Former Exelon CEO says Exelon should shut those reactors | GreenWorld

"I’m living in a fairy world because I don’t have the numbers and I’m not responsible for them anymore. But in my opinion, you shut those three plants down. You say they have become uneconomic just like some old coal plants are uneconomic. And in a world that’s driven by unfriendly market prices and unfriendly public policy, you shut them down."

read: Former Exelon CEO says Exelon should shut those reactors | GreenWorld


#BustTheMyth :: NUKES CAN BE NO SOLUTION TO CLIMATE-CHANGE
– they are NOT carbon-free clean safe green or affordable!

Occupy the NRC | Peter A. Bradford | VOTE NO

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   Occupy the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission)

   Thursday

   
   

   Peter A. Bradford, an adjunct professor at the Vermont Law School and former commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, believes nuclear power is no longer the way to go to solve our energy needs. If you agree with him, click N
   
   

   O on The Wall Street's Journal question should nuclear power be Increased. Vote NO here with a quick click http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443995604578001973671148176.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories
   
   Mr. Bradford's comments below:
   
   If asked whether we should increase our reliance on caviar to fight world hunger, most people would laugh. Relying on an overly expensive commodity to perform an essential task spends too much money for too little benefit, while foreclosing more-promising approaches.
   
   That is nuclear power's fundamental flaw in the search for plentiful energy without climate repercussions, though reactors are also more dangerous than caviar unless you're a sturgeon.
   
   How dangerous? The full impact on people's health from last year's disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan won't be known for years, if ever. But other impediments to relying on a vast nuclear expansion to fight climate change are already clear: Thousands of Japanese may not return to their contaminated hometowns for many years, if ever. The world's largest private utility is a ward of the state. The Japanese government at the time of the accident has fallen. Four reactors were destroyed live on world-wide television. All of this happened on the watch of a safety regulatory regime thought to have been a world leader.
   
   Iran, like several other nations, has used its civilian power program to justify activities bringing it closer to assembling a nuclear bomb. Enthusiasm for spreading reactors among new nations should remind us that the Shah of Iran's nuclear-power program was featured in 1970s nuclear-industry advertisements. If the next nuclear-power-related catastrophe is a bomb going off in a city, what will happen to a climate strategy based on rapid expansion of the "peaceful atom"?
   
   Of course, new reactor designs are safer. However, safety depends on more than design. A world more reliant on nuclear power would involve many plants in countries that have little experience with nuclear energy, no regulatory background in the field, and some questionable records on quality control, safety and corruption.
   
   But safety isn't why the U.S. stopped ordering new reactors in the mid-1970s. Nuclear power is so much more expensive than alternative ways of providing energy that the world can only increase its nuclear reliance through massive government subsidy—like the $8 billion loan guarantee offered by the federal government to a two-reactor project in Georgia approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission earlier this year. That one loan guarantee amounts to $100 in risk exposure per U.S. family. And then there's the quasi-tax that Georgia's government has imposed on its utility customers in the form of early rate increases to help the utility avoid invoking the loan guarantee.
   
   Many more such direct government subsidies will be needed to scale up nuclear power to any great extent.
   
   There are better choices. John Rowe, former chief executive of Exelon Corp., EXC +0.52% an energy company that relies heavily on nuclear power, recently said, "At today's [natural] gas prices, a new nuclear power plant is out of the money by a factor of two." He added, "It's not something where you can go sharpen the pencil and play. It's economically wrong." His successor, Christopher Crane, recently said gas prices would have to increase roughly fivefold for nuclear to be competitive in the U.S.
   
   Exelon's current low-carbon plan makes clear that many combinations of energy efficiency, renewables and gas beat new nuclear units. In these conditions, governments don't know precisely which technologies will best achieve an energy supply that threatens neither security nor the climate. They should focus on implementing policies like carbon taxes (for climate) or oil import fees (for security) and accept the market's verdict as to which energy sources fit the resulting bill.
   
   Countries that choose power supplies through democratic, transparent and market-based methods aren't building new reactors. Only two are under construction in Europe. The U.S. "nuclear renaissance" has collapsed from 31 announced reactors in 2009 to five now likely to be built, none in states that rely on competitive power markets.
   
   

   VOTE NO NOW > http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443995604578001973671148176.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

   
   

   
   

   see also
   whats up: Should the World Increase Its Reliance on Nuclear Energy? (WSJ) (previous post)

   
   

Relax, It’s Just a Run-of-the-Mill Nuke Spill

APRIL 26, 2012
The Limerick Incident Wasn't an "EPPI"
Relax, It’s Just a Run-of-the-Mill Nuke Spill
by DAVE LINDORFF

The idea that the Limerick nuclear generating plant is “routinely discharging” nuclear waste into the Schuylkill River and that this is permitted by the NRC, and that by extension this is being done by all the nuclear generating plants across the nation, will no doubt come as a big surprise to most Americans, including those who live downstream and downwind of these plants (because it turns out that there are also permitted regular releases of radioactive gas by these other facilities). But that’s the truth.

