San Onofre, fixable for free, will now cost CA ratepayers $13.6 BILLION to replace

[wtmusic]

"On July 18, just 42 days after announcing the retirement of the San Onofre nuclear power plant, its owners drove a stake through its heart, making sure it never works again. Playing the role of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was Ted Craver, the chief executive of Edison International, which owns about 80 percent of the plant. He now holds the land speed record for killing a nuke. Next executives will work up the tab for consumers, which may also set a record — and rush to build a slew of profitable replacement infrastructure."

<>

"Under California’s system of regulating monopoly utilities, the cost for anything a utility builds to deliver power goes onto consumer bills — along with a profit of around 10 percent a year. My rough estimate, which is undoubtedly low because it assumes regulators will side with consumers, suggests that consumers face a minimum of $13.6 billion in costs arising from the defunct nuke — including $4.5 billion in potential new utility profits over 25 years."

<>

"Before Craver decided to scrap San Onofre, he didn’t bother to give customers or regulators a basic cost-benefit analysis. Something like this: “Our biggest power plant is broken. It will cost X and take X years to fix. But scrapping it will cost X, plus X to build replacement plants. Anti-nuclear groups will fight any fix. So I’ve decided to scrap it and send you the bill, which will be X.”

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/Jul/27/swift-secret-kill-onofre-nuclear

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries claimed fixing it would be covered under a $138 million dollar warranty. Free, to Edison and CA ratepayers. Edison pulled the plug simply because anti-nuclear activists could keep re-certification tied up for years, costing Edison $1 million every day - not to mention adding 8 million tons of carbon to the air every year. Great job, antinukes!

[kristopher]

1. Actually they closed it because they were caught red handed lying to regulators

They lied to regulators about their knowledge of safety issues and were forced by the courts to turn over emails proving they lied. They closed the plant less than 1 week later with no warning.

[FreakinDJ]

7. While Eco-Terrorist may see this as a Victory

Once the 20 some odd LNG export facilities that have applied for permits are completed and come on line, the availability of cheap Natural Gas which powers a MAJORITY of Electrical Generation Facilities on the West Coast becomes Scarce we will see Electricity Rate INCREASES of the Magnitude Enron Market Manipulators could only have dreamed of.

While the implied hazards of Nuclear Power are real and always possible, they will pale in comparison to the very REAL Deaths of fixed income elderly and low income impoverished people who die in heat waves and cold snaps through lack of affordable energy. These will be Very Real Numbers totaling into the 100s if not 1000s annually directly attributed to the high cost of Electricity. Far more then anyone could possibly attribute to Nuclear Energy.

Before you go clamoring we can fix this with solar ....

It would be possible to place Excise Taxes on all the LNG being shipped to China and Europe and use the revenues to subsidize Solar installations. How ever when was the last time Washington did any thing to benefit ordinary working class citizens when corporations stood to make Windfall Profits

[kristopher]

8. They closed it because they lied to regulators about major safety issues at a nuclear plant.

To you that might be trivial, but to anyone with a shred of sanity that doesn't work for the nuclear industry it is both problematic and illegal. They were getting ready to be hit with a Justice Department investigation so they shut the plant in an attempt to head off the investigation.

Your comments about natural gas are not related to this issue at all.

[FreakinDJ]

12. You as many Eco-Terrorist have a proven record of "Loose with the Facts"

as in using Bull Shit to prove your case

Now you may wish to say the closed the facility because they lied but that would be one of those "Chicken or the Egg" - who is really lying arguments.

And because the NRC has a proven track record of prosecuting people for lying to the NRC your word is basically worthless

[PamW]

16. CITE PLEASE???

kristopher states:
They lied to regulators about their knowledge of safety issues and were forced by the courts to turn over emails proving they lied.

Which emails are these? Which COURT ruled that they had to turn over emails?

Please provide your "source".

PamW

[kristopher]

19. I'm sorry, I was wrong; It was a letter not an email

Last edited Sun Jul 28, 2013, 09:21 PM - Edit history (1)

It was a letter, not an email and it was the PUC that released it pursuant to a FOIA request by Friends of the Earth. However, in my defense, I believe the release involved a court filing or the threat of a court filing since the Public Utility Commission attempted to stonewall.

