Sep 29, 2024: The case against restarting Three Mile Island’s Unit-1


Radioactive: The Women of Three Mile Island

Did you catch "The Meltdown: Three Mile Island" on Netflix?
TMI remains a danger and TMIA is working hard to ensure the safety of our communities and the surrounding areas.
Learn more on this site and support our efforts. Join TMIA. To contact the TMIA office, call 717-233-7897.

    

PJM’s Capacity Auction: The Real Story

Fossil fuel un-reliability and PJM’s failure to speedily connect new clean resources to the grid are to blame for the 2025/26 auction price spike.
 

 

View of the Herbert A. Wagner Coal Generating Station in Maryland. Fossil fuel plants like Wagner caused the price spike in PJM's latest auction.

On July 30, PJM announced the results of its capacity auction for 2025-2026, which showed total costs of nearly $14.7 billion, compared to last year’s $2.2 billion. There are two major causes for blame: fossil fuel un-reliability and PJM’s failure to speedily connect thousands of megawatts of wind, solar, and storage to the grid. This was foreseeable and preventable, and PJM’s failure to allow for new clean energy to come online and plan for more transmission has forced the bill onto ratepayers. 

In this blog, we’ll break down what happened, and show that solutions are within reach. 

What happened?

PJM’s capacity market is set up to ensure that there is enough electricity to meet demand on the hottest and coldest days of the year. Capacity auctions, which happen annually, occur when power plants are paid to commit to be available, or customers are paid to conserve during emergencies.

For years, PJM has over-relied on fossil fuel power plants, even while affordable new power sources are coming online. Gas plants are prone to fail during extreme weather, such as winter storm Elliott in 2022 – when we need them the most. Since PJM did not account for fossil resource weaknesses in its previous capacity market auctions, customers paid for these plants as if they were reliable. That’s like buying a house at full price only to realize the foundation is crumbling. It now turns out that the repairs are quite expensive.

Last year, PJM took the first step in remedying this problem by changing the way all resources are evaluated for reliability, resulting in a more accurate process known as “marginal capacity accreditation.” According to S&P Global, the result was that roughly 26 gigawatts (GW) of gas and coal resources were shown to be unreliable, and thus could no longer claim to benefit PJM at their assumed full output during all weather conditions. 

This chart shows the drivers for the change in PJM’s capacity prices between the last auction (for the 2024-5 year) and the most recent auction (2025-6). Both supply and demand changes drove the price increase. Negative values indicate reductions in capacity in PJM’s system, while positive values indicate additional available capacity. Market changes to better evaluate the reliability of all resources caused the shift in risk periods and resulting additional capacity (far left orange bar), the gas derates, the coal derates, the solar derates, and the changes to the Installed Reserve Margin (IRM). We can see that the reduction in gas capacity is the largest driver for the “tightening” of PJM’s system. Retirements and load growth, while significant, contributed less to the overall price. Only 110 MW (0.1 GW) of new resources came online to help provide capacity; the low number is due mostly to slow interconnection queues. 

Credit: NRDC

As with most markets, when supply falls, prices rise. With 26 GW of gas and coal resources now deemed to be unreliable and therefore not counted in its capacity market, the price of capacity in PJM spiked. Affordability, but not reliability, is now at risk.   

We need not have come to this place. Why? There are over 286 GW of new resources waiting to come online in the interconnection queue. That is far more than the 135 GW of resources that cleared in the PJM auction. Even a fraction of these queued resources could significantly improve reliability and affordability if they were able to come online. 

Unfortunately, PJM has slow-walked interconnection reforms to connect these resources to the grid. This sticker shock is a direct result of delays in getting new energy online, together with the transmission to support it. Many of these resources would have absorbed and buffered the price increases by increasing supply.

Fewer new resources and imports participated in the 2025/26 auction than ever before, showing a clear downward trend.

Credit:

PJM Interconnection, “2025/2026 Base Residual Auction Report,” July 30, 2024.

This doesn’t mean we need more gas – on the contrary, it shows that fossil fuels are expensive and unreliable, and a diverse resource mix will benefit the region far into the future. These high prices are sending a signal to build, and PJM shouldn’t stand in the way of progress. Instead, PJM seems more interested in keeping aging and expensive fossil plants alive, such as Brandon Shores in Maryland, rather than expediting the interconnection of new resources to the PJM power system.

What about retirements and load growth?

Around 6 GW of fossil plants retired since the last auction. The fossil lobby will say this is due to draconian regulations that are forcing power plants to retire before their time, but the truth is that most of these plants are no longer economically viable. Most of the retiring resources are decades-old coal plants, built in the 1960s, and some are facing bankruptcy. Lower-cost, reliable clean energy can replace even more of them, but only if they can get online – which requires PJM to accelerate the interconnection process. 

Projected load growth of 3.2 GW further strained the system, which is a 2.2% increase over the last planning year. Planning for load growth and retirements is important, but the principal driver of the capacity market price increase was PJM derating the gas plants to reflect their lower reliability value. The gas and coal derating (26 GW) was nearly three times as much as the combination of retirements and load growth. 

How can we fix this?

PJM needs new resources, and quickly. The good news is that  there are currently 268 GW of new resources patiently waiting to come online in PJM, and 95% of those resources are clean. Adding even a fraction of this capacity would dramatically reduce prices. 

To estimate the potential cost savings, we constructed a “no backlog” scenario in which 30% of renewable projects that have been stuck in the queue for at least five years were instead assumed to be operational and had bid into the capacity market. The capacity value of these new resources would amount to an additional 7 GW of supply in the most recent auction. Adding just 7 GW of new entry could have lowered the market clearing price from $269.92/MW-day to as low as $98, or by as much as 63%. PJM delays in implementing interconnection queue reforms have effectively blocked new entry, driving up capacity costs and failing to mitigate the price impact for consumers. 

