Bankrupt FirstEnergy Going to Dump Four Nuclear Plants

Established in the Enron area. Do you think these plants are fully funded? Near bankrupt nuclear plants or dead ender plants should be on a special NRC watch list. Before this is over, we are going to  totally destroy a nuclear facility. Most of the corporations will rush to the door to dump their nuclear plants.     

FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC), a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp., operates the corporation’s three nuclear power facilities: the two-unit Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Shippingport, Pennsylvania; the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Oak Harbor, Ohio; and the Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Perry, Ohio.
Together, these facilities produce nearly 4,000 megawatts of electricity – nearly a third of our company’s generating capacity.

Natural gas prices are going to continue to decline.  

FirstEnergy will dump coal and nuclear regardless of what the federal government does to help, CEO says.   

Anya Litvak

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

alitvak@post-gazette.com

3:02 PM

Oct 27, 2017

The owner of Bruce Mansfield and Beaver Valley power plants in Beaver County have been meeting with creditors over the past several months to figure out how to restructure FirstEnergy’s competitive generation business. 

Chuck Jones, the CEO of Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp., told analysts on Friday that discussions are ongoing with two groups of creditors that represent the majority of bond holders, as the subsidiary that operates most of FirstEnergy’s powerplants continues to weigh filing for bankruptcy.  

“In a restructuring scenario, the preferred outcome would be agreement with creditors,” he said.

Mr. Jones said neither he nor the corporate parent, FirstEnergy, have been involved in the discussions. So far, that has been handled by the board of directors of FirstEnergy Solutions, which runs the company’s power plants which aren’t covered by customer rates. 

FirstEnergy announced last year that it wants to transition into a fully-regulated company, where all of its operations are supported by ratepayers. 

“I want to be very clear,” Mr. Jones said on Friday. “We have no interest in maintaining generating assets that have commodity exposure and we’re moving forward with exiting the commodity-exposed business.” 

He made the declaration in response to a question from an analyst wondering if FirstEnergy might hold on to the plants if a proposal from the U.S. Department of Energy to fully reimburse coal and nuclear plants gets enacted.

“I don’t think there’s any connection between them,” Mr. Jones said. 

“I don’t think the DOE initiative has anything to do with FirstEnergy despite what’s been reported in some of the media,” he said. 

That was likely a reference to stories published by the Associated Press in August which referenced a letter that Murray Energy Corp. CEO Robert Murray sent to the White House. The letter sought emergency relief for FirstEnergy’s coal plants, which Murray supplies. 

It opened: “Last evening in Huntington, West Virginia, after President Donald Trump met briefly with Mr. Charles E. Jones, Chief Executive Officer of FirstEnergy Corporation and the undersigned, he turned to you and said ‘tell Cohn to do whatever these two want him to do.’” That is an apparent reference to economic advisor Gary Cohn.
In the same letter, Mr. Murray said that if the emergency declaration wasn’t forthcoming, Murray Energy would be forced to file for bankruptcy in October. 

Murray’s spokesperson Gary Broadbent said on Friday that the company has no plans to do so. 

“Indeed, Murray Energy is current with all of its debt payments and has liquidity,” he said, attributing the apparent turnaround to “regulatory reforms that have recently been enacted by the Trump Administration.” 

While the federal government rejected the emergency plea, the Department of Energy asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to hurry up and act on its proposal to subsidize coal and nuclear plants. 

FirstEnergy submitted a 3,614-page comment on the proposal, saying, “The urgency is real.” 

On the call with analysts Friday, Mr. Jones declined to speculate on how the DOE effort will turn out and assured that while the board of FirstEnergy Solutions will be paying attention to it, it won’t delay the process of getting rid of these unregulated powerplants.

Junk Plant pilgrim: Continued Unreliable SRVS

They replaced all the solenoid valves. One wonders if heat damage caused this. Are these guys type 1.

