For the first time, the operating end points for FirstEnergy Corp.’s Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in Ottawa County; its Perry nuclear power plant east of Cleveland in Perry, Ohio, and its twin-reactor Beaver Valley nuclear power complex west of Pittsburgh in Shippingport, Pa., have been put in writing by a corporation subsidiary. FirstEnergy Solutions, a subsidiary the corporation founded to manage anticipated bankruptcy filings for its economically failing nuclear and coal divisions, has confirmed in a news release distributed Wednesday that Davis-Besse will be shut down permanently in 2020 and that FirstEnergy’s other nuclear stations will be shut down permanently in 2021 if there are no buyers or remedies found by their respective dates.
The Blade 29th March 2018 read more »
Energy Northwest in Richland will help an emerging nuclear company, Terrestrial Energy USA, with a new type of commercial nuclear reactor. Energy Northwest, which operates the Pacific Northwest’s only nuclear power reactor, already has a similar agreement with another nuclear company, NuScale Power of Oregon. Both companies working with Energy Northwest want to operate a plant in Idaho.
Tri City Herald 28th March 2018 read more »
President Trump has announced that he wants the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to “lead an innovative space exploration program to send American astronauts back to the moon, and eventually Mars.” But the risks such ventures would entail have scarcely been touched upon. For those of us who watched Ron Howard’s nail-biter of a motion picture, Apollo 13, and for others who remember the real-life drama as it unfolded in April 1970, collective breaths were held that the three-man crew would return safely to Earth. They did. What hardly anyone remembers now — and certainly few knew at the time — was that the greater catastrophe averted was not just the potential loss of three lives, tragic though that would have been. There was a lethal cargo on board that, if the craft had crashed or broken up, might have cost the lives of thousands and affected generations to come. It is a piece of history so rarely told that NASA has continued to take the same risk over and over again, as well as before Apollo 13. And that risk is to send rockets into space carrying the deadliest substance ever created by humans: plutonium.
Beyond Nuclear 31st March 2018 read more »
The first of two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro was supposed to open two years ago today, with the second following last year. Instead, what’s now the nation’s only new nuclear project grinds on, five years behind schedule and billions of dollars overbudget. Construction continues at a pace of $91 million a month, with ratepayers largely on the hook for those costs. But the issue of who pays for Vogtle isn’t yet a done deal, with legal challenges pending, including one challenge brought to court by a former Georgia governor. And ethics watchdogs are examining the regulators, finding what they say are cozy relationships with the utility and slack record keeping.
Savannah Now 30th March 2018 read more »