Sensible Nuclear Outcomes in Florida and India

The processes may have been a little sloppy, but if the outcomes are good, so be it.

First, in Florida:

The Florida Supreme Court rejected on Thursday the challenge to a controversial law that allows electric utilities to collect money from their customers for nuclear-power plants that won't be built for years — if ever.

The unanimous ruling, in a challenge filed by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, found that the 2006 law did not violate the Florida Constitution by shifting too much decision-making power to the state Public Service Commission. Also, it upheld PSC decisions that allowed Florida Power & Light and what was then known as Progress Energy Florida to collect $282 million in nuclear-project charges from their customers in 2012 alone.

Reporter Jim Saunders sounds a little unhappy with the court ruling himself, doesn’t he? But so what if He gets the facts right. This is another case where anti-nuclear types took a grain of possibility (that the state breached the constitution by ceding authority to the Public Service Commission) and built it into a boulder. Unfortunately, it’s still a grain. The court also said that since the legislature wrote the law, it is up to that body to determine the PSC’s authority, not the courts.

That’s one good Florida outcome. At the same time, the legislature contemplated repealing the bill, but instead made a couple of minor adjustments:

In the short term, Duke Energy can keep collecting the "advance fee" money already approved for the Levy County nuclear plant.

But, in the future, it will get a little harder for the utility to charge customers more.

The Florida Senate with a 40-0 vote Thursday gave final approval to a bill that adds tougher guidelines for use of the advance fee. The bill, SB 1472, now goes to the governor.

Those final guidelines:

In particular, the bill lawmakers passed states that if a utility cannot demonstrate that it plans to complete the construction of the nuclear plant, it will no longer be allowed to collect money. The utility has 10 years after it gets its federal license to begin construction or lose access to the fee.

And it must prove the plant is both economically "feasible" and "reasonable" to continue moving forward with the projects. The existing law required only that the plants be "feasible."

I guess that qualifies as a “little harder.” This is unalloyed good news for Florida Gas & Light and Progress Energy Florida (now Duke Energy). And the Southern Alliance?

"Today is kind of a mixed day for us," said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy[.]

Ah well. They’ll try another way another day. Why is cost recovery important? It allows expensive projects to proceed by lowering interest rates on needed loans (because the collected money reduces risk to a lender). In the end, that savings is passed along to ratepayers.

(To be fair, Duke is not happy with the legislative result, either.

Additionally, our position on (the legislation) has not changed," Sterling Ivey, a Duke spokesman, said. "We remain opposed to the bill, even as amended and passed. The process in current law is working and additional legislation or state requirements are not needed, which was confirmed today by the Florida Supreme Court."

It was working fine as is, though the outcome this time might have been much worse. Ivey is right, though; the better approach would have been to leave the original legislation alone.)

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In India, the seemingly endless haggling to get the Kudankulum facility up and running. Though the court case is quite different, it also involves litigating fear, not actual harm:

Opponents of a nuclear reactor in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu received a setback Monday when the Supreme Court rejected a petition to halt the commissioning of the plant over safety concerns.

But the protest groups are holding out hope that the judgment, which hasn’t yet been published in full, will enable them to continue their campaign against the Kudankulum Nuclear Power Plant.

Protesters had asked the Supreme Court to close the plant until extra safety measures had been put in place, saying that its technology was out of date and it would jeopardize the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people living in its vicinity.

But the court dismissed the petition and cleared the reactor for operation, more than two decades since it was first conceived in an Indo-Russian pact in 1988. The court said sufficient safeguards were in place at Kudankulam and that it was in the national interest to have the plant operational.

I’ve followed this case a bit and can only say that from an American perspective, it was built on a foundation of sand and powered by  fear of an Indian Fukushima Daiichi. Also from an American perspectives, bits like this are puzzling:

“Ideally we wanted them to stop the commissioning but they have gone ahead with a conditional order,” said G. Sunderrajan, an environmentalist who brought the petition to the Supreme Court in September 2012.

“Before commissioning, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India needs to satisfy [for] the court about 17 safety areas,” Mr. Sunderrajan said, adding that there he’s confident that campaigners would get another chance in court. “There is always a tab to pull the decision back,” he said. It wasn’t immediately clear what the 17 safety conditions were or how they would be policed.