The 2025/2026 BRA cleared 135 GW of capacity at a price of $269.92/MW-day. This graph reconstructs the supply curve that produced actual clearing results compared to a “no backlog” supply scenario that includes 7 GW of capacity value from new renewable entry. Additional capacity from backlogged resources could have lowered the market clearing price to under $100/MW-day.

Credit:

NRDC

There are three things PJM can do to bring down prices. 

First, PJM must comply with FERC’s interconnection Order 2023 as soon as possible. PJM has refused to comply with the order so far, but after this auction it should be able to see the urgency of meaningful interconnection reform and comply as soon as possible. 

Second, the region needs new, well-planned transmission. A new report from Americans for a Clean Energy Grid shows that the rate of building new transmission lines is at an all-time low. If PJM’s transmission planning had a grade, it would get a D-. FERC Order 1920 charts a path toward the grid of the future and requires that RTOs, like PJM, create a process to plan for new transmission that provides regional benefits. Doing so will help to add many gigawatts of clean capacity to the power grid.

Third, PJM should examine market barriers that could be quickly fixed before the next capacity market auction in December. For example, customers in PJM currently pay hundreds of millions of dollars to keep at least two coal plants on-line for reliability reasons. Remarkably, neither of these plants bid into the capacity market this year, significantly tightening the supply in the region. PJM should require these plants, and another other future plants in such circumstances, to bid into the capacity market. If they did, customers in Maryland would have saved up to $18 per month, and the PJM region as a whole would have saved $5 billion. 

PJM has the tools in its toolbox to bring down prices and ensure a reliable, clean supply of electricity for years to come. If it acts now, these price increases can just be a bump in the road to a more affordable, resilient grid.

Russia restricts enriched uranium exports to the United States

By Reuters

 

Beaver Valley: MSIV FAILED TO CLOSE DURING SURVEILLANCE
 
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Operations Center
 
EVENT REPORTS FOR
11/12/2024 - 11/13/2024
 
Power Reactor
Event Number: 57420
Facility: Beaver Valley
Region: 1     
State: PA
Unit: [2] [] []
RX Type: [1] W-3-LP,[2] W-3-LP
NRC Notified By: Shawn Keener
HQ OPS Officer: Robert A. Thompson
Notification Date: 11/12/2024
Notification Time: 01:21 [ET]
Event Date: 11/11/2024
Event Time: 17:31 [EST]
Last Update Date: 11/12/2024
Emergency Class: Non Emergency
10 CFR Section:
50.72(b)(2)(i) - Plant S/D Reqd By TS
50.72(b)(3)(v)(C) - Pot Uncntrl Rad Rel
50.72(b)(3)(v)(D) - Accident Mitigation
Person (Organization):
Schroeder, Dan (R1DO)
Power Reactor Unit Info
Unit
SCRAM Code
RX Crit
Initial PWR
Initial RX Mode
Current PWR
Current RX Mode
2
N
N
0
Hot Standby
0
Hot Standby
Event Text
MSIV FAILED TO CLOSE DURING SURVEILLANCE

The following information was provided by the licensee via phone and email:

"At 2250 EST on November 11, 2024, a technical specification required shutdown was initiated at Beaver Valley Power Station Unit 2. The following technical specification limiting conditions of operation (LCOs) were entered at 1939 EST on November 11, 2024:

"LCO 3.6.3, containment isolation valves, condition C, one or more penetration flow paths with one containment isolation valve inoperable; required action C.1, isolate the affected penetration flow path by use of at least one closed and de-activated automatic valve, closed manual valve, or blind flange.

"LCO 3.7.2, main steam isolation valves (MSIVs), condition C, one or more MSIVs inoperable in mode 2 or 3; required action C.1, close MSIV within 8 hours.

"These technical specification required actions will not be completed within the completion time; therefore, a technical specification required shutdown was initiated, and this event is being reported as a four-hour, non-emergency notification per 10 CFR 50.72(b)(2)(i).

"With one main steam isolation valve inoperable, this condition is also being reported as an eight-hour, non-emergency notification per 10 CFR 50.72(b)(3)(v).

"There was no impact on the health and safety of the public or plant personnel.

"The NRC Resident Inspector has been notified."

The following additional information was obtained from the licensee in accordance with Headquarters Operations Officers Report Guidance:

The failure occurred during planned surveillance testing in preparation for reactor startup.

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Operations Center

EVENT REPORTS FOR
11/12/2024 - 11/13/2024

57419

Power Reactor

Event Number: 57419

Facility: Pilgrim
Region: 1     State: MA
Unit: [1] [] []
RX Type: [1] GE-3
NRC Notified By: David Noyes
HQ OPS Officer: Kerby Scales 

Notification Date: 11/11/2024
Notification Time: 16:49 [ET]
Event Date: 11/11/2024
Event Time: 15:10 [EST]
Last Update Date: 11/11/2024

Emergency Class: Non Emergency
10 CFR Section:
50.72(b)(2)(xi) - Offsite Notification

Person (Organization):
Schroeder, Dan (R1DO)

Power Reactor Unit Info

Unit SCRAM Code RX Crit Initial PWR Initial RX Mode Current PWR Current RX Mode
1 N N 0 Defueled 0 Defueled

Event Text

OFFSITE NOTIFICATION

The following is summary of information provided by the licensee via phone and email:

On November 11, 2024, at 1510 EST, site personnel identified what appeared to be water bubbling up from the pavement adjacent to the sanitary lift station 'C' outside of the facility industrial area. Less than 100 gallons of non-radiological sanitary water ran to a catch basin connected to permitted outfall number 007. Visual inspection did not identify any odor or indication of flow at outfall number 007 discharge. By 1530, the lift station pumps had been secured, sources of influent to the lift station were removed from service, and efforts were underway to pump the tank.

