Saturday, February 11, 2012

Almost a Year After Fukushima, US Embraces Nuclear Option in Georgia

By Press Action

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s approval of a combined construction and operating license for two new reactors at a nuclear plant in Georgia and the unanimous applause the decision received at the Georgia Public Service Commission might make a curious person wonder why U.S. policy-makers are so eager to pursue the nuclear option as the planet nears the one-year anniversary of the start of the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Japan.

The answer, of course, is greed and an unwillingness to stop plundering the planet. The nation’s grow-or-die economic system requires a constant supply of energy.

But most Americans have grown to accept nuclear power. Not curious by nature, most Americans don’t care how power is generated as long as their lights come on when they flip the switch. However, there are others who do care about the occasional nuclear disaster, the catastrophic risks of nuclear power, the ever-increasing supply of highly dangerous spent nuclear fuel, the environmental damage caused by uranium mining, the billions of fish and sea mammals killed by the cooling of nukes, and the billions of taxpayer dollars used to subsidize the nuclear industry.

For the typical American, Feb. 9, the day the NRC approved the license for two new reactors at the Vogtle power plant in Georgia, was just another day. They didn’t take notice, but if they did, it was to wonder why there was a 34-year gap in NRC license approvals to build a new nuclear power plant in the U.S.

Unlike the typical American, though, people who care about nuclear power, even some supporters of nukes, were left to wonder on Feb. 9 what drives people to make such reckless decisions. The chairman of the NRC, himself a big supporter of nuclear power, decided to put a damper on the nuclear industry’s victory parade by voting against license approval for the Vogtle expansion project. The vote was 4-1, and NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko made sure to explain the reasoning behind his refusal to make the vote unanimous.

Jaczko cited concerns about post-Fukushima safety improvements that the commission has yet to finalize. “There are significant safety enhancements that have already been recommended as a result of learning the lessons from Fukushima, and there’s still more work ahead of us,” Jaczko said after the vote. “Knowing this, I cannot support issuing this license as if Fukushima had never happened.”

Jaczko had hoped to get “some type of binding commitment” that ensured that post-Fukushima enhancements would be applied to the Vogtle expansion before the new reactors begin operating.

Instead, Southern Co. and its partners on the Vogtle project can now move forward with construction. If the NRC, at a later date, approves new regulatory changes for U.S. nuclear plants as a result of its investigation into the “lessons learned” from the Fukushima disaster, those changes could prove expensive for Southern Co. and its partners to implement at the Vogtle project. But no worries. Southern Co. executives will simply convince the members of the Georgia PSC to allow its utility subsidiary, Georgia Power, to recover the higher costs from its customers.

The nuclear power industry enjoys a cozy relationship with officials at all levels of government. There are state leaders who, for example, complain that the federal government “should not be in the business of picking winners and losers” (Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens) by forcing power plant operators to reduce the level of harmful emissions from their generation facilities. But these same leaders also strongly support the federal government’s program of providing loan guarantees to companies trying to develop new nuclear power plants.

Also, many of the state officials who complain about federal loan guarantees and other types of support for renewable energy resources applaud the federal government’s decision to prop up the U.S. nuclear power industry. At the state level, utility companies are receiving permission from regulators to recover early costs associated with developing new nuclear power plants, whether the plant gets built or not.

Harvey Wasserman, the dean of nuclear power journalists, says, “Without state ratepayers and federal taxpayers being forced to foot the bill, new reactor construction in the U.S. is going nowhere.”

Georgia PSC members were popping champagne corks after the NRC approved the Vogtle license on Feb. 9. They were happy for their good friends at Southern Co. The Georgia PSC, all five members, demonstrated once and for all that, as a regulatory body, they are not honest brokers. Their jobs are to ensure utility companies in Georgia make as much money as possible. Their jobs are not to provide a service that is in the best interest of the public, despite the words contained in the name of their government agency.

If you’re opposed to nuclear power or don’t believe utilities should be allowed to recover nuclear power project financing and other costs, even if the facilities don’t get built, don’t go whining to the Georgia PSC.

“Getting the license to complete construction for our [emphasis added] two new reactors is a great victory for Georgia, and nuclear power in general,” Georgia PSC Chairman Tim Echols said in a Feb. 9 statement.

Is Echols on the payroll of Southern Co. or one of the other developers of the Vogtle expansion project? Does he personally own a financial stake in Vogtle? If not, why is he referring to this “private” energy project as “our two new reactors”? Stupid questions. It’s obvious that what’s good for Southern Co. is good for the Georgia PSC.

UPDATE: Former NRC Commissioner Peter Bradford points out that the only other nuclear plant likely to go forward with expansion, along with Vogtle, is the V.C. Summer nuclear project in South Carolina, operated by energy company SCANA.

“Vogtle and Summer are both uneconomic plants,” Bradford told Orlando Montoya of WSVH in Savannah, Ga. “They’re both being built only because the state utilities commissions are requiring that the customers pay for them many years in advance of their completion.”

Even with the federal government’s loan guarantees, the average Georgia Power customer will be paying about $120 a year more to build the new Vogtle reactors, Montoya reported. Georgia PSC Commissioner Stan Wise and other PSC members often comment about how new EPA rules will drive up the monthly bills of Georgia Power customers. “You can be sure that when the costs of these rules are passed on to the ratepayers, it will get their attention,” Wise has said.

However, in press statements or at industry conferences, the commissioners in Georgia always decline to highlight how the Vogtle nuclear expansion project already is driving up prices for power customers in their state.

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