Nuclear Power 2010 program

[Rennhack]

Overview
The Nuclear Power 2010 program (NP2010), unveiled by the Department of Energy on February 14, 2002, is a joint government/industry cost-shared effort to identify sites for new nuclear power plants, develop and bring to market advanced nuclear plant technologies, evaluate the business case for building new nuclear power plants and demonstrate untested regulatory processes. The accomplishment of these program objectives paves the way for an industry decision to build new advanced light water reactor nuclear plants in the United States that would begin operation in the middle of the next decade. The Department is actively engaged with nuclear industry stakeholders to address the issues affecting future expansion of nuclear generation.
By the end of FY2010, the program will conclude its final year of Government support.  NP 2010 has succeeded in building momentum toward a "nuclear renaissance" in which nuclear plants are effective options for zero-carbon electricity production.  Streamlined regulatory processes such as the early site permit and the combined construction and operating license are stimulating the utility sector to consider nuclear power plants to fill future energy growth requirements, as shown by the spike in license applications from 2002 to present. Completion of complex design certifications on advanced, passively safe reactor designs are expected to provide increased confidence on the part of utilities and the public in the construction and operation of these new units.
Nuclear power plants generate approximately 20 percent of the electricity produced in this country; however, all recent electric-generating capacity additions and projected future additions are primarily fueled by natural gas. Despite the excellent performance of current nuclear plants and decisions by power plant owners to seek license renewal and power up-rates, no new plant has been ordered in this country for more than 30 years.

Program Activities
Below are some highlights of the history and unique successes, as well as the current state of licensing and design certification activities performed under the NP2010 program. Once completed, these activities will provide the technical and regulatory template that industry will use to cost effectively design, license, construct and operate the nuclear fleet of the future.
June 14, 2010 NRC docketed Exelon's ESP application for Victoria County, originally submitted as a COLA.

May 26, 2010 PSEG submitted an ESP application for a site adjacent to their Salem and Hope Creek reactors in New Jersey.

May 24, 2010 NRC invited public participation in an environmental scoping hearing for the William States Lee COLA.

May 20, 2010 AREVA was offered a $2 billion federal loan guarantee conditional agreement for the Eagle Rock Enrichment Facility in Idaho.

May 18, 2010 Dominion selected Mitsubishi US-APWR for the North Anna COLA in lieu of the ESBWR.

May 3, 2010 NRC announced an opportunity to participate in a hearing on the Limited Work Authorization request for the Vogtle COLA.

April 27, 2010 Payette County, Idaho, approved the site of a proposed Alternate Energy Holding nuclear plant.

April 21, 2010 NRC made the Calvert Cliffs and V.C. Summer Draft Environmental Impact Statement available for public comment on April 23.

March 25, 2010 Exelon submitted an ESP application for the Victoria County site, replacing the COL application that they withdrew on July 1, 2009. NRC will conduct a public meeting in Victoria, TX, on April 15 to discuss their review of the ESP application.

February 28, 2010 NRC completed its environmental review for the North Anna COLA and issued the Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (FSEIS), documenting no environmental impacts that would preclude issuing a COL.

February 16, 2010 DOE offered a conditional agreement to Entergy for $8.33 billion in loan guarantees for two AP100 units at Vogtle located in Burke, Georgia. This is the first such agreement for a nuclear plant and the fifth overall under the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

December 31, 2009 Areva signed a letter of intent with the Fresno Nuclear Energy Group to investigate a possible EPR in California's Central Valley region.

December 23, 2009 Alternate Energy Holdings Inc. announced a delay in its COL application for a nuclear plant in Elmore County, Idaho to the fourth quarter of 2011. They also announced plans to submit applications for two new plants: Payette County, ID, 2nd quarter 2011 & Pueblo, CO, 2nd quarter 2012.

December 17, 2009 General Electric-Hitachi announced that it had signed an agreement with Detroit Edison on site planning for an ESBWR at Detroit Edison's Fermi site.

December 16, 2009 NRC held a meeting in Waynesboro, Georgia to discuss the agency's inspection plans under the Limited Work Authorization issued for the Vogtle nuclear plant site.

December 1, 2009 Unistar asked the NRC to suspend review of their COL application for an EPR at Nine Mile due to uncertainties in loan guarantee funding.

November 2, 2009 The Maryland Public Service Commission has granted Electricité de France (EdF) conditional rights to take over 49.99% of Constellation Energy's nuclear generation including the proposed new EPR at Calvert Cliffs.

September 8, 2009 Florida Power and Lights's COL application for two AP1000 reactors at the Turkey Point site near Homestead, Florida was docketed by NRC.
       
August 26, 2009 Southern Nuclear Operating Company received an ESP and Limited Work Authorization (LWA) for its Vogtle site in Georgia.

