Platts - Friday, March 13, 2009 http://www.platts.com ------------ NRC says severe reactor accidents can be mitigated Washington (Platts)--12Mar2009 Severe reactor accidents can be mitigated, and are unlikely to release much -- if any --radioactivity even if they are not, NRC staffers said March 11. The NRC's state-of-the-art reactor consequences analysis, or Soarca, attempts to quantify the probability and likely offsite health consequences of severe reactor accidents, beginning with Exelon Nuclear's Peach Bottom and Dominion's Surry plants. Analysis for those stations has been completed and a report will be completed by May, NRC's Charles Tinkler said in his presentation at the agency's annual Regulatory Information Conference in Rockville, Maryland. Jason Schaperow of NRC said the staff's "preliminary conclusions" are that all accident scenarios analyzed for Peach Bottom and Surry "can reasonably be mitigated." Sensitivity analyses concluded that, even if no mitigation measures were taken, there would be no large early releases of radioactivity, due to the relatively slow progression of the accidents and the small probability of containment failure, Schaperow said. Likely radioactive releases from the accidents analyzed so far in Soarca "are dramatically smaller" than those predicted in a 1982 NRC analysis conducted for use in siting new units, Schaperow said. The late Commissioner Edward McGaffigan and some industry officials were highly critical of that report, which they said was unrealistically conservative in its assumptions. ------------ Spot uranium price continues to drop on soft demand Washington (Platts)--11Mar2009 The spot price of uranium dropped 25 cents a pound to $43.50/lb U3O8 over the past week, according to Ux Consulting. TradeTech lowered its spot price $1/lb to $43/lb in its March 6 report. Both price publishers said sellers are lowering their offer prices in order to attract buyers that are in the market for discretionary purchases. Analysts have said they are uncertain whether the price will continue to drop. TradeTech said demand in the spot market remains "highly discretionary," but noted that the lower prices have "stimulated" some buying interest. Ux said the fall in the spot price has led to an "increasing interest on the part of buyers to make discretionary purchases as a way of locking in prices at what are considered to be attractive levels." Buyers, notably utilities, could hedge their exposure by swapping the market price for fixed prices, Ux said. But that would only happen if the buyers are set up to trade in derivatives with the assistance of a counterparty or broker that would be willing to take on the risk, it said. At least one utility was seen considering a "discretionary purchase" if the price drops any lower, a fuel buyer said late last week. The buyer said the utility received offers for $42/lb and $43/lb, but the sellers appeared willing to "negotiate at a lower price, say $41/lb." However, analysts have said they doubt that the spot price will fall below $40/lb in the next several days. The spot price remains attractive compared with the long-term price. Both price publishers maintained their long-term prices, Ux at $70/lb and TradeTech at $69/lb, respectively. Ux said a total of 600,000 lb U3O8 was sold above or below the company's published spot price. TradeTech reported one transaction for just under 100,000 lb at or near its published price of $43/lb. In the futures market, the bids and offers that brokers are reporting remained unchanged for the most part. Tullett Prebon on Monday posted an offer to sell 100,000 lb for March delivery at $45/lb and its posted bid to buy the same amount of material at $40/lb did not change. As of Monday, the Evolution Markets bid-offer spread was $40/lb-$44/lb, unchanged from a week ago. --Amena Saiyid, amena_saiyid@platts.com ------------ Uranium Resources posts $26.5-mil 2008 loss on weaker prices Washington (Platts)--11Mar2009 Uranium Resources posted a $26.5-million loss in 2008 due to a weak uranium market that led to the closure of three of its five wellfields in Texas, the producer's CEO Dave Clark said Wednesday. URI posted $1.07-million profit in 2007. The company plans to close the remaining wellfields by the end of March until uranium prices increase. The current spot price of U308 is $43.50/lb, but analysts are uncertain whether it has found a floor or will fall further. Uranium Resources is engaged in in-situ leach uranium mining. In a wellfield design for ISL mining, wells are used to inject a chemical leaching solution into the ore, and separate wells are used to pump the solution to the surface so uranium can be extracted from the solution. URI said its earnings declined because "significantly" fewer pounds of U3O8 were sold in 2008 and at a lower price per pound than in 2007. The company also cited a $4.8 million impairment charge on its uranium properties. The company posted a $7.5 million loss during the fourth quarter, compared with net income of $800,000 in the year-ago period. The company shut two wellfields -- one at Kingsville Dome and another at Vasquez -- in the most recent quarter. URI said it shut the third wellfield, at Rosita, during the third quarter because of problems