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Duke Energy Scraps Plans For Florida Nuclear Plant, Forced To Delay Others
mdsolar writes
"According to the Associated Press, 'The largest utility in the U.S. is scuttling plans to build a $24.7 billion nuclear power plant in a small Gulf Coast county in Florida, the company announced Thursday. Duke Energy Corp. said it made the decision because of delays by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in issuing licenses for new plants, and because of recent legislative changes in Florida.' Meanwhile, 'Duke Energy's plans to build two nuclear reactors in South Carolina have been delayed by federal regulators who say budget cuts and changes to the plans require more time. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Duke in a letter that a final hearing on plans to build the William S. Lee nuclear plant in Cherokee County would have to wait until 2016. The original target had been this past March."
Either these kinds of plants are ok or they are not. If not, ban them. If so, get the hell out of the way.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I don't think the gulf coast is a good place for a nuke plant anyway what with hurricanes getting stronger and more frequent
That's a CYA policy. Parents have a nasty habit of making a ruckus if a school gives their kids anything they didn't agree to. It's probably a permission ship to be able to give iodine tablets to the students in the event of a meltdown. So even though those tablets would likely help keep the kids from getting thyroid cancer parents would bitch at the school for doing it without permission.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Either these kinds of plants are ok or they are not. If not, ban them. If so, get the hell out of the way.
Not a matter of them being OK. Dismiss that right off.
I lived for years in a city where a battle was waged by the NIMBYs and a regional power company, with the state and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) sitting on a fence like so many crows and cawing in some change to regulations every now and then. It nearly bankrupted the power company, submitting, resubmitting, re-resubmitting construction plans, plant wiring, cooling system designs and plumbing, environmental impact, etc, etc, etc. Effectively they would spend months building reactor housing and then have to tear it all out and start again. After years of this the writing was on the wall, it would never become a nuclear plant (at least, most likely) The plant became a gas generating plant, though most of the structure could be converted to nuclear if the present owners feel like going to battle again. The designs were fine, but courts and red tape can kill any project.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Like it or not, poor oversight can't be removed from a discussion of the technology. If you are building a nuclear plant, you need to be confident that you will be able to maintain responsible oversight/operations/maintenance of the facility for 60 plus years, with oversight/maintenance/storage of the waste for longer. You can have every confidence in the design, in the current owners and the operators when it begins operation, but they will likely be retired if not dead by the time the plant closes. All it takes is one few year period where bad management / operations / regulation comes in and a disaster can happen.
For the record, cheap natural gas and a general lack of growing electricity demand is making developing a nuclear plant pretty questionable at the moment. You have to spend (i.e. borrow) a ton of money up front, on the expectation you will need the energy in 5-10 or more years and that the price of power will have increased sufficiently. Alternatively you can wait it out, see what happens to demand and if needed throw up a gas-fired plant quickly for much less capital and a pretty reasonable operations costs.
The breakdown of U.S energy research and development subsidies reported by the US DOE is roughly 60% for nuclear, 25% to fossil fuels and 15% to sustainable energy sources.
Half a billion dollars worth of subsidies are available for procuring companies (i.e oil companies) proposing "pre-approved" reactor designs, even if they don't build it, and a 1.8 cent per kilowatt hour tax credit if they do.
In addition the 2005 U.S energy bill provided another $13 billion dollars worth of subsidies and revocation of the Public Utilities Holding Company Act (PUHCA, by George.W.Bush), put into law in 1935 to stop a re-occurrence of the 1929 stock market crash. It is this economic mechanism which allows the owners of nuclear power stations to syphon money from ratepayers in the same way utilities companies did in the 1920s.
For anyone whos says this is a problem of the "NIMBYs" (or the ratepayer) protesting the construction, it's not. Constructs in the law governing the location and construction of Nuclear Reactors specifically exclude ratepayer concerns in the consideration for approval. Utilities companies withdraw for their own reasons, usually insurance and liability as, even with the provisions of thePrice Anderson Act Nuclear power plants are too risky to operate.
The reality is if the Nuclear power industry was forced to cover it's own liability and fund itself it would cease to exist.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I'm here to build nuclear power plants and chew bubblegum... and I'm all out of patience for the plant construction licensing process.
All of the nuclear accidents in history have happened because of poor oversight, not to the fault of the technology itself.
The oversight IS a part of the technology. If the technology were flawless and relatively safe then extensive regulation and oversight would not be needed. I'm not opposed to nuclear power but pretending that the oversight can be separated from the equipment is naive.
The current designs of nuclear plants being built around the world have an initial design life of 60 years, not "a couple of decades". They may well go on operating for a century depending on maintenance, fuel costs etc.
The existing fleet of Gen II reactors built in the 70s and 80s are reaching the end of their initial licencing period of 40 years but after inspection and some upgrading here and there quite a few of them are getting a licence extension of ten years with the expectation that they could well get another 10-year operating extension on top of that.
They *lost* billions because the government forced them to cancel it, and now you want to double their losses by making them pay the same amount to the government? I don't care if it was the government's money to begin with; you don't get to give a bunch of money to someone to buy something, then steal it from them, then demand the money back!
I mean I'm no fan of corporations -- I've nearly been arrested protesting quite a few though Occupy, the Tar Sands blockade, etc....but seriously?