See post 1772, yes, and not only did they abandon it, they wrote off $481 million that they had invested in it.
Clearly they could see the writing on the wall for the chances of completing that reactor after the Fukishima debacle.
Arthur
Electric cars are a pipe dream
- Thread starter Syzygys
- Start date
See post 1772, yes, and not only did they abandon it, they wrote off $481 million that they had invested in it.
Clearly they could see the writing on the wall for the chances of completing that reactor after the Fukishima debacle.
Arthur
First date in list below is year projected for turn on. Then the location & reactor type. Then the owners. Then the date start construction operations was permitted. (Many more permits required prior to start up) Then US loan status.
2017 Vogtle, GA AP1000 x 2 2400 Southern Nuclear Operating Company 24/7/08 granted loan guarantee;
2017 Virgil C. Summer, SC AP1000 x 2 2400 South Carolina Electric & Gas 31/3/08 short list loan guarantee;
2019 Calvert Cliffs*, MD US EPR 1710 UniStar Nuclear
(merchant plant) 7/07 and 13/3/08 short list loan guarantee;
2017 Levy County, FL AP1000 x 2 2400 Progress Energy 30/7/08 but delayed 2021-22
“No date now” South Texas Project, TX ABWR x 2 2712 NRG Energy, Toshiba, Tepco, CPS Energy/STP Nuclear (merchant plant) 20/9/07 short list loan guarantee;
-----------
* Electricité de France (EDF) had hoped to lead US nuclear power with its EPR units via joint venture with Constellation Energy, which in January 2009 accepted the EDF $4.5 billion bid for half of its nuclear power business – more than 60% of its production, but even before the Japanese disaster, in October 2010, Constellation pulled out of Unistar group owners of the Calvert Clifts new units planned.
Note the US government does not loan any money – only guarantees the private loans the owners get. Calvert Clifts (in Md) five, nearly 40 year old units, did get a 20 year operational permit extensions but now does not have financing with the collapse for the Unistar owner group. – No loans to guarantee now.
Thus, only four new Westinghouse,AP1000 units have any chance of being built for at least a decade in the US. Probably, IMHO, only the two in George, with already guaranteed loans and long-lead time items ordered, will be completed and licensed to operate; however, it is certain, as earlier presented graph shows that fossil fuels, now more than 70% of US electric energy production will climb to at least 75% of the total in a little more than one decade. (perhaps sooner if natural gas prices continue to fall)
Thus, switching to EV cars will do little, if anything, to reduce the release of CO2 from cars in the USA.
(Switching to sugar cane alcohol fuel could reduce net CO2 release by at least 95%, perhaps even 101% as some carbon taken from the air is never returned.)
Additional notes:
“… Design certification by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) means that, after a thorough examination of compliance with safety requirements, a generic type of reactor (say, a Westinghouse AP1000) can be built anywhere in the USA, only having to go through site-specific licensing procedures and obtaining a combined construction and operating license before construction can begin. Design certification needs to be renewed after 15 years. ….
The Westinghouse AP1000 is the first Generation III+ reactor to receive certification. It is a scaled-up version of the Westinghouse AP600 which was certified earlier. It has a modular design to reduce construction time to 36 months. The first of many of them is being built in China.* Westinghouse has submitted revisions to its design, and the NRC has requested another change, so the revised design will not be cleared until early 2010. …”
Quotes and data given above from: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf41.html
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* Probably 20 years from now, never again will there be a uranium based reactor built. China is leading the way to the inherently safe (automatic shut down if over heating only requires gravity - no electricity, no cooling water, no pumps, no control rods plunging into the core required) thorium reactors, which should be cheaper as less complex and Thorium is three times more abundant than uranium. It is a by product produced when rare earths are refined. The US has 3200 tons of it stored from when MolyCorp's mine was producing rare earths - enough to meet US electrical energy needs for decades, even if no more rare earths are mined in the US.
Lets just hope that US can buy perfected thorium reactors from China some day.
