Turkey Point suspends nuke construction

[catkicker]

Florida Power and Light has suspended work on two new reactors at Turkey Point in an angry reaction to a decision by state regulators.



Turkey Point
Turkey Point: Two nuclear reactors,
two gas units and two oil units. An
additional two reactors are now in
serious doubt
The company said it would immediately stop work on expanding the Turkey Point power plant, citing the "deteriorating regulatory and business environment" created by the Florida Public Service Commission. The nuclear project is one among $10 billion in investment that FPL said will now be cancelled.



PSC officials today rejected an FPL's request to increase the rates charged to consumers - the way FPL had hoped to finance the investments. The company's regulated base rate had not been reviewed since 1985, and although it has twice been allowed to begin collecting extra money to aid investment, a request to add a total of $1 billion to its income after 2011 was slashed by the PSC to just $75 million.



"The decision was about politics, not economics," said FPL Group chairman and CEO Lew Hay.



FPL will continue to work with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to complete its licence application to build and operate two Westinghouse AP1000s, but has abadoned its ambition to build them by 2017 and 2019.



About face



The move from the PSC comes despite officially accepting the need for the new reactors in March 2008. It was aware of FPL's cost projections and specifically approved spending to reserve the long-lead large components.

At the time, PSC chairman Matthew Carter said: "Trends indicate there will be a substantial need for more power in FPL's service territory, and these new nuclear units can help meet that need. The nuclear units will provide a clean, non-carbon emitting source of base-load power to meet Florida's growing energy needs."
"We understand that there is never a good time to raise base rates," said Hay, "However, our proposal provided a unique opportunity to lower customers total bills." The cost of finance is major part of the costs of nuclear power, and ability to raise funds from consumers lowers the costs to them overall. That state regulators could approve price increases timed to coincide with major nuclear investments had made projects like FPL's look the most likely to go ahead in the US market.



On 11 January, the Florida PSC also rejected a request to increase base rates from Progress Energy, planners of two AP1000s at a new site called Levy. Progress had hoped for a $500 million income boost to ease investment but has not announced any changes to its plans. The company's president and CEO, Vincent Dolan, said the decision "fails to recognize the true costs associated with providing a secure, reliable electricity system."



Besides Turkey Point 5 and 6, other projects on FPL's cancellation list are modernization of the Riviera Beach and Cape Canaveral non-nuclear power plants, a proposed natural gas pipeline and "numerous discretionary projects targeting improvements in efficiency and reliability." According to the company, the work could have created around 20,000 jobs.



Hay said that today's decision "will simply reinforce investor perceptions that the regulatory climate in Florida continues to deteriorate and is increasingly hostile to investment." He went on: "Investments have to be made in the expectation of fair regulatory treatment. By the time we ask for rate recovery, the money - in this case billions of dollars - already has been spent and sunk."

[ruth13]

Besides Turkey Point 5 and 6, other projects on FPL's cancellation list are modernization of the Riviera Beach and Cape Canaveral non-nuclear power plants, a proposed natural gas pipeline and "numerous discretionary projects targeting improvements in efficiency and reliability." According to the company, the work could have created around 20,000 jobs.

Not to be picky, but Unit 5 is already built at Turkey Point - it is not nuclear, but a CT.  The new nuclar units would be #'s 6 & 7, I assume.

[Fermi2]

CT's are rarely counted as Units unless built on their own site.

[HydroDave63]

CT's are rarely counted as Units unless built on their own site.

Out at Grid Galactic Control, where all of the generators are dispatched, any single unit  that has a non-shared breaker to get power offsite is considered a Unit. Some sites out there have multiple owners of the generators at the same site. After all, those really smart Grid Control guys control everything on the other side of your output breaker

[Fermi2]

Yeah but the utilities don't count them as units!

[Already Gone]

Maybe they don't count the small ones that are used for supplemental power (think of Salem 3) because they are more like backup generators.  But Turkey Point 5 is really turkey Point 5A, 5B, 5C, 5D & 5E.  The total combination of 4 GE 7FA CT's and one D-11 steamer produces over 1150MWe.
Most utilities would actually count this setup as 5 units. FPL counts it as 1.
The article above is in error.  The actual response by FPL to the PSC decision is that they are going to slow down their plans to build two nuclear units (6&7) as well as their plans to expand unit 5.

http://www.fpl.com/environment/plant/turkey_point.shtml

[RDTroja]

FPL has withdrawn from several planned capital projects because the funding was to come from the rate increase money. Florida is still a regulated state, so any capital money has to come from the rate payers through the PSC. The PSC basically said No (they offered $75 Million as opposed to 1.8 Billion,) so not only does FPL not get to spend the money, it has to return some that was already collected (assuming they decide not to go to court over it.)

The bottom line is that FPL will still complete the COLAs for TP 6 and 7 (yes, Unit 5 really is Unit 5) but will not decide at this time when or if it will start spending money on them beyond that. To say that FPL 'suspends nuke construction' would indicate they had started it. All they had done was some very preliminary site assessment work.

Film at 11.

[ddm502001]

Has anybody tallied up the dropped plants on this turn?  Turkey Point, Callaway 2, others have stepped away from the race, how many proposed are now dead in the water?

[starving_dog]

This might help... http://www.nuclear.gov/np2010/neScorecard/neScorecard.html

There are archives on this site also.

[UncaBuffalo]

This might help... http://www.nuclear.gov/np2010/neScorecard/neScorecard.html

There are archives on this site also.

Thanks.

[spentfuel]

Its political other states have agreed to allow some pre operating costs to be recovered such as SC and rumor is Duke is asking for NC to follow.

This seems to tell the tail to me anyways

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN_Turkey_Point_nuclear_suspension_1410102.html

sf