At 1611, an offsite notification was made to the Environmental Protection Agency's Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division in accordance with Section B of the station's National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Permit No. 0003557. The event was associated with leakage from underground sewage system piping from a non-radiological underground tank and lift station.

The NRC Resident Inspector will be notified.

a bit of real-world data (from the fossil fuel side)

https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/The-Future-of-Nuclear-Power-is-Wrought-with-Challenges.html

Bob Schaeffer, Public Policy Communications

Talen Energy down after agency rejects Amazon data center agreement ( RTRS ) Mon Nov 04,2024 05:27AM EST ** Shares of Talen Energy down 14.3% to $149.02 premarket ** The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Friday rejected an amended interconnection agreement for an Amazon data center connected directly to a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania ** News weighs on other nuclear−power utilities: Vistra down 5.9%, Constellation Energy falls 7.8%, and Public Service Enterprise drops 3.8% ** Brokerage Jefferies in a note on Sunday said rejection likely results in TLN and Amazon pursuing a new path rather than agreement via FERC ** "Out of the four IPPs, we still see the most value potential from Talen, assuming that Amazon still opts to move forward with its data center efforts at Susquehanna" − Jefferies ** Says data centers make up 17% of their valuation for co, 44% for CEG, 22% for VST, and 8% for PEG (Reporting by Seher Dareen in Bengaluru) ((Seher.Dareen@thomsonreuters.com;)) © Thompson Reuters. 2024. The information provided is reprinted with Reuters permission.

Hello community!
 
We hope you all had a fun and safe Halloween and are enjoying your autumn festivities! First, we want to thank everyone who joined us at CRAFTING Our Power, the party to celebrate our first fellowship and share some education about Fermi 2, the nuclear industry, and looking towards a safe and just energy future.
 
We've got some more important news for you about staying healthy in the event of a nuclear crisis as well as updates on current events. As usual, our news comes from the unwavering watchdogging by our very own Grandmother Jessie. Let's get into it!
Got KI?
 
Did you know? When exposed to nuclear radiation, your thyroid will absorb the radioactive iodine and make you susceptible to illness? Taking potassium iodide (KI) when exposed will neutralize the iodine and protect you from thyroid cancer. Did you also know? Despite living in the zone of threat of nuclear danger, most people are not informed of the threat of radiation exposure and there is no plan to disseminate KI to the public in the event of an accident. Go to our website to see how close you are to Fermi and maybe visit your local pharmacist for some KI tablets.
Manhattan Project Waste: Update
 
The most recent nuclear drama has been the transportation of nuclear waste from New York to Michigan, specifically to Wayne County. This waste is the result of the United States’ first program for developing nuclear weapons: the infamous Manhattan Project, under the direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer. The waste would be relocated 25 miles west of Detroit on Interstate 94, allowing New York to decontaminate and industrialize the original waste site. The cities of Belleville, Romulus, Canton Township, Van Buren Township, and Wayne County have filed a lawsuit over this relocation: if New York doesn’t want its own waste, why should Michigan hold the bag? Shipments have been halted for now, but the lawsuit has been moved from state to federal court.
Nuclear Energy is NOT Carbon-Neutral!
 
Pro-nuclear advocates claim nuclear energy is the way to go for a net zero carbon economy, but this illusion is fraught with misinformation and outright lies. We’ve included a list of talking points from Beyond Nuclear hacking into this myth. For one, while new reactors may not produce carbon while in operation, the amount of carbon produced in their construction and in the mining, milling, and transportation of uranium ore as well as the transportation and storage of waste far outweighs what the reactor would spare us. Read this month’s insert to learn more!
 
Thanks for supporting us and a safer world powered by renewables.
We’re in this together!
 
Peace and Safety,
 
The CRAFT Team
Donate to Support

Citizen's Resistance At Fermi Two (CRAFT) is an Indigenous-led, grassroots, organization, committed to an accessible, fair, and just energy future for all! CRAFT originally formed after the Christmas Day 1993 incident at the Fermi2 nuclear reactor that dumped 1.5 million gallons of untreated toxic, radioactive water into Lake Erie. We will continue to push for the closing of Fermi2, and for a safer world powered by renewables.

Please see below for the Seattle FOX 13 piece that ran after the 10/22 webinar hosted by the Columbia Riverkeeper featuring Leona Morgan, M.V. Ramana, and Joshua Frank. The TV version is much longer and has more details on what Amazon is agreeing to, how many modules, etc. than the written article below so definitely go to the link to view the 3:40 long news clip.
 
Thanks,


Sara Barczak

 

 

https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/wa-faces-energy-crisis 

WA nears energy crisis as Amazon funds nuclear reactors, sparking controversy

Published  October 28, 2024 1:34pm   PDT
 

WASHINGTON - A new report indicates Washington could face an energy crisis within five years as its power capacity approaches its limit. 

The growing demands from AI and major tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are driving this strain on the state's energy resources.

As the ink dries on the deal Amazon just signed with Energy Northwest and X-energy, investing in four new nuclear reactors along the Columbia River in Richland — near Hanford, the most contaminated nuclear site in the U.S. — some groups are asking why we’re risking this again?

"Nuclear kills," Leona Morgan, an indigenous organizer said during a panel hosted by the organization Columbia Riverkeeper. "And nuclear is killing my people. Nuclear is what we call 'a slow genocide.’"

Morgan says the health impacts her family and other indigenous people face stem from radioactive exposure and contamination on their land. 

"Just because we can’t see it, it’s out of sight out of mind, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. And if you need proof of it, come visit us," Morgan added. "See an abandoned uranium mine anywhere in the world? On Navajo, we have over 2,000." 

The panel came just after Amazon's SMR announcement.

 

Columbia Riverkeeper maintains nuclear energy is far from clean. 

