California slashes residential solar feed-in rates

[SC Maintenance]

Scandals by SC people in public works covered it up, not that it was their fault but felt the pressure and they were hoping for the best that it would come together, it never did.

Your recollection is vastly different than mine.

1) The legislature wrote a special bill to allow SCE&G be the general contractor to "save money" and allowed them to charge ratepayers construction costs before the reactor was even built. The governor veto'd the bill saying this would bite us. The legislature - ie his own party - over-rode his veto. Meaning everyone was bribed. No proof of course.
2) Westinghouse had huge issues from day 1. SCE&G kept paying them for years after construction stopped (see 1 above about ratepayer money). There was talk about clawing money back but of course never happened.
3) Legislature allowed Dominion to run deceptive add campaigns to encourage your politician to allow Dominion to take over SCE&G. They said Many ratepayers would get a rebate check of up to $1,000.00 if Dominion took over. Most people didn't want Dominion to take over. The legislature voted for it anyway.

After being a SCE&G ratepayer for a decade my rebate was $1.08. I am not making that number up for affect, that is what it was.

 

[alarmguy]

Your recollection is vastly different than mine.

1) The legislature wrote a special bill to allow SCE&G be the general contractor to "save money" and allowed them to charge ratepayers construction costs before the reactor was even built. The governor veto'd the bill saying this would bite us. The legislature - ie his own party - over-rode his veto. Meaning everyone was bribed. No proof of course.
2) Westinghouse had huge issues from day 1. SCE&G kept paying them for years after construction stopped (see 1 above about ratepayer money). There was talk about clawing money back but of course never happened.
3) Legislature allowed Dominion to run deceptive add campaigns to encourage your politician to allow Dominion to take over SCE&G. They said Many ratepayers would get a rebate check of up to $1,000.00 if Dominion took over. Most people didn't want Dominion to take over. The legislature voted for it anyway.

After being a SCE&G ratepayer for a decade my rebate was $1.08. I am not making that number up for affect, that is what it was.

It's not my recollection, what I wrote is pretty accurate, even what you wrote is. The issue is, Westinghouse messed up big time.
SCEG contracted with Westinghouse. Much like you may contract with a homebuilder who takes off with your money and leaves you with an unfinished home, prevalent in the 2008's but before he takes off on you, he milks you for more and more money and throws you scraps by continuing to promise and keep building. Ohhhh I know so well customers of SCEG were mad as heck, but it was they who bought those stupid commercials and allowed the deal to go through. My Electric Co-Op was smart man, they sold off their contracts to buy electricity from the new plants at the first hint of delays or rumors, no loss to us.

Your post covers the aftermath, mine what took place during, (general overview( As far as the bribes, sorry, no proof, no crime. There were some good people in SCEG that got caught up in the mess. You cant throw around words void of any proof. That isnt even innocent until proven guilty, that is guilty before even being charged.

The employees for SCEG in good faith contracted to get those plants built, Westinghouse could not deliver and was for all intents and purposes already bankrupt and taking down its already almost parent company Toshiba to near bankruptcy.

 

[Skippy722]

Then explain why all 4 BWR tractors at Fukushima blew up, Chernobyl blew up and three mile island did not blow up?
So it looks like 5 points BWR and 0 points pwr, where points are bad like a golf score.

France must be using higher enriched uranium if they are only using BWR and can ramp the power up and down that much.

Any reactor is at risk of blowing up if you sink it into an iodine pit then yank all the control rods. It didn’t help that they put graphite, a moderator, on the ends of their control rods, which accelerates the reaction in RBMK reactors.

The Fukushima explosions were hydrogen explosions, not reactor explosions. Any reactor using zircaloy clad fuel rods will create hydrogen gas if the fuel rods overheat. Both PWR’s and BWR’s use zircaloy clad fuel rods. 3 of the reactors at Fukushima suffered hydrogen explosions, the other 3 did not but were shut down at the time.