June 30, 2009 Florida Power and Light submitted a COL application, for two AP 1000 reactors located at the Turkey Point site in Miami-Dade County, Florida.

June 30, 2009 Exelon announced it will seek an ESP for its proposed Victoria County site rather than a COL, citing economic uncertainties and limited availability of federal loan guarantees.

June 30, 2009 Constellation Energy received final approval from the Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC) for Calvert Cliffs.

June 23, 2009 Ameren UE requested that NRC suspend all Callaway COL Application review activities, citing financial reasons. NRC had previously convened an Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) panel, on May 1, to preside over Callaway hearings.

May 27, 2009 in its proposed FY 2010 budget to Congress, NRC requested $248.3M for work on new reactors.

May 21, 2009 NRC announced public meetings to discuss environmental issues for the Nine Mile Point COL application, to be held in Oswego, N.Y. on June 10.

May 1, 2009 Progress Energy announced a 20-month delay on the Levy County construction schedule upon NRC's determination that excavation and foundation preparation work can only begin after a COL is granted.
April 30, 2009 TVA and NuStart announced their intent to transfer the Westinghouse AP1000 reference application (R-COL) from Bellefonte to Vogtle.

March 13, 2009 Exelon informed NRC of its selection of the ABWR for Victoria County, replacing the original ESBWR; submittal of a COLA revision expected 3rd quarter 2009.

February 25, 2009 The South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Company signed an EPC contract with Toshiba for two ABWRs. A previous contract addressed pre-construction & licensing.

February 19, 2009 NRC authorized the reinstatement of construction permits for TVA's unfinished Bellefonte Units 1 and 2 near Scottsboro, AL.

February 11, 2009 The South Carolina Public Service Commission (PSC) approved SCE&G's plans for two AP1000 reactors at V.C. Summer.

February, 2009 DOE narrowed the reactor applicants eligible for loan guarantees to five.

February 13, 2009 UniStar requested that the NRC delay its review of the Nine Mile Point COLA as the company will focus its resources on the Calvert Cliffs COLA.

February 11, 2009 NRC issued the final safety evaluation report (FSER) for Southern's ESP and LWA at the Vogtle site.

February 2, 2009 Luminant and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries announced a joint venture to develop Comanche Peak during the period preceding issuance of a COL.

January 12, 2009 NRC suspended reviews of Entergy's COL applications at River Bend and Grand Gulf in response to the applicant's request to consider alternatives to the ESBWR design.

January 5, 2009 Westinghouse and Shaw Group signed an EPC contract with Progress Energy for two AP1000 units in Levy County, Florida.

December, 2008 NRC docketed five COL applications:
          o PPL, for an EPR at Bell Bend in Berwick, Pennsylvania, on December 19, 2008.
          o Constellation, for an EPR at Nine Mile Point in Oswego, New York, on December 12.
          o Ameren UE, for an EPR at Callaway near Fulton, Missouri, on December 12.
          o Entergy, for an ESBWR at River Bend in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, on Dec. 4.
          o Luminant for two APWRs at Comanche Peak near Glen Rose, Texas, on December 2.

December 3, 2008 DTE provided notice of intent to prepare an EIS and conduct environmental scoping for its Fermi COLA.

December 3, 2008 NRC docketed Luminant's COL application for two APWR reactors at Comanche Peak near Glen Rose, Texas.

November 25, 2008 NRC docketed DTE's COL application for an ESBWR reactor at the Fermi site in Newport, Michigan.

November 24, 2008 Exelon notified the NRC it is reconsidering its choice of the ESBWR design submitted in their COL application for Victoria County, Texas, and is pursuing a "more mature" design alternative.

November 18, 2008 NRC issued its safety evaluation report (SER) for the ESP and Limited Work Authorization (LWA) at Southern's Vogtle site. A final decision on the ESP is expected in late 2009.
November 4, 2008 Japan Steel Works, Ltd., and Areva signed an 8 year procurement agreement for large forgings.

October 31, 2008 DOE announced availability of its standard contract for the disposal of spent fuel and radioactive waste under 10 CFR Part 961 for companies intending to build new nuclear plants. To date, Southern Nuclear and Duke Power have entered into spent fuel contracts with DOE.

[retread]

Great information!!!  Thanks Mike

[Rennhack]

Nuclear Power Deployment Status

Early Site Permit (ESP)

    * Four ESPs issued by NRC.
    * Two ESP applications under NRC review.
    * Two ESP applications expected in 2010-2012.

Design Certification (DC)

    * Two advanced reactor designs certified by NRC.
    * Four reactor designs undergoing NRC review.

