In light of recent events, licensing procedure has become much more important. It is central to our effort. I am not surprised that, as with everything else nuclear, most people are not aware of the process.
Most people think that there’s a nuclear power plant license that you apply for, get, and start building. No. There are three different licenses, and until recently there were four: the Early Site Permit, the Combined Construction and Operating License, and the Design Certification. This was (semi-)necessary in the boom 1950s, when there was demand for plants still under development. So the utility selects a site, starts construction, and by the time the design is approved the plant is finished and they can get a license to operate it.
This is a deck-of-cards bureaucracy just waiting for something to happen. Eventually, anti-nuclear activists started suing utilities and intervening in Nuclear Regulatory Commission hearings. So the site would be selected and approved, and the plant construction would be started, and the NRC would change the design. So the utility has to tear down part of the plant, rebuild the required sections, and rebuild unmodified parts that got in the way. Then the NRC would change the construction standards. Then they had to go in and reinforce everything. Then some rookie contractor installs the containment backwards and pours concrete on top before anybody figures out what’s wrong. And it all has to be torn up. Then the NRC would change some of the devilish details of the licensing procedure, which changes everything else. For example, outside intervenors in hearings were allowed only after a court battle. So the intervenors had to be let into parts of the hearing that were semi-closed already, and delays were magnified. While this happens, the work crews are sitting around, the contractors are collecting fees (or aren’t, and their workers are still being paid, and contractors are yelping), and the bank is collecting interest on the construction loan. Then some problems come up, like jellyfish in the intake filters, which are (or should be) endemic in the first several hundred units produced of anything. All this is happening to the first 400 or so of these reactors which were ever built, while the design is changing constantly, and no real research and development is allowed because to do so would require going through this same process with no chance to recoup any of the investment.
All this time, coal is cheap (and nobody cares if coal workers live or die–how convenient, no safety restrictions), oil is going through the roof at the exact time they need to retire their oil plants, gas turbines are breaking through, and any utility that announces a nuclear project can be assured of hundreds of protesters. No utility in their right mind would go through that process. When the collapse finally happened in 1974, nobody noticed outside of the industry and protesters because it took so long to build plants.
At least it didn’t cost much to the utilities to go through the process itself, right? Wrong. The licensing process costs between $400-500 million. Why? The utilities and designers have to support 100% of the cost of the NRC taking all the time it wants to review four applications. Then the NRC gets to do whatever it wants to the plant while it’s being built and while it’s operating, and you have to pay for all that too, plus a twist. See, fees aren’t assessed based on how much money the NRC actually spends on micromanaging your facility into the ground. They divide their annual expenses by 103 (the number of reactors) and send out a bill. You could have been responsible for 1/500th of those expenses, but you have to pay the $3,155,000 base fee just like everyone else. Then you have to pay for their oversight of your fuel (which you technically don’t own, but must pay for and dispose of according to their guidelines at your own expense plus their expenses), the spent fuel tax of $0.001 per kilowatt-hour (doesn’t sound like a lot, until you generate millions of kilowatt hours) plus an $880 fee processing fee, $159,000 for decommissioning when you get tired of these fees (plus a $107,200 decommissioning license fee), $38,100 for operating while you can’t decommission because you have to pay off the bank, $205 per hour per reactor inspector, $197 per hour per fuel inspector, $125,000 to apply in the first place, full cost for almost everything else conceivable, fines for missing anything (For example: a $55,000 fine for letting the River Bend, Louisiana, reactor start working properly when it wasn’t supposed to, a $4,400 fine for throwing away a quantity gauge containing a slightly radioactive material used in smoke detectors, $55,000 for irradiating somebody’s thumb, $55,000 for leaving one switch on one backup generator in the wrong position, and other worthwhile expenditures–and that’s just the last half of December, 1997.), and anything else they want in $900,000 chunks. But don’t worry–you can put it on your Diners Club credit card. No, that can’t be true. I’m exaggerating. Look it up (especially 10 CFR 171).
Filed under Alternatives, Economics, Industry Performance, Perception, Politics and Regulation
Posted on October 31, 2005 by Stewart Peterson | 2 Comments »