"It’s the most expensive, complicated, dirtiest way to boil water," said Morgan, explaining that the carbon footprint of nuclear is only counted at the power plant, not during the process to building it and the toxic waste left behind. 

Billions in federal and local funds go toward nuclear site decommissioning and cleaning every year. 

Washington state just approved a record $3 billion to spend on cleanup at the Hanford site this year. 

Money Amazon is investing in Small Modular Reactors near Hanford could be better invested in other renewables like solar, wind and hydro, according to Columbia Riverkeeper, which says nuclear isn’t the clean energy savior that big tech makes it out to be. 

"When it comes to companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon, the public has plenty of reasons to be angry at them," panelist M.V. Ramana said. "These companies steal your data, they do bad things, they want to pretend to be good citizens. The reason they can use investment in nuclear energy as a way to pretend they are good citizens is because the hard work of convincing the public has already been done by the nuclear lobby." 

Ramana is the author of the book "Nuclear is not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change." He says we should focus on energy conservation instead. 

Kelly Rae, who works in corporate communications with Energy Northwest, tells Fox 13 Seattle that the permits for the SMR’s haven’t been secured yet, although lawmakers from Jay Inslee down are already lining up behind the project. 

Rae says Amazon’s funding will pay for a feasibility study over the next two years, in which after they are hopeful to fund the SMR’s. If they’re successful, the energy generated from the first four reactors would be available to Amazon only. Rae says after that, other utility companies and municipalities could come to the table to help Amazon fund additional reactors to provide energy for Washingtonians. 

Energy Northwest is a collection of 28 utility districts, including Seattle City Light, Tacoma Public Utilities and Snohomish County PUD. Amazon didn’t say how much it's spending on the project, or how much, if any, will come from Energy Northwest.

So far, there aren’t any other small modular reactors like the ones Amazon is investing in, operating in the U.S.

https://www.powermag.com/power-demand-from-data-centers-keeping-coal-fired-plants-online/

 

Power Demand from Data Centers Keeping Coal-Fired Plants Online

Oct 16, 2024

by Darrell Proctor

The power generation sector is looking at numerous ways to provide enough electricity to satisfy demand from data centers. Bloomberg Intelligence recently said its research shows data centers, buildings filled with servers and other computing equipment for data storage and networking that supports operations and artificial intelligence (AI), could be responsible for as much as 17% of all U.S. electricity consumption by 2030. The U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) has said one data center can require 50 times the electricity of a typical office building.

Several technology groups are looking at nuclear powerincluding the use of small modular reactors (SMRs), to meet their electricity needs. Energy analysts have said natural gas, whether burned in large-scale facilities or peaker plants, also will be important.

Power consumption from data centers, though, also is benefiting coal-fired power plants, some of which may be kept running longer than expected in order to meet the increased demand for electricity from companies such as Google, Meta, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and others. Some coal-fired plants already have gotten a reprieve in areas where more energy is needed as data centers come online, or are in the planning stages.

The topic reportedly was discussed when C-suite executives from Alphabet (Google), AWS, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia, and OpenAI met with government officials in Washington, D.C., last month to discuss ways to support U.S. infrastructure for AI, including data centers. Part of the discussion was about repurposing old coal sites as data center campuses. The DOE has said it will share resources with data center developers about how to repurpose former coal mines, or coal-fired power plants, to be home to data centers. Energy DELTA Lab, a collaborative effort that includes Dominion Energy Virginia and Appalachian Power, already is working on the Data Center Ridge project at a former mining site in Wise County, Virginia.

Life Extension

Maksim Sonin, an energy expert who has collaborated with several companies, including Chevron and Shell, and is a Sloan Fellow at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, said, “Driven by recent trends in AI development, projected power consumption by data centers in the U.S. is expected to increase in the range from 8% to 17% by 2030—or potentially even higher, as progress in AI technologies is not linear but exponential, as seen in Silicon Valley today.” Sonin told POWER, “With this sharp upward trend, it is highly likely that coal-fired power plants will remain a part of the U.S. energy system for longer, although their role is expected to diminish,” as more renewable and other energy resources come online.

“Coal plants will have an extension of their life due to data center demand,” said Tim Echols, a commissioner and vice-chair of the Georgia Public Service Commission. Echols’ home state is actively recruiting data centers and manufacturing facilities to provide jobs and boost local economies. It already added a significant new source of power when two nuclear reactors entered service at Plant Vogtle last year and this year, providing about 2,200 MW of new electricity output in the state. Plant Vogtle, where two other reactors have operated since the 1980s, is now the nation’s largest nuclear power plant, with more than 4,600 MW of generation capacity.

Echols told POWER in an Oct. 16 interview that Georgia is preparing for a large increase in power demand. “There could be a massive increase of capacity approved next year. Data centers will account for most of it,” he said.

How to satisfy data center power demand is being discussed by utilities and energy officials nationwide. Allan Schurr, chief commercial officer with Texas-based Enchanted Rock, which provides microgrid backup power solutions to data centers and other critical infrastructure, said the debate also should include onsite generation.

“AI data centers require more generating capacity—that’s a given,” said Schurr. “While we are waiting for nuclear power to bring substantial additional baseload to the grid, we don’t want to needlessly ‘recarbonize’ our energy resources by extending the life of older, less-efficient fossil generation plants like coal.

Schurr told POWER, “Today’s grid has significant available capacity with the exception of about 500 hours per year that can be mitigated with dispatchable generation. And the grid needs those 500 hours of additional capacity so we can continue to add solar and wind resources into the energy mix. Data centers can facilitate this dispatchable generation from their own onsite generation, making them assets to the grid instead of liabilities.”

The utilities and grid operators arguing to keep coal-fired plants online say it makes sense to keep existing baseload power sources operating, at least until more nuclear or renewable energy is available. That’s why states including Nebraska, Virginia, and Utah among others, have plans to keep coal-fired units running to support the supply of electricity.

