A utility pulls plug on Florida nuclear plans — but it’s not FPL Miami Herald, BY CURTIS MORGAN, 3 Aug 13, CMORGAN@MIAMIHERALD.COM The future of the nuclear energy industry in Florida appears to be dimming.
Duke Energy Corp. on Thursday announced it had indefinitely postponed plans to build two new reactors in sparsely populated Levy County on the Gulf Coast, citing federal licensing delays and economic concerns.
Those are topped by spiraling construction costs and uncertainty over whether Florida regulators and lawmakers will continue supporting controversial “cost-recovery’’ policies allowing utilities to bill
customers in advance for plants with multibillion-dollar price tags.
The decision by the nation’s largest utility is the latest sign of cooling enthusiasm for nuclear power nationwide. It promises to increase scrutiny of Florida Power & Light’s plan to add two more
reactors to its Turkey Point nuclear power plant on south Biscayne Bay…….
While Duke left the window cracked open for a future reactor,
environmentalists and other critics still said the utility’s move —
driven by high reactor costs and plunging prices for natural gas and
“alternative energy” options like solar power — bolstered their
arguments that FPL should abandon its own expansion plans.
“Duke really has looked at the bottom line and concluded they weren’t
going to make their money back, at least any time soon,’’ said South
Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard, who is among a number of political
leaders from Kendall to Coral Gables fighting FPL’s expansion and an
associated high voltage power line corridor through their communities.
“What they’re trying to pull off at Turkey Point is a lot harder and
more expensive,’’ he said.
Stoddard scoffed at FPL’s cost projections of $12 billion to $18
billion. Duke’s initial estimates of $10 million for two similar
reactors at the Levy County site had most recently topped $24 billion.
Stoddard said Turkey Point would also require extensive additional
work, including a pipeline and processing plant for treated sewage
that would be used to cool reactors and a network of wells that would
serve as a backup supply.
George Cavros, Florida energy policy attorney for the Southern
Alliance for Clean Energy, said “economic drivers’’ had changed
significantly since FPL and Duke filed applications to build the new
plants in 2008 as part of a wave of two dozen proposed reactors across
the country…………..
Other utilities have already walked away from proposed projects and
aging reactors. Early this year, Duke announced it was pulling the
plug on another Gulf Coast plant on the Crystal River, shut down since
a botched repair cracked a reactor containment building in 2009. It
also told the NRC it was dropping plans to expand a North Carolina
plant.
Other companies this year also have mothballed two old reactors in
California and another in Wisconsin.
Perhaps more important, investors have cooled. Daniel Eggers, who
directs a team of utilities analysts at Credit Suisse Securities in
New York, summed up the powerful economic head-winds slowing industry
progress.
“In a competitive market, you can’t even come close to making the math
work on building new nuclear plants,’’ he told Bloomberg Businessweek
earlier this month. “Natural gas is too cheap, demand is too flat and
the upfront costs are way too high.’’
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