 

[alarmguy]

Any reactor is at risk of blowing up if you sink it into an iodine pit then yank all the control rods. It didn’t help that they put graphite, a moderator, on the ends of their control rods, which accelerates the reaction in RBMK reactors.

The Fukushima explosions were hydrogen explosions, not reactor explosions. Any reactor using zircaloy clad fuel rods will create hydrogen gas if the fuel rods overheat. Both PWR’s and BWR’s use zircaloy clad fuel rods. 3 of the reactors at Fukushima suffered hydrogen explosions, the other 3 did not but were shut down at the time.

Modern Nuclear plants are safe as heck, You dont stop building and learning about such an important power source because of a few accidents much like you dont stop space exploration because of the same, much like you still drove automobiles in the 1950 and 60 even though they were death traps in an accident.
We learn from mistakes, we dont stop living and advancing.

(by the way, I'm just talking for others, not disagreeing with anything you said)
Now I better get my gas grill secured, the sky is getting dark and hurricane warnings now halfway up the coast of SC, thunder is starting.

 

[SC Maintenance]

Your post covers the aftermath, mine what took place during, (general overview( As far as the bribes, sorry, no proof, no crime. There were some good people in SCEG that got caught up in the mess. You cant throw around words void of any proof. That isnt even innocent until proven guilty, that is guilty before even being charged.

Much like most political shinanigans, the working class on either side had no part in it. However the CEO and one other executive pleaded guilty to fraud. Anyone with a sniff of common sense know two guys at the top couldn't cover this whole thing for as long as they did without a lot of help.

"CEO Kevin Marsh, and Vice President Stephen Byrne, pleaded guilty for fraud after being charged with the crime by the U.S. Attorney's office. Their crimes centered around their efforts to hide the construction delays from shareholders and regulators. The construction of the two units needed to be finished by 2020 in order to qualify for over $2 billion in federal tax credits. The viability of the project relied on receiving the tax credits. However, both men admitted that they knew the project was not going to be completed in time to qualify for the credits and that they hid that information from regulators and shareholders. "

Nukegate scandal - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If you know anything about regulators, they don't simply go visit the CEO in his office, and take his word for it. Good story for the masses however, it appears to have convinced most.

 

[OVERKILL]

The average French reactor is 37 years old. There working on extending their useable life to 80 years. So they will need to build a lot more again soon. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/ar...fe-of-french-nuclear-reactors_6014297_7.html#

The reason they have many for their size is they lacked the coal and other fossil fuels so they invested heavily in them after WW2. Energy security was important to them since they were invaded twice in a generation.

There having the exact same problem as we are building any more. There latest one is 4X over budget and 2X behind schedule.

European Pressurized Reactors: Nuclear power’s latest costly and delayed disappointments

Touted as a safer alternative to earlier nuclear plant designs, European Pressurized Reactors (EPRs) have so far done little to disprove conventional wisdom: Nuclear plants always cost more than estimated and take longer to build than promised.

ieefa.org

Yep, which is why the French government is taking back over EDF (it was part privatized) and making it vertically integrated again. The EPR design has now also been updated (EPR2) to improve on areas that made the first few more difficult to build, so hopefully that works out for them. Macron has plans for 14 new units, which won't be cheap, but will be necessary to replace units retiring and new growth.

As has been discovered across the West, the original 40 year licensing period was just a WAG, and units can run much, MUCH longer than that, as long as the pressure vessel is in good condition. Steam generator replacement with PWR's (and PHWR's) is necessary (not with BWR's) but that's been well-sorted at this juncture, and they typically roll other upgrades into the process.

 

[OVERKILL]

But isn't it worth it to not strip mine the entire planet for steel and concrete to have power that works at night.
Plus nuclear isn't the answer. It can only make 50 to 70% of power because nuclear doesn't like to vary it's power output and they don't turn off and turn back on so easy. When they trn off they have to stay off for 24 to 48 hours. So really nuclear is only around half to about 2/3 of the answer.

