Saving Money on Your Next Nuclear Plant

You would be perfectly within your rights to give us the fishy eye if we said anything other than that nuclear energy plants are very expensive to build. Most power plants suffer this problem, because costs are so front-loaded: plants take time to build, introducing bank interest charges, changes in regulation that incur cost and fixed costs on commodities that refuse to stay fixed. But this can work in two directions – just as costs can go up for uncontrollable reasons so can they come down.

The official price tag for Georgia Power's share of two new reactors at Plant Vogtle is $1.5 billion lower than when the company requested permission to build them, according to testimony Tuesday in front of the Georgia Public Service Commission.

Walter Jones reports in the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle that a lot of information about Vogtle is protected as a trade secret. But still, he could share what was bringing down cost – this time, it’s bank interest.

Projected construction costs dropped, Mr. Burleson said, because the company is avoiding some interest by charging its customers for the reactors before they begin operation.

Customers are paying about $1.30 per month for the reactors; the charge will rise by that amount each year until it tops out at $9.00 per month. When the plants open in six years, the surcharge should stop.

We like that the Georgia PSC is keeping its hand in and having these checkups every six months. This allows everyone to hear that Georgia Power (it’s nuclear energy page is here) is moving the project along – and in the process validating the Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) method of financing a new plant – and, really, such frequent meetings can do no harm.

If CWIP works as intended in Georgia, then implementing it elsewhere becomes easier – and avoids those fishy eyes when we say there are ways to bring down the costs of a nuclear plant.

Those are Vogtle’s towers way off there in the distance.

Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin...

Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap...

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

NEI Nuclear Notes

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