Re: Mook's quote about nuclear being a "low grade heat". Is it true?

From: Matthew Beasley (dontspam_beasleys_at_teleport.com)
Date: 07/13/04 

Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 02:34:11 GMT

"daestrom" <daestrom@NO_SPAM_HEREtwcny.rr.com> wrote in message
news:57hIc.30366$yd5.5787@twister.nyroc.rr.com...

-major snip-

> In the mid 90's, there were two schools of thought. Some predicted
the end
> of nuclear power, while a few predicted the opposite.
>
> The first group were often looking at single-plant owners that had
poor
> track records. Those owners suffered from a different sort of
approach to
> operations. Often, costs were being controlled at the price of
equipment
> reliability (i.e. poor maintenance). There are a great many things
that can
> take a plant off-line that are *not* required for plant/public safety.
The
> owners would only fund maintenance for items that were required by NRC
and
> other regulatory requirements.
>
> I know it seems silly, but they figured that if the plant had a poor
> operating year, then the only way to 'balance' the books was to reduce
costs
> and cut back on non-safety-related maintenance. Middle managers were
> rewarded for not spending money on maintanence and upper management
did not
> like to see any budget increases. They didn't see a connection
between poor
> maintenance of non-safety equipment and poor performance. Many's the
time I
> heard, "That's not safety-related, so we don't have the money in the
budget
> to fix it." So the capacity factor suffered and the economic outlook
for
> such plants under deregulation was grim. In fairness, they were
> *predicting* future economics based on past performance. Not an
> unreasonable approach, but it ignores possible operational
improvements.
> (i.e. as one quote, 'The net present value is nearly zero and
sometimes even
> negative')
>

The operators that sold plants only to have the plants to become
profitable under new management shouldn't feel too bad. They only need
to look at the operators that assumed that because they weren't able to
operate profitably, nobody else could, so they shut down the plants.
Now the ones who decided to shut down the plants are paying for
decommissioning rather than walking away with the sale proceeds.

In addition, I am certain that the 2000 power crisis would have been
TOTALLY different if Rancho Seco and Trojan had been online rather than
in the process of dismemberment.

Matthew

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