The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia | Fairewinds Energy Education

70 South Winooski #289, Burlington, VT 05401 Phone 802-865-9933 fairewinds.org Written by Arnie Gundersen, Grayson Webb & Ben Shulman-Reed  Edited by Maggie Gundersen Not sure what to do with all the enormous amounts of money you are going to get from the tax cuts? Donate it to Fairewinds!  Please donate today to help us wrap up our biggest fundraising month of the year! Our work is not possible without your support.  Thank you and Happy Holidays! Capsized at the Pier: Vogtle and the Vasa Written by Arnie Gundersen Today, almost on Christmas-weekend, Santa came early to Georgia Power (GP) with a multi-billion-dollar present, when the Georgia Public Service Commission (GPSC) gave GP’s Vogtle Atomic Power Project approval to continue construction! The GPSC granted the go-ahead to the behind-schedule over-budget two-unit Westinghouse Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant against the advice of its own staff of experts to continue its construction for another half a decade. Great for Georgia Power, when real people are stuck paying the bills! Why aren’t we at Fairewinds Energy Education surprised that Georgia Power will continue its Vogtle boondoggle for another half a decade? GPSC’s 5-Commissioners (supposed utility and energy company regulators), are elected to their cushy $116,452 per year salaries (2014 salaries on record) and run for office with 85% of their campaign funds as “donations” from Georgia’s energy companies, according to an exposé by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Newspaper. "In their recent, perhaps most aggressive report presented to the Georgia Public Service Commission early this month, staffers blamed Georgia Power for failing to manage the project and its contractor in a reasonable manner. Staffers argued ratepayers should not be held responsible for additional costs resulting from Georgia Power’s mismanagement of the project." Georgia has created a regulatory travesty for its people and small business owners. I wanted to take this opportunity to explain some of the history of the Vogtle Project along with its significant safety defects, and compare it to another historical financial and technological fiasco: the sinking of the Swedish warship Vasa. Although experts knew the Vasa was doomed, it set sail on its maiden voyage only to capsize within sight of the pier.  Read below to see how Georgia Power and its Vogtle reactors are now embarking on the same path. This project – the last nuke standing in the nuclear industry claimed #nuclearrenaissance – was initially funded by federal subsidies (your and my taxes in case you did not know), ratepayer surcharges that are “prepayments” for the project – long before it ever, if ever, generates electricity, and Westinghouse payments that helped to drive that corporation into bankruptcy. The Vogtle Project, located near Waynesboro, GA, was a financial fiasco from start to what should be its discontinuation. Both construction costs and construction time have doubled. As we relearn too often, history repeats itself. For me that repetitive history is taking place now with the Vogtle Plant. Back in January 1625, Swedish King Gustav II Adolph commissioned the warship Vasa, which he hoped would become one of the greatest wooden sailing vessels ever built in the entire world. The original plans for the Vasa contained 32-guns, and then a second gun-deck was added above the first increasing the ship’s armament to 64-guns. To accommodate for these added guns, Swedish King Gustav and his sailing vessel craftsmen conceived a newfangled strategic innovation to build the Vasa sailing Gunship with two tiers of guns. The Vasa’s keel – the major beam that runs through the center of the boat and connects all its ribs – it is akin to a person’s backbone – was spliced and lengthened in order to accommodate the double-deck gun scheme after construction had already begun. Other hefty features were added, including beautiful ornate wooden carvings further increasing the Vasa’s topside weight and further delaying its construction. Stability concerns for the top-heavy Vasa were ignored as she set sail on her maiden voyage more than 3 ½ years after King Gustav first envisioned this allegedly superior warship. As crowds lined the pier and Sweden’s King looked on in pride, the top-heavy warship was buffeted by a gust of wind, capsized, and sank only a mile from the dock. The Vogtle fiasco is no different than Sweden’s pursuit of the Vasa – its illusory world-renowned warship. Vogtle and the Vasa were both plagued by mismanagement, schedule slippages, engineering concerns, and crippling cost increases.   The Vasa was recovered from its watery grave in 1960 and now is the centerpiece exhibit in a Swedish museum. While tourists marvel at its ornate carvings, graduate students in Master of Business Administration (MBA) Degree programs study the causes of this calamity, which worldwide has been named the Vasa Syndrome, a classic example of hubris and overreach in the midst of worldwide technological and strategic change. Reba McEntire - The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia Like the Swedish warship the Vasa, the purported nuclear power renaissance asserted by the heavily subsidized atomic power industry attempted to construct a new nuclear power armada of 31-proposed so-called “advanced” atomic reactors. This purported nuclear power renaissance has capsized at the pier without firing a shot of electricity to any community while ratcheting up billions of dollars in consumer costs and taxpayer subsidies all over the United States (U.S.).  After significant financial losses to real people and local communities, while assuring years of profits for the atomic power vendors and nuclear plant owners and stockholders, fully 29 of the proposed 31 illusory new reactors have been either indefinitely postponed or totally cancelled after a great waste of money in what could have been a true investment in America’s energy infrastructure and renewable power sources.  