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CPS knew of higher STP cost year ago
CPS Energy knew a year ago that contractor Toshiba Inc. wanted at least $4 billion more than San Antonio was willing to pay for the nuclear expansion, according to several sources close to the deal.
Despite this, utility officials used a much lower figure as they pitched the project at public meetings during the summer, arguing that nuclear was the most cost-effective way for San Antonio to meet its future energy needs.
They took the same message to elected officials who were to vote on a $400 million bond issue and rate increases to finance the multibillion-dollar expansion of the South Texas Project near Bay City.
The response of City Council members and CPS Energy trustees to the 2008 estimate was muted Saturday. “Nothing can surprise me anymore,” Councilwoman Elisa Chan said.
But several officials said the revelation only deepens their mistrust of the city-owned utility's leadership.
“It concerns me greatly that neither the council nor the board was informed,” said Mayor Julián Castro, who acknowledged he, too, recently learned of the existence of the 2008 high estimate.
The high price of a deal gone bad: Rebuilding CPS leadership
It's come to this: The simple truth withheld from the community by CPS Energy was revealed last week by NRG Energy executives to a Houston gathering of financial analysts: San Antonio can't afford the high price of expanding the South Texas Project nuclear facility.
Not that we need another example, but once again Wall Street enjoys the advantage over Main Street. Ratepayers don't have a need to know, but let's not deny institutional investors a little inside information.
The project will cost billions more than CPS estimated, even after interim General Manager Steve Bartley went to Japan to seek concessions. Utility executives want until January to bring a new number to Mayor Julián Castro and the City Council. Why wait?
What CPS once promised was a good deal for the city is now, clearly, a bad deal. It's a bad deal made worse by utility executives who deliberately withheld critical financial data, thus misleading elected city leaders, the Express-News and the public. Even as we were told the project would cost CPS and NRG a total of $13 billion, utility executives knew Toshiba Inc. was estimating $4 billion more.
France faces tough choices on Areva T&D sale | Deals | Reuters
France may have painted itself into a corner by pushing state-owned nuclear power group Areva to sell its most profitable unit, and could end up weakening the very domestic industries it is trying to champion.
The government, which owns 93 percent of Areva, must choose between three bids for the Areva's electricity transmission & distribution (T&D) business -- from GE, Toshiba, and a French consortium of Alstom and Schneider Electric -- each of which potentially hurts French economic interests in different ways.
Should the government choose GE or Toshiba for the business, valued at 4 to 5 billion euros ($5.9-7.4 billion), it would in either case end up strengthening a company that competes with Areva in its core nuclear segment.
AFP: Turkey scraps nuclear power plant tender
Turkey on Friday scrapped a 2008 tender won by a Russian-led consortium to build the country's first nuclear power plant -- a process that had been under threat of being invalidated by a court decision.
In a brief statement, the state-run electricity wholesaler TETAS said its board of directors decided "unanimously" to cancel the tender, citing an article in the bid specification that gave it the authority to scrap the process without any liability.
A consortium led by Atomstroyexport, Russia's state nuclear giant, had been the only bidder in the tender to build four nuclear reactors with a total capacity of 4,800-megawatts at Akkuyu, in the Mediterranean province of Mersin.
TETAS's decision comes ten days after a top administrative court suspended parts of the regulation governing the tender before moving on to review a demand by a civil society of engineers to cancel the process.
Report: Nuclear power won't solve global warming - WFRV Green Bay: Northeast Wisconsin News, Weather and Sports
A new report says nuclear power plants would take too long to build and are too expensive to make any impact on global warming.
The report, released by Wisconsin Environment, an environmental advocacy organization, notes scientists believe developed nations must reduce emissions dramatically by 2020 to limit global warming.
The report says the first new nuclear reactor in the United States probably won't be completed until at least 2016. Money that would go to new plants would be better spent on renewable sources.
State Rep. Mike Huebsch, a West Salem Republican, has pushed to repeal Wisconsin's moratorium on nuclear power. He says groups like Wisconsin Environment are still living off the hysteria of 1970s meltdowns and will do anything to delay nuclear plant construction.
Doubts raised on nuclear industry viability
The investment in nuclear power has been growing around the world over the last few years, being viewed as a means for countries to control their energy security, avoid the price fluctuations of other energy sources, and reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, but concerns are now being raised.
A scientist from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology predicts that supplies of uranium are running out and countries relying on imports of uranium may face shortages by 2013, while a New York Times journalist suggests new nuclear power plants are an "abysmal" investment that will never pay for itself without government financial support.
Dr Michael Dittmar, a physicist with CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), said in the fourth and final part of an essay on the world's nuclear industry published this week that civilian stockpiles of uranium could be depleted by as early as 2013.
CPS partner: Nuclear deal costs too high for S.A.
Toshiba Inc. has shaved about $1.4 billion off its price to build two nuclear reactors, but it's unlikely to ever reach an amount within San Antonio's price range, NRG Energy executives said Thursday.
“We would expect ... the price estimate that Toshiba will come back with may be outside the affordability range for their ratepayers,” Steve Winn, CEO of the NRG-owned Nuclear Innovation North America, said at a financial analysts' meeting in Houston.
