NEI Nuclear Notes

Nuclear Science Week (NSW – but very safe for work) is a national, broadly observed week-long celebration to focus local, regional and national interest on all aspects of nuclear science. Seattle is hosting NSW this year, bit let’s focus on the national aspect. In fact, plans in other locales are – well, pretty darn awesome. I’ll zero in on South Carolina : The Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness (CNTA) will hold their 23rd Annual Edward Teller Lecture and Banquet on Monday, October 20, 2014.  The lecture is a community event attended by community leaders, CNTA members, local and national business and corporate interests, government and Savannah River Site officials, and elected officials from Georgia and South Carolina. Guest Lecturer – Robert Stone (Director – Pandora’s Promise and Oscar-Nominated & Emmy-Nominated Documentary Filmmaker) This is especially impressive. One would imagine that, two years after making Pandora’s Promise , Stone would have ...

If you need evidence of the power and value of the electricity market, Site Selection has you covered. The self-described magazine of corporate real estate strategy and area economic development has published a listing of utilities that have added the most jobs and invested the most resources in the last year. Site Selects lists the top 10, always a popular round number for this kind of endeavor. Frankly, the numbers of jobs in particular surprised and delighted me. These are the companies (most of them, also delightful) with nuclear holdings: Alabama Power : the Southern Company subsidiary's economic development team helped companies create 1,810 new jobs in 2013 with total capital investment closing in on $2 billion. American Electric Power : AEP hosted 10 educational forums across its service territory attended by more than 400 community partners and elected officials. [Writer Adam Bruns didn’t get job/investment numbers for AEP.] Duke Energy : The calendar year 2013 sa...

The following post was sent to us by Southern/Georgia Power’s Sarah Gillham for NEI’s Powered by Our People promotion . Powered by Our People is part of the Future of Energy campaign that NEI launched earlier this year. This promotion aims to communicate innovation in our nation’s nuclear facilities in the voices of the people working at them. Sarah is the maintenance rule coordinator at Vogtle 3 & 4. She has been in the nuclear industry for four years, choosing to make a career in the industry after two summer internships in her field.  For more on this promotion, take a look at the featured content on our website and follow the #futureofenergy tag across our digital channels. Sarah Gillham How long have you been in the nuclear industry?  I have been employed full time for four years and have two summers of previous experience as an intern. What is your job and why do you enjoy doing it?  I am currently serving as the maintenance rule coordinator at th...

Uprate at St. Lucie impossible without CWIP. Two nuclear critics, Peter Bradford and Mark Cooper, recently published a report (pdf) explaining how “advanced cost recovery” for nuclear plants in Florida and South Carolina “creates another nuclear fiasco.” Cooper’s main argument seems to be that Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) shifts to ratepayers all of the risks of building nuclear plants. This is either a deliberate distortion or a misunderstanding of how the cost recovery mechanism works. How “advanced cost recovery” (aka CWIP) works When a utility builds any type of project, it uses a mix of debt and equity to pay for the construction. The debt comes from banks and other investors and, of course, the utility must pay interest to use the debt. The equity comes from the utility’s shareholders and also requires a return for its use. The CWIP financing mechanism, which is also allowed by the federal government for interstate transmission projects, allows a company building...

You just knew it would happen: after Georgia Power announced it would take another year to bring the two new reactors at Plant Vogtle online, the Associated Press intoned : As the cost of building a new nuclear plant soars, there are signs of buyer's remorse. See last week’s post below this one about the “soaring costs,” I was interested to read where the buyer’s remorse was coming from. The main source would be Georgia Power or its parent, Southern Co., right? Not a word about any such remorse here. Well, then, who or what does the article have weeping brokenly? [A] Georgia lawmaker sought to penalize the company for going over budget, announcing a proposal to cut into Southern Co.'s profits by trimming some of the money its subsidiary Georgia Power makes. The legislation has a coalition of tea party, conservative and consumer advocacy groups behind it, but faces a tough sale in the Republican-controlled General Assembly. GOP Rep. Jeff Chapman found just a single co-spo...