These days the only two remaining proposed reactors under construction are for Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear power plant site. The construction schedule for these reactors has more than doubled as their construction time approaches 10-years, and its anticipated construction costs are near $25 Billion, which is considerably more that the originally proposed $10 Billion price-tag. In a true capitalistic system, these nuclear power reactors would have been canceled some time ago, but the pronuclear good ole boy Georgia Public Service Commissioners have kept these two outmoded and unsafe AP1000 nuke reactors on forced consumer life support. Consumers in Georgia are already paying an extra $120 per year to finance this fiasco. Let’s give one more final look at the Swedish warship the Vasa: The sinking of the Vasa was a major disaster for Sweden. The country was at war with Poland and the ship was needed for the war effort. No expense had been spared. The Vasa was the most expensive project ever undertaken by Sweden and it was a total loss. The ship’s captain survived the sinking and was immediately thrown into jail. On August 11th, the day after the disaster, a preliminary board of inquiry was convened. Incompetence of the captain and crew was ruled out and the captain was set free. A formal hearing was conducted in September of 1628. No exact reason for the sinking was determined and no one was blamed. It’s a financial horror that America had not learned the Vasa’s 300-year-old lesson! Well before the nuke power industry’s 31-fantasy nukes were even proposed, the worldwide electric energy market was in the midst of enormous technological change. Renewable energy technology is easy to harness, energy storage is available, and consumer appliances like refrigerators, washers, and dryers are now more energy efficient. Across the world, growth in sustainable and environmentally friendly energy technology has been stymied by spending on atomic power plant construction mismanagement, schedule delays, engineering problems, and crippling cost increases. The gust of wind that finally capsized the mythical nuclear renaissancewas its top-heavy cost structure and absolute refusal to embrace new consumer and ratepayer friendly advances in generating electricity.  A change in generating electricity from the 20th century business plan of major corporations owning giant CONG (Coal, Oil, Nuclear, and Gas) power plants that benefitted the corporate status quo to the renewable and sustainable customer friendly distributed power grid was long-foreseen by energy experts and energy investment financial advisors, but denied by electric and utility regulators whose investments and stock options kept them focused on personal enrichment.  Now, prevailing corporate utility and energy production owners continue to pilfer the pockets of unprotected consumers and small business owners for the astronomical costs of dozens of incomplete reactors. These potbellied corporate enterprises now claim that such exorbitant costs were “prudent” and an unforeseeable “perfect storm”.  The truth of the matter is that the gust of wind that caused the self-proclaimed nuclear renaissance to capsize was just like the one that capsized the Vasa: the problems at Vogtle and the other defunct atomic power reactors are due to top-heavy structures created by management hubris and overreach to earn huge personal salaries (over $4.3 Million for Paul Bowers, the CEO of Georgia Power) with perks like private jets and country-club memberships, while you and I are challenged to pay our bills and support our families in this new more unfriendly to former middle-class American breadwinner. Unlike the ornate Vasa museum piece, Vogtle’s management and its cohorts are truly hunks of concrete and rusting steel that beg the question: “When will they ever learn?” Here are the taglines from Georgia Power’s About Us page:  "Value. It's a promise." -Tell that to Georgia’s ratepayers who will be billed for this ongoing waste of their money. "Reliability. Flip the switch and the light turns on."  -Tell that to the Atlanta Airport and all the holiday travelers who were stranded with no electricity for more than 10-hours. Is this the company you want operating an unsafe and untried design on a new atomic power reactor? "Service. A little Southern hospitality from Georgia Power."  -Not the kind of Southern Hospitality my family and friends down South deliver! "Stewardship. Taking care of the state we call home." -Home is where one’s heart is, not a cash-cow. Time for the people of Georgia to elect regulators that respect consumers’ needs to economically heat and electrify their homes. Vogtle - End of the Nuclear Renaissance? In August, Arnie and Maggie were invited by the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League (BREDL) to present this material showing the inherent risks of the AP1000 reactor to citizens’ groups gathered in Decatur, Georgia (GA) adjacent to the DeKalb County Courthouse and as an invited guest speaker at Paine College in Augusta, GA. For more information on the alarming list of issues surrounding the AP1000 reactor design, listen now!  Big Bucks for Small Modular Reactors Written by Ben Shulman-Reed A new study from the Lazard financial firm shows that not only is it cheaper to operate renewables compared to coal and nuclear power, but it's actually cheaper to BUILD new renewable and sustainable energy options than continue to run outmoded dirty coal and atomic powered plants! This eye-opening study has been echoed by a United Kingdom (UK) National Audit Office (NAO) report and The UK Department of Energy & Climate Change, which found that per megawatt hour, the cost of onshore wind power and large-scale solar would be 60 percent LESS than electricity produced at the UK Hinkley’s Point Nuclear Power Plant. With this new information, all of us would think that most energy producers would see through the smokescreen and choose cheaper and cleaner energy sources? In some cases, this is true, but pro-nuke industry groups keep clamoring for Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) that they claim are a more “affordable” nuclear power option.  Safety, waste issues, and the huge cost of decommissioning aside, how do these SMRs compare to other renewable options? Another UK government study shows that in fact, power from small modular reactors (SMRs) would cost nearly 1/3 more than the current outmoded large nukes, which we already know is triple other sustainable and renewable energy sources! In Fairewinds’ eyes these financial assessments and governmental reports give absolute proof does not put these nuclear that atomic SMRs are no competition for the successful and proven technologies of small modular RENEWABLES like solar and wind. Once again, Fairewinds Energy Education asks energy producers, consumers, and practical thinkers around the globe to see through the Atomic Power Smokescreen and create smart energy investments today.  Stay tuned – we will keep you informed! Thanks again and all the best from the Fairewinds Crew: ~Maggie, Arnie, Ben, Sue & Grayson None of our work would be possible without the financial support of supporters like you! Please help us continue our mission to speak truth to power and donate today to Fairewinds Energy Education!  Fairewinds Energy Education www.fairewinds.org Burlington, VT Support Our Work! Keep up with the news by following us on Facebook and Twitter! Having trouble reading this email or viewing the images? Please let us know! We just changed our Email Service Provider and want to ensure all our followers can still read our communications with ease. Thanks!