At issue is the cost San Antonio's CPS Energy and NRG Energy are willing to pay contractor Toshiba to build two nuclear reactors outside Bay City.
CPS Energy has promised ratepayers and the City Council that it will pursue the deal as long as it can limit power bill increases to 5 percent every other year for the next decade.
This can be done if the total project, with financing, will cost about $13 billion, utility officials say.
To hit that amount, Toshiba's costs need to come in about $8 billion. But the Japanese contractor, NRG confirmed, estimated its price at $12.3 billion in October.
Who Will Dare to Invest in Nuclear Power?
Will there be a nuclear power renaissance in the United States, as a host of rosy-glassed prognosticators have predicted? Not as long as it remains such an abysmal investment opportunity, Matthew Wald writes in Technology Review’s November-December issue.
Wald, a New York Times reporter, contends that nuclear has come a long way in reliability and efficiency but still carries some serious financial baggage. “As the possibility of an accident that panics or injures the neighbors has diminished,” he writes, “the likelihood has grown that even a properly functioning new reactor will be unable to pay for itself.”
Wald cites three factors, all in flux, that make nuclear a huge financial risk. One is the sheer cost of building a new reactor, $4,000 per kilowatt of capacity using optimistic math, which is more than coal ($3,000) and far more than natural gas ($800). Another is the future competitive landscape in energy, and thus the price of electricity. And finally, no one is certain of the future price of fossil fuels, especially natural gas, which could change the whole equation.
Nuclear Power Called a Step Backward - Southern Maryland Headline News
As Maryland closes in on the construction of a third reactor at Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Lusby, an environmental organization has released a report calling nuclear power a step backward in the nation's race to reduce pollution.
The Environment Maryland Research and Policy Center report, released Tuesday, calls nuclear power "too slow and too expensive," an energy source that makes little economic sense in combating climate change.
While nuclear power might be preferable to fossil fuel-based energy sources, it is "diverting and delaying action," said economist John Howley, who was part of a panel convened by Environment Maryland.
Howley, who writes Maryland Energy Report, believes that financing nuclear power will come at the expense of cleaner energy sources, such as solar or wind power.
The Taxpayer Shouldn't be Burned Again in LANL's Inadequate Fire Protection Program - POGO Blog
As usual, last week there was an interesting article in the Nuclear Weapons & Materials Monitor. In “Pu Work Curtailed Because Of Fire Sprinkler Issues,” the Monitor’s Todd Jacobson reported that “Los Alamos National Laboratory [LANL] curtailed programmatic work in the lab’s Plutonium Facility, putting the facility in 'standby mode' for a month from early October to Nov. 5 because of concerns about the adequacy of fire sprinkler coverage.”
On the bright side, the problem that 13 of 100 areas (130 sprinklers) in the facility were not adequately covered by the sprinkler system was discovered before there was a fire in one of those areas. On the not-so-bright side, two weeks ago, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) found that the facility would be vulnerable to a catastrophic fire in the case of a severe earthquake. However, it does not take an earthquake to start a fire in a glove box that could spread.
Group Says Push to Build Nuclear Power Plants Will Set Back Climate Change Efforts - Bay Area Blog - NYTimes.com
To nuke or not to nuke: whether it’s kinder to the environment to suffer nuclear plant start-up delays and potential cleanup headaches or to take arms against (rising) seas of trouble through other, likely costlier, alternatives (think solar)? That is the question that’s been haunting environmental circles for the past few years.
Environment California Research & Policy Center, an environmental advocacy group, weighed in yesterday with a new report arguing that nuclear power would actually set back efforts to fight climate change. Nuclear power plants are too costly and slow to bring on-line, the group says, to effectively contribute toward cutting greenhouse gas emissions. (View the entire report below)
The Diamondback - Nuclear energy: Don't believe the sticker price
A common perception of nuclear power is that it’s an affordable, carbon-free energy source that could meet a lot of America’s demand for electricity, if only those darn environmentalists would get out of the way. Unfortunately for nuclear power advocates and Maryland ratepayers, this statement crumbles upon contact with reality.
The average cost of electricity for all of Maryland’s sectors is 13.45 cents per kilowatt-hour. There’s a growing possibility some of us will have the pleasure of paying double that thanks to the pending merger between Constellation Energy and French electric giant EDF Energy, which is supposed to pave the way for construction of a new nuclear power plant at Calvert Cliffs. Doubling rates is fairly easy to predict with a trip down memory lane.
AFP: Hitachi plans to raise 4.6 billion dollars
Japanese high-tech giant Hitachi Ltd., reeling from massive losses, said Monday that it planned to raise 415.7 billion yen (4.6 billion dollars) from investors to shore up its shaky finances.
Hitachi, which makes everything from refrigerators to nuclear power systems, aims to drum up the cash by selling convertible bonds and new shares. The sprawling conglomerate has been hit hard by the global economic downturn.
It is restructuring with measures including 7,000 job cuts, after losing 787.3 billion yen in the year to March 2009 -- the biggest ever loss for a Japanese manufacturer.
Other cash-strapped Japanese companies are also going cap in hand to investors to bolster their capital, including electronics giant NEC.
