Southern Company subsidiary Georgia Power has already begun preparing a site at its Vogtle nuclear plant to build two new reactors. (Photo: Southern Company)
My office sits about a block from the Nuclear Energy Institute's (NEI) headquarters in downtown Washington, and I could almost hear the corks popping when the government green-lighted the first new nuclear reactors in decades. The two reactors, which the Southern Company will build next to two currently operating reactors at its Alvin W. Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia, will be the first licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) since 1978. The partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979, along with cost overruns and scores of abandoned projects, scotched plans for new reactors until just last week.
"This is a historic day," said Marvin Fertel, president and CEO of NEI, the industry trade association. The NRC vote "sounds a clarion call to the world that the United States recognizes the importance of expanding nuclear energy as a key component of a low-carbon energy future that is central to job creation, diversity of electricity supply and energy security."
Christine Todd Whitman, the former Environmental Protection Agency administrator, and Patrick Moore, a former Greenpeace activist, chimed in the next day on the Huffington Post. Co-chairs of the NEI-funded Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, Whitman and Moore wrote that the new reactors "signal [a] U.S. nuclear energy resurgence."
To be sure, Fertel and his high-profile spokespeople have something to celebrate. Not only will the two reactors be the first built in decades, they will feature a new advanced design by Westinghouse, which was just approved by the NRC in December. That said, many of their assertions -- about nuclear power's revival, its affordability, its impact on ratepayer bills, its potential to "jumpstart" the economy, and its relative safety -- don't hold up to scrutiny.
Let's take a closer look.
"Faint" Prospects for Rebirth. The U.S. nuclear industry has spent hundreds of millions over the last decade to promote its revival, and only a few years ago some proponents were calling for as many as 100 new reactors. Now the industry will be lucky if it can get four or five built in the next 10 years. Standard and Poor's credit rating agency said on Wednesday that the likelihood of a nuclear power "rebirth is faint at this time" due to a sluggish economy, depressed electricity demand, and low natural gas prices.
The Heritage Foundation was equally lukewarm. Jack Spencer, a nuclear expert with the conservative group, told the Associated Press that the approval of the Vogtle reactors was "good news," but added: "I don't think this is the beginning of a full-scale renaissance." He said "too many questions remain" about nuclear waste, government regulation and new reactor designs.
The Economics of New Reactors. Standard and Poor's could have included another major reason the nuclear renaissance has stalled: rapidly escalating construction costs.
Indeed, the price tag for a new reactor has more than tripled over the last 10 years. In 2002, the industry estimated it would cost $2 billion to $3 billion to build a typical 1,100-megawatt reactor, which can power about a million homes. Since then, the projected cost has jumped as high as $10 billion, and Wall Street has been unwilling to finance new reactors without massive federal loan guarantees. Those guarantees mean taxpayers are liable if a plant owner defaults, which is not out of the realm of possibility. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the average risk of default on a federal loan guarantee for nuclear plant construction is 50 percent, and a nuclear project failure would make the Solyndra debacle look like chump change.
Southern Company's subsidiary Georgia Power and its partners probably would not build two new reactors in Georgia if it were not for a $8.3 billion federal loan guarantee, courtesy of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which made $18.5 billion available in loan guarantees to the industry. That leaves only $10 billion, which could support two more new reactors at most, and there is likely no more in the pipeline. The reaction to the Solyndra default prompted the Obama administration -- which wanted to add $38 billion to the nuclear loan guarantee program alone -- to propose a budget earlier this week that zeroes out loan guarantees for all energy technologies. (But don't worry too much about the nuclear industry. The government has been showering it with hundreds of billions in subsidies since it created it more than 50 years ago.)
Georgia Power also will benefit from a federal production tax credit worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to "Big Risks, Better Alternatives," an October 2011 report by Synapse Energy Economics that reviewed proposed nuclear projects in Georgia and Florida. The tax credit would be worth as much as $250 million annually for the first eight years of operation.
In addition, the company is passing along its costs of financing construction, estimated at $1.6 billion, to its customers via a surcharge on their bills, thanks to a law the state legislature passed in 2009 that requires ratepayers to pay for a plant long before it operates--and even if it never does. The average residential customer is now paying about $44 a year to finance the new reactors, and that surcharge will jump to at least $120 a year by 2018 according to Georgia Power's own estimates.
