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"A meeting between feuding officials of NRG Energy (NRG.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and the San Antonio municipal electric utility ended abruptly on Monday with no resolution on the future of a $10 billion proposed expansion of Texas' largest nuclear facility. An NRG spokesman said later that the parties will meet again on Tuesday. San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro last week invited the partners to negotiate a settlement to avoid a lengthy court battle scheduled later in January between NRG, its nuclear development arm and CPS Energy which is backing off a plan to invest in two new 1,350-megawatt reactors due to rising cost projections."

"* Second setback to new US reactors in January * NRG sees possible $400 mln pretax write-off NEW YORK, Jan 29 (Reuters) - NRG Energy Inc (NRG.N) CEO David Crane said Friday the company would not pursue the $10 billion construction of two nuclear reactors in Texas, if an ongoing dispute with co-owner CPS Energy causes NRG to miss out on federal loan guarantees needed to finance the project. This could be the second setback for new nuclear reactors in the United States, after FPL Group Inc (FPL.N) said this month it would halt billions of dollars in capital expenditures, including development of two new reactors, after getting a negative rate case ruling from Florida regulators."

"The recent acceptance of $8.3 billion in taxpayer-backed loan guarantees by the builders of the Vogtle nuclear reactors seems like good news for Georgia electric customers. The taxpayers of the entire country will now share in the costs and risks that had been on the shoulders of the customers of the utilities building the two reactors. But don't celebrate too soon. There are more loan guarantees in the pipeline - a total of $54.5 billion, none for Georgia reactors. These guarantees mean that you and I will repay the lender if the project cannot. The $54.5 billion would amount to an exposure of more than $500 for every American family. Some in Congress want unlimited nuclear loan guarantees, which translate to unlimited taxpayer exposure. For each of these loan guarantees, Georgia taxpayers will be exposed to the risks of new nuclear construction in such places as Texas, Maryland and South Carolina. Before long, the costs Georgians have passed on to taxpayers elsewhere through the Vogtle loan guarantees may be outweighed by the economic exposure that they will take on to help build reactors elsewhere."

"Constellation Energy Group's joint venture with a French company to build a nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs is now "first in line" for a federal loan guarantee, according to an influential lawmaker from Maryland. Democratic Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, the House majority leader, said in an interview Thursday that he has been informed by senior administration officials that the Calvert Cliffs project is further along in the loan-guarantee process than competing projects in Texas and South Carolina. That's potentially significant because, at the moment, the Department of Energy has only enough loan authority to offer one project a federal guarantee. Advertisement Hoyer, whose Southern Maryland district includes Calvert Cliffs, site of two existing reactors on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, said company officials were informed about two weeks ago that their application is nearly ready to be reviewed by the credit board that makes loan guarantee recommendations to the energy secretary."

City Council gets: Carbon Free and Nuclear Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy Stockings filled with coal come by the Wyoming trainload to feed the furnaces powering CPS Energy's plants. But impending federal regulation of carbon emissions is causing utilities nationwide to wrestle with alternatives. CPS's position has been that natural-gas prices are too volatile. Solar's still too small. But does that imply nuclear is just right? San Antonio has been locked in stiff debate over that question this year. Local environmental and energy activists scored a key victory when they got language supporting the proposed doubling of the South Texas (Nuclear)Project stripped from CPS's May rate hike.

NRG's board of directors has unanimously rejected Exelon Corp.'s unsolicited takeover bid, NRG announced November 24. Howard Cosgrove, chairman of the NRG board, said in a press statement that the "Exelon offer is inadequate, dilutive, significantly undervalues NRG and does not fully reflect the underlying fundamental value of NRG's assets, operations and strategic plan," including its market position and prospects for future growth. NRG, based in Princeton, New Jersey, owns and operates one of the country's largest and most diverse power-generating portfolios, including its 44% stake in the two-reactor South Texas Project. Two additional reactors are being considered for that nuclear power plant. NRG added that Exelon's offer might have required "refinancing of all or a significant amount of NRG's existing indebtedness and yet Exelon has not publicly announced that it has committed financing for the offer."

