When South Carolina senators asked Tuesday what it would take to salvage the V.C. Summer Nuclear project, utility executives involved replied a new partner who could put at least $3 billion into the over-budget, behind-schedule project. The state’s customer advocate was a bit more cynical – and perhaps more truthful. “You are going to need probably more than one partner. I don’t know if you can get one partner and I don’t think one partner can do it,” said Dukes Scott, executive director of the South Carolina Office of Regulatory Staff, the Charlotte Business Journal newspaper reported. “You are going to need a partner for (state-owned) Santee Cooper and you are going to need a partner for (South Carolina Electric & Gas, SCE&G) … and we need a third and fourth partner to come in to finish this plant.” Scott reminded the senators of the decision involving energy giant Duke Energy made in the early 1980s to abandon plans for the Cherokee Nuclear plant in Gaffney, S.C. He said he was asked at that time what it would take to save Cherokee. “My answer was a miracle,” he said, the Business Journal reported. “What I just described is close to that.”
Kallanish Energy 24th Aug 2017 read more »
American experts say that US nuclear might depends crucially on the civilian use of atomic energy, and believe the country will lose its place as the world’s nuclear superpower if it does not support its nuclear industry. The link between the civil nuclear industry and the military’s ability to maintain its nuclear weapons capability is spelt out in a report by experts close to the Pentagon. It states openly that tritium, an essential component of nuclear weapons, is manufactured in civilian reactors for military use. It also says that civilian reactors are needed to produce highly enriched uranium. The Washington-based Energy Futures Initiative report, says that Russia and China, which are both building civil nuclear stations outside their national borders, will overtake America both in influence and ability to deliver a nuclear threat unless steps are taken to prop up the civil nuclear programme at home. This is the first time that the dependence of nuclear weapons states on their civil nuclear programmes has been so clearly spelt out. Governments, particularly the United Kingdom’s, have repeatedly claimed there is no connection between the civil and military nuclear industries, but this report makes clear that is not the case. “With renewable costs tumbling and the international nuclear industry in growing crisis, it is becoming ever more difficult to carry on concealing this key underlying military reason for attachment to civil nuclear power”
Climate News Network 23rd Aug 2017 read more »
Stanford scholars make the case for continued nuclear investment in their new book.
Stanford News 21st Aug 2017 read more »