"The problem is these surcharges are based on outdated company cost projections while nuclear cost estimates have only gone up around the world," said Ellen Vancko, nuclear energy and climate change project manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). "No one can say just how much Georgia ratepayers will be on the hook for if and when these reactors are completed."
Better Alternatives. The Synapse report concluded that if the new reactors do come on line, Georgia Power customers would pay top dollar for electricity. Accounting for construction and operating costs, Synapse compared the cost of the new Vogtle reactors -- which Southern estimates at $14 billion -- with viable alternatives. The mid-range cost estimate for the reactors was higher than improved energy efficiency to cut electricity use, natural gas, biomass, land-based wind, and even coal. The only technologies more expensive than the new Vogtle reactors were offshore wind and solar photovoltaic, which are expected to drop in price over time while the projected cost of new reactors continues to escalate.
Overall, Georgia has done an abysmal job promoting energy efficiency, ranking 36th among the states, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy's (ACEEE) 2011 scorecard. ACEEE found that Georgia spent $2.18 per person that year on energy efficiency programs, a fraction of the national average of $14.87. The top five states invested $30.28 to $54.62 per person. A 2009 Georgia Tech study concluded that Georgia could cut electricity demand from 11 percent to 27 percent through aggressive energy-efficiency initiatives.
The state has done an equally abysmal job developing renewable energy. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have policies requiring utilities to ramp up their reliance on renewable sources. Not Georgia. According to UCS calculations, Georgia's homegrown renewable energy sources have the technical potential to supply at least 84 percent of the electricity ratepayers used in 2008.
Marginal Impact on Jobs. In a column Whitman wrote last October for Virginia Business, she called nuclear power a "domestic jobs machine." One new reactor, she said, would produce as many as 2,400 temporary construction jobs, and, once built, employ 400 to 700 full-time workers. In her recent Huffington Post piece, she upped her estimated number of full-time positions to 800.
For argument sake, let's entertain Whitman's latest projection and say the four or five new reactors built over the next decade actually create as many as 4,000 permanent jobs. In the grand scheme of things, that's a pittance. The United States needs 100,000 net new jobs every month just to keep the unemployment rate stable.
If Whitman were really serious about promoting jobs in the energy sector, she would be talking about energy efficiency and renewable energy, which have the potential to create more jobs than nuclear power, according to studies by ACEEE, Navigant Consulting and UCS.
The renewables-efficiency sector is still relatively small, but it's growing. From 1998 through 2007, jobs at renewable energy and energy efficiency businesses nationally jumped 9.1 percent -- more than twice the national average of 3.7 percent--while jobs in the nuclear industry declined 7.9 percent, according to a 2009 Pew Charitable Trusts report. In 2007, 68,203 renewables and efficiency businesses employed 770,385 workers across the country. That same year, the nuclear industry employed 80,242 people.
Maybe Safer, but Safe Enough? Finally, Westinghouse claims that its new AP1000 reactor design chosen for the Vogtle site is safer than current generation reactors because it relies primarily on "passive" means, such as gravity and natural heat convection, instead of pumps, valves and other "active" systems. The design also is intended to be less susceptible to a total loss of off- and on-site power, which triggered the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi facility in Japan last March.
In their Huffington Post piece, Whitman and Moore allude to these passive systems and claim Westinghouse's design "layers precaution upon precaution" to ensure safety. In fact, the design has a weaker containment, less redundancy in safety systems, and fewer safety features than current reactors, according to Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist with UCS's Global Security Program. It is more difficult to predict the performance of passive systems than active systems, he says, but if passive systems fail to work during an accident, there would be no highly reliable active systems available as a backup.
Lyman wants the NRC to thoroughly review the AP1000 and other proposed new designs in light of the Fukushima disaster to ensure they have sufficient safety margins to cope with more severe accidents than they are intended to withstand. For example, the AP1000 is equipped to survive a three-day station blackout under certain conditions, but it is not clear that would be sufficient. The station blackout at Fukushima lasted more than nine days. The NRC, unfortunately, has not conducted the kind of review Lyman says is necessary for designs currently in the licensing pipeline.
NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko apparently was thinking along the same lines last week when the agency voted to grant Southern a license to build and operate the two new reactors. He found himself on the losing end of a 4 to 1 decision -- which has occurred all too often before -- because he wanted assurance from Southern that it would institute safety upgrades based on the NRC's final assessment of lessons learned from Fukushima.