2 stage

LER 17-007-00

On April 24, 2017, during Refueling Outage 21 while performing testing on the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station (PNPS) Safety/Relief Valves, a high resistance was measured across the solenoid pilot valve coil of SV203-3A. This solenoid pilot valve was replaced during Refueling Outage 21. After the solenoid pilot valve was removed it was transported to an offsite vendor for additional testing.

President Elect Hillary Clinton and the USA's Electric Utility Nuclear Industry Establishment.

Update This was the first US and Russian uranium fraud before the Clinton uranium fraud. The whole uranium business is riddle with fraud

Originally published on Apr 25 2015

Clinton Cash: Hillary’s Spin Machine Can’t Shrug Off Uranium Scandal

Breitbart 

• The big issue out of this...more than 80% of the electricity produced by US nuclear power plants comes from foreign sources and most of it comes from Russia. What are the repercussion of this? 

• Why isn't it in our common lexicon that we know what powers up our national fleet of nuclear power plants…where do we get our uranium from?  

• The idea the utilities and the nuclear establishment dominates our news media, our political system…can keep the information secret where our plant uranium comes from because it reflects badly about the domestic nuclear plant industry. 

• The electric utility establishment, because of their size and it is a vital national security industry to the public and business, it totally dominates our news media cycle and our political system. They define what truth is in our society!

Fox/National review:

VIDEO:Sen John Barrasso: I Warned Pres. Obama about Uranium Deal with Russia Back in 2010 
Van Susteren: Is the Nuclear Regulatory [Commission] now giving the license for these particular exports to this Russian company? 

Barrasso: They have not given the — they were supposed to contact me immediately if there was even a request for a license to export — 

Van Susteren: Has there been a request?

Barrasso: Not that I know, but I know that uranium has left the country. They have a number of different companies and shell organizations . . .

Van Susteren: But not this — this Russian company hasn’t been able to take out the uranium, take it out of the country?

Barrasso: When you talk to people on the ground, uranium has left the United States. It has gone to Canada, has gone overseas and our concern is that it’s . . . at the fundamental of American uranium, 20 percent of our capacity here in the United States, and for nuclear power we need to import uranium. We continue to do that. 

Nuclear power provides about 20 percent of the electricity for our country. I think there’s an issue of national security as well as energy security, and I worry about Iran getting this uranium.

Mindless Gods Of Nuclear Nonproliferation

Ultimately what is going one here, these guys are saying we are saving the world from the ultimate destruction through many multiple detonations of giant hydrogen bombs …we are saving the world from the deaths of 5 billion people or more people. If you scrutinize us, it will drive the planet back to the Stone Age. It is altruism corruption on a giant hydrogen bomb level, many nuclear weapon explosions size. A full exchange of nuclear bombs by many big countries. 

If outsiders scrutinize this international uranium trading scheme and who really benefits disproportionally…the cost will be a nuclear bomb holocaust a trillion times the size of WWII Germany.

Ultimately what you are saying, the consequences are so dire to billions people… some special people and institutional priest people are so important, these guys are going to stop this unspeakable planetary catastrophe…these special people and organization are so important to the history of the planet, these guys have to remain unscrutinizable. Everyone dies in a hydrogen bomb planetary wide catastrophe if you see the sins of one of these god proliferation people doing the uranium bomb material trading. 

It is the ultimate unscrutinizable corruption scheme the planet has ever seen. 

You know what the problems are with the humongous powerful black box or stellar black hole USA, Russian governments and USA Electric Utility institutions are: the institution themselves are totally in control of the light shining out of the their institutions. We are talking big money to secret elites. It is only a tiny bit of light that escapes, it highly controlled weak light coming from these corrupt institutions. Who controls the institutions, it is the rich and elites. Nobody can contest these giant institutions.

• NY Senator Clinton: January 3, 2001 – January 21, 2009

• Obama elected on 2009

• Secretary Of State Clinton: January 21, 2009 – February 1, 2013

• So this money to the foundation was all taking place beginning in around 2004 and 2005.

