California Nuclear Update: PG&E Looking at New Nuclear Build

From today's San Francisco Chronicle:

PG&E Corp. is considering investments in new nuclear plants outside California as a way to curb greenhouse gases, Chief Executive Officer Peter Darbee said Tuesday at an employee meeting on energy efficiency and climate change.

Other possible investments include solar power plants that use focused mirrors to heat water, generate steam and run electrical turbines.

California law forbids building more nuclear plants within the state until the United States has a permanent site for storing radioactive waste. But Darbee, whose San Francisco company owns the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant near San Luis Obispo, argues that the country needs nuclear power if it hopes to fight global warming.

Back in September 2005, NEI CEO Skip Bowman gave a speech at LA Town Hall entitled, "Why American Needs Nuclear Energy Now".

Here's an excerpt:

Here in California, replacing the San Onofre and Diablo Canyon nuclear power plants with alternate fossil electricity sources would mean an additional 16.5 million tons of carbon dioxide, by our analysis. That'’s the equivalent of emissions from one-sixth of all the cars in the state.

These four reactors also helped prevent the emission of more than 9,500 tons of nitrogen oxides. To get the same impact, you would have to pull more than 500,000 cars off the road.

[...]

As I read through the Environmental Impact Report prepared by the California PUC on the San Onofre project, the wisdom of steam generator replacement became more and more clear and compelling.

For example, replacing more than 2,000 megawatts of capacity at San Onofre with combined-cycle gas-fired capacity would require construction of four to five new gas-fired plants, the Commission said in its analysis of alternatives. In addition, the new gas-fired plants would require new gas pipeline capacity to bring in the fuel, as well as new transmission lines and new or upgraded substations to carry the electricity to market.

The California PUC'’s environmental report also evaluated renewable energy alternatives to San Onofre. The PUC said that although these technologies "“do not rely on a finite supply of fossil fuel, consume little water and generate either zero or reduced levels of air pollutants and hazardous wastes ... these technologies do cause environmental impacts."”

The PUC concluded that all the renewable alternatives "“have unique technical feasibility limitations. High costs and, in some cases, limited dispatchability, inhibit their market penetration."

California would do well to give nuclear energy a second look.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Environment, Energy, Politics, Technology, Electricity, Nuclear Power, Climate Change, Global Warming, GHG, California

Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin

NEI Nuclear Notes

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