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Independent citizens panel needed for nuclear dilemma
Last week's revelation that the proposed STP nuclear expansion may cost $4 billion (31 percent) more than expected, is a blessing and an opportunity for San Antonio.
Courageous leadership is now needed, especially in light of the apparent attempt by CPS Energy management to hide this information before a council vote.
If this news had not been discovered, ratepayers would have been saddled with $400 million more for nuclear paperwork, setting a path for billions more in uncontrolled spending.
Warning about CPS debt, bond-rater Moody's dropped CPS' outlook from “stable” to “negative,” and noted council must be readily willing to raise electric rates.
How high will rates go? The cost overruns imply nuclear costs of 13-15 cents/kWh — much higher than projected.
What to do now? A completely fresh start is needed.
Public Citizen - As Thursday Vote Looms on Two New Reactors, Popular Opposition May Make Selling Nuclear Power More Difficult
As a Thursday vote on two new nuclear reactors looms, cities around the state that purchase power from San Antonio’s municipal utility, City Public Services (CPS), are balking at the prospect of buying pricey nuclear power from the reactors.
Three problems exist with the planned expansion at the South Texas Nuclear Project (STP) facility. First, nuclear power creates dangerous radioactive waste that no one has figured out how to dispose of safely.
Second, nuclear power is expensive – the nuclear industry requires taxpayer subsidies to prop it up. Third, no one knows for certain just how much the construction of the two reactors will cost ratepayers.
Cost could mar STP nuclear deal
Two troubling issues emerged from news that the cost estimate for the proposed expansion of nuclear generation at the South Texas Project has suddenly gone up by as much as $4 billion. That's a 30 percent increase, and CPS Energy won't have a fixed-price contract for the two new reactors until at least 2012.
Toshiba Corp., the main contractor for the expansion, may merely have thrown out the inflated cost as a negotiating tactic. That's what CPS Energy interim general manager Steve Bartley suggests it is.
Another explanation could be that Toshiba is weak in producing estimates, with the initial figures being too low or the current ones being too high.
San Antonio Clean Tech Nuclear Forum September 16, 2009 Part 1 on Vimeo
Mayor Julian Castro City of San Antonio,Steve Bartley Interim General Manager, CPS Energy,Craig Severance, CPA Author, Business Risks & Costs of New Nuclear Power,Dr. Patrick Moore Co-Chair, Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, Dr. Arjun Makhijani President, Institute for Energy & Environmental Research
At the San Antonio Clean Tech Forum noted pundits square off and discuss the San Antonio's involvement in the proposed expansion of the South Texas Nuclear project.
Dr. Arjun Makhijani September 16 interview on Vimeo
Interview with Dr. Arjun Makhijani at the San Antonio Clean tech forum
on the risks associated with the planned expansion of STP 3 & 4 and the alternatives that should be considered.
FR: NRC: FONSI WCS Tx EA dump
Issuance of Environmental Assessment and Final Finding of No Significant Impact for Modification of Exemption From Certain NRC Licensing Requirements for Special Nuclear Material for Waste Control Specialists, LLC, Andrews County, TX AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ACTION: Environmental Assessment and Final Finding of No Significant Impact. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has prepared an Environmental Assessment for the issuance of an Order under Section 274(f) of the Atomic Energy Act that would modify an Order issued to Waste Control Specialists, LLC (WCS) on November 5, 2004. In accordance with 10 CFR 51.33, the NRC prepared a draft Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) for public review and comment that was issued on July 9, 2009 (74 FR 34983). The public comment period closed on August 10, 2009. NRC received comments from one resident of Texas. The current action is in response to a request by WCS dated December 10, 2007. The November 5, 2004 Order was published in the Federal Register on November 12, 2004 (69 FR 65468). The November 5, 2004 Order, which modified an initial Order issued to WCS on November 21, 2001, exempted WCS from certain NRC regulations and permitted WCS, under specified conditions, to possess waste containing special nuclear material (SNM), in greater quantities than specified in 10 CFR Part 150, at WCS's facility located in Andrews County, Texas, without obtaining an NRC license pursuant to 10 CFR part 70.
CPS votes to lower share in nuclear plant
CPS Energy's board unanimously agreed Tuesday to look for buyers for about half the utility's stake in the expansion of the nuclear South Texas Project, while borrowing $400 million more to continue plans to build the new reactors.
The change in strategy means the utility, which owns half of the project estimated to cost $13 billion, will cut its ownership to 20 percent to 25 percent. Now CPS must find buyers for the portion it wants to sell.
SA Current - Nuke’m High: CPS Board votes 5-0 for nuclear power
Board Chair Aurora Gies opened the special meeting of CPS Energy’s Board of Trustees in a bunker in the bowels in the Alamodome with a defense of the utility’s clean-energy pursuits. “We don’t want to compromise our pursuit of other technologies,” Geis said. “We want to be able to support these technologies as they mature in the future.”