• In the lead up to the spectacular 2008-2009 worldwide economic collapse, generally the stock price of our electricity utilities was in a historic bubble. Unimaginable increase in the price of the big utility stocks signaling a massive future increase in the price of electricity. Gasoline prices were going through the roof. We were in a dire shortage of natural gas and the price of this was just out of the world. We were seeing price spikes of natural gas that would choke a elephant. The high price of natural gas and its shortages, at that time, the price of natural gas set the price of electricity is the USA. 

• Everyone could see with the air pollution in China…China had to go big time for survive into nuclear power.

• Thirty USA nuclear plants were getting ready for “batters up”…in the spectacular new Nuclear Renaissance program.

• Everyone worldwide was thinking about building nuclear power plants until Fukushima

• We are talking about a huge demand of new uranium…

• The Megawatt to Megaton was in full swing…

• Was everyone was afraid the Chinese would consume all the uranium in the near future? 

• The price of electricity is skyrocketing unabated today and heading much higher...

• The problem with nuclear power today is its always been too speculative.

You get a whiff these giant institutions are rotting inside, but you never get enough evidence such that the elite institutionally controlled and privately owned 4th estate and news media never have enough triplicate proof (wink wink) to publish these highly secret stories. 

Are we really a transparent and modern democracy???    

The big questions my Clinton article ask: 

• The big issue: In 2013 greater than 90% of our domestic nuclear power plant electricity came from cheap Russian uranium. Have we switched over post "Megaton to Megawatt" program from (wink, wink) Russian nuclear weapons USA's electricity into Russian internal uranium mining, refining and centrifuging electricity?

• The big story behind all the Russian monies going to the Clinton Foundation is where do we get the uranium that power's up all of our domestic nuclear power plants? 

• Does Russia really got the USA by the "balls" now? The problem with Russia is this nation has always been a black hole to the world…basically transparency has always been controlled by the Russian thug mafia. They only allow you to see what they want you to see. It is not a fully developed institutional democracy government that serves it people. Well then, does the USA fully serve it people? When was the last time you had a raise? 

• Was the Megaton to Megawatt" program really international sized hydrogen bomb corruption... 

• So we are embargoing petroleum out of Russia over Ukraine...we doing the same for Uranium going to the USA?

• What is the price of Russian uranium doing with the high value of the USA dollar?

• Was Russian fuel to going the USA plants subsidized by the USA government?

• Where did all the utility uranium money go to in the Russia. 

• What is the total US money over uranium that going to Russia. Bet, you will run into a grave National Security issues over this.

• This was always a solely domestic story of what source of energy powers up our electric system and thus our economy, but wrapped on in the enigma of extremely secret national security information. This makes the system extremely sensitive to corruption.


• Where does Japan get their uranium?

• What would have happened to our domestic nuclear industry and the utilities, if we were prohibited from using extremely inexpensive Russian gulag uranium electricity post Soviet breakup? 

• I contend the NYT's knows the outline of this story, but they are too chicken to publish it. Or these giant black hole institutions who totally control the information don't give the NYT's sufficient evidence so the giant newspaper feels safe in publishing it. Then again, the public doesn't care about anything electricity.

• I have always had issues with Russian gulag and slave labor electricity!!! 

• Did the American electric utilities illegally kick back through the Russian...monies to the Clinton Foundation as political payoff? 

Did the benefits of USA's cheap Russian uranium electricity ostensibly go to the utility executive 1%ers…or did it make our lives better and support all of our businesses better since the soviet breakup? 

The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force interviewed me in 2010, I always wondered what they thought of me over my blog.