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has docketed, or accepted for review, a combined license (COL) application for two new reactors at the Victoria County site near Victoria City, Texas. Exelon's application, submitted Sept. 3, is the 11th COL request the agency has accepted for review. The application, minus proprietary or security-related details, is available on the NRC Web site here: http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/col/victoria.html. Exelon seeks approval to build and operate two Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactors (ESBWR) at the site, approximately 13 miles south of Victoria. The NRC currently is reviewing the ESBWR design for possible certification. The staff will consider any findings concerning the design during the review of the Victoria County application. Information on the ESBWR application is available on the NRC Web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/design-cert/esbwr.html.

This is NRC's official timeline chart for reactor licensing by design: AP1000 (Bellafonte, Lee Summer, Harris, Vogtle, Levy Cnty, Turkey Pt) ESBWR (N Anna, Grand Gulf, River Bend, Victoria Cnty, Fermi) EPR(Calvert Cliffs, Callaway, Amarillo Power, Bruneau, Nine Mile Pt) ABWR (South Texas) USAPWR (Commanche Peak)

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will conduct a public meeting in Victoria, Texas, on Thursday, Aug. 7, to discuss how the agency will review an expected Combined License (COL) application for two reactors at the Victoria County site, about 13 miles south of Victoria. The prospective applicant, Exelon, has told the NRC it intends to apply later this year for a license to build and operate two Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactors (ESBWR) at the site.

When visitors traipse through the two nuclear power plants at Bay City, the spent fuel pool is as sure a stop as the Alamo is on the Gray Line Tour. A ladder emerges, and visitors are encouraged to climb it. And so they ascend, one by one, and peer into a 26 x 52-foot pool. The pool - less than a third the dimensions of an Olympic-sized swimming pool, although it's deeper - contains used, radioactive uranium rods, stored beneath 20 feet of water. You can't see much from the top of the ladder, but the message is clear enough: See how small it is? In doing so, however, visitors peer into one of the deepest issues surrounding nuclear expansion - what to do with material that will stay extremely hazardous, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, for tens of thousands of years. It's a challenge the plant's operators, and those who want to build two new nuclear plants there, say has been settled to their satisfaction. "We're in a very good position down there to manage the waste at the site," David Crane, CEO of NRG Energy, one of the partners in the proposed South Texas Project expansion, said this week. NRG would continue to store spent fuel in the pool, then convert it to dry storage. That involves encasing it in concrete on-site. Adding two plants would increase the amount stored, but plant officials say they can do it safely.

All four panelists at Wednesday's forum on nuclear energy agreed the decision to partner in or forgo the expansion of the nuclear South Texas Project will play a large role in shaping San Antonio's economic future. That's where the agreement ended. The San Antonio Clean Technology Forum brought in three national experts to join CPS Energy interim General Manager Steve Bartley. The forum focused on the economics around the utility's plans to partner with NRG Energy to build two more nuclear reactors near Bay City. The utility estimates the project will cost $13 billion and wants to take a 40 percent share. CPS already has spent $276 million on the planning and permitting, and the City Council is expected in October to vote on another $400 million to enable CPS to stay in the project.

Federal researchers are still looking for that silver bullet that will enable them to clean up contaminated and radioactive waters beneath so many toxic heaps, the result of decades of dumping of atomic weapons and nuclear power waste. One of the technologies gaining federal attention is also getting treatment from researchers at Texas A&M, Kingsville. In a partnership with Uranium Resources, Inc., which operates the Kingsville Dome uranium mine a couple miles south of the city, Lee Clapp, associate professor of environmental engineering (left, with imported radioactive waste) is leading a team of students in a study of the ability of hydrogen to clean up shop.

Concerns center on water usage, cost and spent fuel disposal. The future of San Antonio's ever-growing power needs was addressed Aug. 26 in McAllister Fine Arts Center during KSTX's Town Hall forum on energy. While the topic of the forum was all things energy, most of the evening's questions centered on CPS' proposed $10 billion-$13 billion expansion of the South Texas Project nuclear power plant in Bay City, which intends to add two additional nuclear reactors, as well as conversation on use of alternative and renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. Construction for the new reactors, dubbed STP 3 & 4, is slated to begin in 2012. CPS' use of renewable resources, including solar, wind and natural gas, equals over 11 percent of the city's peak energy demand, according to the company's Web site. The Web site also lists a goal to increase that percentage to 20 percent by 2020.

