Updated: Nuclear Blogger Carnival 285, Here at Yes Vermont Yankee

Once again, we are proud to host the Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers, right here at Yes Vermont Yankee.  The Carnival is a compendium of nuclear blogs that rotates from blog site to blog site, and it is always a pleasure and an honor to host it.

I am happy to update it with new posts…and unhappy to update it with the news that the Fitzpatrick plant will close.

Nuke Power Talk -- Gail Marcus

Scary Energy Scenarios: My Real Fears on Halloween.

At Nuke Power Talk, Gail Marcus reflects on the Halloween holiday and conjures up futures that are scarier than ghosts and goblins.  When short-sighted policies and misinformed views dominate energy decisions, these futures can go from being scary to--being scary and being real.

Salaries by Degree Field (Update---new post)

In another blog from Gail Marcus at Nuke Power Talk, she reports on the results of a salary survey by academic degree field.  Engineering fields in general ranked high, and nuclear engineering was #2 for mid-career alumni out of 319 academic fields surveyed.

Energy Reality Project--Rick Maltese

Educating a new nuclear workforce: Guest post by Beth Kelly (Update--new post0

This is a post about filling new nuclear jobs in a hypothetical growing market.  However, unless you assume that all nuclear plants in the country will close within ten years (an unwarranted assumption), you must notice that about half the workers at nuclear plants will retire within ten years.  And that leads to job opportunities for younger workers.

Audio version of Chapter 8 of Maltese's book: Energy Reality, a Necessary Renaissance (Update--new post)

Rick Maltese is writing a book he titles Energy Reality: A Necessary Renaissance. He has been posting his chapters at patreon, a crowd-funding website.  This is the first audio sample.

Atomic Insights-- Rod Adams

Several important nuclear energy developments from the Westinghouse press office

Westinghouse announced that the first two  reactor coolant pumps for their AP1000 reactor have passed all qualification tests and should arrive at the Sanmen site in China for installation by Dec 31, 2015.

The next day, Westinghouse announced that they are buying the nuclear plant construction assets of CB&I, their partner at Plant Vogtle and VC Summer.

An excellent discussion of the facts and implications, and of course, a very lively comment stream.

 Yes Vermont Yankee--Meredith Angwin (update, bad news)

Ginna continues operation, surcharges in context, and Fitzpatrick

The Ginna nuclear power plant has been received some financial relief, and will keep operating for at least another 18 months. Sadly, Entergy announced today that the Fitzpatrick plant will close (the post include links to articles about Fitzpatrick.)  In this blog post, Angwin compares the financial relief to Ginna to other electricity surcharges, including Vermont's own local "Efficiency Vermont" charges (much higher than the Ginna per-household costs) and the cost of proposed carbon taxes.

ANS Nuclear Cafe--Ted Besmann

The Power of Nuclear Energy

In this post, Besmann describes some of the economic hazards that currently face the U.S. fleet of nuclear plants.  The EPA proposed clean power rule gives less than 6% credit to emissions reduction from nuclear plants, for example. At the same time, the EPA claims that it would be worth paying  an extra $12 to $17 dollars per ton of CO2 that is not emitted.  But this monetary value is theoretical and not available to nuclear plants.

Update: Fitzpatrick to close.Ginna Continues Operation, Surcharges in Context, and Fitzpatrick

Ginna Nuclear Power Station

Update: Entergy announces Fitzpatrick closing

Fitzpatrick now scheduled to close in 2016 or 2017.  Announcement was this morning.  Two links:

Entergy press release
Syracuse.com article




Ginna gets some relief

Ginna Nuclear Generating Station, in upstate New York, was struggling with some of the same issues that are causing Entergy's Fitzpatrick plant to be at risk.

If Ginna closed down, there might be reliability issues on the grid. Therefore,  Ginna was recently given 18 months of financial relief to keep it operating. Ginna is being helped by a surcharge on utility bills: the surcharge lasts from now till March 2017. The surcharge will give Ginna $15.42 million extra per month, in payment for its role in grid reliability.  This charge will cost about $2 per month per customer, in upstate New York.

References: Deal reached on fate of Western New York nuclear facility at Poltico New York (October 23), and Settlement reached in New York to keep the Ginna nuclear plant running at Utility Dive (September 16).