NYT: Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal

excerpts: 

…"The national security issue at stake in the Uranium One deal was not primarily about nuclear weapons proliferation; the United States and Russia had for years cooperated on that front, with Russia sending enriched fuel from decommissioned warheads to be used in American

I believe this is the first time it was admitted  the USA gave the Russians raw US uranium in return for diluted weapon grade uranium. The money stream worries me. What did the Russians do with our uranium? Obviously it is cheaper to refine and centrifuge uranium in Russia and any of the third world than it is in the USA.     

nuclear power plants in return for raw uranium. Instead, it concerned American dependence on foreign uranium sources. While the United States gets one-fifth of its electrical power from nuclear plants, it produces

So the NYT's admits 80% of the electricity going to our nuclear fleet comes from the Russian uranium. You see really how difficult it is to know where yellow cake or uranium comes from? Christ, American uranium could be supplying Iran or north Korea? I think the 80% for the nukes is much higher. The Times got it wrong. You can never can trust these nukies to tell all of the truth. It goes more like this, 80% comes from the Russians, a least 15% comes from other foreign sources and way less than 5% comes from US sources. How much comes from Canada...why doesn't the US have a list where we get our uranium.  

only around 20 percent of the uranium it needs, and most plants have only 18 to 36 months of reserves, according to Marin Katusa, author of “The Colder War: How the Global Energy Trade Slipped From America’s Grasp.”

Does anyone wonder why it is not a requirement that a utility discloses where they get their uranium from? It is probably half the reason we can't be tougher on the Ukraine issue because we are so indebted to the Russians. Make no mistake, if Russia immediately shuts off the valve on Russian uranium, there would be huge repercussions. Basically we off-shored all our expensive uranium refining and centrifuging to countries with little employee safety laws. Again, the 80% numberhas been banging around in the internet for many decades. It is disclosed be the nuclear industry itself. Does 80% seem plausible...why isn't 83.5%. I doubt this number is truthful and up to date.         

“The Russians are easily winning the uranium war, and nobody’s talking about it,” said Mr. Katusa, who explores the implications of the Uranium One deal in his book. “It’s not just a domestic issue but a foreign policy issue, too.” 

…American nuclear officials, too, seemed eager to assuage fears. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission wrote to Mr. Barrasso assuring him that American uranium would be preserved for domestic use, regardless of who owned it.

“In order to export uranium from the United States, Uranium One Inc. or ARMZ would need to apply for and obtain a specific NRC license authorizing the export of uranium for use as reactor fuel,” the letter said. 

…Two months later, the deal giving ARMZ a controlling stake in Uranium One was submitted to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States for review. Because of the secrecy surrounding the process, it is hard to know whether the participants weighed the desire to improve bilateral relations against the potential risks of allowing the Russian government control over the biggest uranium producer in the United States. The deal was ultimately approved in October, following what two people involved in securing the approval said had been a relatively smooth process. 

…Mr. Christensen, 65, noted that despite assurances by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that uranium could not leave the country without Uranium One or ARMZ obtaining an export license — which they do not have — yellowcake from his property was routinely packed into drums and trucked off to a processing plant in Canada. 

…Asked about that, the commission confirmed that Uranium One has, in fact, shipped yellowcake to Canada even though it does not have an export license. Instead, the transport company doing the shipping, RSB Logistic Services, has the license. A commission spokesman said that “to the best of our knowledge” most of the uranium sent to Canada for processing was returned for use in the United States. A Uranium One spokeswoman, Donna Wichers, said 25 percent had gone to Western Europe and Japan. At the moment, with the uranium market in a downturn, nothing is being shipped from the Wyoming mines."

We are all worked up about Hillary as Secretary of State OKing the purchasing of one-fifth of American Uranium mining capabilities by the Russians. Then the Russian's giving the Clinton Foundation some $4 million dollars and another $32 million dollars worth of uranium money getting to the Clinton Foundation.

Now we getting into one of deepest national security and American electric utility secrets we ever have.

You know, from Exelon or Entergy, why can’t you go up to them asking where do they get their uranium from that fuels yours nuclear plants. I want the cheapest source? List your sources and their percentages? Why has this become so secret and politicized? 

