NEI Nuclear Notes

Blake Bolt and Sharimar Colon are excited about nuclear energy. Each works at Southern Nuclear Co. and sees firsthand how their ingenuity powers the nation’s largest supply of clean energy. For Powered by Our People , they shared their stories of advocacy, innovation in the workplace and efforts to promote efficiency. Their passion for nuclear energy casts a bright future for the industry. Blake Bolt has worked in the nuclear industry for six years and is currently the work week manager at Hatch Nuclear Plant in Georgia. He takes pride in an industry he might one day pass on to his children. What is your job and why do you enjoy doing it? As a Work Week Manager at Plant Hatch, my primary responsibility is to ensure nuclear safety and manage the risk associated with work by planning, scheduling, preparing and executing work to maximize the availability and reliability of station equipment and systems. I love my job because it enables me to work directly with every department ...

Steve McQueen On this day in 1944, 76 Allied prisoners of war broke out of a Nazi POW camp. It was a daring operation that later became known as "The Great Escape" thanks to a book and film adaptation of the same name. What in the world does this have to do with nuclear energy? One of the main characters in the film is U.S. Army Air Force pilot Virgil Hilts. He was played by Hollywood legend Steve McQueen. Virgil Hilts was just a fictional character. But Alvin Vogtle was the real deal. I'll let NEI's Mark Flanagan pick it up from here in an excerpt from a 2010 blog post  about the federal loan guarantees for the construction of two AP-1000 reactors at Plant Vogtle in Georgia. * * * Who was Alvin Ward Vogtle, Jr., after whom the plant is named? According to his 1994 New York Time obituary, he was : A former president and chairman of the Atlanta-based Southern Company. Vogtle (3rd from right) & his POW bunk mates. Well, that makes sense. But ...

The following guest post comes from Victoria Anderson, senior project manager for risk assessment at NEI. Since the NRC published the Probabilistic Risk Assessment Policy Statement in 1995, both the industry and NRC have worked to use risk information to better focus implementation of regulations at our country’s nuclear reactors. Risk information has helped advance maintenance efforts, routine inspections and testing procedures to ensure that licensees direct resources to the equipment and practices that are most important to safe, reliable operation of their plants. In one such effort, in 2004, the NRC published a voluntary rule – 10 CFR 50.69 , Risk-informed categorization and treatment of structures, systems and components for nuclear power reactors – that would allow licensees to refocus their equipment special treatment requirements on the structures, systems and components that are the most important to protecting the plant. Specifically, licensees implementing this volunta...

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...

The following post was sent to us by Southern Nuclear’s Joshua Andrews 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.  Joshua Andrews is a nuclear engineer in the Nuclear Fuel Supply group at Southern Nuclear who has been in the nuclear industry for three years.  For more on this promotion, take a look at the featured content on our website and follow the #futureofenergy tag across our digital channels.  Joshua Andrews Why I enjoy working in nuclear  My job allows me to make decisions that will directly and positively impact the lives of people I care about and the entire footprint of our service area. There will always be a need for electricity, so I can’t think of a more meaningful way to secure a positive future for myself and my ...

Southern Co. and its partners are building two new reactors at Georgia’s Plant Vogtle (and SCANA is building two at South Carolina’s V.C. Summer and TVA is finishing a reactor at Tennessee’s Watts Bar). We all know this. But it would be interesting to know the relationship, if any, between the decision to build these reactors and the EPA’s carbon emission rules released Monday. After all, the rules have been coming since at least 2008, so it could be figured into the thinking. Was it? Kyle Leach, Georgia Power’s planning and policy director, has given us a least a small peek at his company’s view of this: "We have contemplated carbon in our analysis," he said. "... We anticipated that at some time we would be in a carbon-constrained world." With the completion of Vogtle's addition, the company will have 30 percent more generating capacity than it needs on the hottest summer day when air conditioning units are blowing full force across the state. Tha...

Here’s the good news: The nuclear industry applauds the Department of Energy and Southern Company for fulfilling the promise of the clean-energy loan guarantee program enacted by Congress in 2005. The agreement demonstrates the Obama administration’s recognition of the key role nuclear energy must play in a successful clean energy policy. U.S. nuclear energy facilities have proven their ability to provide reliable, affordable electricity while protecting the environment. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced this yesterday at a luncheon and you may well be thinking that this happened a while ago – even a long while ago. Well, yes and no. Previous Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the guarantee to Southern Company in 2010. Reuters picks up the story from there: But record low natural gas prices, tepid growth in electricity demand and the lack of a federal cap on carbon emissions have kept any such revival at bay. Now only a few new reactors are projected t...

Southern Co. has not had a bad time putting up two new reactors at its Plant Vogtle site in Georgia, so maybe they can do a little more of that (behind a pay wall, though you can join for the day for 99 cents – though your email will never see the end of solicitations): The company — convinced natural gas and alternative fuels will not satisfy future demand — is already considering whether to start the process toward another, post-Vogtle nuclear project, a top executive says. “I can tell you that we want to keep nuclear as an option on the table, so don’t be surprised if we start a licensing process to keep that option alive,” President and Chief Executive Officer Paul Bowers said in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “(It’s) a 10-year, 10-to 12-year process to build. So keeping it alive, I think we have to keep that in consideration.” Bowers says the idea would be to consider new build after determining Georgia’s electricity needs in 2025. But what a...