If there are 17 safety conditions, one would expect them to be known to someone. I wonder if Sunderrajan got the number wrong or the Wall street Journal bloggers (Joanna Sugden and Aditi Malhotra)  just threw their hands up and went with it. I expect there are many more safety issues than seventeen and that the utility worked through them. Also, 17 or no, it appears the court doesn’t need them satisfied or is satisfied.

The problem with filing a court case charging that nuclear energy facilities are unsafe is that they are never inherently unsafe. What you end up litigating are your own fears, which are tough to set down in a fact set.

Bottom line: nuclear energy proceeds in India.

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Jim Asselstine's Bullish Assessment of Nuclear Energy’s Future

Jim Asselstine

The following is a guest post submitted by Scott Peterson, NEI's senior vice president of communications.

SINGAPORE--Jim Asselstine has an unparalleled pedigree to assess the nuclear energy industry. He has analyzed the industry for the past 23 years at Lehman Brothers and Barclays, was a Nuclear Regulatory Commission commissioner and punched his policy credential as a congressional staffer.

“My own personal view is that we should try to keep nuclear power, as the only zero-carbon, large-scale baseload generating source at about its current level of 19 or 20 percent of U.S. [electric] generation,” Asselstine said during a clear-eyed assessment of America’s nuclear energy industry. He was speaking at the World Nuclear Fuel Conference, a global symposium in Singapore sponsored by the Nuclear Energy Institute and World Nuclear Association.

Assuming modest electricity demand growth and with the closure of existing reactors after 60 years of production, Asselstine said meeting this goal would require building 30 to 35 reactors by 2030. Whether the industry builds advanced reactor technology at that pace, he said, depends on these factors:

• Electricity demand must increase with economic rejuvenation.

• Increases in natural gas prices, forecasted by Barclays to move to $3.70 per million Btu by the end of this year, up from $2.82 per million Btu in 2012.

• New Environmental Protection Agency regulations affecting coal-fired power plants, including the announced closure of 25,000 megawatts of coal capacity already and up to 50,000 to 60,000 megawatts of coal capacity by 2015.

• The focused response to the Fukushima accident in Japan both by industry and the NRC. “I regard the NRC requirements and industry initiatives as comprehensive and complementary,” he said.

• Industry and NRC must effectively carry out their responsibilities under a new regulatory framework for building new reactors.

Ironically, Asselstine said this is an exceptional time for energy companies to build large capital projects.

“The industry enjoys broad access to financing at historically attractive rates,” he said. “As a defensive safe haven sector, the electric utilities—unlike many other industries—were able to access the debt capital markets during even the most difficult period in the recession in late 2008 and early 2009. This is an excellent time to finance significant capital investments in the industry.”
It’s appropriate that the industry’s fuel companies are gathering in Singapore. Seventy-one reactors are being built worldwide, with the majority of these projects located in Asia to meet fast-rising electricity demand.

The International Energy Agency predicts that electricity demand will expand by more than 70 percent by 2035, or 2.2 percent per year on average. More than 80 percent of that growth will be in non-OECD countries—more than half in China and India alone.

Growth in China’s electricity demand alone over that period is greater than the total current electricity demand in the United States and Japan combined. China has 26 reactors under construction and the country aims to quadruple its nuclear capacity from reactors now operating and under construction by 2020. India has seven reactors under construction; 20 others are planned. Asselstine said he expects the majority of these projects to be completed despite the 2011 accident in Japan.

On the U.S. response to the Fukushima accident, Asselstine said “the industry and NRC responses have been constructive and timely, and should prove effective in addressing the lessons learned for the industry. The review process helped set priorities for the various recommendations, focusing the agency’s and industry’s efforts on a set of changes that can be implemented relatively quickly to produce substantial near-term safety improvements.”

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Almost 700 Million People Without Electricity in India

It's almost impossible to get your arms around the sheer size and scope of the blackout that's struck India over the past two days. Estimates say that about 670 million people are without electricity. As the New York Times noted, that's roughly equivalent to the entire population of Europe or more than the population of North and Central America combined.