Why don’t we get a choice, I want USA uranium or I want Soviet uranium? I want uranium source who treats their employees the best?  Where is out vaulted American choice. 

So I wrote “A Message From the Future” in 2004. Why was I all worked up. The big questions  today is over the Russian Uranium and USA electric utility monies going into the Clinton foundation. Nobody has the balls to get it. Do you really get it? "You sure." The American news media establishment bases all its reporting on having absolute triplicate proof on reporting negatively on our elite establishments. Our deepest national security secret the American electric utilities won't tell the the news establishment is where do we get and at what percentage... do we get the uranium that powers up 20% of our electricity?

Almost none of it came from the USA. Some 90% and as high as 99% of the uranium came from Russia. Nuclear electricity has the highest concentration of  foreign source energy than  any source of energy in the USA. If the Russians stopped providing their Uranium to us, this could created a enormus shortage of uranium for our domestic nuclear plants. 

Who destroyed the USA's domestic production of mined uranium, put great numbers of Americans out of work, extremely cheap Russian Uranium. The Russian's subsidized the great American electric utilities. Our electric utilities are one of our most formidable political forces in the USA. 

In the Sundays morning TV news programs these are the big questions:  

The Russian took over one fifth of the USA uranium mining capabilities.  

Nuclear power makes up 20% of the USA's electricity

I tried to express the system as the "Mindless Gods of Nuclear Nonproliferation". Coming out of the great fall of the "Soviet Empire" came the Mega Tons to Megawatt Program. Most of the soviet uranium, refining and centrifuging came for slave labor and little human health rules and laws. Lots of it came from the soviet gulags. The soviet's said they were decommissioning tens of thousandth obsolete nuclear weapons and very high concentration of U235 was made into 4% of so uranium oxide sold to our American domestic nuclear industry at very cheap prices. So tons of electricity was made from soviet era slave labor and come also from their gulags. There was rumors the Russian were spiking this weapons uranium with new mining, refining and centrifuging...anticipating the end of the megaton to megawatt(MTM) problem. The MTM totally destroyed our domestic uranium mining and totally captured our uranium used in our domestic nuclear plant markets?  

If the news media and our USA government really worked in our interest...they would do a exposé of where we got the uranium that powered up 20% of electricity...all  nuclear plants for the last 25 years?  If I was the coal industry, I'd be bragging at least coal electricity is all  a American product, but they know the guys with the humongous political balls is the electric utilities.  

Mindless Gods Of Nuclear Nonproliferation

“A Message From the Future”  

(I wrote this in 2004. It was then that I realized 90% of electricity from all of our domestic nuclear plants was sourced from Russian uranium.)

I am speaking from the year 2106. Our planet has just begun to recover from the modern dark ages. They say truth is stranger than fiction –who would have thought airplanes could be used as political guided missile messages that destroyed two skyscrapers, witness the Twin Towers in New York City in 2001. These are the astonishing events that led to depopulating of half the planet. Modernity dropped back a century in time on average to 1900 throughout the world by 2020. 

Ironically, this modern Dark Age holocaust saved the planet. We were heading over the unrecoverable cliff if we kept going the way we were. Human life would have ended on this planet earth without this nuclear exchange. What did we say about that life and evolution always protects itself? All of a sudden , the planet wide political pressures of global warming, energy and resource shortages were drastically reduced because of the planet wide human and industrial die-off. 

As we sit in 2106 on a global level -all of our political and educational processes have been drastically changed.We have developed a planet wide ethical and moral code. This came through a catastrophe of enormous proportions and the death and sufferings of billions of people. The way we look at our children today is so different than in the year 2004. 

We know that any child born on this planet has the potential and the requirement –to change the course of history of this planet. We give our poorest and disadvantaged children the finest educational tools that money can buy in the hopes that one child will change the course of our future history. Every child on this planet gets educated like this –and every child is our own child! 