Miniature not because Georgia Power is a small provider of electricity, but because the company’s view of its own future may provide some insight into larger energy trends. We should not assume this to be true, an easy trap to fall into; instead, let’s look at it as one data point in a thesis that could be proven or disproven by more data points. The reason we can glimpse into the future is because the Georgia Public Service Commission requires Georgia Power to submit what it calls an integrated resource plan. This IRP provides a look at the electricity landscape over the next 20 years. Georgia Power prepares a new IRP every three years, so its outlook can change based on changes in the marketplace. Although we often refer to the two new reactors at Georgia’s Plant Vogtle as a Southern Co. project, the facility is jointly owned by Georgia Power (45.7%), Oglethorpe Power Corporation (30%), Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (22.7%) and Dalton Utilities (1.6%). Georgia Powe...

Georgia Power is applying some price pressure on its Plant Vogtle project (where Peter Pepper picked a peck of peppers, apparently), as its ability to charge ratepayers a little bit more now saves a lot later . Georgia Power has cut $18 million from its planned nuclear expansion project at Plant Vogtle, informing state utility regulators Wednesday that their cost for the project is now $6.09 billion. Now, you may say that now or later, it’s the same amount, but not so. The cost of Georgia Power’s portion of the project originally was approved for $6.4 billion but reduced to $6.09 billion after the utility was allowed to collect financing costs from customers. The $18 million in reductions stem from financing costs that were lowered “primarily as a result of changing in the timing of cash expenditures,” the report said. Which means that the interest costs are declining because Georgia Power can pay as it goes on at least some of the activities associated with the two new...

Georgia Power opened what it calls a joint information center near but not at its Plant Vogtle site: The two-building complex adjacent to Georgia Power Co.'s offices in Waynesboro would serve as a media and information center if a serious accident or emergency were to occur at the power plant, situated 20 miles away on the banks of the Savannah River. Planning for a problem and having a problem are two different things and Georgia Power has set things up so that any problem that might develop can be communicated quickly and efficiently. Joint information centers are well understood in the emergency planning field. Here’s a good description from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico: In the unlikely event of an emergency, the WIPP Joint Information Center (JIC) serves as a central control point to coordinate multi-agency efforts to issue timely and accurate information to the public, news media and project employees. What’s interesting about Georgia Powe...

We were pleasantly surprised that Georgia has done what Missouri is edging toward doing: Wednesday the Senate took great strides in saving taxpayers and Georgia Power customers significant money by passing the Georgia Nuclear Energy Financing Act, Senate Bill 31. The bill allows recovering of financing costs during the construction of two nuclear power generators [at Vogtle] rather than have the financing costs compounded at the end of the project. Sen. Don Balfour, chairman of the Rules Committee, sponsored the bill. We don’t disagree with any of this – pay-as-you-go stems interest charges that run into the hundreds of millions - but the writing certainly has a Pravda-like tone to it, doesn’t it? This comes from the Senate press office; we wonder if their next release will be about their glorious five-year plan for agriculture. --- Let’s see how it plays in the press. Here’s Jay Bookman in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: State senators —- with little or no exper...

Georgia Power , plurality owner of the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant , announced today it did not receive any bids in response to its 2016-2017 base load capacity RFP. From the press release , ...Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) rules require market bids to be compared with self-build proposals, but no market bids were received. The company's self-build nuclear proposal will be reviewed by the Georgia PSC's Independent Evaluator before the company submits a final recommendation to the Georgia PSC on August 1, 2008 for approval. A final certification decision is expected in March 2009. If certified by the Georgia PSC and licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the two Westinghouse AP1000 units, with a capacity of 1,100 megawatts each, would be constructed at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant site near Waynesboro, Georgia and would be placed in service in 2016 and 2017, respectively.

From Georgia Power (subsidiary of Southern Co. ): Georgia Power, acting for itself and for Plant Vogtle's co-owners (Oglethorpe Power, Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia [MEAG Power], and Dalton Utilities), entered into an Engineering, Procurement and Construction contract (EPC) with a consortium consisting of Westinghouse Electric Company LLC and The Shaw Group Inc.'s Power Group for the engineering, procurement and construction of two AP1000 nuclear units with electric generating capacity of approximately 1,100 megawatts each and related facilities. Georgia Power expects to submit the EPC to the Georgia Public Service Commission May 1, 2008 as a self-build option in connection with the company's 2016-2017 capacity request for proposal. ... Congratulations!