Nukes can load follow just fine, that's how the French units (and the former German units) operate. There are several papers on this subject. American reactors don't load follow, not because they can't, but because they are setup for baseload operation, I believe it's NRC regulation, and no single state has enough nuclear power to make load following necessary.

 

[OVERKILL]

Why would anyone in a cold climate with a “legacy” home heat with electric baseboard?!? To me that’s the bigger issue. I recall my parents going through this in the early 80s when they built their mountain home. They went dual fuel coal/oil hydronic.

I know that’s a little OT to this thread, but your example just surprises me because I can’t see how it would have ever been a consideration other than very limited space heating considerations up there.

Of course we have the analogous fluctuations in heating oil and gas prices these days too.

Back when hydro was super cheap, many homes were built without ducting and fitted with electric baseboard. This is now a problem in Quebec, and what drives their massive winter peaks. We have houses like that here in Ontario too, and retrofitting them with ductwork is a huge undertaking.

 

[OVERKILL]

Many homes were built with baseboard / no forced air. Depending on construction, retrofit can be a large capital expense. Yes, likely would pay for itself over time, but someone has to find the money to begin with. Easier said than done for a lot of people, which are usually the same people struggling to pay the electric bill.

Bingo, it's a catch-22, and dovetails with the energy poverty issue I mentioned earlier. You have a couple not doing much better than paycheque to paycheque and their hydro rates go up 300% in a couple of years, things were already tight, they sure aren't going to be able to afford a full $50K HVAC refit now to try and get those costs down.

 

[alarmguy]

Much like most political shinanigans, the working class on either side had no part in it. However the CEO and one other executive pleaded guilty to fraud. Anyone with a sniff of common sense know two guys at the top couldn't cover this whole thing for as long as they did without a lot of help.

"CEO Kevin Marsh, and Vice President Stephen Byrne, pleaded guilty for fraud after being charged with the crime by the U.S. Attorney's office. Their crimes centered around their efforts to hide the construction delays from shareholders and regulators. The construction of the two units needed to be finished by 2020 in order to qualify for over $2 billion in federal tax credits. The viability of the project relied on receiving the tax credits. However, both men admitted that they knew the project was not going to be completed in time to qualify for the credits and that they hid that information from regulators and shareholders. "

Nukegate scandal - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If you know anything about regulators, they don't simply go visit the CEO in his office, and take his word for it. Good story for the masses however, it appears to have convinced most.

This is pretty much what I posted. Good people that got caught up in a mess, not created by them, but by Westinghouse.
You must have seen this in my post. But you mention bribery ect. No, it was executives caught up in public pressure by massive cost overruns out of their control and at the mercy of Westinghouse to get these plants built.
I think I mentioned like wise they covered it up, that is a crime, they also covered it up to not lose another 2 billion dollars for their ratepayers.
These weren't crimes for personal gain, these were human reactions (however misguided to the point of no return which led to illegal) to enormous public and political pressure brought on by Westinghouse's incompetence, also shown in the Georgia plants.

This below is a quote from the link you provided, like I stated previously, they got caught up in a coverup, but not personal gain. These executives didnt set out to destroy their lives and lives of their families and co-workers. They made some bad decisions to keep a project going that billions were already spend on. (relying on a hope and prayer)

"As a result of Nukegate, two SCANA executives, CEO Kevin Marsh, and Vice President Stephen Byrne, pleaded guilty for fraud after being charged with the crime by the U.S. Attorney's office. Their crimes centered around their efforts to hide the construction delays from shareholders and regulators. The construction of the two units needed to be finished by 2020 in order to qualify for over $2 billion in federal tax credits. The viability of the project relied on receiving the tax credits. However, both men admitted that they knew the project was not going to be completed in time to qualify for the credits and that they hid that information from regulators and shareholders."