The extremist Islamic Iranian wilayat al-faqih eventually got a series of nuclear bombs in 2006. They detonated two bombs in Israel, one each over downtown Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The Israelis never knew if it came by missile or was sneaked in through the boarders of a destabilized Iraq. Israel within hours immediately retaliated. They devastated Iran through a series of atomic detonation. The Israeli military destroyed the capitals of China, Syria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia (and Holy City of Makkah (Mecca) and Russia. You have no idea what this did to the price of oil –this was devastating to the global economic system. 

The majority of the financing of the Iranian nuclear bombs came from a surprising source. There is evidence today that there was an Al-Qaeda plot involved with the Russians and Iranians. It also seems that a few Russians generals held a grudge with the American involvement in the Afghanistan Vietnam. This led to the downfall of the old Soviet Empire. At the 2004 time frame Russia didn't have a real government –it was ruled by mafia don like figures.

The majority of the financing of the Iranian nuclear program came from the American electric utility rate payers. By 2004, the electricity in one out of ten households (update in 2013: one in five homes) was being supplied from the Russian weapons grade nuclear material through the "Megaton to Megawatt program". We were purchasing HEU grade Uranium from the Russian nuclear bomb building program and fueling up American nuclear power plants in the hopes of reducing the nuclear proliferation problems to the tune of one half a billion dollars a year. There was just too much money to be made at all levels of the production and manufacturing with this Russian nuclear material for anyone to have any moral qualms with this. 

A large proportion of the American monies got diverted into the Russian covert nuclear proliferation program that created the Iranian nuclear weapons. There was a theory that it was Chinese rocket technology that propelled the bomb to Jerusalem. It was common knowledge throughout the American political and intelligence establishment that the American nuclear electric monies were disappearing in the Putin regime. We knew the Russians would sell weapon technology without a hint of morality –likewise most of the countries on this planet would sell weapons without a hint of morality, including and especially the Americans. 

To this day, we wonder why the American CIA and intelligence community didn't inform the American public of this impending catastrophe. It is recognized that the American intelligence community was going under historic reorganizations because of the intelligence failures of 9/11 and the WMD failures in Iraq. It was discovered the American intelligence community had gotten even more blinded than the lead up to 9/11 because of the failure of the American public's responsibility to manage their political system by 2006. This became another item on a long list of American institutional political failures of recent. 

We wonder to this day did the American intelligence community work for the particular political regime or did they work for the people at large? Why wasn't the American intelligence community working for the peoples of the planet. What it discovered, was a common relationship throughout the planet is the elites had transcended into competing for wealth and power among themselves –special access to markets and capital. They had forgotten that they were given this privilege in order to create stability and progress for the whole planet 

It was a huge planet wide educational failure of theirs! 

Thank You, 
mike mulligan 
Hinsdale, NH

(The year 2020 isn't here yet, you still got time to care???)

Heroin Problem

Update Oct 28, 2017

Really, how can we help and developed these guys? Our foreign aid is upwards to $500 million dollars. Will a billion fix them? Two billion dollar? I don't trust them a bit in spending our money. I think the Mexican military actions are only protecting the elites. Probably to protect the vacation and us corporate industrial zone. Screw the rest of the nation. 

Why isn't this a death spiral? You know the La Familia Michoacána cartel is paying off the elites. Their billions are dwarfing our foreign aid. What is our corporation begin fleeing Mexico based on the trump miracle wink).

They are polluting our nation with a assortment of dangerous drugs and crimes. Then there is a humanity thing...how can we support the majority of Mexicans to make there lives better and stop all this illegal immigration. A nation they can be proud of and stay home. Why are our political tolerating this status quo. There is a component of national security. 

We just need tough medicine. 
 

Mexico’s Record Violence Is a Crisis 20 Years in the Making

MEXICO CITY — The forces driving violence in Mexico, which is now on track for its worst year in decades, were first set in motion 20 years ago by two events that were, at the time, celebrated as triumphs.