By way of comparison, the largest blackout that ever struck North America, the 2003 outage that hit the Northeastern U.S. and parts of Canada, deprived about 50 million people of electricity for about two days. As we've seen in the past, power outages in advanced economies can lead to economic disruption and loss of life -- something that should give all of us pause when considering the magnitude of this event.

I'll close with some words from NEI's Senior Vice President of Government Affairs, Alex Flint:

The earth has 7 billion people on it. Today, 2 billion of those people’s principal source of energy is burning firewood or dung. More than 1 billion people have no access to electricity, and non-OECD electricity growth will far surpass that of OECD countries for several generations.

As we see population growth in those countries, we will see tremendous demand for electricity and energy of all sorts. It’s a moral imperative. There is a correlation between life expectancy and access to electricity.

India, pre- and post-blackout, as seen from Russia's Roskosmos satellite.

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99th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers

Welcome to the 99th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers, a get together that we at NEI Nuclear Notes have been honored to host from time to time since its inception. This week, we've got selections from seven of the best blogs the online nuclear energy community has to offer. If you would like to host a future edition of the carnival, please contact Brian Wang of Next Big Future to get on the rotation. And please, don't ask to host the 100th edition of the carnival, as that honor has already been parceled out to a well-deserving blogger.

Nuclear Power Talk: What's Good for the Goose. Gail Marcus takes a hard look at Mark Cooper's claims about the economics of nuclear energy.

The Nuclear Green Revolution: The Clinch River Reactor Failure, Lessons Unlearned. Did AEC make a mistake by pursuing the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor over other designs? Read and find out.

Yes, Vermont Yankee: Green Jobs and Taxes. In this guest post, Guy Page of the Vermont Energy Partnership talks about how the plant provides green jobs and how the state's plan to levy punitive taxes on the plant threatens them. In a second post, Meredith Angwin explains why Vermont Yankee Isn't Fukushima.

ANS Nuclear Cafe: NAS Study of Cancer Risks Near Nuclear Facilities. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has released phase one of a study titled Analysis of Cancer Risks in Populations Near Nuclear Facilities. The release officially opened a 60-day public comment period in which stakeholders can provide their inputs to help guide the next phases of the study. Kudankulam Hot Start Within Reach. The provincial government of Tamil Nadu, India’s southern-most state, has dropped its opposition to hot start of twin 1,000-MW VVER reactors at Kudankulam and withdrawn support from local anti-nuclear protests. The long-running controversy over the start of NPCIL’s Russian-built twin 1,000-MW VVER reactors at Kudankulam *may* be coming to an end.

Idaho Samizdat: NRC Sets Conditions for San Onofre Restart. Our man Dan Yurman takes a look at the situation at San Onofre concerning the current situation with the plant's two steam generators. For more on this issue from NEI Nuclear Notes, click here. It would also be worth your time to view a video message from Southern California Edison. Later on Friday, Dan took another look at the SONGS situation in the wake of NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko's visit to the plant on Friday afternoon.

Atomic Power Review: Catching Up on Developments. Leslie Corrice's new book is out; also, APR addresses the new competitive situation in the SMR market with some small / portable reactor background (and the usual obscure illustrations) as well as links to descriptions of the present products for comparison.

Next Big Future: Brian Wang was awfully busy this week ... GE Continues Pushing Prism Reactor ... iRobot Warrior, Packbot To Be Used in Nuclear Plants in the U.S. ... South Korea Makes Big Overseas Nuclear Energy Push ... Transatomic Power's Waste-Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor.

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94th Carnival of Nuclear Energy – Old Battles, New Technologies and One Scandal

Last week was another busy week in social media. Today we’re hosting the 94th carnival and highlighting 21 posts from 14 blogs.

To start, Gail Marcus at Nuke Power Talk discusses her concerns about the zeroing of funds for nuclear engineering education programs in the 2013 budget request. It’s been an annual battle to maintain the nuclear education programs at the NRC and DOE and this year was no different. From Gail:

It seems to me that in general, it is penny-wise and pound-foolish for a nation to skimp on education. I know the budget is tight and I know there are many other important programs, but we really can't stop looking ahead.