2017 Vogtle, GA AP1000 x 2 2400 Southern Nuclear Operating Company 24/7/08 granted loan guarantee;
2017 Virgil C. Summer, SC AP1000 x 2 2400 South Carolina Electric & Gas 31/3/08 short list loan guarantee;
2019 Calvert Cliffs*, MD US EPR 1710 UniStar Nuclear
(merchant plant) 7/07 and 13/3/08 short list loan guarantee;
2017 Levy County, FL AP1000 x 2 2400 Progress Energy 30/7/08 but delayed 2021-22
“No date now” South Texas Project, TX ABWR x 2 2712 NRG Energy, Toshiba, Tepco, CPS Energy/STP Nuclear (merchant plant) 20/9/07 short list loan guarantee;
-----------
* Electricité de France (EDF) had hoped to lead US nuclear power with its EPR units via joint venture with Constellation Energy, which in January 2009 accepted the EDF $4.5 billion bid for half of its nuclear power business – more than 60% of its production, but even before the Japanese disaster, in October 2010, Constellation pulled out of Unistar group owners of the Calvert Clifts new units planned.
Note the US government does not loan any money – only guarantees the private loans the owners get. Calvert Clifts (in Md) five, nearly 40 year old units, did get a 20 year operational permit extensions but now does not have financing with the collapse for the Unistar owner group. – No loans to guarantee now.
Thus, only four new Westinghouse,AP1000 units have any chance of being built for at least a decade in the US. Probably, IMHO, only the two in George, with already guaranteed loans and long-lead time items ordered, will be completed and licensed to operate; however, it is certain, as earlier presented graph shows that fossil fuels, now more than 70% of US electric energy production will climb to at least 75% of the total in a little more than one decade. (perhaps sooner if natural gas prices continue to fall)
Thus, switching to EV cars will do little, if anything, to reduce the release of CO2 from cars in the USA.
(Switching to sugar cane alcohol fuel could reduce net CO2 release by at least 95%, perhaps even 101% as some carbon taken from the air is never returned.)
Additional notes:
“… Design certification by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) means that, after a thorough examination of compliance with safety requirements, a generic type of reactor (say, a Westinghouse AP1000) can be built anywhere in the USA, only having to go through site-specific licensing procedures and obtaining a combined construction and operating license before construction can begin. Design certification needs to be renewed after 15 years. ….
The Westinghouse AP1000 is the first Generation III+ reactor to receive certification. It is a scaled-up version of the Westinghouse AP600 which was certified earlier. It has a modular design to reduce construction time to 36 months. The first of many of them is being built in China.* Westinghouse has submitted revisions to its design, and the NRC has requested another change, so the revised design will not be cleared until early 2010. …”
Quotes and data given above from: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf41.html
---------
* Probably 20 years from now, never again will there be a uranium based reactor built. China is leading the way to the inherently safe (automatic shut down if over heating only requires gravity - no electricity, no cooling water, no pumps, no control rods plunging into the core required) thorium reactors, which should be cheaper as less complex and Thorium is three times more abundant than uranium. It is a by product produced when rare earths are refined. The US has 3200 tons of it stored from when MolyCorp's mine was producing rare earths - enough to meet US electrical energy needs for decades, even if no more rare earths are mined in the US.
Lets just hope that US can buy perfected thorium reactors from China some day.
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You used this as an arguement for lower CO2, but once again you miss the point.
As the link you referenced pointed out:
China plans on having 5 million EVs on the road by 2020 but then the article also points out:
More to the point though is the article ALSO mentions that China sold 18 million cars last year, ending 2010 with nearly 100 million cars on the road and China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology estimates that there will be over 200 million cars in the country in 2020. So claiming that you are going to add another 100 million cars, but 5 million will be EVs is not going to slow the growth of CO2.
Night Traffic in Beijing
http://chinaautoweb.com/2010/09/how-many-cars-are-there-in-china/
Arthur
I didn't miss that point at all. I am highlighting the technologies that are developing to tackle this problem. China's motives are like I said, all about not being over a barrel (pardon the pun). You are pointing out something I have already highlighted.
None of this detracts from the fact scientists and businesses are working hard on these issues. It is all about finding a profitable application for finding a use for CO2 and other undesirable waste products.
I have big support for the ingenuity of Humans. The new understandings required for manipulating matter to allay environmental issues are essentially beneficial. Big business is slowly coming around to the idea.
Like I said, a long way to go. I would love to see where we are by the end of the century.
What you say is true at present. I do not question that.
The whole point is that we need to entrap CO2 as solid form carbon. In the gaseous form we get warming.
Money isn't exactly free and easy at the moment. I wonder why?
EVs deliver a chance to remove CO2 from the cycle at source. Makes more sense. For millions of years the carbon has been removed from the atmosphere and trapped under ground by dead plants. Using any form of CO2 releasing combustible is not addressing the issue. CO2 levels needs to come down. To do that we need to remove it from the atmosphere, not just maintain its present level.