encountered in extracting uranium and because of "lack of economic feasibility in the current price environment." ------------ US Senate approves energy-laden fiscal 2009 spending by voice vote Washington (Platts)--11Mar2009 The US Senate Tuesday voted to approve an additional $2.5 billion for the Department of Energy's budget as part of a fiscal 2009 appropriations bill which will fund the US government through September 30. The measure was approved by voice vote after eight Republicans voted with Democrats on a procedural clearance vote of 62-35. DOE will receive a total allocation of $27 billion for fiscal 2009. Programs in renewable energy, energy efficiency, science and environmental cleanup stand to receive large increases. A few programs at DOE would also see reductions, including nuclear energy and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The bill makes $205 million available for SPR, the nation's emergency stockpile of oil. This is a sharp decline from the Bush administration's requested $344 million. The new measure would require the DOE to submit a report to Congress within 45 days of enactment on the effects on US oil markets of expanding the reserve. The department could not spend the SPR money on expansion before completing the report. DOE had been given authorization in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to expand the reserve's capacity to more than 1 billion barrels. Its current maximum storage capacity is 727 million barrels. A proposed permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada would receive $288.39 million for the year, a decline of roughly $98 million below the fiscal 2008 level. The Obama administration has said they do not intend to pursue Yucca Mountain as the solution to nation's nuclear waste disposal issue. The Senate spent all of last week debating the $410-billion omnibus appropriations bill before it was pulled from the floor following objections by Republicans who wished to offer amendments. Though several Republican amendments received votes, in the end none were adopted. The US House of Representatives passed an identical bill on February 25, and President Barack Obama is expected to sign it into law Wednesday. The so-called omnibus appropriations bill combined nine unpassed spending bills in one package. House and Senate Democrats chose to delay the appropriations process last year to avoid having to reconcile differences with the Bush administration over spending across the government. Most of the government was funded through stopgap measures. A DOE program for low-income residents was one of several DOE programs that received money in both an economic stimulus bill passed last month and the 2009 bill. The program received $5 billion in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and $200 million for fiscal 2009. The program received $282 million for fiscal 2008 after the Bush administration marked it for elimination. DOE's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy division received $16.8 billion under the economic stimulus bill, and would get $1.9 billion for fiscal 2009, compared with $1.3 billion requested by the Bush administration and $1.7 billion enacted for fiscal 2008. Some EERE programs stand to see substantial gains in the fiscal 2009 bill, relative to both last year's bill and the Bush administration request. Vehicle technology research, including an advanced battery program authorized under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, would receive $273 million. This compares with $221 million requested by the administration and $213 million provided for fiscal 2008. ARRA also provided $2 billion for grants for the manufacturing of advanced batteries for vehicles. SPENDING BILL FAVORS CLEAN COAL OVER FUTUREGEN CCS PROJECT The bill also includes $168.9 million for hydrogen technology, a cut from last year's enacted level of $211 million, but an increase compared with the administration's request of $146 million. Biorefinery research and development would receive $217 million, which is more than Congress provided for fiscal 2008 ($198 million), but less than the Bush administration requested for fiscal 2009 ($225 million). The omnibus bill likewise provides $876.3 million for fossil fuels research and development, including $149 million transferred from the Clean Coal Technology account. It also includes $700 million for Clean Coal Power Initiative's third round of solicitations, paid for partly by transferring funds away from the carbon capture and sequestration project FutureGen, which would receive no funds under fiscal 2009 bill. CCPI is a public-private partnership with utilities aimed at reducing emissions from coal-fired power plants. The bill would apply $5.6 billion to defense-related cleanup activities at DOE, up from $5.3 billion requested by the Bush administration and made available in last year's bill. DOE, which faces lawsuits for missed deadlines for cleaning up Cold War-era nuclear weapons labs across the country, also received $6 billion in the stimulus bill to accelerate that process. The bill provides $262 million for non-defense environmental cleanup at DOE, and $45 million for nuclear site closures. --Jean Chemnick, jean_chemnick@platts.com ------------ UK's Oldbury-1 could reconnect to grid in a week Barcelona (Platts)--10Mar2009 The UK's 313-MW Oldbury-1 could reconnect to the grid in about a week, after restarting following a 31-month inspection outage, said Dan Gould, a spokesman for reactor operator Magnox North. Gould said March 10 that the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate has approved the safety case for restarting the reactor. Oldbury-1, like Oldbury-2, had to undergo lengthy inspections to enable continued operation because of concerns about the rate of graphite depletion in the reactor cores. Oldbury-1 has been shut since August 31, 2006. Oldbury-2 has been back in service since August 18, 2008. Both reactors were slated for permanent shutdown last December. But the extended outages mean they can now run through 2010 because of fuel availability and reprocessing schedules, Gould said. Enough spare fuel is still on hand for short-term operation despite closure of the magnox fuel fabrication facilities at the UK's Springfields complex in 2006 and 2007, Magnox North sources have said in the past. Also, the postponement of the closure of the magnox reprocessing plant at Sellafield from 2012 until 2016 or later allows time for spent fuel removed from the Oldbury reactors at a later date to still be reprocessed, they said. ------------ Cattenom-3 down for inspection of steam generator tube plugs Paris (Platts)--9Mar2009 Electricite de France, or EDF, has taken Cattenom-3 down to inspect its steam generator tube plugs, EDF said March 9. It said the unit was taken offline early March 7 "after discussion with the Nuclear Safety Authority" to check whether the plugs were out of position. The Cattenom-3 plugs came from the same manufacturing batch as those used in two units at Paluel and Penly, EDF said. During inspections at those two units in February, one plug (of a total of 1,000 plugs inserted into the tubes) was found to be missing and another was in the wrong position, EDF said. It said those two plugs were replaced "immediately." EDF declared the mispositioning of steam generator tube plugs as a generic defect last June after finding the problem at both St. Alban-2 and Penly-2. ------------ US Senate spending bill work to continue Washington (Platts)--6Mar2009 Funding for much of the US government, including the Energy and Interior departments and the Environmental Protection Agency, was extended at fiscal 2008 levels Friday for four additional days to give the US Congress time to pass a $410-billion fiscal 2009 dollar spending bill. The measure would give DOE an additional $2.5 billion for the fiscal year that ends September 30, with programs in renewable energy, energy efficiency, science and environmental cleanup programs receiving generous increases in funding. A few programs at DOE would also see reductions, including nuclear energy and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The Senate spent all of the past week debating the omnibus appropriations bill, which combines nine spending bills that failed to be passed in one package. The new law would replaced a five-month stopgap measure that has kept the federal government functioning at fiscal 2008 levels through March 6. House of Representatives and Senate Democrats chose a continuing resolution to avoid having to reconcile differences with the Bush administration over spending across the government. Though they now have a sympathetic White House, Republicans in the upper chamber used Senate rules to block a vote on the omnibus bill in order to force a vote on a range of amendments aimed at reducing its price tag. The new stopgap is set to expire March 11 at 12 am EDT (0400 GMT Thursday). --Jean Chemnick, jean_chemnick@platts.com ------------ Palo Verde-3 remains under highest NRC scrutiny Washington (Platts)--6Mar2009 Palo Verde-3 still requires NRC's highest level of attention, the agency said in a March 6 announcement on the issuance of annual assessment letters to all 104 operating reactors in the US. The Arizona Public Service Co. unit has been in Column 4 of the action matrix under NRC's reactor oversight process since fourth-quarter 2006. The column reflects multiple or repetitive problems with one of seven safety areas of plant operations. If performance slips into the Column 5 threshold, the reactor would have to shut down until the NRC gives approval to restart. The other two Palo Verde units remained in Column 3, which indicates deficiencies in a performance area, but they have been treated as if they also were in the fourth column. Nebraska Public Power District's Cooper remained in Column 3, where it has been since first-quarter 2008. Fourteen other units are in Column 2, which means they require some additional attention: Byron-1 and -2; Comanche Peak-1; Farley-1; Grand Gulf, Hatch-2; Kewaunee; McGuire-1 and -2; Nine Mile Point-2; Oconee-1; Palisades; Prairie Island-1; and San Onofre-2. The other reactors require only baseline inspection. Eric Leeds, director of the NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, said in a statement that the 2008 results "show that about 83 percent of the plants are performing strongly enough that we?re satisfied with our basic level of inspections at those sites." ------------