Virginia is World Data Center Leader

DC Byte, a UK-based research group that tracks data centers worldwide, has said the U.S. is the world leader in the buildout of data centers. The group said Virginia—home to about half of all U.S. data centers—is the largest data center market worldwide. Loudoun County in Virginia is known as “Data Center Alley.”

PJM Interconnection, the grid operator that serves Virginia, the District of Columbia, and 12 other states, has conceded some coal-fired power plants will need to continue operating, and miles of new transmission lines must be built, to satisfy ever-increasing demand for electricity. Other power sources will help—Japan’s Sumitomo Corp. on Tuesday announced it will partner with CEP Solar (based in Richmond, Virginia) to add 1.5 GW of solar and battery energy storage to support data center growth in the region.

“The system is in a major transition right now, and it’s going to continue to evolve,” Ken Seiler, PJM’s senior vice president in charge of planning, said in a December stakeholders’ meeting about how the grid operator can supply more power as it waits for more renewable energy resources to come online. “And we’ll look for opportunities to do everything we can to keep the lights on as it goes through this transition.”

DC Byte in its 2024 Global Data Center Index wrote, “Virginia currently has over 6 GW in the development pipeline including projects under active construction as well as Committed and Early Stage campuses.” The group noted, “Cloud is the greatest driver of growth in Virginia. AWS [Amazon Web Services] operates over 40 facilities in the state and Microsoft operates a massive campus in Boydton as well as a smaller facility in Loudoun County. Both companies have more self-build campuses in the pipeline and are also major colocation tenants across the market.”

DC Byte added, “In 2022, Loudoun County’s primary power supplier Dominion Energy announced that it would not be able to meet power demand in the market. Delays in power delivery are expected until 2025 or 2026 while new power infrastructure is built. In the meantime, Dominion Energy would be providing power incrementally.” Dominion officials have said they project that power demand in the utility’s territory will increase by 85% over the next 15 years.

The 1,100-MW Fort Martin Power Station is located in Maidsville, West Virginia, on the Monongahela River. It has two coal-fired units. It is owned by Monongahela Power (Mon Power), part of FirstEnergy Corp. Source: Mon PowerThe 1,100-MW Fort Martin Power Station is located in Maidsville, West Virginia, on the Monongahela River. It has two coal-fired units. It is owned by Monongahela Power (Mon Power), part of FirstEnergy Corp. Source: Mon Power

PJM is backing a $5.2 billion plan for new transmission lines across several states to bring power to Virginia. The lines would carry electricity produced at several coal-fired power plants that have been slated for closure, including the Longview, Fort Martin, and Harrison stations in West Virginia.

In Maryland, meanwhile, PJM has asked Texas-based Talen Energy Corp. to keep Brandon Shores and Herbert A. Wagner—two other coal-fired facilities located near Baltimore—online at least through 2028. The plants had been scheduled to close by June 2025.

Operating Extension for Omaha Coal Plant

The 644-MW North Omaha Station in Nebraska was scheduled to close in 2023. Instead, Google and Meta data centers caused the area’s power demand to spike, which led the Omaha Public Power District to decide that the two coal-fired units at North Omaha were needed to maintain reliability of the local power grid. The utility has said it will keep the coal-burning units online at least through 2026.

One Google data center is in Papillon, a town about 12 miles southwest of Omaha. DC Byte said the Google facility uses more power than the Meta office, and added that its data shows Google uses more electricity in Nebraska than it uses elsewhere in the U.S. The company also is planning more data centers in the state.

Data from Meta and other groups shows that the company’s data center in Sarpy County, about 25 miles southwest of Omaha, last year used almost as much power as the North Omaha station produced. The Meta campus includes nine separate complexes, encompassing about 4 million square feet.

The Omaha Public Power District has estimated that as much as two-thirds of the projected growth in power demand around Omaha will come from data centers, which are being built on what used to be farmland. Local officials have said opposition to wind and solar farms in rural areas has curtailed additional renewable energy resources that could supply power. The utility has been developing a 2,800-acre solar power project in rural York County, about 100 miles from Omaha, but area residents have voiced concerns about the installation. The utility also has said regulatory issues have slowed plans to replace coal-fired generation with natural gas-fired units.

Meta’s presence in Omaha was sought by state and local officials; a special electricity rate for industrial customers was created in 2017. That rate was then marketed to Google to entice the search engine giant to build in the area.

Georgia Courting Data Center Operators

Georgia Power is buying electricity from a sister company, Mississippi Power (both are part of Southern Co.), to help meet power demand in Georgia. The deal came after Georgia Power officials reportedly told state regulators that growing demand for electricity would overrun supply by year-end 2025. Georgia officials have been actively looking to bring data centers and manufacturing plants to that state, and Gov. Brian Kemp earlier this year vetoed a bill that would have suspended a tax break for data centers (the bill had bipartisan opposition). Had the bill become law, the tax break would have been under the review of a special commission on data center energy planning.

Kemp in a statement said, “The bill’s language would prevent the issuance of exemption certificates after an abrupt July 1, 2024 deadline for many customers of projects that are already in development—undermining the investments made by high-technology data center operators, customers, and other stakeholders in reliance on the recent extension, and inhibiting important infrastructure and job development.”

Georgia Power has a deal with Mississippi Power to buy 750 MW of electricity through 2028. Mississippi Power is providing the energy from its Victor J. Daniel Electric Generating Plant, better known as Plant Daniel, where two coal-fired units have operated for the past 50 years. The plant also has two natural gas combined-cycle units. It is the state’s largest power plant, with nearly 1.6 GW of generation capacity, including 500 MW from its two coal-fired units.