Fairewinds Energy Education | 70 South Winooski, #289, Burlington, VT 05401

New U.S. reactor construction collapses because it's “prohibitively expensive”: the fight for justice continues | Beyond Nuclear

South Carolina electric utilities have scrapped finishing construction for two half-built Westinghouse reactors admitting that nuclear power is “prohibitively expensive.” The abandonment of the V.C. Summer Units 2 and 3 in Jenkinsville, SC comes with an estimated $11 billion in sunk costs and still projected six years from completion. The cancellation adds to the growing number of tombstones for once championed “milestones” in an atomic power revival. The inability to control the “cost-of-completion” and “time-to-completion” is the fundamental economic failure behind this recent collapse of the nuclear industry. In fact, these same reasons were featured in a 1985 Forbes magazine cover story “Nuclear Follies” describing the development of commercial atomic power as “the largest managerial disaster in U.S. business history where only the blind and the biased can say the money was well spent.”

There is not one nuclear power project in the United States that has ever been built on budget and on time, only more or less grossly out of proportion. The country is littered with the abandoned hulks of the 20^th Century’s "nuclear error” including Seabrook Unit 2 in New Hampshire, Shoreham in New York, Midland in Michigan, the “Whoops” reactors in Washington, Bellefonte in Alabama, Marble Hill in Indiana and Zimmer in Ohio. These sites stand as monuments to nearly 100 more cancelled construction projects.   

The recent collapse of V.C. Summer 2 &3 now weighs heavier on the only remaining new reactor construction in the U.S. at Vogtle units 3 and 4 in Waynesboro, Georgia. With the bankruptcy of Westinghouse Electric and still mounting financial trouble for its Japan-based parent company Toshiba, Southern Company and Georgia Power were handed the dubious oversight and management of construction by the U.S. Department of Energy for the two Westinghouse reactors still being built there. The fate of the Vogtle boondoogle is still uncertain even with Toshiba giving $3.7 billion to Southern Company to contractually cut loose of the project and spread the cost out over more owners. Just how much and how long it will take to complete the untested design remain inescapable questions.  Southern Company's new projected cost-of-completion for Vogtle has balloned to $25 billion.  Southern is under pressure to tell the Georgia Public Service Commission by end of 2017 whether it plans to go forward with completion of the Vogtle expansion.  The decision could come as early as the end of August 2017.