The possibility of this type of positive resolution (for the grid and for the plant) is a good reason to

Sign the petition to keep Fitzpatrick operating! 

If you live in New York, contact your state legislator and your congressman, and urge them to keep Fitzpatrick operating. 

What about the ratepayer?

Maybe this relief is great for the grid and the plant, but what about the ratepayer?  What about that

Fracking equipment
at wellhead
Wikipedia

$2.00 per month?

I'm not crazy about more costs to the ratepayer.  If I thought that increasing costs for the ratepayer was a good thing, I would join one of the "environmental" groups that believe electricity should be more expensive--in order to force people to use less electricity.  Instead, I am proud to be on the Coordinating Committee for the Consumer Liaison Group at ISO-NE.  I want to look out for the ratepayer.

With some hesitation, therefore, I share my opinion on the Ginna settlement. I think, in the long run, this settlement is good for the ratepayer, because without it, most of the pricing structure in New York would be held hostage to the fluctuating price of natural gas.

 If the utilities were not "deregulated," any decent utility would want a mix of types of plants on its grid. This mix would be a hedge against sudden jumps in prices for one fuel, sudden jumps in regulatory burden for another type of power plant, etc.

Now that we are "deregulated," the plant that is cheapest today can act as if it were going to be cheapest forever.  Other plants will close down, out-competed---but perhaps only for five years. Then when the once-cheapest fuel type becomes more expensive, the rate-payer is hung out to dry.

It takes many years to site, permit and build a power plant.  Meanwhile, in a single-fuel grid, the grid and the rate-payer have no choices.

Surcharges and Fitzpatrick

I decided to do a quick comparison of some local surcharges on electricity.  I will do this comparison in one-year units..

Ginna: $15.4 million per month, twelve months, $184 million/year, $2 per month per household, $24 a year per household.

Efficiency Vermont.  This utility has a visible surcharge on every Vermont householder's electricity bill.  It charges more than 1 cent per kWh, for all Vermont households.  For an average user (600 kWh/month) the surcharge is be about $7 per month or $84 a year per household.

Households pay this amount, and so do businesses.  IBM (now GlobalFoundries) rebelled, and the legislature enacted SMEEP for large businesses. Large business who make their own efficiency improvements can opt-out of Efficiency Vermont payments, by way of SMEEP. However, only GlobalFoundries qualifies for SMEEP.

Efficiency Vermont helps Vermonters insulate their houses, save energy, etc.  Unfortunately, in practice, this means that Efficiency Vermont collects surcharges from the many, and gives rebates to the few.  (What, me worry? I was one of the few. Efficiency Vermont  helped pay to insulate my house.)

Efficiency Vermont has been controversial, to say the least. Two examples:
Op-ed by Andrew Rudin:  Efficiency Vermont not so efficient.
Vermont Public Radio story: House brings down budget axe on Efficiency Vermont.

Carbon Tax: There is a proposed carbon tax in Vermont, which would start at $10 per ton of carbon dioxide and rise to $100 a ton.  This would eventually lead to a gasoline tax of $0.88 per gallon. This  tax is only proposed, of course.  Still, it gives an idea of what Vermont legislators are thinking nowadays.  (The article about the tax includes 200 comments.)  Meanwhile, an op-ed In Favor of a Carbon Pollution Tax was written by two people who identify themselves with a local anti-nuclear group. They support the carbon tax proposal.

In context

I am going to stop now.  I don't want this to be a treatise on every surcharge on the local grid. However, in context, it is clear that a surcharge for Fitzpatrick nuclear power is likely to be:

• small (compared to Efficiency Vermont or to carbon taxes)
• fair (everyone gets the benefit of stable prices on the grid, as opposed to some people get house insulation and some people get only higher electric bills)
• controversial (no surprise here)

Meanwhile:

Sign the petition to keep Fitzpatrick operating! 

If you live in New York, contact your state legislator and your congressman, and urge them to keep Fitzpatrick operating. 

Support for Ginna: Write a Comment to New York State

Ginna Station
from NRC site

To the New York State Department of Public Service:

I want to express my strong support for keeping Ginna Station operating.