The case for nuclear engineering education is particularly important. The current workforce of nuclear engineers is rapidly retiring. … One hopes that some of the supporters of nuclear energy on the Hill will notice this cut and restore the funding. I would encourage those who share my concern to contact your members of Congress and ask for their help in restoring funding for educational programs.

Hear, hear!

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Meredith Angwin at Yes Vermont Yankee wrote a guest post at the ANS Nuclear Cafe describing the controversies around VY. She notes that “putting Vermont Yankee issues in context is like facing a huge mountain range. There is always another set of hills beyond this one.”

Also at her own blog, she announced the March 17 community rally in support of the plant.

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Steve Aplin at Canadian Energy Issues commented on the different risk perceptions between nuclear materials and chemicals. Fear of the 'Dirty Bomb' recently led to a campaign to phase out the use of cesium-137 in hospital irradiators. Those machines sterilize blood prior to transfusion and prevent transfusion-associated diseases. Steve pointed out that there have not been similar campaigns to phase out other useful chemicals, like chlorine, ammonium nitrate and gasoline, which are much easier to obtain and put to evil purposes than cesium. Many people fear nuclear materials but forget that chemicals, fuel and fertilizers can cause much greater damage.

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Atomic Power Review has a two-part contribution this week concerning the Palisades nuclear station and reactor pressure vessel embrittlement. In the two posts, Will Davis addressed media claims of vessel embrittlement. Part 1 was a background on Palisades with a link to a past APR article on the topic and part 2 provided great detail on embrittlement from a number of print sources and A. David Rossin (former President of ANS).

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Filling in for Charles Barton at Nuclear Green, NNadir shares his thoughts on the first nuclear reactors in the world that naturally fissioned a few billion years ago. Although there is a lot of squabbling about burying nuclear waste, nature proves it can be contained. From NNadir:

Over two billion years, most of the fission products in porous sandstone at Oklo didn't even migrate as far as Tom Brady can throw an errant football in a "Hail Mary" pass at the end of a Superbowl as a last ditch attempt to avoid a losing effort.

His post is humorous and dense but definitely worth the read on Oklo.

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Steve Skutnik from the Neutron Economy describes how small modular reactors can help displace Iowa's coal-heavy energy portfolio. SMRs can provide an economical, "right-sized" solution for smaller, rural electrical grids like Iowa’s. Of course, not everyone is convinced of the benefits. Skutnik also blasted some of the specious arguments against the technology.

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Over at Energy From Thorium, Kirk Sorensen is working hard to push for thorium all around the world. Kirk was in London last year to help launch the Weinberg Foundation which promotes thorium. On Thursday, Kirk highlighted the Foundation’s press release on the formation of an “All-Party Parliamentary Group” in London with members of both the House of Commons and House of Lords to consider the potential of thorium as an energy source. Well done.

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Rod Adams at Atomic Insights discusses how and why we should combine domestic coal with nuclear energy to make oil.

My pitch to the coal industry would be to use cheap, clean nuclear heat to convert H2O and their carbon rich fuel into a refined hydrocarbon that could compete with petroleum products.

No, it’s not a new concept. Technologies exist to achieve this, check out Rod’s post on how.

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How close did Japan really get to a widespread nuclear disaster? At Brave New Climate, Barry Brook highlights a post at Slate.com by two authors at the Breakthrough Institute who put Fukushima into a proper context. Barry adds:

Much of the post-accident speculation was constrained only by people’s imagination (which can be pretty wide ranging), and utterly failed to resolve the fact that RISK is probability X impact. Instead, anti-nuclear types typically choose a huge, speculative impact, and then try to attach a large probability (often near certainty) to it. For truly catastrophic outcomes, both numbers are very small, and multiplied, vanishingly so.

Can’t add to that.

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We have two posts to mention from the ANS Nuclear Café. Wesley Deason launched his series on the uses of nuclear fission to enable human space exploration beyond earth’s orbit:

Nuclear reactors, due to their ability to produce large amounts of energy at any location, will be the required energy source for future human space travel outside of earth’s orbit.

Make sure to follow the Café for more of his series.

Also at the Café, Dan Yurman reveals a dispute over the start of two new nuclear plants in India. To the right, months of protests have delayed the Kudankulam nuclear project in southern India. Some people (including India’s sitting prime minister) allege that American NGOs are funding the protests. If true, it sounds like a scandalous story.