Therefore a zero CO2 form of energy production is the key. It allows photosynthesis to bring down CO2 levels.
Oh, and thorium reactors look interesting also. You have working knowledge Billy. How far off would you say thorium is, realistically?
Pretty funny.
Most power companies are licensed to operate as a monopoly, and because of this their profits are regulated, usually by a public service commission which sets their rates to give them a nominal profit.
As such they could mandate Carbon Capture and Storage any time they wanted and allow the power companies to raise the rates sufficient to cover the cost, and still make the exact same profit margin.
Carbon Capture and Storage have three fundamental costs.
1) Extraction of the CO2 into a manageable form for further processing
2) Transporting the CO2 to the Storage location
3) Storing the CO2
Most pilots are only working on one of these goals
At this point the cost of Extraction in the best projects is running over $115 per ton of CO2 and the the cost of pumping it into underground storage areas is running about $20 per ton. Until these two costs become reasonable, no one is even going to worry about the cost of the hundreds of thousands of miles of CO2 carrying pipepline necessary to get the CO2 from all the thousands of power plants to the sequestration sites, but we do know that it will add a few dollars per ton at a minimum.
So to put these costs into perspective.
Coals primarily used in electricity production, bituminous produces 4,931 lbs of CO2 and sub-bituminous produces 3,716 lbs of CO2 per ton of coal.
We use just about the same amount of both, so lets just use 4,300 lbs CO2 per ton of coal.
In 2008, we burned 1,040,580,089 tons of coal making electricity.
So at a discounted rate of just $100/Ton to extract it and $10/Ton to both transport it and store it, the additional cost would be about $110 per ton of coal.
Which is about 4 times what coal costs today.
So if we wanted to use CCS to reduce our CO2 emissions by 50% from coal used to produce electricity, then the annual cost would be ~$130 Billion.
(Of course this would not have any impact on the 76 million tons of coal we use in our Industry)
The net cost to a family of four would thus be about $1,400 per year.
The impact?
Well the typical house would see about 40% of that in increases in the cost of products, and 60% in direct costs for electricity. The direct costs would add about 8c per kWh to their electricity cost, but for an EV that get's recharged each ight, that would add about $7,000 to the cost of the EV over a ten year period.
So yeah, you could do CCS, but remember it will also make the cost of using an EV go UP.
Arthur
Because the physics is already well known (neutron release rate of U233, etc.) and modern computers can make accurate Monte Carlo studies of neutron utilization / losses of various fuel geometries to get the production and decay of the tiny fraction of U233 needed to be equal, etc. I should think it possible that China has one on line in five years, if that is high priority item. 10 years if not. China has world's fastest computers, but I'm not sure they would get to work on these calculations.
I suspect it will have at least one "control rod." Perhaps just a high melting point cylinder that can be lowered into the molten fuel, to both change the fuel geometry and absorb a few neutrons. This would be a simple way to modulate the power production rate.*
I am almost sure, as molten metals expand with temperature, that power production with temperature increase has a negative coefficient in the thorium reactor. The Chernobyl reactor was designed to make plutonium (electric power was a secondary product) for bombs. It had a positive temperature coefficient. That was part of the reason it got out of control but stupidity was far more important. They were trying to measure that coefficient, so had disabled some automatic controls on the temperature rise.
------------------
*Uranium 235 does have one advantage for control of reaction rate, which I do not know that thorium +U233 has. When the U235 splits, a few neutrons are released by the fission product with significant delay. This makes control possible. If all were released immediately control would be much harder and probably impossible in a positive temperature coefficient design. I strongly suspect this delayed release is also true of the thorium reactor as it too would have a broad set of fission products, many the same as a uranium reactor. - I just don't know the facts, but bet they are known and part of the reason China is going to build thorium reactors.
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Yes that is the American system, but not that used in France. There the government runs the industry and safety is the first priority, not profit.
In US the rate of return is based on the operationally installed capital. Until unit is online, it is not included in the rate base. Thus, the three mile island plant (and quite a few others) were first place online on 31 December to be included in the rate base for next year. TMI plant went online with more than half of its backup system pumps not yet installed. In US system profit comes first.