May 27 the letters were released.
May 28 Sen Boxer calls for Justice Dept investigation.
June 7 with no warning Edison announced the immediate closure of the plant. That's 10 days after the letters were released, 8 days after they were published online.

San Onofre: Pressed by Calif. regulators, Edison forced to release another damning letter

Posted May. 29, 2013 / Posted by: Adam Russell

Friends of the Earth: More proof utility sought to mislead NRC

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Under pressure from the California Public Utility Commission, Southern California Edison has released to Friends of the Earth another suppressed and highly incriminating internal document, showing that the utility knew eight years ago of serious flaws in the design of replacement steam generators for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. The letter directly contradicts written testimony Edison gave in January to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission....

Boxer says Edison lied; wants Justice Department to investigate San Onofre Nuclear Power Plan
Ben Bergman | May 28th, 2013, 5:46pm

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California) is asking the Justice Department to investigate whether Southern California Edison (SCE) lied to regulators and the public about the San Onofre nuclear plant.

In a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, Senator Boxer did not hide her contempt towards Edison.

“What they’re saying is gobbledygook,” she said. “It’s embarrassing.”

The senator later added: “I don’t know what planet they’re living on,” she added....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112745772

[NV Whino]

2. You are aware the damned thing sits in an earthquake fault

Good riddance.

[wtmusic]

4. Nonsense.

I've been through this too many times to bother.

[Control-Z]

9. A big enough quake

on any of the many near by faults could cook us all down here.

[wtmusic]

15. You're much more likely to die from the quake itself

If you're that afraid, why do you live there?

[PamW]

24. UNWARRENTED Assumption

NV Whino,

Your whole "argument" above is based on a scientifically unwarranted assumption; which is that an earthquake HAS TO be fatal to a nuclear power plant.

Just because your house can't withstand an earthquake doesn't mean that all man-made structures will fail in an earthquake. Imagine that you are in San Francisco when the "Big One" hits, and you are in a local branch of Wells Fargo. The branch manager herds all the staff and patrons into the vault. Do you think you will be safe? Of course you will be safe. Bank vaults are designed to withstand forces much greater than anything an earthquake can muster.

OK - you are concerned about larger structures. What about the Bay Bridge which is currently being retrofitted for seismic reasons, with the grand opening of the new span later this year. ( Hopefully. ) Let's forget about nuclear power plants for the moment, because that always engenders an not useful knee-jerk response.

Let's deal with the Bay Bridge. If a big earthquake struck while the bridge was packed at rush hour, and it collapsed; then there would be much death and carnage. So what do we do? Do we say, "All you people in Oakland and Berkeley that work in San Francisco, need to drive south to San Jose, and then up the peninsula".

NO - we don't do that. We know the faults that can threaten the bridge; at least the big ones. ( The little ones can't generate really big quakes anyway; not like the big ones ) We then calculate just how much force a big quake can exert on the bridge. Then we artificially increase that amount to provide a safety factor.

Then we build a bridge that can withstand that amount of force. Engineers do such things all the time. Your airliner could encounter sudden jarring turbulence. You may hear about those occasionally on the news; the passengers get really shaken up. But do the wings fall off the plane? They do NOT. Why is that?

Because the airliner is designed to take the forces of that sudden jarring turbulence; and MORE.

We design bridges to deal with the forces that could be applied to them. We design airliners to deal with the forces that could be applied to them.

Guess what else. We also design nuclear power plants to withstand the forces that could be thrown at them.

An earthquake doesn't automatically equate to a broken, leaking power plant.

PamW

[Control-Z]

3. How close do YOU live

to San Onofre?

[wtmusic]

6. About 80 miles north. nt

[Control-Z]

10. If I lived 80 miles in any direction

from it I might be more comfortable. But since I live something like 15 minutes from it, I'm not.

Easy when you're at a comfortable distance I guess.

[Pab Sungenis]

11. As always,

the bravery of being out of range.

[wtmusic]

14. No bravery required.

Some of the brave people of San Clemente, CA - about one mile from San Onofre - enjoying the good life.

[Control-Z]

18. What a crock of crap.

That pic means nothing. People don't stop living and having fun because of places like San Onofre. They would just be a lot more happy and comfortable without it. Not to mention, it's an eyesore on an otherwise beautiful coast line.

