WSJ: Scana Abandons Nuclear-Site Plans

As reported by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ)/Dow Jones News Service, South Carolina utilities have decided to pull the plug on two new reactors less than 40% constructed in Jenkinsville, adjacent to the 33-year-old Summer Unit 1 atomic reactor.

The article reports:

The move to halt work on the South Carolina project will likely prompt U.S. regulators and utility chiefs to think twice before proposing any more nuclear plants.

The next shoe to drop could well be the Vogtle Units 3 and 4 new build in Georgia, as the article reports. Both Summer 2 & 3, as well as Vogtle 3 & 4, are (were?!) Toshiba-Westinghouse AP1000s, an experimental new reactor design.

The massive cost overruns (in the billions of dollars per reactors), as well as several year long construction schedule delays, forced Westinghouse Electric of Pittsburgh to declare bankruptcy earlier this year. Westinghouse's Japanese parent company, Toshiba, has also been thrown into financial distress by the fission fiasco.

The South Carolina utilities' decision appears to be a most wise one.

The WSJ article reports:

The South Carolina power plant was about to get even more expensive. Santee Cooper, a state-owned electric utility that was a minority owner in the plant, provided figures that suggested the final costs to build the facility by 2024 would swell to about $25.7 billion. When first proposed in 2008, it was projected to cost $11.5 billion. Before Monday, most recent projections called for it to cost around $14 billion.

Southern Company, Georgia Power, GA Public Service Commission (PSC), and other decision makers in GA, should take heed.

Not only are billions of dollars of GA ratepayer money on the line, but so too are $8.3 billion in U.S. taxpayer money -- in the form of federal nuclear loan guarantees, awarded a few years ago by Obama's Energy Secretary, Ernest Moniz, despite widespread warnings about the financial (not to mention radioactive) risks.

DTE and the MI PSC should also take heed. Beyond Nuclear and coalition partners have been resisting the proposed new Fermi 3 atomic reactor in s.e. MI since it was first proposed. DTE filed for a construction and operating licnese in Sept. 2008. The Beyond Nuclear et al. environmental coalition intervened in early March 2009, represented by Toledo attorney Terry Lodge. Lodge will argue our appeals at oral hearings in D.C. federal court in the near future, on such issues as quality assurance (QA; Fairewinds Associates, Inc. chief engineer Arnie Gundersen has served as our expert witness), as well as violations of NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act).

As revealed by the State Attorney General of Virginia (where an identical reactor design to Fermi 3 is also proposed to be built, at North Anna nuclear power plant), the price tag for the ESBWR design (the ironically named "Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor") is a whopping $19 billion.

Michael Keegan of Don't Waste Michigan in Fermi 3's host Monroe County has pointed out that Fermi 3 could well cost more than North Anna 3, given the higher prevailing wage in MI than in VA. And re: the ESBWR name, Keegan has pointed out the only thing economically simplified about the design, is that DTE would spend other peoples' money to build it -- namely ratepayers, if CWIP (Construction Work in Progress, a.k.a. advanced cost recovery, or nuclear "tax" surcharges on ratepayers' electric bills) is allowed to occur, and U.S. taxpayers, if federal nuclear loan guarantees are awarded.