{"id":30555,"date":"2018-02-06T07:10:43","date_gmt":"2018-02-06T12:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30555"},"modified":"2018-02-06T07:10:43","modified_gmt":"2018-02-06T12:10:43","slug":"nuclear-reactors-bankrupting-their-owners-closing-early","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30555","title":{"rendered":"Nuclear Reactors, Bankrupting Their Owners, Closing Early"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nuclear Reactors, Bankrupting Their Owners, Closing Early<\/a><\/h3>\n
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On January 22, FirstEnergy Corporation announced that its faulty and nearly-self-destructed Davis-Besse power reactor east of Toledo, Ohio, will be closed well before its license expires. But the shutdown is not because the reactor represents reckless endangerment of public health and safety. FirseEnergy was fine with that. No, the old rattle trap can\u2019t cover its costs any more, not with the electricity market dominated by cheaper natural gas, and renewable wind and solar.<\/p>\n

Davis-Besse\u2019s early shutdown date has not been announced, but CFO James Pearson of FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co., the corporate division in charge of the wreck, said the reactor will close if lawmakers don\u2019t approve a taxpayer bailout.<\/p>\n

FirstEnergy had said the financial sky was falling in March 2017. Chief nuclear officer Sam Belcher [his real name] told the Toldeo Blade<\/em> then \u2014 as the firm was floating the bailout measure (SB 128) through the Ohio legislature \u2014 \u201cIn the absence of something happening, [taxpayer-funded handout to the private, investor-owned firm] we\u2019re going to have to make some tough decisions.\u201d So far, state lawmakers have refused to save the decrepit reactor with state taxes. They cite old-fashioned market competition, and the failure of previous subsidies to save the mature, well-established reactor industry once led by the now bankrupt Westinghouse.<\/p>\n

Serious accidents at David-Besse in 1977, 1985, 1998, and 2002 endangered its neighbors. The most hair-raising was the discovery in 2002 that corrosion had eaten through more than 6-inches of the reactor head\u2019s carbon steel. The corrosion went undetected by federal and company inspectors for decades. Having gouged a hole in the reactor cover the size of a football, the corrosion left only 3\u20448 inch of steel holding back the high-pressure coolant. A break would have caused a massive loss-of-coolant accident and out-of-control overheating, resulting in catastrophic uranium fuel melting (known as a \u201cmeltdown\u201d) and massive radiation releases.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nuclear Reactors, Bankrupting Their Owners, Closing Early On January 22, FirstEnergy Corporation announced that its faulty and nearly-self-destructed Davis-Besse power reactor east of Toledo, Ohio, will be closed well before its license expires. But the shutdown is not because the reactor represents reckless endangerment of public health and safety. FirseEnergy was fine with that. No, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5493,18366,18365,12087,579,5004,18367,15035],"class_list":["post-30555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-counterpunch","tag-electricity-market","tag-firstenergy-corporation","tag-john-laforge","tag-nuclear-power","tag-nuclear-reactors","tag-taxpayer-bailout","tag-westinghouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30556,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30555\/revisions\/30556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}