Missouri and The Callaway Plant: An Update

The last time we checked in with Missouri, AmerenUE wanted to build another unit at Callaway, but needed a change in the law to allow it to charge customers for their construction while it was ongoing. Even if this change would save kittens from being made into food, the prospect of higher energy bills remains daunting, of course, the current economic outlook sends shivers through everyone. In sum, AmerenUE couldn’t have picked a worse time to want this change.

Peter Bradford, who served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 1977-1982, said the change would raise electric bills for business and residential customers and reduce the money available for creating jobs and spurring economic development.

You have to give Bradford credit for being bang up to date on his economic buzz words. If you’re trying to get a date for the prom, be sure to argue that agreeing will create jobs and spur economic development. In fact, one could argue convincingly that the Callaway plant will do both – it’s blindingly obvious that new construction is an economic good. However, asking ratepayers to pony up for it is a tough sell. AmerenUE’s giving it a try:

The Missouri Energy Development Association, a trade group for Ameren and other Missouri investor-owned utilities, estimates that electric customers' rates would increase between 1 percent and 3 percent annually and just over 10 percent during the entire project.

That figure is based on a construction project taking about six years with Ameren able to get smaller electric cooperatives and municipal utilities to buy an ownership stake in the second reactor.

In other words, they admit to a certain optimism. Keep the name Delbert Scott in mind: he’s the state legislator putting forth the bill to make the change AmerenUE is looking for.

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And here come the Greens:

Such efforts have been met with disdain by environmentalists, many of whom say categorizing nuclear power as "clean" energy is greenwashing.

"They're putting a green bow on a box of radioactive waste that's never going to go away," said Kathleen Logan Smith, executive director of St. Louis-based Missouri Coalition for the Environment.

We think Ms. Smith has seen Kiss Me Deadly, with the Great Whatsit. Nuclear waste has practically lost all its ground as an argument; maybe Ms. Smith could try job creation and spurring economic development.

Correx: we said AmerenUE wanted to build two new units. It's just one - we got over-enthusiastic.

Well, we can’t feature that darned arch every time we look in at Missouri. This is the world’s largest pecan, in Brunswick. We think they kind of missed the boat on achieving a pecan here, but world’s largest filbert probably doesn’t make much sense in Brunswick. Here’s some info.

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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