First, Colombia defeated its major drug cartels in the 1990s, driving the center of the drug trade from the country into Mexico.

Then, in 2000, Mexico transitioned to a multiparty democracy.

This meant that the drug trade moved to Mexico just as its politics and institutions were in flux, leaving them unable to address a problem they have often made worse.

Since then, a series of bad breaks, missteps and self-imposed crises have led to an explosion of violence. Last year there were more than 20,000 killings. This year is on track to be worse, exceeding the 2011 record, which was thought to be the drug war’s apex.

“Drug trafficking is not this violent in other countries,” Guillermo Valdés, a former leader of CISEN, the civil national security intelligence service, said in an interview in Mexico City…

I am surprised we haven't done a broad study on the personality characteristics and history of those who get addicted to heroin???

Oct 26 2017 Trump Update

Blah, blah, blah typical politician!!!

Trump says 90% of our heroin comes from south of our boarder. Our narco counties!!!

***Treatment and incarceration does not work. We got severely go after the producer and distribution countries. Cut off foreign aid and ever blockade the countries. Go to war over it to disrupt cartels and drug king pins. China is the main producers fentanyl. Mexica is a gigantic distributor and  producer. Columbia and Mexico are producer of the hard drugs. I would legalized pot.

If we stopped all hard drug from South America we would crater the economy. There would be riots and rebellion all over the place flooding America with illegal immigrants.

NRC All Hands Meeting: Mass Firings and More To come

All Hands Meeting

This has been another year of significant change for NRC. 16
In a few weeks, the Agency will end the fiscal year with around 3200 17
employees. That's about the level we were at in 2006, when NRC was 18
starting to ramp up for the anticipated wave of new reactor applications. 19
In just two years, our workforce declined by more than 12%, 20
mostly as a result of the Project Aim efforts. That is a lot of change in a short 21
period of time, and I know that major changes can be challenging. 22
Unfortunately, for the first time in many years, NRC is preparing for a potential 23
reduction in force, affecting a number of corporate office positions.

The magnitude of it according to the bureaucrats:

NRC 2.0

Pathetic all about downs sizing, statues (art) and employee issues. Nothing about operating reactors, or their financial issues. I am beginning to wonder if downsizing really is NRC employee intimidation.

Worker:Paper Plant Closed

Update

Reposted from 2/26/05

Saturday, February 26, 2005

Worker: paper plant closed

Nika CarlsonSentinel Staff

WINCHESTER — In a strikingly familiar story, Atlantic Paper and Foil, a Winchester tissue plant, temporarily closed its doors Friday, leaving more than 70 people without a job, a worker said.
Company officials could not be reached for comment, but the worker said officials announced they plan on reopening the plant in two to six months.

The closure was news to Winchester Selectman Gustave A. Ruth, who said the company informed Winchester officials several weeks ago that the company was going through bankruptcy proceedings.
According to the worker, who didn’t want his name used, company officials want to upgrade the more than half-century old equipment and improve production at the mill.

Atlantic Paper and Foil is a family-owned company based out of Hauppauge, N.Y., with other locations in New York and Georgia. The Winchester plant was one of its smaller locations.
The situation at Atlantic Paper and Foil closely mirrors that of the plant’s former owners.
Atlantic Paper bought the plant in 2003, after it had lain dormant for several years.

The mill last closed in July 2001. Then-owners American Tissue Inc., said they were

(Fixed)This lagoon issues was me. NH is very weak regulator wise. I hounded the NHDES and politicians (Gov Shaheen) beginning in around 1999. The NHDES totally ignored my first complaint. I kept documenting huge plumbs of pollution heading towards my town and reported it. Got the Keene Sentinel to write an an article on it. Got them on falsified pollution reports and severe EPA poor oversight of the state regular. Identified shortcoming in the regs with  the EPA in small and medium size polluters like this. It was all political fraud in the Clinton era and it was systemic in the NH for decades. Eventually though my hounding, the NH governor, she tasked our Attorney General to take a deep look into this corrupt company. Because of the investigation, then a bank (BOA) made a fraud complaint. We then were off to the races. Put about ten thousand employees out of work and put severe hardship on towns laying off employees and cops.

