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October 18, 2013 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

US Nuclear Collapse: Out with the Old & the New

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2013

In the past year, major US utilities have announced permanent shut downs at five existing nuclear reactors and canceled plans for building seven more:

1) Vermont Yankee, Vermont — 1 reactor — shut down announced August 27, 2013: After years of pressure from protestors and lawmakers, Entergy announced plans to permanently close its Vermont Yankee facility by the end of 2014. See back page for details.

2 & 3) Levy County, Florida — 2 reactors — August 1, 2013: Duke Energy canceled plans for its Levy County reactors as part of a settlement with the state after a law allowing utilities to charge customers for nuclear projects that may never be built was revised. Customers could still face a bill of up to $1.5 billion for the initial costs of the project, which never provided them with electricity.

4 & 5) Calvert Cliffs, Maryland & Nine Mile Point, New York — 1 reactor each — canceled July 30, 2013: Owned by Electricite de France (EDF), the operating licenses for new reactors at Calvert Cliffs and Nine Mile Point were denied in August 2012 because of an Atomic Energy Act law prohibiting foreign ownership of US reactors. EDF announced July 30 that it would pull its interest out of new reactors in the US, with its chief executive saying, “The circumstances for the development of nuclear in the US are not favorable at the moment. We are a major player in nuclear, but we are not obsessed by nuclear. Our development in the US will focus on renewable energy; that will be our vector of growth in the US.”

6 & 7) San Onofre, California — 2 reactors — shut down June 7, 2013: After new but seriously flawed equipment caused Edison to pull both reactors offline in January 2012, an unfavorable judicial decision moved the company to close them permanently. (See Page 4 for details.)

8) MidAmerican, Iowa — 1 reactor — canceled June 4, 2013: MidAmerican Energy canceled plans to build a new reactor in Iowa after completing a two-year feasibility study funded by its ratepayers. The company blamed environmental regulations, and the uncertainty of the untested “small modular” reactor technology that it had planned to use, for the cancelation. MidAmerican plans to invest $1.9 billion in wind energy in Iowa instead.

9) Kewaunee, Wisconsin — 1 reactor — shut down May 7, 2013: Dominion announced in October 2012 it would retire Kewaunee early for economic reasons.

10 & 11) Shearon Harris, North Carolina — 2 reactors — canceled May 2, 2013: Duke Energy announced it would not add two new reactors to its Shearon Harris site, where one reactor has been running for 25 years. Duke cited slow demand growth as a reason for its decision, saying the power produced by the new units would not be needed for another 15 years. The site was originally built for four reactors, and three of its four cooling pools are used to hold highly radioactive waste fuel, making the site one of the nation’s largest concentrations of radioactive waste.

12) Crystal River, Florida — 1 reactor — shut down Februray 5, 2013: After a 2009 accident resulted in a cracked containment building, Duke Energy decided to permanently close the reactor less than a year after it acquired the unit in 2012.

In addition to the above cancelations, Exelon announced June 12th that it had canceled major power upgrades for two reactors at its Limerick site in Pennsylvania and two at its LaSalle site in Illinois, “based on market conditions,” and Xcel canceled an upgrade for its Prairie Island reactor in Minnesota last October. — ASP

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, On The Bright Side, Quarterly Newsletter

October 18, 2013 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Offshore Wind Power Boom 

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2013

WASHINGTON, DC — The federal government has finally taken steps to support wind power by leasing federal waters off the Atlantic coast for large wind farms. The first lease, 164,750 acres of federal waters off the coast of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, could produce as much as 3,400 megawatts of electricity — enough to power more than one million homes. On July 31, 2013, Deepwater Wind of Providence, Rhode Island was awarded the first lease for offshore wind development by the Interior Department. According to Tommy Beaudreau, director of Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, “This sale marks a really historic moment in the clean energy future of this country.” The second lease sale is slated for the coastal waters of Virginia. On Sept. 4, Interior will auction 112,799 acres. The area, to be sold under a single lease, is expected to power 2,000 megawatts of wind generation — enough to electrify 700,000 homes. A federal undersea transmission line called “Atlantic Wind Connection” will eventually carry power from these offshore turbines to onshore distribution centers. — PVB

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, On The Bright Side, Quarterly Newsletter, Renewable Energy

October 18, 2013 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Putting Lipstick on the Bomb

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2013

Since any wind turbine is a good one, we put this in the good news column. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has contracted with Germany’s Siemens Corp. to build a wind farm that will provide 60 percent of the electricity for its Pantex H-bomb facility in the Texas Panhandle. The Energy Department uses the complex for nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly. Sited in a wind-rich area of West Texas, the wind power is expected to save the government an average of $2.9 million a year over the 20-year contract period. Construction is set to begin in December. — Greentech Media, Aug. 6, 2013

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, On The Bright Side, Quarterly Newsletter, Renewable Energy

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