Crystal River 3 |
I know all of this is obvious, but it’s nice occasionally to see it reaffirmed publically.
“The review found that the current repair plan appears to be technically feasible,” said Alex Glenn, incoming president of Progress Energy Florida, a subsidiary of Duke Energy, “but significant risks and technical issues still need to be resolved, including the ultimate scope of any repair work.Glenn is talking about a crack in a containment dome at Progress Energy’s Crystal River 3 facility in Florida. Progress (which is now part of Duke Energy) wanted to figure out how much it would cost to fix the problem and hired an outside company, Zapata Consulting, to review the situation.
The cost? A fair amount.
The Zapata report estimated the repair cost at approximately $1.49 billion. Progress Energy's prior assessment indicated expected repair cost of $900 million to $1.3 billion, with the costs trending up.”And if Zapata is correct, trending up is what those costs are doing. As with many reports, Zapata offered scenarios to estimate how much the process would cost if it went extremely well and if it went very badly.
Under the worst-case scenario, Zapata estimated that the cost could be $3.43 billion with a 96-month schedule.That’s a lot of money and we would be naïve to think that Progress Energy will not consider its options. Crystal River 3 has been operating since 1977 and has paid its way.
“We have not made a final decision on whether to repair or retire CR3,” Glenn said in a statement on Monday. “The decision and schedule will be driven by the final analysis. We will carefully analyze and settle each finding as we continue to evaluate the technical and licensing implications, estimated costs and the time required to make the repair. We will proceed with a repair option only if there is a high degree of confidence that the repair can be successfully completed and licensed within the final estimated costs and schedule.”The shuttering of any nuclear energy facility means the loss of a lot of carbon emission free baseload electricity generation – 860 megawatts in this case, with an uprate pending if it returns to service. And it may yet return to service – Progress Energy will figure out what’s best for its customers.
But if Progress Energy decides to retire the reactor, that’s that. No company runs unsafe nuclear reactors; and no company can afford to lose money. There’s just no upside.
Comments
James Greenidge
Queens NY
James Greenidge
Queens NY
And certainly, PGN proved no better at corporate mergers than they are at SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis. They put themselves through the wringer rather consistently.
Now its a Duke issue.
Hopefully a different talent base.
James Greenidge
Queens NY
mark said...
While we're at it lets list off other aspects that will cost more than you initial 50 million estimate. The demo of the existing containment will certainly cost more than that. the rebar and concrete to rebuild the new one will cost more than that. Hell you can't buy the fuel to refuel the reactor at Crystal River for just one outage for 50million"
Yea, well finding out what's out there's half the fun! Wonder how much it costs for China and India and Russia to build their containment structures. Yes, I don't discriminate who does the contract, so long it's done right for the right (lowest) price! Competition rules for me!
James Greenidge
Queens New York