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Posts Tagged ‘toshiba’

Foreign Ownership Could Halt Licensing of South Texas Project Nuclear Reactors

Posted in Nuclear, tagged , , , , , , on May 1, 2013 |

NRC Says NINA Doesn’t Meet Their Requirements

STP US vs Foreign OwnershipOn Tuesday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told judges overseeing the licensing case for two proposed South Texas Project reactors that the applicant (NINA) is subject to foreign ownership control or domination requirements and does not meet the provisions of the Atomic Energy Act in this regard. This will help licensing opponents in the hearing that is anticipated this fall.

“This NRC notice is great for us as opponents of two proposed reactors at the South Texas Project,” said Karen Hadden, executive director of SEED Coalition, a group that has intervened in the licensing process, along with the South Texas Association for Responsible Energy and Public Citizen. “We hope that we’ll soon see clean, safe energy developed in Texas instead of dangerous nuclear power. We must prevent Fukushima style disasters from happening here.”

“Federal law is clear that foreign controlled corporations are not eligible to apply for a license to build and operate nuclear power plants. The evidence is that Toshiba is in control of the project and this precludes obtaining an NRC license for South Texas Project 3 & 4,” said Brett Jarmer, an attorney also representing the intervenors.

“Foreign investment in U.S nuclear projects is not per se prohibited; but Toshiba is paying all the bills for the STP 3 & 4 project. This makes it difficult to accept that Toshiba doesn’t control the project,” said Robert Eye.

Toshiba North America Engineering, or TANE, will assume exclusive, principal funding authority for the project, but they are a wholly owned subsidiary of Toshiba America, Inc, a Japanese corporation. Opponents contend that this makes them ineligible for licensing.

“National security and safety concerns justify NRC’s limits on foreign ownership and control of nuclear reactors,” said Karen Hadden, Director of the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition. “What if a foreign company was careless in running a U.S. reactor? International allegiances are known to shift. Our own reactors could become a weapon to be turned against us in the future and be used to threaten civilians in a war against the U.S. The NRC is right to protect against this possibility.”

“Even if the reactors are operated by the South Texas Nuclear Operating Company, they will get their orders from foreign owners. What if their concerns are more about cost-cutting and less about safety?” asked Susan Dancer, President of the South Texas Association for Responsible Energy. “Japanese investors would have us believe that they can come to America and safely build, own and operate nuclear plants, and that we should not concern ourselves with passé laws and regulations, but the recent Fukushima disaster has demonstrated the flawed Japanese model of nuclear safety and the lack of protection afforded the Japanese people. In such an inherently dangerous industry, the American people deserve protection through federal law, including that our nuclear reactors are controlled by the people most concerned about our country: fellow Americans.”

“Foreign Ownership, Control or Domination policy is spelled out in the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) of 1954,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas Office.  “In Section 103d it says that no license may be issued to an alien or any corporation or other entity if the Commission knows or has reason to believe it is owned, controlled, or dominated by an alien, a foreign corporation, or a foreign government.”

The NRC interprets this to mean that these entities are not eligible to apply for and obtain a license. According to Commission guidance, an entity is under foreign ownership, control, or domination “whenever a foreign interest has the ‘power,’ direct or indirect, whether or not exercised, to direct or decide matters affecting the management or operations of the applicant.” There is no set percentage point cut-off point used to determine foreign ownership. The factors that are considered include:

  • The extent of foreign ownership
  • Whether the foreign entity operates the reactors
  • Whether there are interlocking directors and officers
  • Whether there is access to restricted data
  • Details of ownership of the foreign parent company.

For further information please visit www.NukeFreeTexas.org

To read the staff FODC determination letter, click here.

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No new nuclear plants for Texas any time soon

Posted in Nuclear, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 31, 2012 |

Excelon at Victoria, TX

Earlier this week, Exelon Generation announced plans to withdraw its Early Site Permit application for an 11,500-acre tract of land southeast of Victoria, TX.

The company said the decision was based mainly on economics and sited current market conditions that make it impossible to create electricity for less than what the company could sell it for.  This comes down to the price of natural gas which has seen substantial drop making it impossible to build a large base load nuclear plant and make a profit.

Excelon had submitted an Early Site Permit application that would have given them 20 years before they would be required to build a plant.  Given that,  they must believe that the current economic trend is a long-term one.

Citizens in the region opposing the plant had expressed concerns regarding the region’s water supply, the knowledge that most of power generated would have gone to other areas, and safety risks regarding malfunctions and attacks.