While her insistence that nuclear expansion will in no way limit the city’s ability to aggressively pursue cleaner options has become an expected soundbite over the past months, today’s — offered moments before a unanimous vote to devote itself to nuclear power expansion — was especially anemic.
The Hawk Eye: Pantex plant site waiting for same status as IAAP
Many former atomic energy workers in southeast Iowa practically have to beg for compensation under the federal program specifically designed for them.
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They go months without a response from the Department of Labor that oversees the program, and yet are expected to get their replies sent back in record time. Some letters simply go unanswered by the district offices.
Then, they often wait years before finally being denied redress for protecting the country during the Cold War.
And the former workers in Amarillo, Texas, at the Pantex site would love to have it that easy.
"Why can't cumulative information be used to benefit other workers," said Sarah Ray, who is one of three people applying for a special exposure cohort for Pantex. "I don't get the feeling that they are truly creating a usable database. I think they're missing the boat."
CPS postpones vote on nuclear expansion
A vote on the plan to reduce San Antonio's share in the nuclear project will be postponed at least a week.
CPS Energy's board had been expected to vote Monday on a proposal pushed by Mayor Julián Castro to decrease its stake in the expansion of the nuclear South Texas Project to 20 percent to 25 percent, meaning it would have to sell about of half its current ownership.
But any public discussion and decision on nuclear by the utility's board has been postponed tentatively until Oct. 13.
“This decision is much too important to rush,” Castro said via e-mail. “By moving board consideration back a week, we will give the CPS board, the City Council and, most importantly, the public additional time to hear from CPS Energy on this critical issue.”
The delay comes a day after Castro halted a closed-door meeting between the City Council and CPS Energy to discuss nuclear because of a challenge from the San Antonio Express-News.
SA Current - Express-News rejects: the Current’s new fall line
[Local clean-energy activist Margaret Day says the following column was rejected by Express-News Editorial Page Editor Bruce Davidson because it insinuates NRG Energy's Executive VP of Nuclear Development, Mr. Steve Winn, "is a liar." Express-News Ombudsman Bob Richter said Davidson turned it down because he “had other, better anti-nuclear commentaries” and felt Day “misstated Winn’s reasoning.” Whatever. We got a kick out of it. Which is why we at the second most comprehensive source on all things nuclear wanted to give it a public airing.
SA Current: Atomic Numbers
Most Texas homes weren’t built as if energy mattered. Despite 100-degree summer days, our roofs are still covered in heat-absorbing black-tar shingles. Cheap insulation in the attic, leaky doors, and single-paned windows mean when the air conditioner runs, it runs loads of cooled air right out the house.
San Antonio’s CPS Energy plans to spend $850 million to eliminate 771 megawatts of wasteful energy consumption through weatherization programs and rebates to help residential and commercial customers replace lights and appliances, and hoist solar panels onto their roofs by 2020. To do that will cost roughly $1,100 per saved kilowatt, according to the utility.
However, 80 miles to the northeast, municipally owned Austin Energy has already cut 800 megawatts through energy efficiency over the last 20 years at a cost of roughly $350 per kilowatt, said Scott Jarman, consulting engineer with Austin Energy’s efficiency program. But after 20 years of efficiency work, the savings are increasingly hard to find, and accordingly, more costly.
SA Current: Risky Business: Part Two In a Series: What CPS won't tell you about nuclear power
The banquet room inside the city’s lavishly refurbished Pearl Brewery is filled with solar advocates, coal-power people, city decision makers and bureaucrats, geothermal enthusiasts, and a table of Express-News staffers. They dine on salmon and judge in quiet gestures the performance of the panel at the front of the room.
As a tense but generally amenable exchange between the nuclear-energy proponents and the renewable-power disciples winds down, Matagorda County resident Susan Dancer steps from the shadows at the back of the room to steer the conversation, briefly, into dangerous waters. In a rapid-fire indictment of the entire course of the debate, Dancer drops the controversial “C” word.
But cancer isn’t on the menu at today’s forum. In fact, the talk is almost entirely of money. For more than a year, the city has been drifting, in multi-million-dollar installments, into a second helping of nuclear power from the South Texas Project nuclear facility outside Bay City.
Yankee Waste Disposal Site Approved in TX - WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-
t appears Vermont Yankee is getting an out-of-state site to store its low-level nuclear waste.
The nuclear power plant has been storing its low-level waste at the Vernon reactor since its long-time disposal site in South Carolina closed last year. But now a facility owned by Waste Control Specialists LLC in Andrews County, TX, has won final approval from regulators to build a disposal site. Construction documents still need approval and then the site will take about a year to build. Yankee's owner, Entergy Nuclear, says once the Texas site is built disposal costs will shrink.