Combined Construction & Operating License (COL)

    * Eighteen COL applications submitted to NRC.
    * Thirteen COL applications under NRC review.
    * Four COL applications suspended pending technology decision or for financial reasons.
    * One COL application withdrawn and replaced with ESP application.

New Nuclear Plant Orders

    * Eight utilities have ordered large, long-lead nuclear component forgings from three reactor vendors.
    * Four Engineering, Procurement, and Construction Contracts signed (Vogtle, V.C. Summer, STP, and Shearon Harris).
    * TVA resumed construction of Watts Bar 2; construction permits reinstated for Bellefonte 1 & 2.
    * Site prep work has started at four facilities.

Federal Financial Incentives

    * Nuclear Power Loan Guarantees – DOE authorized to guarantee $20.5 billion in loans for nuclear projects; $10.33 billion has been conditionally committed.
    * Standby Support (Risk Insurance) – DOE authorized to issue insurance to six reactors to cover delays in operations attributed to NRC licensing reviews or litigation.
    * Production Tax Credits – 1.8 cents/kw tax credit for the first 6,000 Mwe of deployed nuclear power.

[Rennhack]

Just as interesting as the 'winners' are the 'losers', the plants that will never be:

Florida Power and Light's Turkey Point Units 6 & 7
Entergy (NuStart)'s Grand Gulf Unit 3
Entergy's River Bend Unit 3
Exelon Generation's Victoria County Units 1 & 2
AmerenUE (UniStar)'s Callaway Unit 2
UniStar (Constellation)'s Nine Mile Point Unit 3



As of July 2009, the proposed Victoria County Nuclear Power Plant has been delayed, as the project proved difficult to finance. As of April 2009, AmerenUE  has suspended plans to build its proposed plant in Missouri because the state Legislature would not allow it to charge consumers for some of the project's costs before the plant's completion. The New York Times has reported that without that "financial and regulatory certainty," the company has said it could not proceed. Previously, MidAmerican Energy Company  decided to "end its pursuit of a nuclear power plant in Payette County, Idaho." MidAmerican cited cost as the primary factor in their decision.

In May 2009, John Rowe, chairman of Exelon, which operates 17 nuclear reactors, said he would cancel or delay construction of two new reactors in Texas without federal loan guarantees. U.S. nuclear power developers are increasingly looking for new partners to share the high costs and risks of building new reactors.

The prospect of a "nuclear renaissance" has also revived debate about the nuclear waste issue. On June 29, the Obama administration ended an environmental review that would have allowed reprocessing of nuclear waste, a process that may have the potential to reduce the volume of stored waste, citing nuclear proliferation concerns. There is an "international consensus on the advisability of storing nuclear waste in deep underground repositories", but no country in the world has yet opened such a site.

[Rennhack]

Some Links:

http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/col/new-reactor-map.html
http://www.ne.doe.gov/np2010/neScorecard/neScorecard.html
http://www.nei.org/keyissues/newnuclearplants/
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/state_profiles/nuc_state_sum.html
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf41.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States#Recent_developments

[mostlyharmless]

Excellent. Shame about the never be's. We have six non functioning reactors here at SRS  and talk about a small experamental reactor on the way. But at a DOE site plans change easily and serve a similar purpose as good intentions.

[roadhard]

Economy Sandbags Plans For Nuclear Reactors

New York Times

Oct 10 - WASHINGTON — Just a few years ago, the economic prognosis for new nuclear reactors looked bright. The prospect of growing electricity demand, probable caps on carbon-dioxide emissions and government loan guarantees prompted companies to tell the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that they wanted to build 28 new reactors.

The economic slump, which has driven down demand and the price of competing energy sources, and the failure of Congress to pass climate legislation has changed all that, at least for now.

Constellation Energy's announcement on Saturday that it had reached an impasse with the federal government over the fee for a loan guarantee on a new reactor in Maryland is a sign of how much the landscape has been transformed.

Essentially, the Energy Department argued that Constellation's project is so risky that the company must pay a high fee or provide other assurances of repayment if it wants the taxpayers to guarantee its construction loans. Constellation said the government's demand was "unreasonably burdensome."

The government is hardly the only one to question the economics of nuclear power right now. The would-be builders of seven reactors around the country have deferred their projects in the last few months.

J. Scott Peterson, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's trade group, said the "pause" in nuclear building plans mirrors delays in other industrial projects. "It's principally because of the economic situation," he said.

One major factor driving the cautious stance of both the industry and the government is the fall in electricity demand, which peaked in 2007. In 2009, demand dropped by more than 4 percent from 2007. So far, it seems that demand in 2010 will be higher than last year, but not as high as 2007. These are big changes for an industry that is accustomed to growth on the order of 1 to 3 percent a year. With slack demand, there is less urgency to build new plants.