South Texas Nuclear Project

With the NRC rejection of the Calvert Cliffs new site permit because of its foreign ownership (French Électricité de France-EDF), the application for expansion of South Texas Project (for a 3rd and 4th unit) will probably be rejected to because of it’s predominantly Japanese ownership (Toshiba).

The 1954 Atomic Energy Act prohibits the NRC from issuing a reactor license to any company owned by a foreign corporation or government.

STP also has an application in for a license extension.  We don’t know what is happening with license extensions with regard to the issue of long term waste storage.  We will update when we have a better indication of how the NRC is going to handle those applications.

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NRG could pull out permanently from STP expansion by the end of the 2011 3rd quarter.

Posted in Energy, Nuclear, tagged , , , , , , , on February 22, 2011 |

NRG desperate for PPAsNRG Energy, Inc. posted their 2010 Full-Year and Fourth Quarter results today.  It appears that if no loan guarantees are forthcoming and the company fails to secure sufficient Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) for the STP expansion project by the third quarter of this year, NRG could make a final decision to pull the project.

For this reason, Central Texas utilities like Austin Energy, LCRA, and San Marcos are going to be lobbied heavily by NRG representatives in the coming months.  Click here to read our earlier post on NRG’s approach to Austin Energy.

A section directly from their 4th quarter report is excerpted below:

On November 29, 2010,  NINA awarded the EPC contract for the development of STP Units 3 and 4 to a restructured EPC consortium formed by Toshiba America Nuclear Energy Corporation and The Shaw Group Inc. Shaw is providing a $100 million credit facility to NINA to assist in financing STP. The credit facility will convert to equity in NINA upon the satisfaction of certain conditions including the project receiving full notice to proceed, which is expected in mid-2012. The project is presently scheduled to come online with one unit in 2016 and the second in 2017.  The project remains subject to receipt of a conditional loan guarantee from the Department of Energy and to the satisfaction of certain conditions, most notably, the arrangement of long term PPAs for a significant portion of the plant’s capacity. It is anticipated that the pace of development and pre-construction work required to meet the 2016/2017 online schedule dictates that the loan guarantee needs to be received and critical conditions satisfied in the third quarter of 2011. As a result, NRG expects to make a final decision with respect to its continued funding of STP 3&4 during the third quarter of 2011.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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South Texas (Nuclear) Project gets a new partner

Posted in Nuclear, tagged , , , , , , on November 30, 2010 |

Seal of the United States Atomic Energy Commis...

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 The Shaw Group is increasing its bet on nuclear power, announcing a role in the proposed 2,700-megawatt South Texas project making it the largest nuclear construction project in Shaw’s history.

Toshiba, the Japanese company, and NRG Energy Inc. jointly own Nuclear Innovation North America, which is developing the South Texas plant.

The Shaw Power Group will get the initial engineering, procurement and construction contract for the two-reactor expansion proposed at South Texas. But Shaw will be more than the contractor. It will be a partner with Toshiba in the project.

As part of its new agreement with Toshiba, Shaw has agreed to invest up to $250 million in nuclear projects. Of that, $100 million will initially be a loan guarantee for NINA for South Texas. If the project wins its combined operating license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, that loan guarantee will be converted into an equity investment in the project.

The Shaw Power Group strategy is not without risks. There have been questions in recent months about whether the “nuclear renaissance” in the United States will actually occur. And there have been specific questions about the South Texas project, much of them through the SEED Coalition and Public Citizen interventions in the licensing process.

South Texas still on the hunt for partners

South Texas would be a merchant energy plant and they believe they are in line for federal loan guarantees. But another merchant plant, Calvert Cliffs in Maryland, ran into trouble when Constellation Energy pulled out. Constellation said the loan-guarantee conditions were too onerous and made the project financially untenable.

Every proposed nuclear expansion has come with the caveat that these projects are too expensive (and risky) to move forward without the federal loan guarantees.  Yet when the federal government tries to mitigate its own risk, the industry has protested.   

NINA has been looking for partners for the South Texas project since San Antonio’s municipal power company, CPS Energy, went from being a 50% partner to taking just a 7.6 percent ownership in the project.

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NRC Staff Should Stop Balking, Provide Fire Safety Information, Groups Say

Posted in Global Warming, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 22, 2010 |

Agency Is Refusing to Adhere to an Order to Release Document That Would Help Determine Safety of New Nuclear Reactors

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) should stop balking and provide a critical document that would reveal how the owners of a Texas nuclear plant expansion project plan to deal with a fire or explosion, three public interest groups told the commission late last week.

