Why don't we "mothball" shutdown nuclear plants?ANS Nuclear CafeSeptember 3, 2013, 1:57PM|Rod AdamsIn May 2013, the United States lost a perfectly functional and well-maintained nuclear power plant, the Kewaunee Nuclear Power Plant. Last week, Entergy announced that it would be shutting down a second such plant, Vermont Yankee, after its current fuel load has been consumed. In both cases, the owners indicated that the plants were no longer economical due to market conditions; namely, the low price of natural gas, the presence of subsidized renewable energy suppliers that can pay the grid to take their power and still receive revenue for every kilowatt-hour generated, and an insufficient market demand for electricity in the markets where the plants were attempting to sell their output. Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power PlantUnder similar market conditions, conventional power plant owners might decide to shutdown the plant but make provisions to ensure that the plant could be restored to service if needed, or if the market conditions change by either increasing revenue opportunities, lowering operating costs, or both. However, in each of the nuclear power plant cases under discussion, the owners decided that their best course of action was to announce a permanent shutdown with the concurrent action of giving up the plant operating license. In both cases, the plant operating licenses had been recently extended for an additional 20 years.Giving up an operating license for a nuclear power plant in the United States is a permanent choice with implications that run into the many billions of dollars; there has never been a situation where a plant owner gave up an operating license and was subsequently granted another license to operate that plant.The closest precedent available is the Tennessee Valley Authority's Browns Ferry. All three units were shutdown in 1985, each was later restored to operating status (1991, 1995, and 2007). The difference at Browns Ferry was that the owner (TVA) never gave up the operating licenses.Unfortunately, there are several aspects of current rules that discourage nuclear plant owners from choosing to mothball plants.There are only two license choices available for the owner of a nuclear power plant. The owner can maintain an operating license, which costs a minimum of $4.4 million per year in fees to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or the owner can choose to give up the operating license for a "possession only" license. That costs just $231,000 per year, plus the cost of any additional regulatory services, which are billed to licensees at a rate of $274 per staff hour. (Note: Some operating licensees pay more than the minimum because they have special conditions that require additional regulatory services. If that is true, those services are billed at the same $274 per staff hour rate.)In addition to the annual operating license fee, a company that seeks to maintain an operating license must maintain a certain level of staff proficiency and must maintain a security force sized to prevent a design basis threat from gaining control of the facility and causing the plant to release radioactive material. Of course, a plant that is in a state of semi-permanent shutdown could probably make a successful case for maintaining a substantially reduced staff compliment; there might already be a reduced staffing precedent available from the long-term shutdown and eventual restoration of TVA's Browns Ferry.The owners of a plant that is being held in a semi-permanent shutdown state could also make a good case to the NRC that they should be allowed to defer any required investments in new capabilities until such time as they decide that they are going to restart the plant. A semi-permanently shutdown plant would not need to purchase any new fuel or pay any additional contributions to the nuclear waste fund; those contributions are based on the amount of nuclear electricity generation.However, during any period of semi-permanent shutdown, a nuclear plant will be consuming days of potential operation; nuclear plant operating licenses are issued on a strict calendar basis with no ability to reclaim days. Even if there is no stress or strain put on any plant components because the plant is shut down and cooled down, the calendar keeps turning pages. Owners are logically reluctant to keep up the spending on a plant that might only have a few years of life remaining after the market finally turns around.Without access to the detailed financial analysis used by Dominion and Entergy to determine that the best course of action was to permanently shutdown Kewaunee and Vermont Yankee, I have to make an educated guess about the considerations that drove their decision. It seems highly unlikely that the operating license fee difference was enough to cause utilities to give up an asset whose replacement cost would be at least $3 billion-$5 billion. The ongoing personnel costs might have been high enough to tip the balance, but I doubt it.I got a hint in a Bloomberg article about Entergy's decision to shut down Vermont Yankee.The reactor was expected to break even this year, with earnings declining in futures years, the company said. Closing it will increase cash flow by about $150 million to $200 million through 2017.(Emphasis added.)That's right. Entergy has determined, and announced to the investment community, that closing down a production facility that produces about 4.8 billion kilowatt hours of electricity each year using fuel that costs just 0.7 cents per kilowatt hour will result in a substantial improvement in their cash flow. That is true even though the plant will not be producing any product and even though the company will incur some transition costs.The jewel for Entergy is that the owner of a plant in a decommissioning status has access to the decommissioning fund that was set aside at the time that the plant was built and received additional funds over the years that the plant operated. In the case of Vermont Yankee, the decommissioning fund balance is $582 million. Tapping that fund will allow the company to book more revenue.There is one more factor that is probably more important for Entergy than it was for Dominion. Removing production facilities in a market that is suffering from low prices as a result of insufficient market demand is a tried and true strategy for commodity suppliers. If enough production facilities stop producing the oversupplied product, it will enable the remaining facilities to raise prices to a more profitable level.Since Entergy has a number of other facilities that sell into the Northeast U.S. electricity market, it will benefit when those price increases happen. Since Dominion's Kewaunee was its only facility in the Midwest, it is hard to see any direct benefit to Dominion in the form of increased market prices.I hope that your reaction to reading this explanation is to start thinking about ways to change the situation, before we lose any more emission-free, reliable, low-cost nuclear electricity production facilities. Kewaunee Power Station______________________ AdamsRod Adams is a nuclear advocate with extensive small nuclear plant operating experience. Adams is a former engineer officer, USS Von Steuben. He is the host and producer of The Atomic Show Podcast. Adams has been an ANS member since 2005. He writes about nuclear technology at his own blog, Atomic Insights.Tags:entergyShare:LinkedInTwitterFacebook