[wtmusic]

21. Sentiment in San Clemente is about evenly split

A good part of the population depended on SONGS for business and about 400 employees lived there. I wonder why employees would live there, if it was so dangerous? Seems they ought to know.

Kilowatt for kilowatt, San Onofre replaced about 385 square miles of the shit you see below. That's an eyesore.

[miyazaki]

25. The San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm pictured above

will be offset by an 800 megawatt natural gas peaker plant north of Palm Springs.
As of course the wind isn't blowing half of the time, and when it is, half the turbines
aren't moving. A routine observation of mine over the past thirty years living nearby.

[wtmusic]

27. Every wind farm's bastard brother you're not supposed to know about.

"Wind is carbon-free energy." Maybe, but the 800 megawatt gas peaker plant that backs it up isn't.

Driving through San Gorgonio makes me ill. Those thousands of idle turbines rusting in the sun will still be there 200 years from now, their only legit purpose as a tax dodge long forgotten.

[wtmusic]

13. I wouldn't care if it was in my backyard.

I've toured SONGS. Seen the control room, and met the people who run it. I have a very good understanding of the risks involved, and they are minimal.

There are millions of people who live in West Virginia and Southern Ohio whose risk of getting cancer from airborne coal smoke is thousands of times higher than your chances getting it from a nuclear meltdown at SONGS. And millions of times higher than someone with your proximity to SONGS. So your comfort level is of your own making, and not due to any external factors.

[Control-Z]

17. Right.

Tell that to the folks around Fukushima. Because you feel you have such a good understaning of the risks involved I bet they would feel a whole lot better.

[wtmusic]

20. I don't need to tell them anything.

They understand that it was an earthquake and a tsunami that killed 22,000 people, and that Fukushima killed no one. Do you understand that?

[Mopar151]

5. Mitsubishi Warranty is an oxymoron n/t

[hunter]

22. Trading this for fracked gas...

... what a world.



Enjoy the climate change and toxic chemical waste in your air and water. At least that energy industry waste is not radioactive... um wait, it's that too.

[wtmusic]

23. thank you

[kristopher]

28. The Carbon Value of San Onofre to the California Grid is Minimal.

There have been a steady stream of overtly false claims related to the carbon costs of San Onofre's closing. Here is a comprehensive explanation of what is going on from the NRDC.

The next time you read one of the false claims by nuclear industry shills about importing coal fired electricity or replacing SO watt for watt with natural gas, just remember that the information from the NRDC isn't secret. If these so-call analysts wanted to be truthful, it would be no more difficult to find accurate information than it was for them to produce the lies they're putting out.

Without SONGS, California still has more than enough capacity to meet their needs:

In order to keep the lights on, the ISO needs to have more generation available than consumers are expected to use. This is known as a “reserve margin,” and the California Public Utilities Commission requires the utilities to plan for a 15% cushion. And the state already has more power plants than we need to pass that test. This summer, the ISO expects to easily exceed that margin under normal conditions, and to still avoid rolling blackouts even under extreme conditions (like if a lot of power plants go down unexpectedly at the same time customers’ demand is unusually high).




Source: ISO (Note: SP 26 and NP 26 are roughly Southern and Northern California, respectively)

As you can see the problem presented by the shutdown isn't having enough capacity to meet demand.

So why, in 2012 when SO shut down, did they need to pull 2 retired natgas generators (450MW) out of retirement in nearby Huntington Beach?

Blame it on a grid designed around centralized generation. The gaping hole in the system left by the shutdown of a large centralized source of generation causes a lot of problems besides the loss of ability to meet demand.

...the grid needs the “voltage support” SONGS used to provide.

Since a major part of the Southern California electric grid was built around SONGS, it is a lot harder for the transmission grid to remain stable without the plant operating and providing that voltage support. This all gets very technical fast, but the important thing to know is that there are different ways to provide voltage support (and they don’t all require burning fossil fuels at a power plant). So even though one might expect the state to fill the hole left by SONGS with more dirty power plants, this year the state is taking a better and cleaner approach.

So what happens now?

...(Huntington Beach - k) is instead being converted into “synchronous condensers,” which provide voltage support without onsite emissions. (The synchronous condensers operate like electric motors and use a small amount of energy from the grid in the process.) Other emissions-free efforts to fill the hole left by SONGS include installation of capacitors and upgrades to a local transmission line so that if the line has a problem, only part of it goes down instead of the whole thing.