 

[OVERKILL]

Yes I am familiar with that family of reactorst. Those are very likely boiling water reactors and we don't want to build boiling water reactors because they have a tendency to blow up.

Nope, they are PWR's, the entire French fleet is PWR's.

 

[SC Maintenance]

they got caught up in a coverup, but not personal gain. These executives didnt set out to destroy their lives and lives of their families and co-workers.

Your a far better man than I am @alarmguy. You see the good in everyone. Honest comment.

I would tar and feather their corrupt bottoms.

 

[OVERKILL]

It depends on how you want to define political. To me its not political, its decades of bad management. There has always been opposition to nuclear power - its just grown a lot.

Actually, opposition is on the decline, it peaked in the 70's and 80's with the conflation of nuclear weapons with nuclear power. A lot of the folks pushing the anti-nuke sentiment from that era are now dead or close to it, so it has helped to temper that opposition.

In the 50's and 60's the public was told the atom was magic and safe and we needed lots of power to beat the commies and the plants were built by Patriotic American iconic companies like GE and Westinghouse run by honorable men. So the public was on board.

However then you had Chernobyl and 3 mile island - and all of the sudden the magic atom wasn't so safe. Irrelevant of how you feel about those accidents, there in the public lexicon and won't change.

But, it has been changing, thankfully. It was difficult turning around the narrative up here, but being able to point out that there's never been a major CANDU incident, and that we have our own reactor technology, has been helpful in that regard.

And those patriotic companies were found dumping PCB's in rivers and other public water supplies, amongst other things, and they were not so honorable after all.

Then after a few decades of cheap power the reactor is shut down followed by a site that has to be maintained for 10,000 years and nothing else can be done there.

Uhhh, remediated sites aren't maintained for 10,000 years, that's an anti-nuke myth, just like the one that there's no solution to SNF, while there are several options.

Humboldt Bay

www.nrc.gov

https://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/decommissioning/power-reactor/lacrosse-boiling-water-reactor.html

La Crosse BWR site released for unrestricted use

www.ans.org

https://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/decommissioning/power-reactor/zion-nuclear-power-station-units-1-2.html

Zion currently looks like this:

They haven't removed the switchyard yet, but all the structure has been removed. The other plant grounds listed have been turned back over for free public use.

 

[alarmguy]

Your a far better man than I am @alarmguy. You see the good in everyone. Honest comment.

I would tar and feather their corrupt bottoms.

It's all good (and thank you), maybe because I am older now, but I know they SCEG executives did not set out to build these plants and ruin their whole lives over it as things went south.
If I was a paying SCEG customer I might have felt the same as you. Thing is, boy it was so easy for Dominion to bribe the voters into wanting that deal. But isnt that the way in all things with the majority? Look at our national debt today in another example.
Dominion came in as the savor but truly was evil at its worst and played the public perfectly. I still cant believe the ads they ran and the public bought it.

 

[OVERKILL]

Fukushima - was hit by a Tsunami and lost all power including back up generation. Only 1 of the 4 had any self cooling mechanisms and they melted down, not blew up. They may have blown up if not for the heroic efforts of the staff - who will likely all die of leukemia at some point.

Tepco had been advised by GE (the plant designer) that the backup generators should be relocated, and they were also recommended to increase the height of the seawall to match more recent regulation. They were able to avoid doing both due to "grandfathering" because the regulator is/was captive to the industry in Japan, it is not wholly independent like elsewhere.

That said, passive safety is one of the big changes with Gen 3+ and Gen 4 designs, having make-up water tanks as part of the structure and passive cooling so that even in a complete site black, the units can be cooled.

Not to toot the Canadian horn too hard, but that's something we've had as part of our designs since our first commercial unit, Douglas Point.

Chernobyl blew up because they had a very unstable design - positive void coefficient - which was especially bad running at low percentages. Bad Design + bad training + operator error = boom.

