NEI Nuclear Notes

St. Luice Nuclear Plant For the past few weeks, we've taken note of attempts by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy to cast doubt on the safety of the steam generators at the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant . Just this afternoon, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission put an end to the nonsense by rejecting a request asking the commission to delay the plant's re-start : FPL spokesman Michael Waldron said, “There should be no doubt that this decision confirms the continued safety of the St. Lucie plant and the steam generator system. The NRC’s rejection of SACE’s petition clearly shows that the inflammatory rhetoric, scare tactics, and testimony by so-called “expert” witnesses, is about political theater, not safety. FPL would not put a nuclear unit online if it was unsafe, nor, would we be allowed to do so by our federal safety regulator.” In today’s order, the NRC said, “SACE’s concerns are connected to the 2007 replacement of the plant’s steam generators; the plant, how...

Dennis Spurgeon Over the past week, we've seen a spate of media activity concerning the safety of the steam generators at St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant . Despite the fact that the NRC has said that St. Lucie is safe , anti-nuclear activists are getting plenty of mileage in the local media over charges that don't hold any weight. In fact, anyone with any operating or regulatory experience  says this story is complete bunk. You can add former Department of Energy assistant secretary Dennis Spurgeon to that list. Today over at TCPalm.com , he's wondering out loud about the why behind all of this coverage. Though the text is behind a pay wall, we've excerpted this relevant passage: Before repeating the Times' story, shouldn't this newspaper have looked into why such a biased hit piece was written in the first place? Is it an attempt to discredit the St. Lucie Nuclear Plant because its successful power upgrade (retrofit) has demonstrated that Florida's ...

We've been watching the wires pretty closely every since we caught wind of a potential announcement by Duke Energy about the proposed nuclear project in Levy County, Florida. So far, several outlets have incorrectly reported that the project has been permanently shelved. It's too bad those reporters didn't bother reading the fine print of the Duke Energy press release concerning a wide-ranging settlement with the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) that went out about an hour ago (Bold emphasis mine): In 2008, Duke Energy Florida announced plans to construct two 1,100-megawatt nuclear units in Levy County, Fla. Duke Energy’s EPC agreement was based on the ability to obtain the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) combined construction and operating license (COL) by Jan. 1, 2014. As a result of delays by the NRC in issuing COLs for new nuclear plants, as well as increased uncertainty in cost recovery caused by recent legislative changes in Florida, Duke Energy wi...

Diego Garcia (left) and Gators for long-term energy planning. Earlier this week, a Florida State Senate committee held a hearing on the state's nuclear cost recovery law . Paul Genoa was on hand to deliver testimony on behalf of NEI, but today I'd like to focus on another individual who testified on Monday. His name is Diego Garcia . He's a senior at the University of Florida currently and is double majoring in nuclear engineering and political science. He's also president of the campus chapter of the American Nuclear Society. That's him in the picture with a few of his classmates who showed up at Monday's hearing. So why should we listen to Mr. Garcia ? Put simply, nuclear cost recovery laws have been put in place all over the country in order to allow electric utilities to engage in the sort of long-term planning that's desperately needed on the electric grid . And when we're talking about facilities that could potentially be producing emissi...