Fall Quarterly 2017

On Tues., Aug. 29, three environmental groups jointly called for the immediate shutdown of the twin South Texas Project nuclear reactors near Bay City, Texas which was directly in the track of Hurricane Harvey. Instead, the reactors have been kept running at full capacity throughout the disaster. Karen Hadden of the Sustainable Energy & Economic Development Coalition in Texas said “There is plenty of reserve capacity on our electric grid, so we don’t have to run the reactors in order to keep the lights on.” Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear in Maryland said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Reactor Oversight Project have both acknowledged the “credible threat of a severe accident initiated by a breach of the embankment wall that surrounds the 7,000-acre cooling water reservoir. It’s simply prudent that the operator put this reactor into its safest condition, cold shutdown.” And Susan Dancer of the South Texas Association for Responsible Energy said that after mandatory county-wide and Bay City evacuation orders, “It’s an outrageous and reckless decision that the nuclear reactors are still running….Where is the concern for employees and their families. Why is corporate profit being prioritized over caution and good judgment?”

Because some of the nuclear workers’ homes have been flooded, Buddy Eller, speaking for the reactor’s owners, said to BloombergMarkets.com Aug. 30, “The biggest issue is finding other employees who can safely make it back to the site.” Eller added that the reactors hadn’t been threatened by the rising waters and that hurricane force winds never reached them. However NuclearStreet.com reported, “The reactors kept operating despite the storm with wind gusts that peaked at 130 mph.” Hurricane strength is officially 74 mph.

As we go to press Hurricane Harvey, “could end up being the most costly weather disaster in US history, with its relentless rains flooding [tens of] thousands of homes, crippling the energy hub around Houston, and killing at least 46 people,” according to the Austin American-Statesman.

Fall Quarterly 2017

President Moon Jae said June 18 that he had scrapped plans to build new power reactors and that he hopes to gradually replace the country’s 25 power reactors with renewable energy sources. “We will abolish our nuclear-centered energy policy and move towards a nuclear-free era,” the president said at a ceremony marking the shutdown of the country’s oldest reactor, Kori 1, in Busan on the country’s southeast coast. — The Telegraph, June 19; and the Olympian (Washington), June 18, 2017

Fall Quarterly 2017

In a triumph toward true solutions to the environmental crisis, plans for three nuclear power reactors have been cancelled. On July 31, the nuclear power company Scana voted to suspend construction on the half-built V.C. Summer Units 2 and 3 in Jenkinsville, South Carolina. In a desperate attempt to keep the Summer construction alive, Scana requested and was refused $3 billion in aid from Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Then in late August, Duke Energy announced its cancellation of two reactor projects, the William States Lee III Nuclear Station Units 1 and 2 in Gaffney, South Carolina and the Levy County Nuclear Plant Units 1 and 2 in Florida. Not surprisingly, Duke Energy is seeking permission to recover $368 million in pre-construction costs by means of a rate hike of 16.7% for residents in order to get their shareholders off the hook.

Following Westinghouse, Inc.’s declaration of bankruptcy in March, prospects for construction of its reactors has come into serious doubt. Now the fate of the three projects involving six untested Westinghouse “AP1000” reactors has been sealed. The only reactors still under construction in the US are part of another Westinghouse project, Plant Vogtle in Georgia. The owners at Southern Company are expected to announce soon whether construction can continue. The belated cancellations demonstrate, as Scana now admits, that nuclear power is “prohibitively expensive.” — Duke Energy, Aug. 29; Charlotte Business Journal, Aug. 25; Bloomberg, Aug. 11, 2017