Duke Energy is weighing the issue of how to replace the power generated by its troubled Crystal River nuclear plant in Florida, which the company has announced that it will permanently shut down.
One option is the construction of a new plant fired by natural gas, given the low price and abundant supply of that fuel source. Such a plant could come online as early as 2018, Duke said on Tuesday.
The Crystal River plant, in Citrus County, Fla., has been closed since 2009, when a crack was found in a concrete containment barrier when the plant was undergoing refueling and the replacement of its steam generators. More cracks were caused by repair work in 2011, leading the company to evaluate the risks, costs, and scope of any further repairs, Progress Energy Florida, a Duke subsidiary, said in a statement.
In 2012, a report commissioned on the plant found that while it would be technically possible to complete the repairs, any such work would carry increased risks, delays and much higher costs. ?This has been an arduous process of modeling, engineering, analysis and evaluation over many months,? Jim Rogers, chief executive of Duke Energy, said in a statement. ?The decision was very difficult but it is the right choice.?
In a post-Fukushima world in which regulators are tasked with rigorously policing nuclear safety, ailing plants like Crystal River are less likely to survive than they once were, one analyst suggested on Wednesday. ?It?s very reflective of the increased stringency with which existing plants are being looked at,? said John Dean, president of JD Energy, an energy and environmental forecasting firm based in Frederick, Md. ?We are seeing a level of scrutiny that we?ve never seen before.?
Duke faced potential costs of more than $3 billion to repair Crystal River, Mr. Dean said, setting the plant apart from other older nuclear stations. But even if it had restarted, it would have faced the same regulatory rigor and some local opposition. Similar concerns have arisen about plants like Vermont Yankee, which the Vermont Senate voted to have shut down, a move blocked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Indian Point in New York, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said he wants closed.
The 2011 accident at Japan?s Fukushima Daiichi plant has led to more stringent safety testing at nuclear plants in the United States under changes adopted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ?It increased the level of scrutiny,? said Dave McIntyre, a commission spokesman.
7:49 p.m. | Updated
On Wednesday, for example, Representatives Barbara Boxer of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats, sent a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expressing concern about documents indicating that utilities have long since been aware of design problems with steam generators at the San Onofre nuclear power plant in California, completed two decades ago. The waterfront plant has been shut down for production for more than a year, since a radiation leak led inspectors to discover that hundreds of steam generator tubes were damaged.
Concern about the age of many American nuclear plants is exacerbated by the fact that 72 of them have had their original 40-year operating licenses extended for another 20 years, Mr. McIntyre of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission noted. The oldest plant is Oyster Creek in New Jersey, which began operating in 1969; the newest is Watts Bar in Tennessee, which went online in 1996.
Nationally, four new units are under construction: two at the Southern Company?s Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro, Ga., in Georgia, and two at South Carolina Electric and Gas?s V.C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station in Sumner, S.C.
Despite increasing demand for carbon-free power generation, the future of nuclear plants is clouded by the abundance of domestic natural gas, which has led many utilities to embrace that fuel for power generators. That has eased the pressure on operators to keep nuclear plants open, especially if there are questions about their safety.
?There is more of a feeling that because you have very low natural gas prices, there is another alternative out there,? Mr. Dean said.
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