NEI Nuclear Notes

Your list of the best nuclear news of the year, part 1, and in no particular order. All good news is number 1, right? 1. Pandora’s Promise – There has been a movement by environmentalists to support nuclear energy for some years because of its continued safety record, the inability of renewable energy sources to provide baseload energy and, most especially, the looming spectre of a climate change-driven catastrophe. Robert Stone’s movie Pandora’s Promise made this tectonic shift in attitude manifest for many people. Stone does a lot more than provide talking heads, however, dispelling myths, showing the anti-nuclear movement as driven more by fervor than rationality and facing fully the implications of the Fukushima Daiichi accident. Still, what a great bunch of talking heads: Gwyneth Cravens, Mark Lynas, Stewart Brand, Richard Rhodes and more. They all articulate their conversions on the road to nuclear energy with great intelligence and humor. For me, Lynas is the breakout ...

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...

J. Scott Peterson The following guest post was written by J. Scott Peterson, NEI's senior vice president, communications. NEW YORK CITY—Despite challenging electricity markets and natural gas prices at a 13-year low, industry leaders are confident in the long-term prospects for nuclear energy and its contributions to the electricity mix and U.S. economic growth. On average, America’s 104 commercial reactors are the most efficient power producers on the grid—operating at 86 percent capacity factor. Capacity factor is a measure of efficiency, with a 100-percent rating equaling full power production 24/7, 365 days. Absent reactors in California, Florida and Nebraska that have been closed virtually all year for extended maintenance, the capacity factor at the other 100 reactors was just shy of 90 percent. “We continue to invest in these facilities to preserve their asset value,” NEI President and CEO Marv Fertel told nearly 200 financial analysts and journalists at the Insti...

Some happy news is always a good way to kick off the weekend. Fairfield County officials gathered at the county treasurer’s office Jan. 15 to meet with representatives of the V.C. Summer Nuclear Plant – and receive a check for $23.4 million. If my local nuclear facility wanted to hand me a few million dollars, that would be a-ok, but this actually speaks to one of the major benefits of having a power plant in the neighborhood. “We are very pleased that V.C. Summer Nuclear Station continues to be a major contributor to the local economy through property taxes that support schools, roads, and critical public services for the residents of Fairfield County,” said Dan Gatlin, vice president of Nuclear Operations at V.C. Summer. The article doesn’t say, but I wager Summer is one of the larger employers in Fairfield County , so it has value beyond paying property taxes. And beyond property taxes and employment opportunities, Summer also provides a economic root system for all kinds o...

Harvard professor David Ropeik takes a look at radiation and the concept of risk and find a number of linkages that inculcate a fear of radiation beyond the actual risk from it. Particularly among baby boomers, our nuclear fears are rooted in existential Cold War worries about nuclear weapons, which transitioned into fear of nuclear fallout from weapons testing , which transitioned into environmental concerns. Beyond that stigmatizing past, nuclear radiation bears many of the psychological characteristics that research has found make any risk scarier. We're more afraid of risks imposed on us than those we choose, which is why medical radiation is accepted but nuclear power radiation isn't. A sign of a good article is that it is not afraid to tread into uncomfortable areas. The more pain and suffering they cause, the more afraid we are of risks, and nuclear radiation is associated with cancer, even though studies of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have...

South Carolina Gas and Electric received its combined construction and operating license (COL) from the NRC for two new reactors at its V.C. Summer facility. Let’s let them tell you about it: South Carolina Electric & Gas Company, principal subsidiary of SCANA Corporation , and Santee Cooper, South Carolina’s state-owned electric and water utility, have received approval for combined construction and operating licenses (COLs) from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for two new nuclear units at V. C. Summer Station in Jenkinsville, S.C. “Receiving approval of our licenses to construct and operate units 2 and 3 at V.C. Summer is a significant event for our company and marks the culmination of an intense review by the NRC,” said Kevin Marsh, chairman and CEO of SCANA. “We look forward to building these two new nuclear units to enhance our ability to meet the energy needs of our customers.” Lonnie Carter, president and CEO of Santee Cooper, said, “These new nuclear un...

