Wait until *ssport!!! I mean passport!
NMC is not the "fleet of choice"?? Fleet Enema of choice!
I thought the letter below says there is not displeasure with NMC
Stirring the pot some more!!!
I feel for ya! Hey, whatever happened to our spaceship?
So...... What's the over/under on NMC? 6 months?
WEC to review Point Beach options, reflects ‘no displeasure’ with NMC
Feb. 9, 2006
Wisconsin Energy Corp. (WEC) will spend the year evaluating four options related to the Point Beach plant, including continued operation by NMC, hiring a third-party operator other than NMC, returning to in-house operation by Wisconsin Electric, or selling the plant.
WEC officials announced the plan to review options for Point Beach during a conference call with investment analysts Wednesday.
“We will be thorough and deliberate in carrying out this review during 2006, and we will provide you with an update when we have reached our conclusions in the fourth quarter this year,” said Gale Klappa, WEC’s President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). We Energies, a unit of WEC, owns the Point Beach plant.
While stating that reductions in the size of the NMC fleet influenced their decision to evaluate options for Point Beach, Klappa and Rick Kuester, President and CEO of WEC unit We Generation, emphasized that NMC’s performance in operating Point Beach was not a factor in their plan.
The WEC officials also expressed their belief that decisions by other owners of plants operated by NMC did not reflect any displeasure with NMC’s performance. In fact, they noted, NMC has improved the performance of all the plants that it has operated.
NMC assumed the operation of five nuclear plants (and seven units) in 2000: Duane Arnold (single unit), Kewaunee (single unit), Monticello (single unit), Point Beach (two-unit) and Prairie Island (two-unit). In 2001, NMC assumed operation of the single-unit Palisades plant, bringing the fleet to eight nuclear units.
The fleet has been reduced in size since then, with the sale of Kewaunee in July 2005 from Wisconsin Public Service (WPS) to Dominion Resources and the sale of Duane Arnold from Alliant Energy to FPL Energy last month. Consumers Energy, the owner of the Palisades plant, also has announced its intent to sell that plant.
Referring to WPS, Alliant and Consumers Energy, Kuester told analysts that, “None of those companies . . . made those decisions based on NMC performance. I think all the owners [in NMC] have been pleased with the performance and improvements in performance they have gotten out of the units.
“There were other business reasons at work for those other owners,” Kuester continued. “I don’t want anyone to interpret that there’s displeasure with NMC performance. It’s simply that every company has to evaluate their situation, their customer needs, their portfolio and make a decision based on that.”
Klappa also said WEC has “not concluded that NMC is not a viable operator. In fact,” he added, “if you look around the country at the size of fleets, certainly there are some major nuclear consolidators, but there are other operators doing very well with the size of the fleet that NMC would have. … And, as Rick mentioned, NMC’s track record in improving the performance at every one of the plants that it’s operated has been quite positive.”