Duke & Progress merger, greener or browner

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/04/business/energy-environment/duke-energy-merger-creates-largest-us-utility.html?_r=1

This is one of the few companies that can build new nukes. At a last minute switch that smacks of back office dealings, the ceo's were switched. Does this mean less agressive nuclear power?
Duke-Progress merger puts restart of Florida reactor in doubt - Chicago Tribune

The key to natural gas versus fixing the nuc and adding more according to Rogers is the price of natural gas. That makes me think that the nuke won't be turned back on, and more combined cycle plants added. Depending on your point of view one is better than the other. From the ghg hawk pov this is a bad thing, from the german green pov a good one. One thing for sure is Roger can play politics and Duke is a leading contributor to democrats and republicans.

Duke was one of the major proponents of ghg cap and trade, and got special favors for its coal operations in the bill. The new company may be even more influential

Lobbyists for cap and trade face daunting task| Reuters

 

The merger is old news, the new news is that it just went through, with duke telling all the regulators that Johnson, the progress CEO would be head of the new company. In less than a day after he took over he got a big golden handshake, and the company CEO was Rogers again. Regulators are investigating. Did they have this plan all along and lie to regulators or did something happen? People at progress are worried there will be massive layoffs, that the progress boards would not have allowed, but the new board is 10:5 Duke to Progress. Duke claims it was about the nuclear strategy.

The first question is will the damaged florida nuclear plant be repaired. It is much less expensive to repair it than to build a new nuclear plant. Rogers said that the question boils down to the price of natural gas. The switch at CEO means it is likely Duke will not repair it. That means they will likely not push plans to build the nuclear power plants on the table. The new company has 6 of the most likely nuclear power plants to be built, and the question is if killing these plans is a good idea or not.

If cap and trade when through, then Duke would have been paid lots of money to build nukes and shut down some coal. At today's prices though new natural gas and wind are less expensive than nuclear power.

Duke has great political power, both at the state and national levels. If they did lie to regulators, what should be done to punish them. 85% of the new merged company is regulated.

Duke is already mandated to be at least 10$ renewable in NC by 2020, and is almost all coal and nuclear today. IMHO the nuclear strategy doesn't make much sense in the south east today. No reason for them to add any IGCC there either.[/quote][/quote]

 

I thought they priced it at around $1.3B, but costs could be higher. Insurance was suposed to cover about 3/4, but we don't know what is going on, and there are secrets. Progress wanted to build Levy County for around $20B for 2.3GW of nuclear power. Maybe some of the secrets will come out, either way florida residents not Duke are likely to pay.

Secrets about Crystal River nuclear plant could be revealed at hearings this week - Tampa Bay Times

Note, instead of spending $20B on Levy County power plant 2.3GW Nuclear, they could spend less than $7B for 2.5 GW of fast cycling combined cycle natural gas and 1 GW of Solar. This would get rid of most of the green house gas and pollution of closing the same coal plants. Fuel would be more expensive, but solar should decrease in price. As fuel prices go up and solar prices down, more solar could be added with some of that money not spent on nuclear. Wind is good in NC but not very good in Florida, or I would suggest wind with that natural gas plant. Solar utilization is much lower than nuclear, but occurs when florida is at peak power needs.

 

Progress self contracted the repair, instead of hiring a contractor. The repair was claimed to cost around $80M, but they caused structural damage, and that will cost over $1B. The questions are was it negligence and whether insurance will cover the repair. There may be more things that were damaged in the initial repair, and we don't know if costs were kept secret.

If progress can not competently operate nuclear power plants, they may be subject to NRC issues.

 

Yes, this plant was safely shut down for the maintenance/upgrade. Afterwards San Onofre was safely shut down for even more of an upgrade. San Onofre, the plant in southern California then let out small amounts of radiation, and has been shut down since. The california plant is one to worry more about, and I would like it to stay off. This is in a highly populated area that grew since the plant was put into service. SCE seemed to do this maintance correctly and the upgrade still may need to be repaired. This makes the progress repair seem more risky. If insurance won't fully cover Duke repairing the nuclear plant, and something went wrong again, its a very expensive proposition.

San Onofre, Indian Point, and Diablo Canyon are the three that seem to be the riskiest nuclear power plants.