Nuclear power Fracked off

[Marlin]

Nuclear power Fracked off

Thanks to cheap natural gas, America's nuclear renaissance is on hold
IT IS the sort of thing you would expect to see in China, not in the pine forests of rural Georgia. On the banks of the sluggish Savannah river towers one of the world's biggest cranes. It is helping build two nuclear reactors, to add to the two already up and running at the Vogtle power plant. It testifies to the mammoth efforts that have been made in recent years to revive America's nuclear industry—and to the disappointing results.

The half-built reactors at Vogtle are the first new ones to be approved in America since 1979, when a radioactive leak from Three Mile Island, a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, ruined the industry's already troubled reputation. A consortium of local utilities is paying for the plant; Westinghouse, a subsidiary of Toshiba, a Japanese conglomerate, designed the reactors and is helping build them. It is one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the country, according to Southern Company, a utility which owns 46% of the new plant.

Deep foundations have been dug. The massive steel-and-concrete bowl in which the nuclear parts will sit is almost finished. Prefabricated bits of the "containment vessel"—more steel—are ready to be lowered into place by the gargantuan crane. To one side, shrink-wrapped in blue plastic, sits the reactor itself, an innocuous-looking package the size of a small lorry, which could power 250,000 homes. Car parks worthy of an airport will cater to 5,000 or so construction workers. All this is impressive, but Vogtle and two more reactors being built across the river in South Carolina are the last vestiges of what was heralded, four or five years ago, as America's "nuclear renaissance".

Renaissance postponed

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has received applications for 24 more reactors, to add to the 104 already running (see table). But none is likely to be built soon. Some are backed by consortia that have fallen apart; others have been withdrawn. In early May, for example, Duke Energy, another utility, told the NRC, which must approve new plants, that it was calling off two of the six reactors it had planned. Far from building new reactors, utilities are closing existing ones. Also in May, Dominion power shut a nuclear plant in Wisconsin that was licensed for another 20 years, "based purely on economics".

The culprit is the price of natural gas, which fell from over $13 per million British thermal units in 2008, when many of the applications to build new nuclear plants were lodged, to just $2 last year. Although it has since recovered to over $4, America's huge reserves of shale gas should stop it from rising much for years to come. That makes some old nuclear plants costlier to run than gas-fired ones. Factoring in the massive expense of building new reactors—the pair at Vogtle will cost around $15 billion—makes nuclear power even less competitive. David Crane, the boss of NRG Energy, which scrapped plans to build two reactors in Texas in 2011 after sinking $331m into the project, estimates that new gas-fired generation costs $0.04 per kilowatt-hour, against at least $0.10 for nuclear.





http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21578690-thanks-cheap-natural-gas-americas-nuclear-renaissance-hold-fracked?fsrc=scn/ln_ec/fracked_off

[Higgs]

Our company reported that the wholesale prices for 2016-2017 are down something like 40%. $120 per MW-day in 2014-2015 to something like 70 per MW-day. Our stock dropped 6% that day.

These prices are literally killing us.

Justin

[HydroDave63]

Even with fracked nat gas, a modern CCTG/HRSG plant at heat rate ~6000 Btu/kWh runs about 7x gas price, so roughly $24-30/MWh in SP15 or PV Hub. Spring of 2012 saw scary low prices of nearly $2/MMBtu, but that was an overcorrection due more to fracking companies having to replay loans by forward hedging gas, than some super-duper surge of supply. The gas support price seems to be around $3/MMBtu, for $20/MWh power.

Why I mention all that is that any lower price in the market is likely to be a newer constructed mine-mouth coal steam plant (few of those), or more likely a decremental price in your energy market; there are occasions when a strong multi-hour wind push can drive prices to negative, and thus your baseload nuke plant actually pays money to not load-follow. All thanks to green power and the VAR-sucking bird blenders across the fruited plains!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._2012_Installed_Wind_Power_Capacity.svg

[hamsamich]

http://ohsonline.com/Articles/2012/10/01/Radiation-Sources-in-Natural-Gas-Well-Activities.aspx?Page=3

sounds like they have an unfair advantage....nuclear plants are monitoring for radiation hazards and paying for it, while the petroleum industry doesn't seem to care while the state looks the other way...don't know much about this but this article had some info on whether or not radiation levels were high enough to be monitored.  it is NORM, but still occupational exposure...one of the guys here said 50,000 alpha was not uncommon, but this is second/third hand knowledge.

[Higgs]

Here's a copy/paste of what was put out to us;

"The annual Reliability Pricing Model auction conducted by PJM Interconnection in late May – also known as the capacity auction – delivered prices that were well below expectations, due in part to a record amount of new generation, as well as generation imported from regions outside of PJM, that bid into the market. Other factors included an increase in gas-fired generation and low growth in demand because of the slow economy.

PJM is the regional transmission operator for the area served by our electric utility companies. The recent auction set the price for capacity – a commitment to have generation available for the period of June 1, 2016, through May 31, 2017.

"The market interpreted these very low capacity prices in our part of PJM as a signal that electricity prices are not likely to recover significantly in this timeframe," said Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Jim Pearson. "As a result, our stock price was down more than six percent on Tuesday, May 28* following PJM's release of the auction results after the market closed Friday."

Capacity prices for PJM fell from $136 per megawatt-day in 2015-16 to $59.37 per megawatt-day in 2016-17.  In the American Transmission Systems Inc. (ATSI) zone covering our northern Ohio and Penn Power footprints, prices dropped from $357 per megawatt-day to $114.23 in the same time periods.

"While many factors, such as a rise in natural gas prices, could positively affect our stock in the long term, we certainly see the auction results as presenting a near-term challenge. As always, I have confidence in our company's ability to rise to the occasion and work through this challenge as we have in the past."

[GLW]

http://ohsonline.com/Articles/2012/10/01/Radiation-Sources-in-Natural-Gas-Well-Activities.aspx?Page=3

sounds like they have an unfair advantage....nuclear plants are monitoring for radiation hazards and paying for it, while the petroleum industry doesn't seem to care while the state looks the other way...don't know much about this but this article had some info on whether or not radiation levels were high enough to be monitored.  it is NORM, but still occupational exposure...one of the guys here said 50,000 alpha was not uncommon, but this is second/third hand knowledge.

SECY 12-0099 changes much of the current paradigm,...

[HydroDave63]

A more recent nuclear hopeful "fracked" to death...

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/cfb02ddba8be4baf8003b83b0b7e1074/IA--MidAmerican-Energy-Nuclear