Mark your calendars : The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is poised to award Scana Corp. (SCG) a license to build two reactors in South Carolina , the second such action after a three-decade drought. The NRC will vote March 30 on the Cayce, South Carolina- based company’s proposal to build two units at its existing Virgil C. Summer plant, about 26 miles (42 kilometers) northwest of Columbia, the agency said today on its website. This seemed likely to happen after the approval for two reactors at Vogtle in Georgia last month, but that didn’t happen. And even in this instance, the NRC calendar marks this event as tentative. So we’ll see. These affirmation hearings take place after all issues have been advanced. This one is scheduled for 1:25 pm and will probably be done by 1:30. It’s basically a quick okay. Bloomberg adds this detail: The reactors may be among the last built in the U.S. this decade, as a glut of cheap natural gas has discouraged companies from investing in nuclear e...

2012 promises to be an extremely consequential year for American nuclear energy. In the grand tradition of sneak previews, the first news to hit made 2011: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday approved the amended design for the Westinghouse AP1000, a reactor that several power companies intend to use for building the first new U.S. nuclear plants in decades. “The design provides enhanced safety margins through use of simplified, inherent, passive, or other innovative safety and security functions, and also has been assessed to ensure it could withstand damage from an aircraft impact without significant release of radioactive materials,” NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said in a statement. And that means this in – we hope – the early part of next year: The certification brings Southern Company subsidiary Southern Nuclear one step closer to receiving the first Combined Construction and Operating License (COL) for a U.S. nuclear plant. "This is another ke...

Does America Online still exist? Why, yes it does, though it seems to have changed its business model considerably – it isn’t supporting the CD-manufacturing industry all by itself anymore, for one thing. It also has an energy site , at which we learn: The headlines should come somewhere between December and March 2012 when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, if all goes as expected, will okay building up to four new nuclear reactors. The licenses for two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors at Southern Co.'s Plant Vogtle in Georgia, followed quickly by two more at SCANA's Summer station in South Carolina, will be the first granted since the 1970s. The story following is notably positive. One plus for new nuclear is new jobs. Both the Vogtle and Summer sites will employ thousands of construction workers, as well as hundreds of operational personnel when the units start up 2016-19. Fertel said that, while the largest reactor components have to be forged overseas since no facilities ex...

I hear it all the time lately. “What’s happening to American technology? Are we losing our edge?” No more space shuttle . Steve Jobs logging off for good . The next generation space telescope on the chopping block. So, it was with no small satisfaction last week that I listened into an NRC hearing on combined construction and operating license for new reactors at the V.C. Summer site in South Carolina. Perhaps the best bit was Stephen Byrne, executive vice president of South Carolina Electricity and Gas, explaining why a utility executive would opt to build a new nuclear power plant . “We choose nuclear over other energy alternatives for four main reasons. First, the need for baseload power. The new units will help meet state regulatory reserve margin requirements. Second, cost. Nuclear is competitive with other baseload options when evaluated over its 40-year design life. Third is fuel diversity, adding units 2 and 3 [at V.C. Summer] will increase the share of nuclear in o...

Yesterday, SCANA held its Spring 2010 analyst meeting which provided an update on the progress of Summer nuclear units 2 & 3. Among the wealth of new pictures (pdf) and stats, the biggest pieces of news are that the project is slightly under budget and may come in almost $1B less than planned once completed (still early though). Here’s Steve Byrne (pdf) - SCANA Corp.’s Executive VP and Chief Nuclear Officer (p. 26): Quick cost update; this is a total project cost which includes for us escalation and contingencies. So generally our contract was negotiated in 2007 dollars, here what you're seeing are escalated numbers [chart below]. The project to-date should have spent about a little over $1 billion, we spent a little under $1 billion. You can see that the project budget is about 10.6 based on the current escalation factors; we think we're going to come in at about 9.8. Those numbers are going to change. I don't get too excited about them dropping or raising...

On a crisp morning in 1937, if you asked him, he may have gone with you and his other friends to a fishing spot just over that hill. But to support his disabled father, and his mother and siblings, Virgil Clifton Summer, Jr., graduated from high school and went to work. The Parr Steam Plant had given him a job: sweeping floors and mowing grass. He was then just 16 years old. After four years as a Navy sailor in World War 2, a college degree, professional engineering license, and a couple decades of hard work back at South Carolina Electric & Gas, he became SCANA’s Chairman, President, and CEO. In 1971, the board named the company’s first nuclear plant for him. Everyone’s heard of Summer 1, and many remember Chairman Summer the gentleman. And now comes the next generation, bearing the same proud name as the original. In Sept ember, the South Carolina Public Service Commission granted SCE&G’s application for a 1.1 percent increase in retail electric rates to help pay for ...