Mississippi Power had planned to retire the coal-burning steam turbines in 2027. The deal with Georgia Power, though, could extend that lifecycle. Jeffrey Grubb, the utility’s director of resource planning, reportedly was asked by Georgia Power’s lawyers about the agreement, and said, “Because those units would have been either retired or sold off-system and we needed certainty that they would be there to serve our customers.”

Echols, the PUC co-chair, on Wednesday told POWER the contract with Mississippi Power is open to any kind of generation source.

“Our contract with Mississippi Power calls for 750 MW, and it doesn’t matter where it comes from. That may mean an [operating] extension for the coal plant, or it may not,” he said. “Mississippi could do 750 MW of solar plus storage, they could bring in 750 MW of wind power from a neighboring state.”

Echols noted that a move by regulators in 2022 extended operations for two coal-fired units at Georgia Power’s Plant Bowen, one of the nation’s largest coal-burning power plants, with about 3.4 GW of generation capacity. Echols said, “In the 2022 IRP [integrated resource plan] … our commissioners delayed the closure of units 1 and 2 at Plant Bowen. I imagine as we evaluate that in next year’s IRP, we will also delay the closure for another three years. We’ll have to wait and see what the utility is asking for and how the commissioners feel we need to move forward.”

Echols told POWER, “There could be a massive increase of capacity approved next year. Data centers will account for most of it.” Echols also offered, “I think there is a scenario where we approve two more AP1000 [reactors] at Plant Vogtle if the federal government provides bankruptcy insurance or overrun insurance” for another expansion at the site.

Other Efforts

DC Byte has identified Salt Lake City, Utah, as a growing market for data centers. Meta already operates a 4.5-million-square foot complex in Eagle Mountain, Utah, south of Salt Lake City.

State lawmakers have pushed legislation to keep the Intermountain Power Project, a coal-fired station near Delta, Utah, open past the facility’s scheduled 2025 closure date. Officials have looked at ways to have the state take over the plant. Lawmakers this year did pass legislation intended to extend the life of Rocky Mountain Power’s coal-fired stations in Emery County.

Stuart Adams, president of the Utah Senate, during the legislative session this summer said, “The United States has a real problem. We do not have enough power for our data centers. AI development is technology that we have to embrace, and power is the key to it.”

Building more infrastructure to support that AI development was among the reasons those tech company execs met last month on Capitol Hill. Reports said the discussion included repurposing former coal sites to house data center campuses, in part because those sites usually have access to power lines, water, and a local workforce.

The DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Lab, which is leading the “coal-to-X” redevelopment campaign, in a guide to the program wrote, “A retired coal site could even be redeveloped to combine a data center with new clean energy on the same site.”

As Schurr of Enchanted Rock noted, generating onsite power via a microgrid, or through a renewable energy resource, could be preferable to using coal-fired generation. That’s of particular importance for data center operators looking to build in remote areas where they need plenty of land, and where there’s a lack of transmission infrastructure.

Sonin reiterated that coal will play a role in satisfying power demand from data centers, but like Schurr, noted other fuels could work with coal to reduce the environmental impact of keeping coal-fired power plants online.

Sonin told POWER, “Emerging technologies that, for instance, allow for substituting some of the coal with ammonia, a carbon-free hydrogen derivative, through a process known as co-firing, may help address public environmental concerns. Current advancements, particularly the potential for upscaling production trains, could reduce the cost of ammonia facilities by 30% and more, making this chemical a viable solution for cutting emissions from coal plants.”

Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER

 

Tim Judson

Executive Director

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 340

Takoma Park, MD  20912

Pronouns: he/him/his

O: 301-270-6477

E: timj@nirs.org

W: www.nirs.org

 

 

 

On Monday, October 21, 2024 at 02:08:19 PM EDT, 'Tim Judson' via Nuclear Skeptics <nuclear-skeptics@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 

 

Also, further to this area of reporting:

 

Washington Is Giving Tax Breaks to Data Centers That Threaten the State’s Green Energy Push 

https://www.propublica.org/article/data-centers-clean-energy-washington-state

 


From: Tim Judson
Sent: Monday, October 21, 2024 2:02 PM
To: 'Scott Sklar' via Nuclear Skeptics <nuclear-skeptics@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Power Demand from Data Centers Keeping Coal-Fired Plants Online

 


https://www.powermag.com/power-demand-from-data-centers-keeping-coal-fired-plants-online/

 

Power Demand from Data Centers Keeping Coal-Fired Plants Online

Oct 16, 2024

by Darrell Proctor

The power generation sector is looking at numerous ways to provide enough electricity to satisfy demand from data centers. Bloomberg Intelligence recently said its research shows data centers, buildings filled with servers and other computing equipment for data storage and networking that supports operations and artificial intelligence (AI), could be responsible for as much as 17% of all U.S. electricity consumption by 2030. The U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) has said one data center can require 50 times the electricity of a typical office building.

Several technology groups are looking at nuclear powerincluding the use of small modular reactors (SMRs), to meet their electricity needs. Energy analysts have said natural gas, whether burned in large-scale facilities or peaker plants, also will be important.

Power consumption from data centers, though, also is benefiting coal-fired power plants, some of which may be kept running longer than expected in order to meet the increased demand for electricity from companies such as Google, Meta, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and others. Some coal-fired plants already have gotten a reprieve in areas where more energy is needed as data centers come online, or are in the planning stages.

The topic reportedly was discussed when C-suite executives from Alphabet (Google), AWS, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia, and OpenAI met with government officials in Washington, D.C., last month to discuss ways to support U.S. infrastructure for AI, including data centers. Part of the discussion was about repurposing old coal sites as data center campuses. The DOE has said it will share resources with data center developers about how to repurpose former coal mines, or coal-fired power plants, to be home to data centers. Energy DELTA Lab, a collaborative effort that includes Dominion Energy Virginia and Appalachian Power, already is working on the Data Center Ridge project at a former mining site in Wise County, Virginia.