Over the past few weeks, we've gotten multiple requests from our member companies to distribute video of the most popular panel discussion at the 2013 Nuclear Energy Assembly . The clip embedded below is from a panel discussion between four industry CEOs: Tom Farrell of Dominion Resources; Chris Crane of Exelon; Tom Fanning of Southern Company; and Tony Alexander of FirstEnergy Corp. The topic: "Navigating Uncharted Seas: CEO Perspectives on the Electricity Business." The discussion, moderated by Dominion's Farrell, was both frank and free-wheeling. If you really want to get some insight into the issues nuclear operators are facing these days in both regulated and merchant markets, this 31-minute video is a great place to start. Now, we understand that not everyone is going to have 30 minutes to devote to watching the entire discussion. That's why we're hard at work back at the office editing this same video into smaller bites that can be digested more...

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...

The two reactors at Georgia’s Plant Vogtle will be delayed about a year and cost $381 million more than originally planned. Is this disappointing? A bit – I’m eager to see these up and running, but the years, they do speed by, don’t they? 2017 will be here soon enough. Certainly, though, another year of work means ratepayers are on the hook, right? No, it doesn’t seem so. The truth of another year is that it does not represent a major issue for the ratepayers. But the company’s analysis continues to show that adding more nuclear energy to Georgia Power’s portfolio would be a better deal for customers by $4 billion over the life of the plant than any other available energy source, said Buzz Miller, Georgia Power’s executive vice president for nuclear development. “We have a very good project for our goals of building it right with quality and compliance ,” he said. And happily, Georgia Power has some options. Miller said the additional costs will be offset by fed...

Bottom of containment vessel for new reactor at Plant Vogtle The following guest post was written by NEI's Mitch Singer. Jeff McMahon bases his argument against nuclear cost recovery “Editors Rebel Against Ratepayer Financing For Nuclear Plants,” on the sole premise that because natural gas is inexpensive at this point in time it will remain so for decades. Therefore, energy companies should rely solely on one source of electricity generation. Ignoring the old adage of not putting your eggs in one basket is as relevant in generation choices as it is in financial investments. Energy companies evaluate a variety of factors to determine their generating mix and plan not in years, but rather decades ahead. Public utility commissioners do the same. They conduct an extensive analysis of the state’s demand growth commonly known as a “determination of needs” that looks at all methods of generation to see which ones are most suitable. Commissioners are also obligated to make ...

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...

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...

The 560-foot tall lift derrick at Plant Vogtle (Southern Company). That is one mighty big crane . Here are all the details from Southern Company: Testing has begun on a major component in the construction of two new nuclear units at Plant Vogtle 3 and 4 – a 560-foot tall heavy lift derrick, one of the biggest cranes in the world. The derrick, which will be used to move large pieces at the site of the first new nuclear units built in the United States in 30 years, has the capacity to move the equivalent of five 747 jets across the distance of more than three-and-a-half football fields in a single lift. In addition, major components will begin arriving to the site later this year and early 2013, the first of which will be the reactor vessel for Unit 3. The Unit 3 condensers have arrived from South Korea, where they were manufactured. Unit 3 is scheduled to go online in 2016, and Unit 4 will follow in 2017. Also at the site, significant work has been done on turbine islands, co...

Earlier this month, the Associated Press ran a story on its national wire concerning what it described as rising construction costs at America's new nuclear plants : America's first new nuclear plants in more than a decade are costing billions more to build and sometimes taking longer to deliver than planned, problems that could chill the industry's hopes for a jumpstart to the nation's new nuclear age. A couple of days later, I had a chance to spend a few minutes with Steve Byrne, SCE&G 's President, Generation and COO, to ask him some questions about the topic. SCE&G's parent company, SCANA Corporatio n, is building a pair of new reactors at the VC Summer site in South Carolina (click here for the latest progress report from SCANA). I started off by asking Steve why claims that costs were spiraling out of control at VC Summer and Plant Vogtle in Georgia were incorrect: I also had the chance to ask Steve about how "construction work in pr...

In case you missed the tweets from @SouthernCompany or @EnergyPressSec yesterday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu   toured the site where two new reactors are being built at Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Ga. Reconfirming his commitment to nuclear energy, the Nobel Laureate spoke to the more than 500 workers already on site on the need to build new nuclear plants to create jobs for American workers and boost U.S. competitiveness . “In his State of the Union address, President Obama outlined a blueprint for an American economy that is built to last and develops every available source of American energy,” said Secretary Chu. “Nuclear power is an important part of that blueprint. The work being done in Georgia and at research organizations like Oak Ridge National Laboratory is helping restore American leadership in the global race for the nuclear energy jobs of tomorrow.” Just how many new jobs is Secretary Chu talking about? Business Week says : About 1,700 workers are alrea...

Last night, NEI's Chief Nuclear Officer, Tony Pietrangelo, appeared on the PBS News Hour to discuss the future of the industry in the wake of the awarding of a COL to Plant Vogtle.

Germany is a big country with a big problem when it  comes to closing its nuclear plants. Belgium is a smaller country with the same problem and somehow it’s still a pretty big one : With just three years to go before Belgium is due to begin phasing out nuclear power, the country is still grappling with basic questions about its plans, including whether the 2015 deadline has to be adjusted to ensure electricity supplies remain reliable. To be honest, if you want to close nuclear plants, you have to prepare for the loss of a lot of electricity and the very real possibility that the price to customers will go up, in some cases considerably. Belgium hasn’t prepared for any of this. Melchior Wathelet, the country's new state secretary for energy, said in an interview that a study currently being prepared, for presentation by July, will assess whether there is "an alternative that would guarantee the security of supply at an acceptable price and respecting the environm...