The issue at Chornobyl wasn't as much the explosion (though that was obviously an issue) but moreso the lack of containment. The RBMK was a horrible graphite moderated boiling water design with an absolutely massive core that was designed to be cheap to build and operate. Adding containment would have been expensive, and run counter to the "cheap to build" narrative of the design, so it was foregone as the Soviets argued it didn't need it because it was "so safe ". The Wiki on the RBMK is SCARY, lol.

The difference between even MK1 containment (Fukushima) and none (Chornobyl) is striking. Both sites experienced hydrogen explosions, but Chornobyl, open to the atmosphere, the burning graphite produced smoke that carried radioactive particulate over a huge area, quite unlike Fukushima.

The damage sustained at the Fukushima Daiichi facility was far greater, with basically all the units damaged. Chornobyl continued to operate after the incident, as a three-unit plant.

3 mile island was not the reactor - it was a pump / bypass failure and the idiot operators kept silencing the alarm. When they finally figured out "hey, maybe this alarm we have been ignoring for hours actually means something" the issue was solved, but not before a partial melt down.

Highly simplified.

PWR's do have the advantage of there being two separate circuits where you don't have the water running the turbine contacting the fuel.

In a PWR/PHWR, if you have a fuel leak, the circuit that gets contaminated never leaves containment, with a BWR, due to the single circuit nature, that water exits containment and enters the BOP, where there isn't any containment.

The advantage of not having steam generators is of course cost. BWR's are probably the cheapest design to build. PWR's have become the dominant design because they are easier to make "walkaway safe" and they behave better than BWR's do; they are easier to operate.

 

[Bladecutter]

Hey, I just want to thank everyone here for the education on the various energy generation technologies that have been included in this thread.

I know that Overkill said this at one point in his reply to me when I said that I like nuclear power plants:

View attachment 175628

And my answer is Yes, and I can point to one specific event in my life that occurred.

I had the pleasure of going for a helicopter ride around Point Lepreau way back in the late 80's, or early 90's, when my cousin, Jamie Wilson, was contracted to photograph the plant for some materials needed for something or the other. I don't know if it was internal documentation, or if it was for public consumption, but Jamie was contracted to take pictures of the facility, and I got to go for a helicopter ride around it while he was working his craft.

I know that practically no one on here gives a crap about the Maritime provinces, their economies, or their residents, but this NYC boy still remembers his helicopter ride around the only nuke plant built in the beautiful province of New Brunswick quite fondly.

I just want to point out the obvious:
Nuclear got screwed over in its infancy by the bad events that happened because of bad design, shortcuts, stupidity, and greed, as all the various examples of the failures in Japan, USSR, 3 Mile, and the failed project in SC all attest to.
Pretty much the nuclear equivalent of "Unsafe At Any Speed" being written about the Corvair.

There have been plenty of fantastic and reliable nuclear plants all across the world running for decades without a whisper of issues.
You don't hear anyone tooting that horn in the public.
All you ever hear about is coal, oil, and gas employees losing their jobs whenever someone talks about wanting to reduce pollution, and how we hate coal, oil, and gas employees if we dare ever ask for a different energy source in the US.

 

[Shannow]

All you ever hear about is coal, oil, and gas employees losing their jobs whenever someone talks about wanting to reduce pollution, and how we hate coal, oil, and gas employees if we dare ever ask for a different energy source in the US.

Down here, everyone hates coal employees...within families too...

 

[Skippy722]

Down here, everyone hates coal employees...within families too...

I still want to buy an EV and put a “Friends of Coal” license plate on it, well worth the extra $20!

 

[zzyzzx]

If I ever get a soler array it will be with batteries sufficient enough so that any excess generation goes into the battery and not out to the grid.

 

[OVERKILL]

If I ever get a soler array it will be with batteries sufficient enough so that any excess generation goes into the battery and not out to the grid.

Problem is, the economics of that don't work unless your rates are through the roof.