Life Extension

Maksim Sonin, an energy expert who has collaborated with several companies, including Chevron and Shell, and is a Sloan Fellow at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, said, “Driven by recent trends in AI development, projected power consumption by data centers in the U.S. is expected to increase in the range from 8% to 17% by 2030—or potentially even higher, as progress in AI technologies is not linear but exponential, as seen in Silicon Valley today.” Sonin told POWER, “With this sharp upward trend, it is highly likely that coal-fired power plants will remain a part of the U.S. energy system for longer, although their role is expected to diminish,” as more renewable and other energy resources come online.

“Coal plants will have an extension of their life due to data center demand,” said Tim Echols, a commissioner and vice-chair of the Georgia Public Service Commission. Echols’ home state is actively recruiting data centers and manufacturing facilities to provide jobs and boost local economies. It already added a significant new source of power when two nuclear reactors entered service at Plant Vogtle last year and this year, providing about 2,200 MW of new electricity output in the state. Plant Vogtle, where two other reactors have operated since the 1980s, is now the nation’s largest nuclear power plant, with more than 4,600 MW of generation capacity.

Echols told POWER in an Oct. 16 interview that Georgia is preparing for a large increase in power demand. “There could be a massive increase of capacity approved next year. Data centers will account for most of it,” he said.

How to satisfy data center power demand is being discussed by utilities and energy officials nationwide. Allan Schurr, chief commercial officer with Texas-based Enchanted Rock, which provides microgrid backup power solutions to data centers and other critical infrastructure, said the debate also should include onsite generation.

“AI data centers require more generating capacity—that’s a given,” said Schurr. “While we are waiting for nuclear power to bring substantial additional baseload to the grid, we don’t want to needlessly ‘recarbonize’ our energy resources by extending the life of older, less-efficient fossil generation plants like coal.

Schurr told POWER, “Today’s grid has significant available capacity with the exception of about 500 hours per year that can be mitigated with dispatchable generation. And the grid needs those 500 hours of additional capacity so we can continue to add solar and wind resources into the energy mix. Data centers can facilitate this dispatchable generation from their own onsite generation, making them assets to the grid instead of liabilities.”

The utilities and grid operators arguing to keep coal-fired plants online say it makes sense to keep existing baseload power sources operating, at least until more nuclear or renewable energy is available. That’s why states including Nebraska, Virginia, and Utah among others, have plans to keep coal-fired units running to support the supply of electricity.

Virginia is World Data Center Leader

DC Byte, a UK-based research group that tracks data centers worldwide, has said the U.S. is the world leader in the buildout of data centers. The group said Virginia—home to about half of all U.S. data centers—is the largest data center market worldwide. Loudoun County in Virginia is known as “Data Center Alley.”

PJM Interconnection, the grid operator that serves Virginia, the District of Columbia, and 12 other states, has conceded some coal-fired power plants will need to continue operating, and miles of new transmission lines must be built, to satisfy ever-increasing demand for electricity. Other power sources will help—Japan’s Sumitomo Corp. on Tuesday announced it will partner with CEP Solar (based in Richmond, Virginia) to add 1.5 GW of solar and battery energy storage to support data center growth in the region.

“The system is in a major transition right now, and it’s going to continue to evolve,” Ken Seiler, PJM’s senior vice president in charge of planning, said in a December stakeholders’ meeting about how the grid operator can supply more power as it waits for more renewable energy resources to come online. “And we’ll look for opportunities to do everything we can to keep the lights on as it goes through this transition.”

DC Byte in its 2024 Global Data Center Index wrote, “Virginia currently has over 6 GW in the development pipeline including projects under active construction as well as Committed and Early Stage campuses.” The group noted, “Cloud is the greatest driver of growth in Virginia. AWS [Amazon Web Services] operates over 40 facilities in the state and Microsoft operates a massive campus in Boydton as well as a smaller facility in Loudoun County. Both companies have more self-build campuses in the pipeline and are also major colocation tenants across the market.”

DC Byte added, “In 2022, Loudoun County’s primary power supplier Dominion Energy announced that it would not be able to meet power demand in the market. Delays in power delivery are expected until 2025 or 2026 while new power infrastructure is built. In the meantime, Dominion Energy would be providing power incrementally.” Dominion officials have said they project that power demand in the utility’s territory will increase by 85% over the next 15 years.

The 1,100-MW Fort Martin Power Station is located in Maidsville, West Virginia, on the Monongahela River. It has two coal-fired units. It is owned by Monongahela Power (Mon Power), part of FirstEnergy Corp. Source: Mon PowerThe 1,100-MW Fort Martin Power Station is located in Maidsville, West Virginia, on the Monongahela River. It has two coal-fired units. It is owned by Monongahela Power (Mon Power), part of FirstEnergy Corp. Source: Mon Power

PJM is backing a $5.2 billion plan for new transmission lines across several states to bring power to Virginia. The lines would carry electricity produced at several coal-fired power plants that have been slated for closure, including the Longview, Fort Martin, and Harrison stations in West Virginia.

In Maryland, meanwhile, PJM has asked Texas-based Talen Energy Corp. to keep Brandon Shores and Herbert A. Wagner—two other coal-fired facilities located near Baltimore—online at least through 2028. The plants had been scheduled to close by June 2025.

Operating Extension for Omaha Coal Plant

The 644-MW North Omaha Station in Nebraska was scheduled to close in 2023. Instead, Google and Meta data centers caused the area’s power demand to spike, which led the Omaha Public Power District to decide that the two coal-fired units at North Omaha were needed to maintain reliability of the local power grid. The utility has said it will keep the coal-burning units online at least through 2026.

One Google data center is in Papillon, a town about 12 miles southwest of Omaha. DC Byte said the Google facility uses more power than the Meta office, and added that its data shows Google uses more electricity in Nebraska than it uses elsewhere in the U.S. The company also is planning more data centers in the state.