The repeated and predictable economic failure of atomic power sends an ever direr warning of the shear folly in wasting billions more dollars and decades longer only to predictably fall short in the challenge to abate climate change. Again, nuclear power is exposed as an unreliable partner in any “energy mix” with renewable power from the wind and sun, energy efficiency and conservation. Nuclear power, new and old, only serves to divert and deplete necessary resources and squander the precious little time that remains.

The collapse of the nuclear industry further lay bare the economic and environmental justice struggles still ahead to hold corporations accountable to greed, fraud and desecration.

Accolades are much deserved to the environmental and consumer protection groups that have been involved from the beginning with the proposed Summer and Vogtle expansions. These same organizations are now demanding ratepayer restitution and protection from still more fleecing.

As Tom Clements, South Carolina’s advisor to Friends of the Earth (FoE) puts it, “The decision to abandon the V.C. Summer project is of monumental proportion and is a full admission that pursuit of the project was a fool’s mission right from the start.” According to Clements, the abandonment of construction now portends a fight for economic justice where, “Rather than applauding the decision this is a time for reflection and to prepare for formal proceedings before the PSC that will review how this debacle happened and how to refund ratepayers money due to a string of imprudent decisions.”

Sara Barczak with the Southern Alliance for Safe Energy (SACE) is wondering how much longer it will take Southern Company to pull the plug on Vogtle 3 and 4. Still she continues the call for “stopping the forced draining of customers’ wallets” there. Indeed, as Barazk observes for V.C. Summer, “A very costly door has closed on the so-called nuclear renaissance” and the awaited announced cancellation of Vogtle 3 and 4. 

Beyond Nuclear - Home - New U.S. reactor construction collapses because it's “prohibitively expensive”: the fight for justice continues

'Last Gasp of Dying Industry': Nuclear Experts Decry First New US Reactor in 20 Years | Common Dreams

Watts Bar's launch is "a symbolic gesture. It's very sad that this is the last gasp of the industry because it looks like such an extraordinarily dumb one"

OCTOBER, 2016: The first new nuclear reactor in the United States in 20 years went live on Wednesday in Tennessee, in what at least one nuclear expert is calling the "last gasp of a dying industry."

The Watts Bar 2 reactor, which began construction decades ago but faltered, only picking up again in the last four years, is now producing electricity for 650,000 homes and businesses, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported.

At $4.7 billion, the project is "arguably one of the most expensive, most over-budget, oldest reactors to be started in human history," Friends of the Earth senior strategic adviser Damon Moglen told Common Dreams on Thursday. "It's a testament to the failure of the nuclear industry, rather than the resurgence."

"It's the last gasp of the nuclear industry trying to prove they are still alive in the sense of opening new reactors," Moglen said. "There is just absolutely no justification for the stunning sums of money and time and energy poured into this reactor" instead of renewable, cost-competitive energy…

"One can purchase lots of renewable energy sources for $6 billion"

more: 'Last Gasp of Dying Industry': Nuclear Experts Decry First New US Reactor in 20 Years | Common Dreams

Olsen: Nuclear shouldn't be the future of energy | Journal Times

...New nuclear is prohibitively expensive. They are trying to finish two new reactors at Vogtle in Georgia. It will be at least $18 billion. Here is the real cost data from Vogtle. Vogtle will double or triple the cost ratepayers pay if the plant ever starts up, but since they are already billing ratepayers during construction, they are on the hook, even if it doesn't start up...

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...The $18 billion Vogtle plant could be replaced with solar PV for the cost of around $4 billion. Why have so many been blinded by science, the lure of the sexy science of nuclear, which was founded on lies out of the gate, and is even more so when we see the massive costs necessary to make new nuclear even "pretty safe?"

complete: Olsen: Nuclear shouldn't be the future of energy

Looking back–for just one day | GreenWorld

Still got a long way to go….Vogtle Units 3 (left) and 4, July 30, 2015.

At GreenWorld, we like to look forward. Forward to the day that nuclear power is a bad but fading memory and our planet is powered as safely, cleanly and affordably as possible with renewable energy and advanced 21st century efficiency, storage and grid technologies. Forward to that day of a nuclear-free, carbon-free energy system.

