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Conspiracy theory puts NRG on the grassy knoll
CPS Energy's longest-serving board trustee, Steve Hennigan, hasn't actually given me a copy of his nine-page “not so far-fetched theory document,” but we spoke at length Friday night and Saturday afternoon about what's in it as he fights to keep his board seat and remain a major player at the municipal utility.
“I'm not a conspiracy theorist,” said Hennigan, a credit union executive by day and an unmistakably nice man.
Conspiracy theory, nevertheless, is making the rounds these days in one of those “truth stranger than fiction” scenarios as business and civic leaders ask what went wrong with a multibillion-dollar plan to expand the South Texas Project nuclear facility, the source of 30 percent of the city's current energy usage.
CPS board postpones decision on executives
CPS Energy trustees took no action Wednesday morning after deliberating for nearly 11 hours over the fate of several top executives connected to a nuclear cost estimate — much higher than expected — that was kept from the utility's board and the City Council.
The board came out of executive session shortly before 1 a.m. to announce that it would continue deliberation Monday.
“The seriousness of this issue warrants that this board takes care, takes caution,” Chairwoman Aurora Geis told the sparse crowd that waited. “People's lives are at stake.”
Tuesday's meeting was a continuation of Monday's nearly five-hour session, during which the board heard results of an internal investigation into how contractor Toshiba Inc.'s high cost estimate for the multibillion-dollar nuclear expansion was kept under wraps.
Your Turn – CPS heads must roll
I'm not surprised about this new turn of events but I am stunned that your staff accepted interim GM Steve Bartley's statement that he didn't know about the omission. How could henot know?
Ask Bartley what he'd do to any employee who: 1. told him he didn't know about a major element of their business, or 2. flat out lied to him? He would fire him on the spot.
What CPS management did was out and out fraud. They lied to us on their application for a rate hike. Treat them the same way any bank would treat an application for a home loan if the financial information was fraudulent. Turn down the application and call the authorities to investigate.
We should do the same. City Council would not tolerate any citizen coming before them and lying to their faces, or are they going to condone lying? Hopefully there are not two sets of rules — one for ordinary citizens and one for big shot citizens/companies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
CPS Energy sends team to Japan to negotiate cut in nuclear power costs - San Antonio Business Journal:
CPS Energy CEO Milton Lee and Interim General Manager Steve Bartley are heading to Japan on Tuesday to square off behind closed door meetings with Toshiba Corp. officials to discuss why the cost projection on two new nuclear reactors are higher than expected.
Toshiba Power Systems is the lead contractor for the proposed expansion of the South Texas Project nuclear power plant in Matagorda County, Texas. There have been reports indicating that the price tag could be as much as $4 billion higher than originally projected. CPS Energy’s partner in the South Texas Project expansion, NRG Energy, will also be involved with discussions. CPS Energy will press the Japanese for a pricing structure on the two new reactors that is more affordable than the current cost projection. CPS Energy wants the cost of the nuclear reactors to have no more than a 5 percent impact on customer bills, Bartley says.
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.
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: 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.
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.
Water looms as key issue for nuclear proposal
Sitting in on Mayor Julián Castro's town hall meeting Monday evening felt like watching some old movie in which you know all the lines by heart.
It probably served some purpose on the front end — forcing CPS Energy officials to realize that their proposal for a $5.2 billion investment in two nuclear plants falls well short of a sure thing — but it didn't seem to shift opinions around much.
Still, with all the talk about how the Big Decision will affect our grandchildren, it was easy to wonder which question will appear most prescient decades from now.
Perhaps it will be the handwritten, photocopied ‘No Nuclear Energy!' sheet passed out at the front door, on which a man named Ray Davidson Hillman guaranteed that if all North American nuclear plants are not shut down soon, the planet won't support life in one or two hundred years. If he's right, of course, no one will be around to realize how smart he was.
Anti-nuclear group launches
As CPS Energy continues to present its case to the public for spending billions of dollars on two nuclear reactors, community groups opposed to the plan are banding together to make their own case.
A new organization, calling itself Energia Mia, is holding a press conference today before one of CPS Energy's neighborhood meetings that were set up for the utility to answer questions about its plan to partner in the expansion of the nuclear South Texas Project outside of Bay City.
“We have noticed that there are a lot of groups in San Antonio that have different reasons for opposing nuclear energy, but all have come to the conclusion that it is not in our best interest,” said Cindy Weehler of the Consumers' Energy Coalition and one of Energia Mia's organizers. “We decided that we are going to have a venue or a forum. CPS is going out and educating the community on their side of the issue. We would like to educate people to our side of the issue.”
SA Current - Moody’s taking dim view of nuclear option
This small alert from Moody’s Investor Service has been making the rounds these past two weeks. So we’d be remiss if we didn’t throw it out there with schmear o' analysis.
The “special comment” issued last month is pretty plain. Moody’s analysts found that the construction of nuclear-power plants represents a huge financial gamble — a “bet the farm” proposition — that proceeds only at the whim of innumerable political factors over a lengthy time line.
San Antonio on center stage in nuclear power debate - San Antonio Business Journal:
With its recent recommendation to move forward with construction of two new nuclear power units in South Texas, the staff of CPS Energy has placed San Antonio at the forefront of a national debate that has been raging for more than two dozen years.
There hasn’t been a new nuclear power reactor constructed in the U.S. since the 1970s, but now there are five potential units on the horizon, including two that would be located in South Texas supplying power for CPS Energy — which serves San Antonio and Bexar County.
Former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman came to San Antonio recently as co-chair of a group advocating for the expansion of nuclear energy nationwide and acknowledged the Alamo City’s central role in the debate.
EPA ex-chief here pushing nuclear
There's no way the nation can meet its future appetite for energy and fight climate change without significantly expanding its supply of nuclear reactors, former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman told several audiences in San Antonio on Wednesday.
“You cannot have a growing, thriving economy if you are subject to brownouts and blackouts,” Whitman told the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
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