- TVA looks beyond Watts Bar II
- Rising costs for coal and natural gas prompt Indiana to think nuclear
- Duke may license Lee, but building it is something else
TVA has long term nuclear ambitions
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is thinking beyond the completion of Watts Bar II in 2015. The $4.5 billion effort to complete the reactor will provide power to replace coal plants the utility will shut down. Bill Johnson, TVA CEO, says that the next challenge will be to complete one of the partially complete Bellefonte reactors.
But Johnson’s surprise statement, made during an interview on the Nashville, TN, NPR radio station, is that beyond Bellefonte, TVA has plans for an entirely new reactor.
One of the possibilities is that it will be a small modular reactor (SMR) with power in the range of 50-300 MW. TVA has filed for an early site permit for an SMR with the NRC, but is not required to specify a reactor in the application.
Until recently TVA had a partnership with B&W to license and build two of the firm’s MPower 180 MW reactors at the utility’s Clinch River site. Last August the two firms agreed to part ways, at least for now.
B&W told the TimesFreePress Aug 21 that neither the technology nor the market were ready for prime time. TVA’s Johnson said the utility wouldn’t be ready to build an SMR until the mid-2020s. That would be about the time it would finish with the Bellefonte unit.
An Early Site Permit for an SMR at Clinch River would be less complicated, and less costly, since the site is already in use for other nuclear activities. However, it could be a while before B&W gets a design certification before the NRC.
In the meantime, another SMR developer, NuScale of Oregon, is looking at sites in Idaho and elsewhere for its 50 MW design. Earlier this year NuScale told anyone who would listen they were focused on a site Idaho.
However, an expected announcement that the firm would submit a COL for a plant in Idaho has not materialized this Fall leading to speculation the firm is still mulling over its options including launching its technology overseas as well as in the US. Would TVA’s Clinch River plant be one of them?
Could coal state Indiana take a peek at nuclear?
Why anyone would be interested in nuclear energy in Indiana is somewhat of a mystery. The state is a graveyard of failed projects and big ones at that.
In 1981 the Northern Indiana Public Service Company scrapped the Bailly nuclear power plant which was to be built on the shore of Lake Michigan.
The New York Times reported that the utility’s executives said that the project was halted because of construction delays, for which they blamed environmentalists, public officials and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Reasons included proximity to dense populations, less than optimal geology for the plant, and the possible contamination of nearby steel mills in the event of an accident.
In 1984, the Public Service Company of Indiana announced it was abandoning the half-finished Marble Hill nuclear plant on which $2.5 billion had already been spent. The project’s backers were unable to convince the Indiana legislative to authorize “construction while in progress” (CWIP) and shut down the half built plant due to a lack of financing
Since then, Indiana, which is a coal state, hasn’t shown much interest in nuclear energy. This may change. Rising costs for coal, spurred by costly plant pollution control equipment upgrades, and for natural gas, is prompting the executives of the state’s manufacturing base to start looking for alternatives, and one of them in nuclear energy.
Comes now Indiana State Senator Jim Merritt, a republican from Indianapolis, who wants to add nuclear energy to the list of projects that would qualify for special financial treatment. It will be a tough fight. Last year he couldn’t get the bill out of the Senate Utilities Committee even though he chairs it.
Merritt argues that the state will need nuclear energy to meet EPA’s new clean air requirements. While few dispute the idea in principle, the state government’s more direct approach has been to file a lawsuit against EPA’s efforts to limit its greenhouse gas emissions. It turns out, at least in Indiana, that lawyers are still cheaper than nukes.
Duke keeping its options open for Williams States Lee III
Duke utility CEO Lynn Good told a meeting of the Edison Electric Institute in Houston in mid-November that while it intends to seek a license for the William States Lee III twin Westinghouse 1150 MW AP1000 power station, it does not have a time line to build it.
The site is near Gaffney, SC. That state is already home to the construction of two AP1000s now under construction by South Carolina Gas & Electric. At one time Duke pursued buying a 500 MW equity share in that project, but has since dropped the idea.
One key element, among many, to a decision to build Lee is whether the State of North Carolina will change its rules about how a utility recovers costs for a plant. Duke wants North Carolina to match the profile of its neighbor to the south which includes CWIP. It’s a complicated situation, and although Duke is a powerhouse in North Carolina, it doesn’t always get its way.
Duke expects to get its COL license for William States Lee III from the NRC in 2016.
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