Data from Meta and other groups shows that the company’s data center in Sarpy County, about 25 miles southwest of Omaha, last year used almost as much power as the North Omaha station produced. The Meta campus includes nine separate complexes, encompassing about 4 million square feet.

The Omaha Public Power District has estimated that as much as two-thirds of the projected growth in power demand around Omaha will come from data centers, which are being built on what used to be farmland. Local officials have said opposition to wind and solar farms in rural areas has curtailed additional renewable energy resources that could supply power. The utility has been developing a 2,800-acre solar power project in rural York County, about 100 miles from Omaha, but area residents have voiced concerns about the installation. The utility also has said regulatory issues have slowed plans to replace coal-fired generation with natural gas-fired units.

Meta’s presence in Omaha was sought by state and local officials; a special electricity rate for industrial customers was created in 2017. That rate was then marketed to Google to entice the search engine giant to build in the area.

Georgia Courting Data Center Operators

Georgia Power is buying electricity from a sister company, Mississippi Power (both are part of Southern Co.), to help meet power demand in Georgia. The deal came after Georgia Power officials reportedly told state regulators that growing demand for electricity would overrun supply by year-end 2025. Georgia officials have been actively looking to bring data centers and manufacturing plants to that state, and Gov. Brian Kemp earlier this year vetoed a bill that would have suspended a tax break for data centers (the bill had bipartisan opposition). Had the bill become law, the tax break would have been under the review of a special commission on data center energy planning.

Kemp in a statement said, “The bill’s language would prevent the issuance of exemption certificates after an abrupt July 1, 2024 deadline for many customers of projects that are already in development—undermining the investments made by high-technology data center operators, customers, and other stakeholders in reliance on the recent extension, and inhibiting important infrastructure and job development.”

Georgia Power has a deal with Mississippi Power to buy 750 MW of electricity through 2028. Mississippi Power is providing the energy from its Victor J. Daniel Electric Generating Plant, better known as Plant Daniel, where two coal-fired units have operated for the past 50 years. The plant also has two natural gas combined-cycle units. It is the state’s largest power plant, with nearly 1.6 GW of generation capacity, including 500 MW from its two coal-fired units.

Mississippi Power had planned to retire the coal-burning steam turbines in 2027. The deal with Georgia Power, though, could extend that lifecycle. Jeffrey Grubb, the utility’s director of resource planning, reportedly was asked by Georgia Power’s lawyers about the agreement, and said, “Because those units would have been either retired or sold off-system and we needed certainty that they would be there to serve our customers.”

Echols, the PUC co-chair, on Wednesday told POWER the contract with Mississippi Power is open to any kind of generation source.

“Our contract with Mississippi Power calls for 750 MW, and it doesn’t matter where it comes from. That may mean an [operating] extension for the coal plant, or it may not,” he said. “Mississippi could do 750 MW of solar plus storage, they could bring in 750 MW of wind power from a neighboring state.”

Echols noted that a move by regulators in 2022 extended operations for two coal-fired units at Georgia Power’s Plant Bowen, one of the nation’s largest coal-burning power plants, with about 3.4 GW of generation capacity. Echols said, “In the 2022 IRP [integrated resource plan] … our commissioners delayed the closure of units 1 and 2 at Plant Bowen. I imagine as we evaluate that in next year’s IRP, we will also delay the closure for another three years. We’ll have to wait and see what the utility is asking for and how the commissioners feel we need to move forward.”

Echols told POWER, “There could be a massive increase of capacity approved next year. Data centers will account for most of it.” Echols also offered, “I think there is a scenario where we approve two more AP1000 [reactors] at Plant Vogtle if the federal government provides bankruptcy insurance or overrun insurance” for another expansion at the site.

Other Efforts

DC Byte has identified Salt Lake City, Utah, as a growing market for data centers. Meta already operates a 4.5-million-square foot complex in Eagle Mountain, Utah, south of Salt Lake City.

State lawmakers have pushed legislation to keep the Intermountain Power Project, a coal-fired station near Delta, Utah, open past the facility’s scheduled 2025 closure date. Officials have looked at ways to have the state take over the plant. Lawmakers this year did pass legislation intended to extend the life of Rocky Mountain Power’s coal-fired stations in Emery County.

Stuart Adams, president of the Utah Senate, during the legislative session this summer said, “The United States has a real problem. We do not have enough power for our data centers. AI development is technology that we have to embrace, and power is the key to it.”

Building more infrastructure to support that AI development was among the reasons those tech company execs met last month on Capitol Hill. Reports said the discussion included repurposing former coal sites to house data center campuses, in part because those sites usually have access to power lines, water, and a local workforce.

The DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Lab, which is leading the “coal-to-X” redevelopment campaign, in a guide to the program wrote, “A retired coal site could even be redeveloped to combine a data center with new clean energy on the same site.”

As Schurr of Enchanted Rock noted, generating onsite power via a microgrid, or through a renewable energy resource, could be preferable to using coal-fired generation. That’s of particular importance for data center operators looking to build in remote areas where they need plenty of land, and where there’s a lack of transmission infrastructure.

Sonin reiterated that coal will play a role in satisfying power demand from data centers, but like Schurr, noted other fuels could work with coal to reduce the environmental impact of keeping coal-fired power plants online.

Sonin told POWER, “Emerging technologies that, for instance, allow for substituting some of the coal with ammonia, a carbon-free hydrogen derivative, through a process known as co-firing, may help address public environmental concerns. Current advancements, particularly the potential for upscaling production trains, could reduce the cost of ammonia facilities by 30% and more, making this chemical a viable solution for cutting emissions from coal plants.”

Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER

 

Tim Judson
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 340
Takoma Park, MD  20912
Pronouns: he/him/his

Outlook-kt5yeahr.jpeg

Pages