I worked in energy research for many years. My background includes renewables, gas-fired plants, and nuclear plants. I have worked to improve them all. I live in Vermont, and  I am now a member of the Coordinating Committee of the Consumer Liaison Group (CLG)  for ISO-NE.  I must stress that the opinions I express here are MY OWN: they are NOT official opinions of the Committee.  I mention the CLG to explain that I have some expertise in grid issues. The purpose of the CLG is to advise the grid operator in support of the electricity consumer.

Right now, the New England grid makes almost 50% of its electricity with natural gas.  This has been a problem for grid stability, especially in the winter.  ISO-NE has had two “Winter Reliability Programs” that basically paid dual-fired generators to keep oil on hand. They used the oil during the times in deep winter when natural gas was not available to power plants.  These reliability programs have cost $70-$80 million a year, and FERC wants them to stop, because they are targeted, not market-based.  FERC may be right, but the programs have kept the lights on in New England during the winter.  These programs mainly bought oil, though LNG was also fed into our grid (though not as part of the Winter Reliability Program). Other grids are encountering the same issues, as they become more dependent on natural gas.


Ginna Station and other nuclear stations make low-carbon electricity and increase the diversity of the New York grid.  Please value that diversity! Grid diversity contributes to system reliability and price stability.  Without the nuclear plants, the grid will move more and more to natural gas, which emits greenhouse gases.  Also, putting all your eggs in one basket (having only one predominant fuel supplier for the grid) is a very bad idea. Supply crunches and price rises are not only likely: they happen, and they will happen more if the grid goes mostly to natural gas. The amount of “subsidy” given to Ginna to keep it operating will be only a small amount, compared to the amount you can expect to pay for winter reliability programs or if there is a price rise for natural gas.

For the sake of your consumers, keep the grid diverse and keep Ginna (and other nuclear plants) operating. For the sake of the planet (greenhouse gases), keep Ginna (and other nuclear plants) operating.

----------
Who Digs Deeper, and For What Do They Dig?

A friend on Facebook alerted me to the opportunity to support continued operation of Ginna Station in New York.  Thank you, Michael Mann!

I just posted the comment above on the New York State Department of Public Service site. The Department is asking for comments on a case to allow a "reliability support services agreement" for Ginna Station. This agreement would give Ginna slightly increased pay on the grid, in return for the reliability and support that the plant gives to the grid.

An upstate New York newspaper has an article headlined Regulators examining plan to prop up Ginna plant.   The first sentence says that consumers will have to "dig deeper in their pockets" to keep the Ginna plant operating.

Old steam locomotive
Best I could do for "steam"
Wikipedia

This really annoyed me.  When our local grid reached into our pockets for a $70 million dollar Winter Reliability Program, and used that money to buy oil.….hey, nobody asked me if I wanted to dig deeper for imported oil! But keeping a nuclear plant going and getting away from such oil-based emergency programs: that is the sort of thing that leads to a catchy headline about "propping up. "

Sometimes you can almost see the steam coming out of my ears.

Don't Just Steam, Take Action

Write your short letter about Ginna here:
http://documents.dps.ny.gov/public/Comments/PublicComments.aspx?MatterCaseNo=14-E-0270

It doesn't have to be long, but make sure it is personal.  Make sure it is clear that the letter is your personal opinion.  If you live in New York State, that's a great reason to have a pro-Ginna opinion.  If you live elsewhere, compare the issue to something in your area: coal plants shutting down, electricity price rises, whatever is going on.  Make it personal.

As an example of what NOT to write, look at the existing letter collection.
http://documents.dps.ny.gov/public/MatterManagement/CaseMaster.aspx?MatterCaseNo=14-E-0270
Approximately a thousand letters all say the same thing.  They all start:

Dear Secretary Burgess:
I am writing to oppose a consumer subsidy for the Ginna nuclear power reactor, owned by Exelon.
Ginna is one of the oldest nuclear reactors in the U.S. Propping up this uncompetitive reactor …..

Not very convincing!

When you have finished your note to the New York regulators, please consider also sending it as a comment on this post. The more examples of letters that we have, the easier it will be for the next person to post a letter to the New York State regulators.