<snip>

The Public Utilities Commission should continue to build on the great start made this year by requiring utilities to fill the gap with efficient and clean resources by:

making the electric grid more resilient through transmission system upgrades;
adding renewable resources in different geographic regions to take advantage of the different times when they’re available; and
avoiding new generation through more aggressive efforts to help customers:
improve the efficiency of their homes and businesses;
reduce consumption during costly “peak” periods; and
use clean on-site generation like solar panels.

Information courtesy of the wonderful folks at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/dwang/replacing_songs.html


ETA:
With the large scale "hole" in the grid created by the unexpected shutdown of SO, the general basics of California's grid are worth looking at again.

While the local nuclear acolytes will automatically say coal is going to be the main replacement, that is highly unlikely. The same goes for the insane predictions that natural gas will replace it. Due to a 2006 law forbidding municipal and investor owned utilities from signing new contracts for out of state coal, California's energy mix is only 8% coal (3% in state 5% imported) and that number is set to decline as LA has passed a law to phase out coal completely by 2025 (they currently get 44% of their power from coal). And while the mix is 35% natural gas, the state mandates at least 33% renewables by 2020 and they still need significant capacity to meet that goal.

The worst aspect will be some natural gas, but the RPS mandate of 33% renewables will weigh heavily in investment decision-making.

This is shows the trends fairly well:

Total System Power for 2011: Changes from 2010
In 2011, Total System Power for California was marginally higher by half of a percent from 2010. The two primary reasons are the ongoing recession and continued mild temperatures. The effects of the recession resulted in a peak demand that was 5 percent less than the forecast. As for temperatures, they were lower than normal during the spring, near normal temperatures during the summer, and above normal temperatures during both the fall and winter.1 By design, California's electric generation system delivers electricity quickly to match peak air conditioning load conditions in the summer.

In-state generation declined by 2.4 percent in 2011 however net imports from the Northwest and Southwest combined made up for the difference. In particular, energy imports from the Northwest in 2011 increased by 42.7 percent due primarily to an increase in hydroelectric generation resulting from higher precipitation in the Northwest. Between March and May 2011, Oregon and Washington experienced their wettest periods in the last 116 and 117 years respectively.2

With the conversion of Mt. Poso Cogeneration coal facility to a biomass plant complete, the in-state coal category showed a slight decline from 2010. Mt. Poso Cogeneration is about 10 miles north of Bakersfield.

Large hydroelectric generation, a category based on nameplate capacity of 30 megawatts (MW) and larger, showed a significant increase of 24.8% for in-state generation. This coincides with California experiencing one of its wettest years. After three relatively dry years, statewide precipitation during the 2010 Water Year (ending September 30, 2010) was 105% of average. Precipitation during the 2011 Water Year (ending September 30, 2011) was 135% of average, and runoff was 146% of average. Though January 2011 was remarkably dry, the months of March and May were extremely wet with peak snowmelt in early July. As a result, in-state hydroelectric generation in 2011 was 127% of average compared to 101% in 2010.

Generally, when snowmelt and runoff is plentiful, California's hydroelectricity is less expensive to purchase than electricity generated by plants using natural gas-fired generation. Therefore, usage of natural gas-fired generation is reduced ("displaced&quot . This is especially so during the spring and fall months and during off-peak summer hours (afternoon and early evening hours). Wind generation increased in 2011 reflecting the continued siting of new wind projects in the state. Solar also saw some increase as commercial-scale systems came online in 2011.

Reporting requirements for Total System Power are limited to projects rated at 1MW and larger. Because most solar photovoltaic (PV) systems on residential households and businesses are less than 1 MW, data on them is not collected. As more installations of solar PV and other "behind the meter" distributed generation technologies take place, consumption of power delivered by utilities will continue to decrease. Whether to exclude these smaller systems from the Total System Power summary may need addressing in future, if the aggregate capacity and energy of such small systems becomes a significant portion of the state's generation mixture.

1 http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2011/13
2 http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2011/13

More at http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/total_system_power.html

See also
Los Angeles Bans Coal Power
Coal Free by 2025

By Jon Carter
Friday, March 22nd, 2013
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/los-angeles-bans-coal-power/3209

[Politicalboi]

26. It wouldn't be the same without them

Everywhere I look, something reminds of her.