It’s a day that we believe is coming, and is coming sooner than could have been believed even five years ago. But while we believe that day is inevitable, the timing is important: if it comes too late to turn back the worst effects of climate chaos, then its inevitableness won’t matter. And it won’t come on its own in time. As we’ve said here often, it will take all of us who believe in that future to act to bring it about in time.

Nor will that day just suddenly happen. It is the product of a transition, a transition that already has begun but that is still in its infancy and whose stumbling steps could be blocked or halted for years or even decades at any time. Chronicling–and urging along–that transition is the purpose of GreenWorld. So, naturally, we tend to look forward.

As we enter our third year of publication next week, however, it is appropriate to both look back for just one day and to turn our focus toward you, our readers. Who you are, and, of the 89 posts we published last year (about 1.7 per week, if you’re counting) on topics ranging from solar power in Indiana, Fukushima’s aftermath, the growing interest and viability of electricity storage highlighted by Tesla’s release of the consumer-oriented PowerWall, Russia’s increasingly aggressive efforts to market nuclear power abroad, to continuing coverage of the economically threatened reactors owned by Exelon, Entergy and FirstEnergy, what you found most interesting in 2015.

The most-read article on GreenWorld this past year pretty much sums up the state of nuclear power in 2015. Titled Vogtle: at $65 billion and counting, it’s a case study of nuclear power’s staggeringly awful economics, the piece examines the cost overruns and construction delays of America’s symbol of the “nuclear renaissance.” While the focus of the piece is on the Vogtle reactors being built, slowly and expensively, near the Georgia/South Carolina border, the fundamental conclusion–that the economics of not only Vogtle but nuclear power generally don’t add up, that nuclear reactors are not only too costly to build but even to operate–permeated throughout GreenWorld, and the real world, during the year...

more: Looking back–for just one day | GreenWorld

Gunter: Cheap? Clean? Nuclear power is neither - Roanoke Times: Letters

The audacity of Michael Leigh to describe nuclear energy as cheap, clean and safe was breathtaking ("Want cheap, clean fuel? Go nuclear," Dec. 13 commentary)

Construction costs for a single new nuclear power plant are ballooning to $12 billion. They are so expensive that the owners won’t even pay for them. Those now under construction in Georgia and South Carolina are being subsidized in advance by ratepayers...

Leigh would like to keep Virginia pristine. He presumably favors the continued ban there on uranium mining. But the fuel for his nuclear plants will have to come from somewhere. Mining and processing uranium not only adds to the costs that Leigh omits, these processes release CO2, radiation and heavy metals into the environment, and consume vast quantities of often scarce water supplies.

Costs of decommissioning are also estimated in the billions of dollars. Nuclear power never was and never will be  "too cheap to meter...”

MORE: Gunter: Cheap? Clean? Nuclear power is neither - Roanoke Times: Letters

LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

International Specialist at

Beyond Nuclear www.BeyondNuclear.org

TAKOMA PARK, MD

Feds Finalize $8.3 Billion in Taxpayer-Backed Loan Guarantees for Over Budget, Significantly Delayed Vogtle Nuclear Reactors as Alleged “Benefits” to Georgia Power’s Customers Have Eroded, Experts Say | SACE | Southern Alliance for Clean Energy

Atlanta, Ga. (June 24, 2015) ///PRESS RELEASE/// On the heels of Tuesday’s all-day public hearing on the 12^th semi-annual Vogtle Construction Monitoring (VCM) report (Docket 29849) at the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC), which underscored more schedule delays and at least $1.4 billion in cost increases just for Georgia Power’s share of the two Toshiba-Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactors under construction at Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro along the Savannah River, the Department of Energy (DOE) issued the remaining $1.8 billion in federal loan guarantees to MEAG, a utility partner in the project. Despite testimony from the PSC Public Interest Advocacy (PIA) staff expert witnesses that identified at least an additional 3-month delay, constituting a 3 1/2 year overall project delay, and stressed that significant obstacles remain that could further derail the schedule, the DOE finalized the remaining portion of the $8.3 billion loan guarantee.

more: Feds Finalize $8.3 Billion in Taxpayer-Backed Loan Guarantees for Over Budget, Significantly Delayed Vogtle Nuclear Reactors as Alleged “Benefits” to Georgia Power’s Customers Have Eroded, Experts Say | SACE | Southern Alliance for Clean Energy