NEI Nuclear Notes

NEI VP Richard Myers About a week ago, the Tampa Bay Times published an analysis by Ivan Penn claiming that ratepayers in Florida would be better served if Duke Energy built a natural gas plant in place of a proposed nuclear energy facility in Levy County . Over the weekend, that same paper published a letter to the editor by NEI's Richard Myers taking issue with that conclusion: Nuclear plants offer benefits The May 12 article "Levy nuclear plant more costly than a natural gas facility" fails to account for the economic and environmental benefits the two nuclear plants would bring to Florida. Progress Energy Florida, now Duke Energy Florida, determined in 2008 that the Levy nuclear plants would benefit the state by providing fuel diversity and price stability for consumers while avoiding air emissions. In 2012, Florida generated 68 percent of its electricity from natural gas, a significant increase from 47 percent in 2008. Floridians may recall that in 2008...

Crystal River 3 No one wants drilling rigs to topple into the ocean. Or coal mines to leak toxic and/or explosive gases into tunnels. Or windmills to wipe out populations of bats. There are risks to virtually any human endeavor, of course, and there are benefits to balance against them, but the goal is always to minimize risk and maximize benefits. If the risk can be close to zero and the benefits considerable, that’s of course ideal if difficult to achieve. 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 pa...

Duke Energy got a motley crew of protestors at its annual shareholder meeting, with environmentalist upset with coal and nuclear and the local tea party upset that Duke apparently helped bring the Democratic National Convention to Charlotte. "We need to move away from coal," said Kim Jackson, an activist. "Yet they continue to embrace it. And nuclear isn't much better. Look what happened in Japan. Does nuclear look safe to you?" Not to understate the seriousness of the accident in Japan, but to date the death toll from the plant is zero. Jane Bilelle of the Asheville, N.C., Tea Party said [Duke chief executive Jim] Rogers should be ashamed of himself for giving "shareholders' money to the Democratic Party." "That's theft of shareholder's money," she said. If she’s a Duke shareholder, she should complain; otherwise, it’s just words on the wind. Duke spokesman Tom Williams said the utility has long support...

That’s the news. Here are some details : Duke's offer was a 6.4 percent premium over the last 20 trading days, the company said, and the deal would be accretive to Duke's earnings in the first year. The transaction would create an industry giant with approximately 7.1 million electricity customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio, and 57,000 megawatts of generating capacity. And here’s what the proposed merged company wants to do: The two North Carolina companies will serve more than 7 million electricity customers, and will use the opportunity to eliminate redundancies in their service areas to focus on beefing up their nuclear power offerings. Duke and Progress have long been expanding their nuclear ambitions, and say the new combined company will have the largest regulated nuclear fleet in the U.S. Here are comments from Duke Energy’s Jim Rogers (from Duke’s press release ): “Our industry is entering a building...

Interesting doings in Florida today: The Florida Public Service Commission rejected arguments from environmentalists and clean-energy advocates and voted 3-1 today to approve a request by Progress Energy, and Florida Power & Light, to charge customers for four new nuclear power plants that wouldn't generate any voltage until 2017. It’s a first shot on this story and not completely accurate. True, four new units are involved. Two of them – Progress Energy’s – will be in Levy County – we wrote about them the other day. The other two – FPL’s - will be put in the existing plant at Turkey Point. In addition, FPL won approval to increase capacity at four units, two each at Turkey Point and St. Lucie. Likewise, Progress Energy will be able to increase capacity at one unit at Crystal River. We’d also call the “clean-energy advocates” phrase a bit misleading since nuclear advocates could call themselves that with equal validity. But why filter? We can go straight to the Fl...

Let’s get the long weekend going with some good reading: The Energy Information Administration, the statistics arm of the Department of Energy, has launched a new portal called Energy Explained , which, um, explains energy. All the usual suspects are accounted for and nuclear energy has a nice set of pages. It really does start at the beginning: Nuclear energy is energy in the nucleus (core) of an atom. Atoms are tiny particles that make up every object in the universe. There is enormous energy in the bonds that hold atoms together. Nuclear energy can be used to make electricity. But first the energy must be released. It can be released from atoms in two ways: nuclear fusion and nuclear fission. Nice shoutout to the fusion gang there. We expect the site could be especially helpful to students but really to anyone with an interest. --- President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize this morning. We expect both sweet and sour comments about it, but here’s what caught...