Nuclear 'Renaissance' Held Up by Fight Between DOE and OMB - NYTimes.com
The awards of $18.5 billion in federal loan guarantees for new nuclear plant projects remain held up by an ongoing dispute within the Obama administration over the financial risk the new reactors pose for the government and taxpayers, according to industry and government officials.
The struggle pits the Energy Department against the Office of Management and Budget, agencies that have been at odds since the loan guarantee program was approved in 2005. DOE will make the final decision on nuclear project loan guarantee requests. OMB has a pivotal say in determining the risk of loan defaults if the projects suffer cost overruns or cannot be completed.
Security of nuclear power plants in the age of terrorism - Nov. 12, 2009
The government says nuclear power is safe, but others say an airplane hit or frontal assault would be big trouble.
BAY CITY, Texas (CNNMoney.com) -- At a nuclear power plant in Texas, two men dressed in combat gear are perched atop a steel-framed watchtower armed with assault rifles, firing on both moving and stationary targets some 300 yards away.
This is only a drill, but the threat they're preparing for is very real. It's one of the worst disaster scenarios imaginable: Terrorists infiltrate a nuclear power plant and cause a meltdown.
Pretty Dungeness cottage for sale: don't mention the nuclear plant - Times Online
To an estate agent it was a charming fisherman’s cottage on the Kent coast. To anyone else, it was the two nuclear power stations next door that were the main feature. The cottage in Dungeness was highlighted recently after agents found no space in the “for sale” advert to mention the power plants, which were nowhere to be seen in accompanying photographs either.
Though the agents have not been accused of any offence, some viewers were appalled to discover the perimeter fence 100 yards from the front door when they arrived. “It was unbelievable. I had seen the property online and thought it looked just right for me and my family,” said Alex Robertson, 32."The photos make out it is an isolated cottage with nothing surrounding it — but that could not be further from the truth.
Nuclear power industry may benefit from climate change levy exemption - Times Online
The Government is considering fresh tax breaks for Britain’s nuclear power industry that could smooth the way for the construction of a new generation of UK reactors, The Times has learnt.
Whitehall insiders have told The Times that officials at the Department for Energy and Climate Change have been studying the possibility of an exemption for nuclear electricity from the climate change levy, a tax on industrial energy consumption that was created to boost energy efficiency.
The levy, which was introduced in 2001, raises an estimated £1 billion a year for the Treasury. Suppliers pay the levy on electricity provided to businesses to Customs & Excise and then pass on the costs to customers.
Letters: The cost of nuclear doesn't add up | Environment | The Guardian
Government plans to fast-track major projects pose a real threat to their action plan on global warming (UK's nuclear future is mapped out as race to tackle climate change hots up, 10 November). Reports on the government's national policy statements have predictably focussed on the controversial issue of new nuclear reactors, but a fundamental flaw in the proposals, which has gone largely unreported, threatens to undermine UK targets for tackling climate change.
Under the Climate Change Act, the UK has been set legally binding "carbon budgets", setting limits on how much carbon the UK can emit, over five-year budget periods, for the next 15 years. Some of the projects covered by the national policy statements, such as new coal and gas-fired power stations, are likely to have a significant impact on UK emissions – but bizarrely the effect that these developments would have on UK carbon budgets is missing from the proposals, and this issue won't be considered by the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC).
Reactor Designs Concerns Raise Specter Of Nuclear Plant Delays
Regulators' concerns about two new nuclear reactor designs could throw a wrench in energy companies' plans for a build-out of nuclear power plants in the U.S.
Regulators in France, the U.K. and Finland told French nuclear powerhouse Areva S.A. (CEI.FR) earlier this month to fix a flaw in the safety systems for its EPR reactor, which the company is also seeking to license in the U.S. And in October, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission rejected a modified version of the AP1000 reactor, designed by Toshiba Corp.'s (6502.TO) Westinghouse Electric Co., citing concerns about structural integrity.
Regulatory delays could force U.S. power companies like Scana Corp. (SCG) and PPL Corp. (PPL) to push back their timetables for building nuclear power plants using the new reactor technology, though both of these companies say their plans currently remain on track. More than a decade after the last commercial nuclear reactor was completed in the U.S., such delays could lead to the kinds of cost overruns that plagued developers in the first wave of U.S. nuclear power plant construction.
Green energy plan should be alternative to nuclear
CPS Energy has made two critical errors in their dealings on the South Texas Project (STP) nuclear plant: assuming that nuclear energy will be cheap and that the cost of alternatives is too high.
This month, just two days before the San Antonio City Council was to vote to approve $400 million in bonds to move forward with the STP expansion, CPS announced that the cost estimate for the project had risen as much as $4 billion. That brought the cost of expanding the nuclear power plant to $17 billion — a $12 billion increase from NRG Energy's original estimate just last year of $5.4 billion.
Cheaper and safer ways exist to meet the city's need for power. With the bond vote now pushed back until January, the City Council should take the time to get bids on alternative energy scenarios for San Antonio's new electric generation. This input would present the council with the most cost-effective, least risky, most environmentally sustainable plan possible.
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