WCAX News
Nuclear forum highlights contrasting opinions
All four panelists at Wednesday's forum on nuclear energy agreed the decision to partner in or forgo the expansion of the nuclear South Texas Project will play a large role in shaping San Antonio's economic future.
That's where the agreement ended.
The San Antonio Clean Technology Forum brought in three national experts to join CPS Energy interim General Manager Steve Bartley.
The forum focused on the economics around the utility's plans to partner with NRG Energy to build two more nuclear reactors near Bay City.
The utility estimates the project will cost $13 billion and wants to take a 40 percent share. CPS already has spent $276 million on the planning and permitting, and the City Council is expected in October to vote on another $400 million to enable CPS to stay in the project.
CPS Energy shortsighted, not long, in nuclear power push
Earlier this year, the San Antonio City Council adopted a vision to make the Alamo City one of the greenest cities in America. The “Mission Verde” plan envisioned solar panels on every rooftop, high efficiency homes that helped lower electric bills, and good-paying local jobs created to make all this happen.
But CPS Energy has a different vision. While making some encouraging investments in clean energy, the utility’s primary energy strategy continues to focus on polluting, unsustainable energy sources. They’ve just built a new coal-fired power plant, and now they want to invest in two new expensive and dirty nuclear reactors that San Antonio doesn’t need.
CPS claims that building the new nuclear reactors — at an eye-popping price of $5.2 billion — won’t compromise San Antonio’s ability to also develop clean sources of energy. But that claim doesn’t hold water.
The Ranger San Antonio College - Town hall renews nuclear questions
Concerns center on water usage, cost and spent fuel disposal.
The future of San Antonio’s ever-growing power needs was addressed Aug. 26 in McAllister Fine Arts Center during KSTX’s Town Hall forum on energy.
While the topic of the forum was all things energy, most of the evening’s questions centered on CPS’ proposed $10 billion-$13 billion expansion of the South Texas Project nuclear power plant in Bay City, which intends to add two additional nuclear reactors, as well as conversation on use of alternative and renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.
Construction for the new reactors, dubbed STP 3 & 4, is slated to begin in 2012.
CPS’ use of renewable resources, including solar, wind and natural gas, equals over 11 percent of the city’s peak energy demand, according to the company’s Web site. The Web site also lists a goal to increase that percentage to 20 percent by 2020.
Valhi, Inc. Announces WCS Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal License Has Been Signed... | Reuters
Valhi, Inc. (NYSE: VHI) announced that the Executive Director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has signed and declared effective a license for the near-surface disposal of Class A, B and C low-level radioactive waste ("LLRW") to Waste Control Specialists LLC ("WCS"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Valhi, following WCS completing its last administrative requirement of acquiring 100% of the mineral rights at its west-Texas facility. "Since the final LLRW license was granted in January of this year, we have worked diligently to complete all of the necessary requirements so the license could be signed and declared effective," said William J. Lindquist, Chief Executive Officer of WCS. "The process is now complete and we are ready to begin constructing the LLRW disposal facility, after recently completing construction of the byproduct material disposal facility. Following the anticipated opening of our LLRW disposal facility in late 2010, WCS will provide the industry with a 'one-stop shop' for its waste needs by having the broadest range of capabilities of any commercial enterprise in the U.S. for the storage, treatment and permanent disposal of hazardous, toxic, low-level and mixed LLRW and radioactive byproduct material. We believe our Texas-based solution will provide WCS with a significant competitive advantage in this multi-billion dollar industry since the only U.S. commercial facility currently authorized to accept low-level and mixed LLRW is limited to disposing of Class A waste, while WCS will be able to permanently dispose of Class A, B and C LLRW."
SA Current - U: Mining whistleblower surfaces in Yorktown
Roland Burrows worked for Uranium Resources, Inc., as a wellfield operator at the Kingsville Dome in-situ uranium mine in Ricardo, Texas, back in 1996.
He says the company at the time was regularly flushing high volumes of water into the mine field that would have expanded groundwater pollution beyond its permitted area, posing a potential future risk to the residents of Kingsville.
SA Current - U: Toxic legacy of South Texas uranium mining
“Prepare to meet thy God,” reads the small black-and-white sign in the yard at the end of this dusty county road in Karnes County. I’m looking for a string of open-pit uranium mines, now filled with water, where some locals fish, swim, and practice their water skiing.
A San Antonio mechanic and Karnes County resident lost his 30-some acre lake (and former uranium mine) last year when the Texas Railroad Commission pumped out more than 122 million gallons, transferred about 70 foot-long big mouth bass to a nearby stock tank, and left him with a dry graded pit.
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