TMI Update: Jan 14, 2024


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.

    

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

The article is behind a pay wall, so I could only extract the first bit. But it sounds like OGC is interpreting the provision of the ADVANCE Act s: that it does not actually amend the provisions of the Atomic Energy Act and the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 to change the NRC's statutory directives and responsibilities. If OGC's interpretation of the law is the same as mine, we're both probably in the ballpark. 
 
Changing the NRC's public mission statement is a matter of public relations. The trouble is, what the ADVANCE Act requires is that NRC advertise its mission in a way that contradicts the NRC's statutory authorities and duties. And that will only confuse the public about what the NRC is supposed to do and provide more opportunity for the industry and its government backers to beat up on the agency and weaken its ability to exercise its duties to protect public health and safety.
 
Sen. Capito's trying to have her cake and eat it: she and the other sponsors knew it was too controversial to actually amend the NRC's statutory mission, so they opted to do it cosmetically. This is just the first example of how the industry's Congressional backers will be able to use the ADVANCE Act to heap more political pressure on NRC and further undermine nuclear safety.
 
 

One of the ADVANCE Act’s authors is taking issue with how Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff is interpreting a contentious provision.

Senate Environment and Public Works ranking member Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), one of the sponsors of this year's law to promote nuclear energy, speaking with reporters at the Capitol. Francis Chung/POLITICO

Senate Environment and Public Works ranking member Shelley Moore Capito is at odds with Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff about a law she helped write.

Last week, Office of the General Counsel released a recommendation regarding how the agency should handle a provision in the ADVANCE Act to widen the agency’s mission statement. It’s one of the most debated parts of the law.

President Joe Biden signed the ADVANCE Act in July to promote the next generation of nuclear reactors. It requires the NRC to adjust its mission statement to ensure the licensing process does “not unnecessarily limit” the benefits of nuclear energy to society.

But NRC’s general counsel says the law doesn’t actually alter the agency’s nonpromotional status or its mission to protect public health and safety, and it does not require the agency to take into account broader societal benefits of nuclear energy. ...

 

Tim Judson
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 340
Takoma Park, MD  20912
Pronouns: he/him/his
Outlook-rkag3dkv.jpeg
 
Centrus receives waiver to import Russian uranium amid new ban
Staff Writer July 24, 2024
 
 
Centrus Energy has received a waiver from the US Department of Energy (DOE) allowing it to import low-enriched uranium (LEU) from Russia for delivery to US customers in 2024 and 2025.
The Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act was signed by President Joe Biden in May, after being passed unanimously by the US Senate and will go into effect on 11 August.  It bans the import of unirradiated, LEU that is produced in the Russian Federation or by a Russian entity.  The ban will remain in place until the end of 2040.
The waiver process was put in place to ensure US NPPs do not face supply disruptions while the US works to build up its domestic LEU capacity.  According to the US Energy Information Administration, Russia has been supplying about 24% of enriched uranium used to fuel the US fleet of 94 commercial reactors with 12% coming from Germany and 11% from the UK. and 27% produced in the US.  DOE says Russia has roughly 44% of the world’s uranium enrichment capacity and supplies approximately 35% of US imports for nuclear fuel.  The only commercial enrichment operation in the US is Urenco’s facility in New Mexico which began operations in 2010, Urenco is jointly owned by the UK, Germany and the Netherlands.
Waivers to allow the import of limited quantities of Russian-origin material may be granted by the US Secretary of Energy, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Commerce, if it is determined that no alternative viable source of LEU is available, or that the importation of Russian LEU is in the national interest.  Waivers will only be available until 1 January 2028.
Centrus filed its first waiver request application – covering deliveries from 11 August 2024 to the end of 2027 – on 27 May.  DOE has issued a waiver allowing it to import LEU from Russia “for deliveries already committed by the Company to its US customers in years 2024 and 2025,” the company said in a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing.  Centrus said DOE has deferred a decision on 2026 and 2027 to “an unspecified date closer in time to the deliveries”.
A decision from DOE is still awaited for a second waiver application to allow the importation of LEU from Russia for processing and re-export to Centrus’s foreign customers.  The application was filed on 7 June.  Centrus also plans to file a third waiver request application to allow for importation of LEU from Russia in 2026 and 2027 for use in the USA.  This would be for deliveries that have yet to be committed to customers
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Real climate solutions are NOT radioactive.
The genome is the REAL dosimeter.
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 Fission energy is safe if and only if all devices work, everybody does their job, no plant or repository is in any battle — conventional or not, and no quantity of fissionable material is in the hands of the ignorant   No Acts of God  
Investigation of Michigan nuclear power plant reveals extensive safety issues
 
 
Donna

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