Also in contrast to the French, almost all US control rooms are a unique design. Thus when AEC's etc. experts arrived to help get problem at TMI under control they did not understand the function of many controls or what the gauges were telling them and for more than a day made the problem worse or at least did not do anything good. Every control room in French reactors is exactly the same. France gets about 80% of it electric power from reactors and still sells a lot of energy to Germany! France has never had a significant nuclear event. Safety is first in that government owned and operated system, not profits.
Summary: Even uranium reactors can be very safe and release much less radio-active isotopes than a coal plant making the same energy does. (There is both thorium and uranium in almost all US coal.) and coal mining kills quite a few each year. It is not the reactor that causes accidents but the profit motive and stupidity.
Untrue.
Safety with a reactor is intimately tied to profit.
TMI was primarily an ECONOMIC disaster far more then a radiation issue.
Indeed
http://www.threemileisland.org/downloads//225.pdf
SOURCE?????
Wiki said:
It wouldn't have gotten it's operating licence from the NRC in February if half of it's pumps weren't installed. Secondly, pumps (or lack of them) had nothing to do with the accident.
By the way, we operate 104 reactors to France's 58 and produce about twice as much electricity and our reactors have an excellent safety record.
Arthur
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“… Superior economics and leasehold drilling have accelerated activity in many of the nation’s top shale plays despite depressed natural gas prices. …
Fuel switching at power plants with the capability to burn either coal or natural gas has picked up over the past year thanks to low natural gas prices, while concerns about limits on carbon emissions are prompting many utilities to close coal-fired facilities or convert them to cleaner-burning natural gas. …
Interest in fuel switching has also hit the US transportation sector, where concerns about the country’s dependence on foreign oil and carbon-dioxide emissions have picked up. Energy magnate T. Boone Pickens has played a key role in raising public awareness about America’s massive natural gas reserves and the benefits of natural gas vehicles (NGV), sinking $58 million into an elaborate advertising campaign. (See more, including video links here: http://www.pickensplan.com/act/ He want you to sign up your support but there is box at bottom to check and skip that.)
The National Gas Vehicle Coalition (NGVC) estimates that 110,000 NGVs are on the road in the US and about 1,000 fueling stations, roughly half of which are open to the public. …
Billy T insert: How many EVs are running one US roads? Many who have used kits to convert their cars to NG also have NG heating their homes and cooking their meals, so fill tanks overnight with small pressure pump. I.e. have their own “filling station” for cost of a couple of hundred bucks as an APL technician of our group did ~ 50 Years ago. It paid for its self in less than a year in avoided gasoline fuel taxes. Doing that will still be popular, but possibly illegal soon as gas taxes mainly go to road construction and repair. But who is to know about your saving if you don’t brag too much about it.
Last year telecom giant AT&T announced that it would spend up to $350 million over five years to purchase more than 8,000 vans that it will convert to run on compressed natural gas. Such investments not only reduce fuel costs and lower greenhouse gas emissions by 20 to 30 percent, but also make for a good public relations story. …”
Quote from: http://www.investingdaily.com/tes/1...gx=d.kac,stid.5094,sid.250664,lid.12,mid.3039
PS Because it costs so much less to convert your old car to a dual fuel (either NG or gasoline at the flip of a switch even while driving) car via a kit, I think about 5 CNG vehicles are (and many are big, like buses) now entering the roads for every EV that is. In a few years that will probably be > 10 NG for every EV. I.e. the US will switch more to NG than to EV cars. It is so much cheaper and "money talks."
Fuel switching at power plants with the capability to burn either coal or natural gas has picked up over the past year thanks to low natural gas prices, while concerns about limits on carbon emissions are prompting many utilities to close coal-fired facilities or convert them to cleaner-burning natural gas. …
Interest in fuel switching has also hit the US transportation sector, where concerns about the country’s dependence on foreign oil and carbon-dioxide emissions have picked up. Energy magnate T. Boone Pickens has played a key role in raising public awareness about America’s massive natural gas reserves and the benefits of natural gas vehicles (NGV), sinking $58 million into an elaborate advertising campaign. (See more, including video links here: http://www.pickensplan.com/act/ He want you to sign up your support but there is box at bottom to check and skip that.)
The National Gas Vehicle Coalition (NGVC) estimates that 110,000 NGVs are on the road in the US and about 1,000 fueling stations, roughly half of which are open to the public. …
Billy T insert: How many EVs are running one US roads? Many who have used kits to convert their cars to NG also have NG heating their homes and cooking their meals, so fill tanks overnight with small pressure pump. I.e. have their own “filling station” for cost of a couple of hundred bucks as an APL technician of our group did ~ 50 Years ago. It paid for its self in less than a year in avoided gasoline fuel taxes. Doing that will still be popular, but possibly illegal soon as gas taxes mainly go to road construction and repair. But who is to know about your saving if you don’t brag too much about it.