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Dan Yurman at his own blog, Idaho Samizdat, also reported several positive news items for the week including the good news that North Korea is suspending its nuclear weapons program and opening more dialogue with the U.S. Of course, some aren’t holding their breath.

Dan also reported that Iran is having a tough time with its uranium enrichment program, how the U.K. is consuming its surplus plutonium, and how South Africa is taking another shot at bids for new reactors in the country.

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Brian Wang at Nextbigfuture looked at detailed levelized cost comparisons of nuclear, solar and coal. Brian notes that two-thirds of the cost of coal energy is determined by future commodity prices while nuclear and solar costs are dominated by construction costs and financing.

Brian also highlights a World Nuclear News story on GE’s laser uranium enrichment plant. The NRC just issued its final technical Safety Evaluation Report (SER) and Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the proposed enrichment plant.

The GLE plant would use a laser-based process to enrich uranium up to 8% uranium-235 by weight (although nuclear power reactors normally require 3%-5% enriched uranium), with an initial planned maximum target production of six million separative work units (SWU) per year. … Laser enrichment could be 2 to 20 times more efficient than other enrichment processes.

Sweet.

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And here at NEI Nuclear Notes, various contributors generated a lot of action – covering PBS’ documentary of Fukushima, Senator Bingaman’s proposed Clean Energy Standard, tornadoes in the South, and NEI’s next social media call on the industry’s FLEX strategy.

Be sure to stop by everyone’s pages for these great articles and new reporting. Stay tuned for other carnivals at Yes Vermont Yankee, ANS Café, Next Big Future and Atomic Power Review!

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When 51 Percent Say Yes

From the department of unlikely mind changes, India division:

An anti-nuclear forum spearheading the stir against Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant today said they would withdraw their protest if most locals favored the project and demanded that the state government constituted panel visit all villages and towns affected by KNPP.

NEI will close its doors as soon as a majority of Americans decide nuclear energy is not for them. The President will resign his position if his approval rating slips below 50 percent. My chance of surviving this disease is slightly less that 50/50. Time to reach for the bottle.

Sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do. But it’s called the  People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy for a reason. So even if what it will win will be a pyrrhic victory, with the taste of ashes on its tongue, I hope it doesn’t quit on the prospect of 51 percent going against its views. We wouldn’t. But it can make you think.

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So shrill you almost have to be a dog to hear it:

With the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) believed to be within days of announcing the final federal approval of the controversial Vogtle nuclear project, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) has asked a court to stop more than two years of stonewalling by Southern Co. and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which are resisting any meaningful public disclosure to taxpayers of the risks to which they are exposed in the massive commitment of $8.33 billion in conditional federal loan guarantees to Southern Company and their utility partners for two proposed new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle in Georgia.

But really, they had me at controversial. How many more paragraphs does SACE have to go before Solyndra hits the mix? You guessed it: one. And SACE probably liked Solyndra.

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China will slow approvals of nuclear projects after the resumption, which is expected to take place this year, according to an industry expert from a national energy think tank.

Okay, I guess that makes sense.

"China will be cautious in pursuing nuclear power and is likely to approve only three or four projects each year,…" said Xiao Xinjian, a nuclear industry expert at the national Energy Research Institute, affiliated with the National Development and Reform Commission.

Oh. Wait, what?

The country had been accelerating its nuclear development since 2008, with 14 reactors approved in 2008 and six in 2009.

So there you are. It’s all relative. Wonder how SACE would take it.

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It can’t all be good news and snark, can it?

Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha recently announced that the government will postpone the construction of a nuclear power plant in the Shkoder region until issues regarding its potential impact on the environment and territory are fully resolved, AENews reported.

Albania is hesitating because the Shkoder region is seismically active. There may be surprises in the Japan lesson learned reports,  but the accident there appears to have had the tsunami as its main cause, not the earthquake.

Regardless, if Albania chooses to proceed, and it would be smart to do so, it will be with enhanced safety in mind, and that’s never a bad thing. We expect at least 51 percent would agree.

Koodankulam nuclear facility.

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