The Tribune has this interesting article today about a Texas power generating company that announced it would be shutting down 2 of its 3 units at one of its coal plants.  Here’s an excerpt, but you should check out the whole article:

Luminant, a major Texas power-generation company, plans to shut two of three units at one of its 1970s-era coal plants during the winter and spring, the company told the Texas grid operator this week. That removes about 1,200 megawatts, or more than 1 percent of capacity, from the already strained Texas power grid.

“The sole reason is persistently low power prices,” said Allan Koenig, a spokesman for Luminant. The two units, from the Monticellocoal plant in Titus County in East Texas, have been operating well below capacity, he said, producing only about a quarter of the power they are capable of for much of the year. The units will come back online in time for the peak demand next summer, Koenig said.

Environmentalists were quick to point out that the two units were the same ones Luminant had argued would be forced to shut down if a federal environmental rule known as the cross-state air pollution rule had taken effect. Luminant had joined state officials in arguing vociferously against the rule, and a federal court threw it out last week, to the frustration of environmentalists.

Energy Future Holdings, the parent company of Luminant, was “really just blowing smoke about how [the cross-state rule] would bankrupt them,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, of the environmental group Public Citizen Texas, in a statement. “There may be no market for old coal in the winter in Texas because we have so much low-cost wind.”

Luminant had previously said that the cross-state rule’s requirements “will seriously jeopardize the ability of the state’s electric grid to supply power to Texas businesses and consumers.”

I saw several articles today about the Japan nuclear disaster and the effect it is having on nuclear plans in the U.S. I have highlighted the parts I thought were interesting.

The Texas Tribune had this article about a hearing the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission held yesterday to hear testimony regarding early-stage approval to a site for a new nuclear plant in Victoria Texas filed by Exelon.  Here is an excerpt:

Exelon is not currently seeking a full permit to build a plant in Victoria County — an expensive proposition even before the Japanese tragedy. The purpose of the early permit is so officials can vet all of the safety and environmental concerns about a site before a company invests significant capital there…

TSEP [Texans for a Sound Energy Policy, a group opposed to the plant] is neutral on the use of nuclear energy but opposes the site chosen in Victoria County. The D.M. O’Connor family, landowners who have lived in Victoria for generations, has invested millions in TSEP to hire lawyers and engineers to conduct geological studies of the area.

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission attorney said the review of the permit application in Victoria is ongoing, and that “no final decisions have been made about the substance of that application.” Several other new reactors — including two at Comanche Peak in Somervell County — have also been proposed for Texas.

The geology of the proposed South Texas site in Victoria County has been called into question by TSEP, which argues that geologic activity, combined with the lack of an adequate water supply, could pose a threat to safety. The area is not prone to earthquakes or tsunamis, but Victoria County has another sort of fault, called a growth fault, that can still shake things up. Unlike the sudden, jarring shift of tectonic plate movements, the shift of growth plates happens slowly over time. They won’t abruptly topple buildings, but they do create cracks in the sidewalk, for example.

There’s also this article  by Fuel Fix, comparing the Fukushima plant to 2 existing South Texas Project plants (located about 90 miles southwest of Houston near Bay City; STP has also proposed building 2 additional nuclear plants in the same area):

On Location: “Fukushima is on the coast in one of the most active seismic zones in the world, while STP is about 11 miles inland from Matagorda Bay in a seismic zone rated zero – signifying the lowest earthquake probability. Fukushima’s coastal location probably contributed to the catastrophe there. Officials reported that diesel generators responsible for providing backup power to cooling pumps were swamped by tsunamis that followed last Friday’s massive earthquake.The South Texas Project is about 29 feet above sea level, spokesman Buddy Eller said, and appears capable of withstanding the extreme storm events that are most likely for the region.

A study looking at the possible impacts of a combined Category 5 hurricane storm surge and a 100-year flood on the Colorado River that runs adjacent to the plant site found water levels would rise to just under 28 feet.”

Age: “There’s also an age difference. The Fukushima units are 30 to 40 years old. South Texas Project Unit 1 went online in 1988 and Unit 2 in 1989, making them the sixth- and fourth-youngest units in the U.S.”

Reactor Designs:  “The Japanese and Texas plants also use different reactor designs. In Fukushima’s Boiling Water Reactors (BWR), water runs through the nuclear reactor and boils into steam that turns power generation turbines. In STP’s Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR), reactor water is heated under pressure but does not boil, and moves in a closed loop. The hot water in the loop boils water in a separate vessel into steam that runs the electric turbines.

In both designs, steam flows from the turbines to a condenser that cools it into a liquid to repeat cycle.”

Finally, there’s this Wall Street Journal article, noting that the Japan crisis is putting focus on plants in the US that have the same reactor design:

Japan’s nuclear crisis is drawing attention to aging U.S. reactors, especially the 23 most similar to reactors at the Japanese plant where workers are racing to avoid a full-scale meltdown.

Eleven U.S. utilities, including industry giants such as Southern Co., Entergy Corp. and Exelon Corp., own similar reactors in 14 states. Most of them are operating beyond their initial 40-year licenses and have been granted 20-year extensions by federal regulators.

The Japanese crisis, in which problems at four reactors have led to dangerous releases of radiation in the surrounding area, could lead to safety-related changes at similar U.S. plants. Operators said that, even if they’re not ordered to make changes by regulators, they might do so to restore public trust.

U.S. regulations require plant owners to make sure plants can survive any expected threat, even if that means they have to retrofit facilities that already have licenses.

“If there’s a change in a significant safety rule, it can be imposed retroactively,” said Richard Meserve, a physicist and former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Plant operators already are pledging to learn from Japan’s accident.

“We want to look at our systems and procedures and operator training to prevent a complete loss of power to our units” in a natural disaster, said Jeff Gasser, executive vice president of Southern Co.’s nuclear division. Its Edwin Hatch plant in Georgia has two reactors similar to the Fukashima Daiichi plant’s reactors.

Some critics say the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission should rethink the way it assesses risks and create even more conservative safety standards.

One former nuclear plant operator who opposed the license extension at Entergy Corp’s Vermont Yankee plant in Vermont, one of those similar to Japanese units, thinks the NRC and utilities will have to take a hard look at the “design basis threat”—or the maximum threat—that plants face.

“What used to be considered a non-credible threat is now credible, given what’s happened in Japan,” said Arnie Gundersen, a former senior vice president of Nuclear Energy Services, a provider of engineering and technical assistance to nuclear plants. He said he thinks safety margins should be increased.