A little over a month ago, back on March 19, at 3:00 in the morning, the Limerick Nuclear Power Station, which runs two aging GE nuclear reactors along the Schuylkill River west of Philadelphia, had an accident. As much as 15,000 gallons of reactor water contaminated with five times the official safe limit of radioactive Tritium as well as an unknown amount of other dangerous isotopes from the reactor’s fission process blew off a manhole cover and ran out of a large pipe, flowing into a streambed and on into the river from which Philadelphia and a number of smaller towns draw their municipal water supplies

No public announcement of this spill was made at the time, so the public in those communities had no idea that it had occurred, and water system operators had no opportunity to shut down their intakes from the river. There was no report about the spill in Philadelphia’s two daily newspapers or on local news programs.

Only weeks later, after the regional office of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was finally sent an official report by Exelon, the owner of the plant, did a public notice get posted on the NRC’s website, after which some excellent reporting on the incident was done by Evan Brandt, a reporter for a local paper called The Pottstown Mercury.

We contacted the NRC regional office with oversight over Limerick and were told that Exelon had only reported the incident to state authorities — the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA). A call to the DEP elicited a response that the state agency, now in the hands of a Republican governor who has shown open distain for environmental concerns ranging from nuclear
waste to regulation of natural gas fracking chemicals, that it did not feel it was necessary to issue any public report on the spill. “Exelon assured us that it was not an EPPI incident,” explained DEP regional office spokeswoman Deborah Fries.

“What’s an EPPI?” she was asked. “It’s an Event of Potential Public Interest,” Fries replied.

In other words, Exelon and the state’s DEP and PEMA officials, meeting behind closed doors, agreed that the spilling of up to 15,000 gallons of radioactive isotope-laced reactor water into a river that supplies drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people was not an event of “potential public interest,” and so they didn’t make it public, thus insuring that it would not become a matter of public interest, or even of public knowledge! The logic is impeccable, though the NRC subsequently protested that Exelon should have reported the incident to the commission, which would automatically have posted it on its website as public notice of a spill.

But it gets worse. Mercury reporter Brandt discovered that one reason Exelon was able to claim initially that the spill of reactor water into the river was no big deal, and to avoid publicly announcing it, was that it was a “permitted discharge.” Even the NRC report on the incident, when it was finally posted three weeks late, said that the spill had merely been waste water that had “overflowed during a scheduled and permitted radiological release.”

The idea that the Limerick nuclear generating plant is “routinely discharging” nuclear waste into the Schuylkill River and that this is permitted by the NRC, and that by extension this is being done by all the nuclear generating plants across the nation, will no doubt come as a big surprise to most Americans, including those who live downstream and downwind of these plants (because it turns out that there are also permitted regular releases of radioactive gas by these other facilities). But that’s the truth.

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MORE > Relax, It’s Just a Run-of-the-Mill Nuke Spill - Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

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Exelon's 'Nuclear Guy' says... No New Nukes!

April 2, 2012 | Climate IMC International | re Retired Exelon CEO John Rowe

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Nuclear power is no longer an economically viable source of new energy in the United States, the freshly-retired CEO of Exelon, America’s largest producer of nuclear power, said in Chicago Thursday.

And it won’t become economically viable, he said, for the forseeable future.

“Let me state unequivocably that I’ve never met a nuclear plant I didn’t like,” said John Rowe, who retired 17 days ago as chairman and CEO ofExelon Corporation, which operates 22 nuclear power plants, more than any other utility in the United States.

“Having said that, let me also state unequivocably that new ones don’t make any sense right now.”

Speaking to about 5o people at the University of Chicago‘s Harris School of Public Policy, Rowe presented a series of slides comparing the economic viability of various energy portfolios, including the “King Coal” scenario favored by Republicans, the “Big Wind” scenario favored by Democrats, and a “Playing Favorites” scenario that shuffles and selects from various energy sources.

All were trumped by a portfolio that relies heavily on America’s sudden abundance of natural gas, which has flooded the market since the boom inhydraulic fracturing of shale gas. Natural gas futures dropped to a 10-year low today—$2.15 for 1,000 cubic feet—on abundant supply, the Associated Pressreported.

“I’m the nuclear guy,” Rowe said. “And you won’t get better results with nuclear. It just isn’t economic, and it’s not economic within a foreseeable time frame.”

Nuclear power remains a favorite of the Obama Administration, particularly in the form of small and modular new reactors. But Rowe’s pessimism about nuclear power reinforces statements made by other nuclear experts since the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan.

However, Rowe did not touch upon the political vulnerability of nuclear power since the Fukushima accident. His argument was economic and, he added, paints a picture that Exelon itself does not savor...

> more Exelon's 'Nuclear Guy' says.... No New Nukes! | Climate IMC International

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