Searching for lost revenue from shut-down nuclear plants, NY law allows towns to assess waste storageIndian Point nuclear power plant. Photo: Entergy NuclearCommunities across the United States where nuclear power plants have been shut down face huge gaps in tax revenues, sometimes in the tens of millions of dollars. States such as New Jersey, Illinois, Wisconsin, and California are watching events in New York now that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has signed a new law that says cities can “assess the economic value of storing waste” on sites where nuclear plants once operated, as reported by Bloomberg.Go to Article
Palisades license transfer request submitted to NRCThe Palisades nuclear plant will be permanently retired in the spring of next year. Photo: Entergy NuclearEntergy Corporation and Holtec International have jointly submitted an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for approval of the transfer of the licenses for the Palisades nuclear plant, in Covert, Mich., to Holtec, following the plant’s permanent shutdown and defueling in the spring of 2022.The application, dated December 23, also requests approval of the license transfer of Entergy’s decommissioned Big Rock Point facility near Charlevoix, Mich., where only the independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI) remains.Go to Article
NRC passes on Pilgrim Watch’s license petitionThe Pilgrim nuclear power plant was shut down in May 2019. Photo: Entergy EnergyThe Nuclear Regulatory Commission has denied a request by the antinuclear group Pilgrim Watch for a hearing in the transfer of the Pilgrim nuclear power plant’s license from Entergy to a subsidiary of Holtec International for decommissioning. The NRC commissioners issued the order denying Pilgrim Watch’s petition to intervene and request a hearing on November 12.Pilgrim Watch submitted its petition against the transfer of Pilgrim’s license from Entergy to Holtec Decommissioning International in February 2019. The NRC staff, however, approved the transfer in August 2019, while the petition was still under review. NRC regulations allow staff to approve a license transfer under the condition that the commissioners may later move to “rescind, modify, or condition the approved transfer based on the outcome of any post-effectiveness hearing on the license transfer application.”A separate petition against the license transfer submitted by the state of Massachusetts was withdrawn in June, following a settlement agreement between the state and Holtec.Pilgrim permanently ceased operations in May 2019. Holtec plans to decommission the plant (with the exception of the independent spent fuel storage installation) on an eight-year schedule to permit partial site release by the NRC.Go to Article
Final outage completed at Palisades plantPalisades: The Covert, Mich., plant reentered commercial operation on October 21 for one last run. Photo: Entergy Nuclear.Entergy Corporation’s Palisades nuclear power plant returned to service on October 21, following the completion of the Covert, Mich., facility’s final refueling and maintenance outage, which began on August 30.The company invested more than $86.5 million during the outage, according to Entergy. The plant’s 600 full-time nuclear professionals worked with approximately 800 supplemental workers to replace reactor fuel and to inspect and upgrade hundreds of pipes, pumps, electrical components, and other equipment.Go to Article
Entergy takes net-zero pledge, teams with Mitsubishi to decarbonize with hydrogenPaul Browning, Mitsubishi Power, and Paul Hinnenkamp, Entergy, sign the joint agreement on September 23. Photo: EntergyNew Orleans–based Entergy Corporation last week announced a commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, joining a growing list of major energy companies to make that promise—including Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, Southern Company, Xcel Energy, and Public Service Enterprise Group. And, like those companies, Entergy says that it sees nuclear playing an important role in the realization of that goal.Go to Article
When a nuclear plant closesTheresa Knickerbocker, the mayor of the village of Buchanan, N.Y., where the Indian Point nuclear power plant is located, is not happy. What has gotten Ms. Knickerbocker’s ire up is the fact that Indian Point’s Unit 2 was closed on April 30, and Unit 3 is scheduled to close in 2021. The village, population 2,300, is about 1.3 square miles total, with the Indian Point site comprising 240 acres along the Hudson River, 30 miles upstream of Manhattan. Unit 2 was a 1,028-MWe pressurized water reactor; Unit 3 is a 1,041-MWe PWR.The nuclear plant provides the revenue for half of Buchanan’s annual $6-million budget, Knickerbocker told Nuclear News. That’s $3 million in tax revenues each year that eventually will go away. How will that revenue be replaced? Where will the replacement power come from?Go to Article
Indian Point-2 to power down for good todayControl room operators at Entergy Corporation’s Indian Point Unit 2 will permanently shut down the 1,028-MWe pressurized water reactor today, April 30, after more than 45 years of producing electricity for New York. The remaining operating reactor at Indian Point, the 1,041-MWe Unit 3, is scheduled to be retired exactly one year from now, on April 30, 2021.Go to Article
NRC: No danger to Indian Point from natural gas pipelineEntergy’s Indian Point nuclear power plant, in Buchanan, N.Y., would remain safe in the event of a rupture of a 42-inch natural gas pipeline installed near the facility, according to a team of Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff and outside specialists.Go to Article
Save Vermont Yankee. If not you, who? If not now, when?I told some friends the other day that I often feel like a time traveler from the Age of Reason who sees questionable behavior and is forced by training to ask, "Why?"Go to Article
Vermont Yankee closure announced – There is work yet to be doneOn August 27, Entergy announced that it plans to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in the fall of 2014, when the plant's current fuel is depleted. Entergy plans to decommission the plant using the SAFSTOR option, which consists of defueling, mothballing the plant for a period, then dismantling it by the end of 60 years. Entergy said that it is closing the plant because it is no longer projected to make money, considering the estimated future natural gas prices. Electric power generated by gas is now over 50 percent of the ISO-New England grid.Go to Article