"I cannot support issuing this license as if Fukushima had never happened," Jaczko said. "We've given them a license. They have not given us any commitment they will make these changes in the future."
Elliott Negin is the director of news and commentary at the Union of Concerned Scientists. UCS, which is neither for nor against nuclear power, has been a nuclear safety watchdog for more than 40 years.
Follow Elliott Negin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ElliottNegin
In some areas, Radon is not completely avoidable. Mostly it seeps into basements. Radon ventilation systems are very effective, they can reduce this amount at least 50% and maybe 80%, just depends how much air you want to move. So instead of a 37% of your exposure if you reduce that 80% it is 7.5%, plus 5% cosmic, and 3% soil, that is 15%. So by "so called 'natural sources" like med procedures, nuke medicine, those items are jacking up your dose like 400% to 700% from where is could be "naturally". the whole natural radiation lie, unravels as a complete joke.
http://nukepimp.blogspot.com/p/baseline-is-just-one-of-lies.html
March is Buy Your Girl a Geiger Month!!!! Yeah!!!
Stylish geiger counter, looks like digital camera!
http://www.gqelectronicsllc.com/comersus/store/comersus_viewItem.asp?idProduct=4542
Stylish and cheap at $160 on sale.
Sheesh, why not have a restaurant ready Geiger.
No Geiger? Poor thing.
Buy one for your girl, Geiger shows the love almost as much as Diamonds (not!), but its way cheaper!
I discovered just how poorly these plants were being run and how poorly
they were designed from the get-go. And then I discovered how one of
the basic premises of risk control, separation of risks, was completely
ignored. That being that the used fuel rods were the most dangerous
part of the plant, but for "convenience" the most dangerous things were
stored right next too or even RIGHT ON TOP OF the reactors themselves.
This is done to conserve cost, if they were to ship off the ......
http://nukepimp.blogspot.com/p/manifesto-why-shut-them-down.html
The Carbon Foot print of solar and wind is a significant contribution to this increase.
Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors {LFTR} a flex [Natural Thorium, LWR Nuclear Waste, and even Nuclear weapons] fuel reactor can use the Coal Ash radioactive isotopes (Uranium and Thorium)
to generate Clean (no mercury) electrical power with comparative absolutely no CO2 emissions.
http://www.coal2nuclear.com/
The Convenient Truth is the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor is
The Earth Friendly Reactor.
Earth friendly and never proved anywhere except MAYBE the lab...
Why push for nuclear dreams when SAFE SOLAR is ready for prime time and it coats less?
The CO2 has been going up steadily year after year for 50 years.
To then attribute a new high to the recent influx of wind and solar, produce no CO2 is just amazing.
I suggest a crime against humanity be filed for significant lies to promote a dangerous disease producing industry, nuke.
What are our Leaders thinking besides political payback for the Nuclear Industries Donations?
It is a proven fact that Nature can destroy any land based nuclear reactor, any place anytime 24/7/365! How would the USA pay for a Trillion Dollar Eco-Disaster?
Ask The Japanese!
The only thing safe about nuclear is that the Industry will profit by it...
http://www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com/usatoday/article/38632869?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CFrontpage%7Cs
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/business/2012/feb/22/tdmain01-elevated-levels-of-a-weak-form-of-radioac-ar-1706167/
http://enenews.com/gundersen-in-japan-1000000-additional-cancers-from-fukushima-over-next-20-years-based-on-university-studies-after-three-mile-island-1-5-hour-video
At 54:55 in
Additional cancers because of Fukushima
1,000,000 cancers over next 20 years
based on TMI studies by Dr Steve Wing at U. of N. Carolina
When I use his analysis I develop a number on the order of 1,000,000 cancers
A lot of analysis to indicate a 10% increase in lung cancer and others at TMI
VIDEO
http://www.fairewinds.com/content/arnie-gundersen-japan-national-press-club
That's the difference between science and religion; the former requires facts, and the latter only belief.
http://hormesishistory.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/transcripts-show-n-r-c-dependent-upon-a-free-press-for-info/
妊娠中の日本人女性の避難すぐ Stop sacrificing infants
http://tekknorg.wordpress.com/
ROTFL
March is Buy Your Girl a Geiger Month!!!! Yeah!!!