Last year telecom giant AT&T announced that it would spend up to $350 million over five years to purchase more than 8,000 vans that it will convert to run on compressed natural gas. Such investments not only reduce fuel costs and lower greenhouse gas emissions by 20 to 30 percent, but also make for a good public relations story. …”
Quote from: http://www.investingdaily.com/tes/1...gx=d.kac,stid.5094,sid.250664,lid.12,mid.3039
PS Because it costs so much less to convert your old car to a dual fuel (either NG or gasoline at the flip of a switch even while driving) car via a kit, I think about 5 CNG vehicles are (and many are big, like buses) now entering the roads for every EV that is. In a few years that will probably be > 10 NG for every EV. I.e. the US will switch more to NG than to EV cars. It is so much cheaper and "money talks."
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I agree. I never said or even implied that business men don't make disasterous economic decisions in the long run, while running after short term profits. In fact that is typical.- Just look at the major disasters of the US economy - all caused by the greedy seeking short term profits, like "no money down loans" repackaged to become "toxic trash" etc.
I also never said of implied that the absence of the back-up pumps at TMI had in anything to do with the accident. They were installed years before it happened. My only point was that stupidity and the profit first were not the way to run nuclear power.
Yes there are many US reactors that have good safety records but some with terrible profit motivated management, getting by on luck. Hell, one had a significant fire, started by a candle! - The employee using it was looking for where an air current was coming from and set wires or insulation etc on fire. As each installation is different, there is no rule book on procedures, as in France. US nuclear power runs by the seat of your pants, but the wearers of the pants are usually pretty well qualified.
And you don't rack up all the thousands of reactor years of safe operation we have based on Stupidity or running reactors by the seat of your pants.
As to profit, again, these power companies are regulated and only allowed a set profit, so no, there is no great profit motive driving the electric power industry to take short cuts with safety.
Arthur
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Actually they annouced it in 2009 and PR is mainly what it is because ATT has a fleet of more than 73,000 vehicles, and as of March 2011, AT&T has deployed only 2,400 CNG vehicles.
As to stations, according to the DOE, as of this month there are 383 PUBLIC stations, which means finding a station is a major problem for most people in most states. California has 128 of those stations, so if you are going to try CNG, that's one of the few states where you might be able to pull it off.
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/data_download/
Arthur
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Genetically engineered algae?
It does need to be profitable to make it work. No one is going to go for non-profit, higher price option.
Plus you still do not get it. IF we need to get down CO2 to save the planet (need to look at global warming trends over the next decade) then all your worrying about money isn't worth a shit. Governemnts will HAVE to do what they have to do despite the cost.
All in all sounds promising. So do we refer to these reactors as 'nuclear reactors'? I suspect so. I'll let you guys reach your own conclusions.
True there rate of return is controlled by public service commission, and base for the calculation is ONLY the capital invested in equipment that is on-line. I.e. they collect ZERO on the millions invested for typically a decade or more while the plant is being built. "Good management" does every thing it can to get the plant on line ASAP - even if it can only initially operated at half its eventual power level.
The capital base is adjusted once a year, typically is the capital on line on 31 December. Thus a plant will never be decommissioned late in the year as that removes it from the rate base for the next year. Likewise most plants are placed on line, even if not fully complete late in the year, often on 31 December as was the case with Three Mile Island plant even thought more than half of the back-up pumps were not yet installed. This to is typical. In the year following going on line many more items are completed. For example one of several cooling towers many not yet be built when placed on line so until it is the plant can not operate at full power.
Because of this rate base structure, about the only way management can increase profits is by "cutting corners" - and they do. I am not sure, but think there is no "final inspection" in the license process.
Part of the problem with US nuclear power is that most were built under the AEC. That agency, like the one recently split into two parts for permitting oil well drilling in the gulf, was in charge of both promoting nuclear power and regulating it for safety - A clear conflict of interest. I think now that DoE exists, the people regulating for safety are not the same people promoting the expansion of nuclear power as was the case when nearly all of the US plants were put online more than 30 years ago. - At least I hope that is the case.
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That still means you need to extract it and transport it.