The plunge in the price of natural gas has also made nuclear power far less competitive. The year the recession began, 2008, the standard unit of natural gas, one million British thermal units, sold for an average of $7.96 at the well head. Last year the same amount of gas cost just $3.71, according to preliminary Energy Department figures, and for the first six months of this year, it cost $4.43.

A return to strong economic growth would push up the demand for electricity and for natural gas, but even then, natural gas prices may remain low because a technology called hydraulic fracturing has vastly increased the estimate of recoverable reserves.

Also weighing on the nuclear industry is the unwillingness of Congress to pass climate change legislation that would put a price of some sort on carbon-dioxide emissions. Since nuclear power produces no carbon emissions, it would gain a competitive edge against coal and natural gas if a bill were passed. But while such legislation once seemed likely, sharp divisions in Congress and concerns about the tottering economy have stalled its prospects.

Putting all that together, the Energy Department evaluated Constellation's proposal the way a bank would look at a prospective credit card customer or home buyer and set the fee according to the borrower's creditworthiness. Under a program created by Congress, Constellation was seeking a guarantee for 80 percent of the cost of the project. The government settled on a fee of $880 million, or 11.6 percent of the $7.6 billion loan, according to Constellation. In a letter to the Energy Department, the company called the figure "shockingly high" and said it would doom the project.

Other companies have looked at the economics of building new nuclear reactors and decided to wait. In September, Exelon, the largest nuclear operator in the United States, stepped back from a plan to build a twin-unit reactor plant in Texas and decided to simply seek approval for the site, which would save it some time if it decided later to build.

Exelon said it needs natural gas prices to reach about $8 per million B.T.U. — almost double today's price — and a carbon fee of $25 a ton to make the project worthwhile economically. "We don't have the right stimulus right now," said Christopher M. Crane, president and chief operating officer, in a recent interview.

Two utilities in Florida, Progress Energy and FPL, each want to build twin-unit reactors but have slowed their projects down. A Missouri utility has backed away from a plan to build a carbon copy of the Constellation Maryland reactor.

Nuclear plant operators like Exelon and Constellation face particular challenges because after deregulation in their states, they must compete against other energy suppliers to sell electricity to the companies that actually distribute energy to customers.

Two nuclear projects that have gone forward, in Georgia and South Carolina, are in states where the utilities building them also distribute the electricity and operate under traditional regulatory rules that virtually guarantee them a financial return: Whatever the companies spend to generate power, the customers will pay for, unless regulators decide the expenses were not "prudent." That regulatory compact is so strong that the South Carolina project, on the site of the existing V. C. Summer reactor, has begun work without a loan guarantee.

In Constellation's case, the Energy Department proposed that Constellation reduce the risk of financial failure by signing a contract with its regulated subsidiary, Baltimore Gas & Electric, to buy 75 percent of the new reactor's output at a price that would allow Constellation to repay the loan. That idea would require approval of state regulators, but state officials have generally favored construction of the reactor.

Such a contract would limit the builders' upside possibilities, however, and Constellation has not pursued the idea.

A spokeswoman for the Energy Department, Stephanie Mueller, said the parties were still working on a compromise. "We urge Constellation and its partner to examine the latest terms and continue working on this project important to bringing about the clean-energy economy of the future and creating many needed jobs," she said.

Some nuclear advocates say that pure economics should not be an overriding concern.

Constellation Energy argues that its reactor is less risky than the government's assessment indicates. The Maryland reactor would be the sixth or seventh instance of a new design, with Finland, France and China working out the kinks first, according to James L. Connaughton, executive vice president of Constellation Energy.

He said that Constellation and its partner, Électricité de France, are experienced at this kind of job, and thus the fee from the government should be 1 or 2 percent of the guarantee. The reactor's construction will provide thousands of well-paying jobs and clean power for decades, he said, if only the government would make a more realistic assessment of risk.

But Michael Mariotte, executive director of the antinuclear group Nuclear Information and Resource Service, predicted that Constellation and the nuclear industry will experience no renaissance for the most simple of reasons: "nuclear reactors make no economic sense."

[Rennhack]

Roadhard, thank you for sharing.  That was a very well written article.  It seems to be the most detailed and ballanced article I have read on the subject, and it hits the nail on the head.

[RP Instructor]

In the October 6, 2010 edition of "The Augusta Chronicle", there was an article stating that Santee Cooper (that currently owns a 45% interest in VC Summer Unit 1, and had planned on owning a similar interest in Units 2 and 3) is looking to sell it's interest in VC Summer Units 2 and 3. They too don't see the demand now that was once projected when the decision was made to go forward with the construction of Units 2 and 3. The article also stated that Duke Energy and Progress Energy both expressed an interest in buying Santee Cooper's share of  VC Summer Units 2 and 3.