If we didn’t like nuclear power very much and our arguments against it were running a little thin, we might consider using current events as a wedge. For example, you may have heard that the economy has been struggling. Hence: The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, which is opposing new nuclear plants in several states, will ask the PSC to re-evaluate the urgency for new nuclear energy in Florida given the recession and the slowing growth of the utilities' customer base. This comes from the Orlando Sentinel and nowhere in the story does the SACE say anything about mutated alligators making a meal out of grandma or radioactive sludge in the everglades. It’s all about the money – admittedly a big subject for all power plants, but most particularly for nuclear energy plants. So what is the response? Progress officials said Friday they have already taken into account the country's economic downturn and its project's construction delays by reducing how much they w...

The NRC has approved the Shearon Harris plant 's application for license renewal; extending plant operations for an additional 20 years, through 2046. Per the NRC press release, After carefully reviewing the plant’s safety systems and specifications, the staff concluded that there were no safety concerns that would preclude license renewal, because the applicant had effectively demonstrated the capability to manage the effects of plant aging. The “Safety Evaluation Report Related to the License Renewal of Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant, Unit 1,” was issued in August. In addition, NRC conducted inspections of the plant to verify information submitted by the applicant. The reports relating to the Shearon Harris license renewal are available on the NRC Web site . The Shearon Harris license renewal is the 51st renewal to date. The NRC announcement is particularly well-timed, as it provides an opening to point readers to a relevant clip that has just gone up on YouTube, from our fr...

A Florida regulatory agency, the Public Service Commission , has unanimously endorsed Progress Energy's proposal to build two new nuclear reactors on a site in Levy County. If approved by state and federal regulators, the two reactors could begin operations by 2016-2017. Earlier this year, the Public Service Commission expressed unanimous consent on Florida Power & Light's request to build two new reactor units at its Turkey Point plant in Miami-Dade County.

That of course would be Walt Disney World, but in neighboring Levy county, the next most happiest, Progress Energy is set to build a new nuclear power plant. The response by Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Thomas is exceptionally upbeat : Locally, the only major controversy comes from neighboring Citrus County, which houses the utility's Crystal River nuclear plant and is miffed it isn't getting this one. The state of Florida is gung-ho, which means no major obstacles from the Public Service Commission or Department of Environmental Protection. Nuclear power is the only option available to meet Gov. Charlie Crist 's ambitious goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A new state law will allow Progress Energy to begin collecting money for the $17 billion facility in advance. So the utility's customers could see a $9 bump in an average electric bill beginning in January. To speed up the federal review process, Progress Energy plans to use a next-g...

From Progress : Progress Energy Carolinas, a subsidiary of Progress Energy (NYSE: PGN), announced that it will file a combined operating license (COL) application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) later today [yesterday] for two possible new reactors at the existing Harris Nuclear Plant site near New Hill, N.C. Nuclear power is one of three components of the company's balanced solution strategy, which also includes the use of renewable energy sources and an emphasis on energy efficiency. ... Progress Energy chose the Harris site in 2006, based on availability of transmission lines, proximity to cooling water and to Progress Energy Carolinas' largest area of customer concentration. ... The Harris Plant site was originally planned for four nuclear reactors, but due to changing economic conditions in the 1970s and 1980s, only one reactor was built. The Harris site offers a large amount of available land -- approximately 35 square miles -- and has an adequate water suppl...

Arriving here at the office this morning, everyone at NEI was shocked at the news of the passing of Robert McGehee, the chairman and CEO of Progress Energy. McGehee suffered a stroke in London this weekend while there to attend an EEI Financial Conference. He was 64. Mr. McGehee was a member of NEI's Executive Committee and had previously served as vice-chairman. A veteran of the U.S. Navy, McGehee attended submarine school alongside our President and CEO, Skip Bowman. Needless to say, our thoughts and prayers are with the McGehee family at this time. Please keep them in yours.

Details off the wire .

From Gainesville.com : In a move that could provide more financial incentive for building nuclear power plants, the Florida Public Service Commission on Tuesday adopted new rules that will let investor-owned utility companies recover some of the costs of the new plants before they begin operation. The immediate beneficiary of the rule change could be Progress Energy, which is taking steps to build the state's first nuclear power plant since 1977, when the company began operating its Crystal River facility. Progress Energy has identified a 3,000-acre site in Levy County eight miles north of the Crystal River complex as the possible location for a new nuclear plant.