 |
Related
quotes
| FE |
31.80 |
- 0.36 |
|
| 12/12/02 4:01:00 PM ET |
|
.gif) Related stories
FirstEnergy
unit indicted over worker safety-WSJ
PRESS
DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Dec 12
NRC may
cite TXU's Texas nuke following water leak
|
|
U.S. reactor repairs seen topping $1
billion
Reuters, 12.12.02, 5:09 PM ET
(Refiling to fix
slug)
By Chris
Reese
NEW YORK (Reuters) - What
started earlier this year as a couple of rust spots on a Midwest
reactor lid has mushroomed into a repair bill for the U.S. nuclear
power industry that is likely to top $1 billion.
FirstEnergy Corp. said it was surprised back in
February when it found cracks in the lid capping the reactor at its
925 megawatt Davis-Besse plant in Oak Harbor,
Ohio.
More surprising was the
discovery of a hole in the 6-inch thick steel lid, eaten by boric
acid that had been leaking for years through tiny cracks around the
nozzles that guide fuel rods into the vessel that contains the
nuclear reaction.
Davis-Besse's
pressurized water reactor uses the same basic design as 69 other
U.S. nuclear reactors which together account for about 12 percent of
the nation's power supply.
Following the startling discovery at Davis-Besse,
the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission ordered special
inspections at all of the nation's pressurized water reactors to
determine whether any other vessel heads need to be pulled and
replaced --a huge, costly job.
A Reuters survey of nuclear plant operators showed
work is planned or already under way to replace vessel heads on 17
reactors.
While not all
companies were willing to discuss the cost of replacing reactor
vessel heads, those that did estimated the job would cost on average
$60 million per unit.
At that
price, replacement costs for the 13 units including Davis-Besse
would add up to roughly $1.02 billion, and more vessel heads may
have to be swapped.
SOARING COSTS
FROM DAVIS-BESSE
However, the
replacement cost of the reactor head itself does not include the
biggest expense -- down time.
A
shut nuclear unit can cost its owners nearly $500,000 a day buying
electricity it would have generated otherwise.
First Energy estimates the Davis-Besse outage is
costing the company $10 million to $15 million a month in
replacement power, soaring to $20 million a month in July and August
when air conditioning pushes up electricity
demand.
With 10 months of down
time since February, the replacement power cost for Davis-Besse
alone would average $140 million.
Because most utilities have regulated rates, they
cannot automatically pass the repair and replacement power costs on
to consumers without first winning regulatory
approval.
"Basically our rates
are capped in terms of what we can charge customers," FirstEnergy
spokesman Richard Wilkins said.
The owners of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant
in Pennsylvania have said they will replace the reactor lid in the
autumn of 2003 because of the difficulty and high cost of removing
insulation around the head before inspection.
The $100 million cost of replacing the head at
Three Mile Island, in part, has prompted the plant's owner, AmerGen
Energy Co., to consider selling the reactor.
The head replacement process at Davis-Besse was
nearly complete as of early December.
Davis-Besse has been shut since February when the
corrosion was discovered, but the actual vessel head replacement
took about 45 to 60 days, Wilkins said. Davis-Besse is expected to
resume power production in early 2003.
OVER TWO FEET
OF CONCRETE
The replacement job
is a formidable one.
An
18-by-18 foot hole has to be cut in the two-and-a-half foot thick
concrete wall of the containment building, and the old vessel head
-- an 85-ton metal dome about 17 feet in diameter and eight feet
tall -- has to be eased outside.
The new vessel head is moved into the building and
the hole in the containment building is closed and restored to its
original technical specifications.
The old vessel head is decontaminated and wrapped
in a protective shrink-wrap type material to be sent to a disposal
facility in Utah to be permanently buried.
FirstEnergy, for its Davis-Besse facility, was able
to purchase a replacement vessel head from another facility where
construction had begun on a nuclear reactor but was never completed.
Copyright 2002, Reuters News
Service
|
|
|
|
|
.gif){kind=spacer}