Platts - Tuesday, December 07, 2004 http://www.platts.com ------------ Officials near Grand Gulf would support another reactor Washington (Platts)--6Dec2004 County officials near Grand Gulf would welcome another nuclear plant at the Mississippi site. The Claiborne County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution today stating it supports the efforts of Entergy subsidiary Systems Energy Resources Inc. to prepare an early site permit for a possible future reactor. Entergy has not committed to building a new reactor. The board said that Entergy pays about $8-million annually in property taxes on Grand Gulf, which helps to keep the cost of homeowner property taxes and auto license tags much lower than in neighboring counties. "We want a new nuclear plant here," said Charles Shorts, the board president. "We feel that building a new nuclear plant here will be very beneficial to the citizens of Claiborne County." ------------ Browns Ferry, Millstone advance toward license renewal Washington DC (Platts)--3Dec2004 Browns Ferry and Millstone moved closer to license renewal approval with the NRC staff's issuance of a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) for each plant. The NRC staff said today its preliminary recommendation for each plant is that "the commission determine that the adverse environmental impacts of license renewal...are not so great that preserving the option of license renewal for energy-planning decisionmakers would be unreasonable." An EIS is one of the two major documents NRC must prepare before it can make a decision on a license renewal application; the other is a safety evaluation report. The public comment period for each EIS ends March 2, 2005. The draft documents are on NRC's Web site: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1437/supplement2 1/index.html (Browns Ferry) and http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1437/supplement2 2/index.html (Millstone). ------------ Salem -1, -2 to shut down due to oil spill Washington (Platts)--2Dec2004 Salem-1 and -2 will shut down to avoid damage from a Nov. 26 oil spill in the Delaware River, PSEG said today. Both units will begin reducing power Friday and then be shut to avoid getting oil into the plant's water intake structures due to the Athos I tanker spill, PSEG said in a press release. The units will remain shut "as long as necessary," PSEG Nuclear President Christopher Bakken said. "PSEG Nuclear is tracking costs the company many incur associated with the oil spill with full expectation of recovery of those costs from responsible parties," the company said. ------------ Hungary's Paks nuke plans to sell more power to free market Budapest (Platts)--2Dec2004 Hungary's Paks nuclear power plant is preparing to sell more of its power on Hungary's liberalized electricity market, scientific adviser Tamas Katona said at the EnKon conference of the Institute for International Research Wednesday. The announcement, the first public pronouncement of its kind from a Paks official, comes as a surprise because sales of power produced by the plant are mainly limited by government decree to the country's regulated "public service" market, which accounts for 75% of total consumption and includes all household consumers. At Ft 8.3/kWh ($0.045/kWh or Eur0.034/kWh), Paks has the cheapest generating capacity in Hungary, and keeping this price advantage in the household market has been seen as a political priority. "The effects of liberalization are now felt by Paks only indirectly," Katona said. "But we have to prepare for the situation to change over time, and for the Paks nuclear power plant to eventually become an active player in the market." ------------ NRC to begin review of Brunswick license renewal submittal Washington (Platts)--1Dec2004 NRC has docketed the Brunswick license renewal aplication and announced the opportunity for a hearing on the submittal. Docketing means the NRC staff has determined the application contains enough information for the agency to begin its technical review. Progress Energy submitted the application for Brunswick-1 and -2 on Oct. 20. The operating license for unit 2 expires in 2014 and for unit 1 in 2016. The deadline for requesting a hearing on the application will be 60 days after publication of a notice in the Federal Register, expected shortly, NRC said today in a press release. ------------ Davis-Besse corrective action program rated `marginal' Washington (Platts)--30Nov2004 Davis-Besse's overall corrective action program was rated "marginal" by an independent assessment team. In a report submitted to the NRC Nov. 15 and released today, the group graded the FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co. (Fenoc) plant as "marginal" in six of seven categories and "unsatisfactory" in the seventh. In the last category, "effectiveness of program trending," the team said it gave Davis-Besse a low grade because Fenoc "has not worked aggressively to correct deficiencies identified in previous self-assessments or oversight findings." The team, which was composed of three industry officials and three consultants, recommended an "Integrated Action Plan for the Improvement of the Davis-Besse Correction Program Implementation." The study is one of four annual reports that NRC required Fenoc to commission when the agency allowed Davis-Besse to restart in March after a two-year shutdown. ------------