Nuclear reactors in the United States should be phased out, and replaced by technologies that don't threaten public health with the emission of radioactive chemicals, urges the Cancer Prevention Coalition. A recent energy bill sponsored by Congressional Republicans proposed building 100 new nuclear reactors across the United States in the next 20 years. The proposal, which would double the current U.S. total of 104 operating nuclear reactors, would amount to a nuclear renaissance, as no new reactors have been ordered since 1978. Concerns about global warming gave utilities the idea for this revival since reactors don't emit greenhouse gases while generating power, and utilities have stopped closing old reactors while proposing 33 new ones to be sited in New England, throughout the South and Southeast, and in Texas, Utah and Idaho.

Ten billion or $22 billion? What does it matter how much it costs to build two new nuclear power plants in Matagorda County if a hijacked airliner comes crashing down into the equation? Better yet, where do the billions go if South Texas Project's best can't pull enough water from the Guadalupe River to cool their reactors?

In 1989, Sacramento voters agreed to shut down their utility's nuclear power plant, rejecting warnings that their electricity bills would skyrocket. Twenty years later, the area has among the lowest electricity rates in California, even as the Sacramento Municipal Utility District considers a 13 percent increase. That's a message former state lawmaker Tom Hayden and others involved in the 1989 campaign say the federal government should note. Hayden held a news conference Friday in the capital to mark the 20th anniversary of the vote and urge the federal government to invest in conservation and renewable energy. The U.S. Energy Department is evaluating loan guarantees to four companies planning new nuclear plants. The reactors being considered are in Maryland, Georgia, South Carolina and Texas.

The public conversation about expansion of the South Texas Project nuclear facility has been surprisingly low-key. On the other hand, this isn't a debate about a new sports arena or protecting trees. This is about complexity: the city's future energy sources in an uncertain global marketplace weighed against the unprecedented cost of the expansion, and other community investments San Antonio will have to forgo if it commits to expansion. Mayor Julián Castro and others I've spoken to in the leadership community tend to frame their eventual decision as an economic one that can't be made until CPS Energy puts a price on the project. Preliminary estimates by pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear interests have varied wildly from the $20 billion range down to last week's estimate of $10 billion made by the builder, NRG Energy. The CPS staff will deliver its much-anticipated estimate at the June 29 board meeting. After that, expect the public conversation to intensify in advance of a City Council vote in the fall.

"Heavily subsidized by taxpayers and ratepayers, nuclear power is susceptible to delay, cost overruns and significant environmental risks. Investing billions into more nuclear power threatens to derail funding that would be better spent on energy efficiency and safer, cleaner renewable energy. Moody's advises investors that nuclear projects frequently lead to financial crunch and credit rating drops. The two South Texas Project reactors proposed for the existing Bay City site were supposed to lead the so-called "nuclear renaissance," but there has been strong citizen and legal opposition and the cost has already skyrocketed. Estimates now exceed $18 billion, three times original projections. No shovel has yet been turned and no license granted."

"EnergySolutions Inc. assured its investors Thursday that trainloads of depleted uranium from a government cleanup in South Carolina will end up in Utah as originally planned -- but the assertion was quickly contradicted by Gov. Gary Herbert's office. Herbert's spokeswoman says a deal the governor struck Monday with the Department of Energy would keep the two trains of depleted uranium out of the state for good. "We take the Department of Energy at its word," said spokeswoman Angie Welling. She said the governor remains confident in the agreement "despite the rhetoric from EnergySolutions" that the waste is being detoured only temporarily to Texas,. "

"EnergySolutions Inc. assured its investors Thursday that trainloads of depleted uranium from a government cleanup in South Carolina will end up in Utah as originally planned -- but the assertion was quickly contradicted by Gov. Gary Herbert's office. Herbert's spokeswoman says a deal the governor struck Monday with the Department of Energy would keep the two trains of depleted uranium out of the state for good. "We take the Department of Energy at its word," said spokeswoman Angie Welling. She said the governor remains confident in the agreement "despite the rhetoric from EnergySolutions" that the waste is being detoured only temporarily to Texas,. "