Where you grow this algae is not typically going to be right next to the power company you know, it's going to take a lot of land area and typically be in sunny warm locations with access to the ocean (need to grow this in seawater, almost no one has enough spare fresh water).
I do think this is one of the more promising methods for eventually using up some of our CO2, but I do question how soon and how much of the CO2 we could capture by this method. In the US alone, our CO2 from coal fired power plants would be over 5 million tons per day and CO2 from Natural Gas plants is another 3 million tons per day. If we managed to just use one quarter of this CO2 it would still yield about 20 million tons of aglae per day!
BUT
If they eventually make this work, the output from these huge algae farms would be Biofuels, which makes advanced hybrids like the Prius or Volt as the way to go, not EVs.
We don't have a world government which can dictate this and with our recent climate meeting in Copenhagen you can see that it is not quite as rosy as you think. Not all governments agree on what needs to be done or who should do it or that it even needs to be done. When you add to that that no one can yet point to any real harm caused to a significant number of people by GW it gets a bit difficult to convince govenments that they have to take drastic action because the sky is falling, or that if they don't the future is dire because 10 or 20 million people (out of 9,000 million people on the planet) living on low lying islands or river deltas might have to move sometime later this century, particularly when most of those people live in one of the countries that is not going to lower its net emissions of CO2.
The developing countries of the world claim that reduction to 1990 levels penalizes them and prevents them from achieving a standard of living that the US and Europe enjoy and so they won't agree to CO2 restrictions except on a per-capita level, which means their CO2 is going to grow and grow.
It's unlikely that the industrialized nations will penalize themselves too much if they have to do it unilaterally since they already find it difficult to compete with the developing world and even if they do by forcing expensive CO2 scrubbing costs onto Electricity Generation (and we reallly have no alternative but Coal for generating electricity for many decades), then you significantly drive up the cost of running EVs and thus make them less attractive.
Arthur
I don't think so Billy.
I've seen too many cases where rates went up to pay for construction of new plants and indeed, to pay for plants that never went online at all.
As Wiki says:
What that implies is 180 degrees from your assertion, the power company didn't take the risk, the consumers did.
This is for a Coal plant, but the type of plant isn't the issue:
So even though the plant isn't going online until the 4th quarter the costs are already being absorbed by the people via rate hikes.
http://www.gpace.org/news/kcpl-boos...icity-plant-and-customer-rates-will-rise-too/
Nuclear plants (PWRs which are most of what we run) don't operate at much less than full power. Their capacity is based on hours of operation, not rate of power. You power them up and they pretty much go full bore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_energy_source
Arthur
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No, the customers will pay EVENTUALLY for the capital that made quipment / plants/ that serve them, but not one cent while it is under construction. This is a major reason why nuclear units are so expensive – they get ZERO on the capital for typically a decade at least.
As you stated in post 1803, NRG Energy wrote off $481 million that they had invested in the planned but now cancelled Texas nuclear plant – the share holders, not the customers, will eat this loss as that capital never was / will be part of a unit that was placed on-line.
“In general, the rate base consists of the value of property, as used by the utility in providing service.” From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rate_base_(energy)
Thus the $481 million will never show up in the rate base as it never will provide any service to the utility’s customers.
Your link about the Kansas coal plant states: “The plant is now expected to start up in the fourth quarter of this year. Originally, the plant was to be supplying power in late summer. The new figures include additional costs for contingencies. Caisley said just when the higher cost would be reflected in rates was unclear." When they get to start charging for the capital of the new plant is uncertain because they don’t know when it will be on-line, especially as it has already experienced construction delays.
No the article say that when the customers start to pay higher rates is uncertain.
We are talking about the rare base, not the rate of return. Thus, in the public interest, the public service commission can increase the rate of return allowed, to help the company out, but not the rate base.
As nuclear plants are then most capital intensive, yes they try to keep them operating a full capacity – supply the “base load.” That does not mean they cannot operate at reduced capacity. To do that, I think, they put the control rods deeper into the core and reduce the water flow, so that the steam is still at the same temperature and pressure, just with reduced steam volume produced.
I own shares in Southern Company (Most likely one to put new plant on line and only company that has received the Federal guarantee of the construction loans) They have three nuclear plants in operation and file reports to government if anything in their operation changes. C. Schwab then sends a summary to me. Every few weeks, it tells they have had to reduce the operational power level. Last week one unit had an unexpected automatic shut down, which is now being investigated. Until the cause is learned it is operating at half capacity. Usually these reduced power level operation periods are schedule events.
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