Re: "Europe: No. 1 in Sustainable Energy"

On Tue, 07 Aug 2007 02:41:38 -0400, Neon John wrote:
On Mon, 06 Aug 2007 23:45:17 GMT, Ann <nntpmail@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

"New Reactor Costs Daunt U.S. Utilities as TVA Restarts Old Unit"
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=agGMCRlWdMyU&refer=home
" July 9 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush plunged into the cotton
fields of northern Alabama last month to fete the restart of the
Tennessee Valley Authority's oldest, most troubled nuclear reactor after
a $1.8 billion renovation.

"We want to start building plants," said Bush, whose administration is
promoting loan guarantees and tax breaks to get the first new U.S.
reactors constructed since 1996."

And who other than taxpayers is paying for these tax breaks and loan
guarantees?

when you quote mass media as your source of information, "URL
warrioring", you run the risk of appearing quite stupid. Such is the
case here. That article is all over the place and has little to do with
industry reality.

I didn't read the article past the Bush quote.

All that blather is based on old plant design, something that isn't even
a consideration for new plants. The modern designs which will be
type-accepted ahead of time so that costly licensing hassles against the
obstructionists won't have to be done for each plant, and will be mostly
shop-fabricated and site-erected will greatly reduce the cost. How
much? Who knows until one is actually built.

FWIW, On general principles, I'm opposed to both "tax breaks" (using the
government to thieve money from working people to give it to those who
need it least) and "loan guarantees". I'm not sure what a "loan
guarantee" means in the context of a federal corporation such as TVA.

To answer your specific question of who pays, why the ratepayers, of
course, just like they do for the so-called alternative energy
boondoggles, environmental extremism, taxes, fees and all the other
stuff that gets heaped on 'em. All the loan guarantees do is make the
overall cost to the ratepayers - you and I and most everyone else -
lower.

BTW, you snipped out a fairly important piece:

I "snipped" nothing. I quoted the second paragraph of the article ...
about federal tax breaks and loan guarantees for nuclear power plants. You
however snipped the part of your previous post that I was replying to.

"TVA's renovation of Browns Ferry Unit One was attractive because it
retooled an old
reactor for just $1,558 per kilowatt.

By comparison, traditional coal-fired plants cost $2,022 per kilowatt to
build, Hunt says. And Congress is considering clean-air legislation that
would add about $500 per kilowatt to the cost of those conventional coal
plants."

and

"Investment banking consultant Gary L. Hunt, president of Global Energy
Advisors in Sacramento, California, estimates the cost of building a
plant at $2,214 per kilowatt of generating capacity. The market places a
value of $1,730 per kilowatt of generating capacity on currently
operating reactors, he says."

If we accept these last numbers as valid, which I don't since they're
based on old technology, nuclear and coal construction costs are neck
and neck with the winner going to nuclear by a nose. Thing is, once a
nuke is built, the major costs stop. Fuel is relatively so cheap that it
has little effect on power costs. Nuke operational overhead costs are
higher, of course, but not nearly enough to offset the cost of coal.

Now I'm intimately familiar with BFNP, as I worked there as an engineer
for years. What TVA did with Unit 1 was basically to build a new plant
inside the shell of the old plant. TVA both proved that it could be
done and proved that it could be done at moderate cost. This will be a
common thing to do in the future as so many plants reach the end of
their design lives. Rebuilding like this saves the cost of acquiring
and licensing a new site and it saves the cost of the heavy construction
of things like reactor and turbine buildings and other massive
structures. TVA is to be congratulated for a job well done.

One other point. The article notes - correctly this time - that BFNP #1
was constructed for about $300 million. It was one of the few "turnkey"
plants that GE was allowed to build (without utility interference) and
is regarded as one of the best bargains in the industry.

If we plug $300 million into the government's inflation calculator here
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl we see that $300 million in 1974
works out to about $1.3 BILLION in today's dollars. BFNP 1 and 2 were
built before all the ruinous over-regulation and obstructionism and OSHA
and lawyers and lawsuits and all the other government crap that has been
heaped on the industry since then. If a plant were to be built today
under those same conditions, it would cost almost $1.5 billion.
Government regulation has jacked up the price of everything else so it's
no surprise that to build a plant of the old design today would cost
double.

A $3 billion plant would be about the cost of what, 2 B2 bombers,
something that has little direct benefit to us here in the states. By
that measure, even an old design nuclear plant would be a bargain.

-----
Assuming there is never another drought: "Drought hits TVA power
production"
http://www.timesfreepress.com/absolutenm/templates/local.aspx?articleid=18576&zoneid=77
"Nonetheless, TVA has had to rely on more power generation from
alternate sources this year, he said. Minimum flows have cut normal
hydroelectric power generation nearly in half, while warmer-than-normal
reservoirs are threatening to curb or even halt production at nuclear
and fossil fuel plants, Mr. Gibson [TVA's water supply manager] said.

"We're getting very close to the limits," he said. "It's something that
everyone at TVA is very concerned about."

Oh bullsh*t. When they hit the "limit", that is, some arbitrary value
for water temperature, they'll simply fill out some forms, get the
proper exemptions for higher water discharge temperatures and keep on
generating. Happens every few years. Until the NY times bought out the
Free Press a few years ago, they'd have not wasted ink on such routine
happenings. Now they fabricate controversy out of thin air and TVA is
as good a place to look as any.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), drones
such as this guy and the other PR flacks in TVA are separate from Power
Operations, the guys who actually make and ship the power. Just
something else Power Operations has to put up with.

You said it; I didn't. (That the TVA Water Supply Manager is a "PR
flack".)

If some state 'crat ever tried to upset this procedure and actually
force a plant to shut down, TVA would simply restate their federal
supremacy and ignore 'em. Everyone involved knows that so all those
types do is huff and puff to the media. Shutting down a plant for such
silliness isn't even on the table.

And to hell with other water users?

Again, you have used a "shoot the messenger" defense rather than address -
in particular - nuclear plants' consumptive water use. Since you worked
at TMI, you should should be aware of the Susquehanna River Basin
Commission, which oversees water use in the basin (NY, PA, MD) and their
Pooled Water Storage Program.

"In the late 1970s, two large utility companies in Pennsylvania needed to
find a source of water to meet SRBC's low flow water makeup requirement.
Rather than construct their own water storage facility, the two companies
agreed to pay SRBC to purchase water storage for them at the Cowanesque
Reservoir in Tioga County, Pa., just south of the New York state line. The
reservoir is a federal facility -- constructed and operated by the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers."
http://www.srbc.net/docs/COWANESQ.pdf

Note: The two companies were GPU and PPL. GPU's (et al) rights/obligations
under the SRBC-brokered agreement were transferred to the new owner when
TMI-1 was sold.

I believe PPL's agreement also covers makeup water for a coal-fired plant,
but the big water consumer is their two Susquehanna nuclear units -
40-million gallons of water per day. To put this in perspective, the SRBC
puts the consumptive water use by agriculture in the PA portion of the
basin at 15.9-million gallons of water per day.



.

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