Recently in Nuclear Category

Michael Morris may get a sixpack of Miller Lite from David Crane. Or not. It's about Southern Company's Vogtle nuclear plant plan.

At Platts Global Power Markets Conference in Las Vegas, Crane, CEO of NRG Energy, said a nuclear project just would not go forward without a federal loan guarantee. Even with a guarantee for 80% of the cost, "It's still a $2.5 billion equity investment," he said.

Senator Lindsey Graham's floating proposal for a "clean energy standard" got a shout-out Friday from one of the big companies that wants to build at least one nuclear plant in the US. EDF President Jean-Pierre Benque said companies like his could delay plans to build new nuclear units here if there is no requirement for a carbon-clean portfolio standard.

A price on carbon right away appeared to be less essential. "If there is no real incentive for renewable and nuclear through, first, a carbon clean portfolio standard, combined with a carbon price in the future (emphasis added), it could be difficult and could postpone investment decisions," Benque said at Platts' Nuclear Energy Conference.

In 1969, when the US Atomic Energy Commission, the predecessor of DOE, detonated a 40-kiloton nuclear device (read: atomic bomb) 8,426 feet below the surface of a western Colorado mountainside in an attempt to release commercially marketable quantities of gas, little did they suspect that the site would still be the scene of controversy 40 years later.

Project Rulison was the second natural gas reservoir-stimulation experiment in the Plowshare Program, which was designed to develop peaceful uses for nuclear energy. The blast vaporized the surrounding rock and formed a cavity about 150 feet in diameter. Although a re-entry well drilled at the site produced 455,000 Mcf of gas, the gas was too radioactive to be used commercially and in 1971 the re-entry well was shut in; it was abandoned in 1976.

Nuclear power interests have made some progress with members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Last night and this morning, they lost two efforts to have nuclear play a major part in renewable electricity standards, but they lost by smaller margins than some might have expected, and the issue is very likely to show up when the full House debates the climate change and energy bill. Whenever that may be, given that health care reform is high on lawmakers' agendas.

Last night's amendment, by Florida Republican Cliff Stearns, would have subtracted all nuclear power from the baseline that utilities will use to calculate the 20% renewables requirement. This morning's, by Michigan Republican Fred Upton, was bolder; it would have allowed nuclear power to be considered a renewable resource.

Jon Wellinghoff is not being shy about his vision for power supply. The new chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a big promoter of the smart grid, demand response and renewables, believes the US may never see another new nuclear or coal plant.

The question right now may be no more than theoretical, he said at a United States Energy Association press briefing this morning, since costs are too high -- nuclear costs he cited as roughly $7,000/kW and advanced coal as similarly daunting. But even in the long term, Wellinghoff suggested, these traditional baseload sources may just not be needed.

In fact, our colleague Chris Newkumet reports, Wellinghoff said the very notion of baseload capacity may be "an anachronism."