Three administrative judges of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board have ordered the agency to provide at least a redacted version, but NRC staffers have refused. The NRC’s lack of transparency could impact the ability to get adequate safety-related information not only about the South Texas Project (STP) but about other proposed reactors around the country as well.

Late Friday, the groups – the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition, Public Citizen and the South Texas Association for Responsible Energy – filed a brief with the NRC. It noted that the NRC staff’s refusal to provide the information violated President Barack Obama’s new transparency policy. The groups also said the NRC is acting arbitrarily and trying to shut the public out of NRC proceedings.

“After the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress required new fire and safety standards for all new plants and the NRC developed rules to reflect this. Now, the NRC is trying to do its work behind closed doors, and its staffers are literally making up how to handle information as they go along, keeping as much secret as possible,” said Karen Hadden, executive director of the SEED Coalition. “Without disclosure of this information, we can’t tell how well the NRC is doing in protecting the public.” (more…)

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Nuclear cost estimate balloons by $4 Billion, San Antonio delays vote on expansion project

Posted in Nuclear, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 28, 2009 |

With just two days before San Antonio City Council was to vote to approve $400 million in bonds to move forward with the South Texas Nuclear Project two reactor expansion, officials announced yesterday that the cost estimate for the project had ballooned by up to $4 BILLION.  That means that the new price tag on the new reactors, up from $13 Billion, is now a whopping $17 Billion (and don’t forget that even $13 Billion was a big jump from the original cost estimate of $5.4 Billion).  As a result, the Council has postponed the vote until January.

This is a huge victory for environmentalists, social justice workers, and citizen activists who have been tirelessly organizing opposition to new nuclear reactors.  If these concerned citizens hadn’t gotten involved, the City Council would have voted to approve the bonds a month ago, with no option to renegotiate their contract or pricing.  Because citizens got educated and involved, City Council was forced to delay the vote until they had all the information.  And the information, as it turns out, is that the cost estimates that groups like Public Citizen and SEED Coalition have been predicting for more than a year (up to $17.5 Billion according to a 2008 study by Arjun Makhijani and as much as $22 Billion according to analyst Clarence Johnson), far from a Cassandra cry, have been right on the money all along.

For all the dirty details, be sure to read the San Antonio Express-News’ breaking article Nuclear cost estimate rises by as much as $4 billion and the San Antonio Current’s blog post Nuke Collider: San Antonio delays $400 million nuke bond vote over Toshiba cost surge.  And courtesy of the unstoppable Greg Harman at the Current, check out the following video from the emergency press conference CPS officials and the Mayor’s office held yesterday, a MUST WATCH:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwdivqvtjgc&feature=player_embedded]

What I find most interesting about this whole mess is that CPS insiders knew a week and a half ago that the costs were up by $4 Billion, but neglected to tell the Mayor or City Council until yesterday.  And even then, it didn’t come as a formal announcement — the cat was only let out of the bag because, as the Express-News reports, an aide of the Mayor confronted CPS about rumors of a cost increase.

CPS interim General Manager Steve Bartley said the utility’s main contractor on the project, Toshiba Inc., informed officials that the cost of the reactors would be “substantially greater” than CPS’ estimate of $13 billion, which includes financing.

He said utility officials found out about the increase “within the last week and a half or so.”

But the mayor said he only learned the news Monday night after an aide asked Bartley about rumors of a cost estimate increase.

Castro said he didn’t know whether CPS would have divulged the increase to the council before its vote Thursday had his aide not directly questioned utility management.

“One would hope otherwise, but the evidence seems to suggest that they were less than proactive,” he said.

Sounds like CPS was going to wait until after Thursday’s vote to share their special need-to-know information, and that if it weren’t for those meddling kids they would have gotten away with it too.

Any way you look at it, yesterday’s announcement is fortuitous for the City of San Antonio.  Now City Council has a better idea of the real costs they are looking at with the project, and hopefully will think twice about placing their trust in CPS Energy now that they’ve been burned by the utility’s untransparent business practices.  With two months time until the vote, City Council now has plenty of time to order an independent study to model various energy scenarios and present a slew of options (besides just “nuclear or nothing”) for San Antonio’s energy future — including a heavy mix of renewable energy and efficiency. An outside study to model alternatives would present City Council with the most cost-effective, least risky, most environmentally sustainable plan possible. CPS claims to have done a ‘thorough’ investigation of these options, but just as they conveniently underestimated the cost of nuclear, they have overestimated the cost of renewable energies such as wind, solar, storage, and energy efficiency to the point of absurdity.  With two months to work at it, there is no reason why San Antonio shouldn’t have a green plan to put up against the nuclear plan by January.  They nearly voted to approve the project this week without the full range of information.  San Antonio City Council can’t put themselves in that situation again.