Stylish geiger counter, looks like digital camera!
http://www.gqelectronicsllc.com/comersus/store/comersus_viewItem.asp?idProduct=4542
Stylish and cheap at $160 on sale.
Sheesh, why not have a restaurant ready Geiger.
No Geiger? Poor thing.
Buy one for your girl, Geiger shows the love almost as much as Diamonds (not!), but its way cheaper!
Now, almost a year after the accident, newly released transcripts of discussions by U.S. officials give the clearest picture yet of how that move was based at least in part on faulty information about whether spent fuel rods in one reactor had been exposed.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204909104577237491247282070.html
Tapping its abundant thorium reserves, the Government has decided to commence the construction of 300-MW thorium-based Advanced Heavy Water Reactor in the next 18 months, a senior official said on Tuesday.
“Under the third stage of nuclear programme based on thorium utilisation, a reactor of 300 MW will be constructed in a year and a half from now..,” Kalpakkam-based Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research Director, Mr S.C. Chetal, told reporters here.
The debate over new generation versus conservation, nuclear plants versus natural gas versus coal versus renewables and more, is picking up.
http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20120219/GPG03/202190624/Energy-generation-debate-heats-up
The equipment will help ensure that every U.S. commercial nuclear energy facility can respond safely to extreme events, no matter what the cause, NEI said in a statemen
Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2012/02/21/us-nuclear-plants-to-buy-more-safety-equipment/#ixzz1n4Z6XFCn
How long has these recommendation been out mikie?
Why has it taken THIS long?
What is the actual cost that they have fought for this long?
whatever dude, you and the rest of the Socks do NOT GET interconnections at all.
Stay poor and blind......
http://enenews.com/ap-radiation-contamination-detected-400-miles-fukushima-coast-levels-1000-times-above-normal
Book: Mentally handicapped working at Fukushima plant after meltdowns — Often given worse radiation suits than regular employees
How the Yakuza went nuclear
an explosive book recently published in Japan [by] Tomohiko Suzuki, calls “Japan’s nuclear mafia… A conglomeration of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, the shady nuclear industry, their lobbyists…” And at the centre of it all stands Japan’s actual mafia: the yakuza.[...]
For his book, The Yakuza and the Nuclear Industry, Suzuki went undercover at Fukushima to find first-hand evidence of the long-rumoured ties between the nuclear industry and the yakuza. [...]
His fellow workers, found Suzuki, were a motley crew of homeless, chronically unemployed Japanese men, former yakuza, debtors who owed money to the yakuza, and the mentally handicapped. Suzuki claims the regular employees at the plant were often given better radiation suits than the yakuza recruits. (Tepco has admitted that there was a shortage of equipment in the disaster’s early days.) The regular employees were allowed to pass through sophisticated radiation monitors while the temporary labourers were simply given hand rods to monitor their radiation exposure.
http://enenews.com/book-mentally-handicapped-working-fukushima-plant-after-meltdowns-given-worse-radiation-suits-regular-employees
HAD ENOUGH OF THESE NUKE GUYS YET?!?!?
YET MORE News first suggested here on HP by the Japanese Irregulars!
Report says RISK of terrorism greater after Fukushima
http://wp.me/p21p6a-7w0
snip
The Japanese government continues to strengthen it’s prospects of providing electricity from nuclear power in Japan, when a commission proposed that the government introduce background checks on workers at nuclear stations. Japan ‘s nuclear industry has been exposed for using illegal workers at nearly all of it’s nuclear power stations, usually saving these sub-contract workers to avoid the Employment Security Law which is designed to ensure proper working conditions are in place.
The commission has been discussing ways to strengthen security at nuclear facilities in light of recommendations from the International Atomic Energy Agency.The background checks may cover criminal records and financial situations such as loan balances. Many of the sub-contract workers have been found to be affiliated with a variety of international criminal groups, most notably the Yakuza, a Japanese crime syndicate.…
+
How much nuclear "clean-up" money will find it's way into GANG pockets?
Is the Government even able to "follow" all this money; remember their will be many, many HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of Yen…
http://www.nationaltimedia.com/opinion/Redefining-Thai-national-security-threats-30176217.html
Relevant sentence..............
In June 2003, a Thai man was arrested with 30 kilograms of the radioactive isotope cesium-137, which can be used in making dirty bomb.
There are others I will not get into.