But don’t take my word for it.  Check out the following statements from Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas Office and Karen Hadden, director of the SEED Coalition:

Cost Increase of South Texas Project Shows Nuclear Power Is Too Expensive, Too Risky

Statement of Tom “Smitty” Smith, Director, Public Citizen’s Texas Office

We can’t think of any good reasons for the San Antonio City Council to continue with this project when there are far less expensive alternatives readily available. Investing in wind and solar makes much more sense and carries none of the risks – both the extreme financial risk that CPS wants taxpayers to bear and the health and safety risks inherent with nuclear power. If the City Council continues with this project, the average ratepayers will see their utility bills increase by 50 percent.

If San Antonio citizens hadn’t stepped to the plate, the City Council would have voted for the STP a month ago and the city would have been another $400 million in the hole with no option to renegotiate. But citizens got educated and got involved. Their involvement made the City Council delay the vote until they had all the information.

We know the San Antonio City Council is too smart to continue to support this boondoggle. Nuclear power is too expensive and too risky to use. It’s time for the San Antonio City Council to pull the plug on the STP expansion.

Statement of Karen Hadden, executive director, Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition:

We aren’t surprised to hear that the latest cost estimate for the South Texas Project puts the price to build two new nuclear reactors at $17 billion, $4 billion more than what CPS Energy said in June and more than three times the project’s original $5.4 billion price tag. We’ve been saying for two years that CPS has been feeding the public lowball estimates that wouldn’t hold up to reality.

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CPS has dropped the ball on alternatives to nuclear

Posted in Nuclear, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 2, 2009 |

CPS has dropped the ball on alternatives to nuclear

By Arjun Makhijani – Special to the San Antonio Express-News

CPS Energy is asking its board and the San Antonio City Council for permission to sell $400 million of bonds to follow the $276 million CPS Energy has already spent to get an option to buy a nuclear pig in a poke.

Yet, the price that Toshiba, the company that would build the plant, would charge won’t be fully disclosed until 2012; a “baseline” cost estimate will be disclosed this winter. A commitment of such a vast additional sum is premature, at best.

First, CPS’ electricity demand projections are suspect. Its projected annual growth rate would increase from about 1.5 percent during 2009-2020 to about 2.4 percent after that. Yet, stringent building and appliance efficiency regulations are in the works nationally. Carbon prices are likely to rise steeply after 2020.

CPS’ assumption about an increasing growth rate makes neither market sense nor common sense. The risk to San Antonio would not be as serious had CPS done a careful analysis of the options. It has not. It only considered coal (a poor risk) and natural gas as potential alternatives.

CPS did not consider compressed-air energy storage, in use on a large scale both in Alabama and Germany. An investment of $400 million could convert the 1,250 megawatts of wind energy that CPS has or plans to acquire into about 400 megawatts of baseload capacity. CPS estimates a cost of $9,000 per kilowatt for a concentrating solar thermal power plant with heat storage, yet utilities are signing contracts (or purchased power agreements) for half this amount or less today. Google’s green energy chief, Bill Weihl, recently stated that solar projects typically cost $2,500 to $4,000 per kilowatt, plus $1,000 for storage.

Moreover, these costs are coming down. CPS did not consider combined heat and power, which is commercial, biomass used in an integrated gasification combined cycle plant, or elements of a smart grid that could convert intermittent renewable capacity into dependable capacity for loads like washing machines and air conditioners. It doesn’t appear to have considered recent drops in natural gas prices.

In brief, CPS has dropped the ball on alternatives. The argument that CPS must meet urgent deadlines to preserve its nuclear option should not rush the board or the city. NRG, CPS’ 50-50 partner in the project, can hardly proceed without CPS. Without CPS’ stellar bond rating and money, NRG, with its junk bond rating, would be far less likely to get federal loan guarantees.

Indeed, in my view, without CPS, NRG would not have a viable project. During the Clean Technology Forum in San Antonio on Sept. 16, Mayor Julián Castro promised the public that CPS’ investment decision will be made on merits.

However, this cannot be done now, because CPS has not put the options on the table that would enable a comparison on the merits. An independent expert panel could probably do a study for City Council in six months, possibly less. It would be unwise to risk $400 million more without it.

Arjun Makhijani is president of Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. He has published two studies on CPS nuclear costs.

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