(Actually BOA later bought out the bankrupt first bank who made the loans and they made the complaint to AG and feds. I believe the loan bank made complaint, then went bankrupt. The NHDES told me in veiled way in the beginning, these are really bad guys. I said bs, make them stop polluting right now)  

going to fix leaky lagoons where wastewater from the plant was leaking into the Ashuelot River.

The mill was never reopened, and American Tissue Inc. declared bankruptcy that same year.
Like Atlantic Paper, the company was based out of Hauppauge, N.Y., though the two firms are unconnected, said Atlantic’s executive vice president in 2003. However, the company was founded by a former partner in American Tissue.

In 2003, four former American Tissue executives were charged with defrauding banks and investors of nearly $300 million, leading to the company’s collapse. At that time, the company owed at least $100,000 in back taxes to the town of Winchester.

When Atlantic Paper bought the mill, officials promised to repay those back taxes.
Town records show the company currently owes unrelated back taxes. The town says Atlantic Paper owes $419 for a piece of property, though the company denies owning the land, Ruth said.

Town officials lobbied hard to bring Atlantic Paper to town, even winning a $700,000 federal grant to help the company buy the mill.

That grant was funneled to Atlantic Paper as a loan through the Monadnock Economic Development Corp. Winchester is not responsible if the company defaults on the loan, Monadnock Economic Development President John G. Dugan said in 2002.

The worker said company officials informed the plant manager just a few days ago that the plant would close. Plans were finalized Thursday, he said.

The worker said management said nothing about severance packages, but said the company promised to pay out any leftover vacation days. They also had unemployment papers readied for workers to fill out, he said.

Many workers were still shocked and angered by the closure, he said.

“There’s a lot of people there that make pretty good money,” he said. “In a week of overtime, I can make $1,000. How are we going to get by that sort of thing? A lot of people got bills to pay, rent to pay, car payments to pay, and kids to take care of. Unemployment might help you get by, but it’s a far cry from what we make.”

Junk Plant Salem/Hoping Going Down The Tubes

The NRC is back stopping from collapse. They would quickly collapse if the NRC stood back. This second latest nuclear facility in the USA is not sufficiently self directed.  

SALEM GENERATING STATION UNIT 2:  SUPPLEMENTAL INSPECTION REPORT 05000311/2017011 AND ASSESSMENT FOLLOW-UP LETTER 

What Isn't There 500 Niger and Chad ISIS Members Dead By Now In A Public Military Operation

Update: Seems 12 Niger troops were killed in the same area as our green berets. It looks like the same people.

***Remember the tuff guy military wise Trump was in the election. Now he is nothing but a pussy with North Korea and African ISIS. I guess the Russia meddling thing have turned him weak.

I'll tell you what those grieving wifes, children and families secretly want.  They want and deserve vengeance. Last week, they wanted the ISIS attack group, all the rest of them and their leaders dead. They wanted a big show of it publically!!!   

It is time right now to make the final stand, wipe out all ISIS in Niger and Chad. The lessens  of Vietnam is crush our enemies early and visously!!! It really doesn't matter what Chad or Niger thinks. Lets backstop our French friends...

Use the full force of the military to crush the terrorist at the incipient stage.  

Utility Big Southern Infrastructure Projects: Clean Coal Plants and Nukes

First Published on 2/8/17

Doesn't this look like the Vogtle plants in George. Why are these utilities having so much difficulties with these huge construction projects. You get it, basically the conservative republican dominating the political scene. Regulated utilities and crooked republicans and graft. A guaranty the plant's cost would get passed onto the rate payers no matter how over budget the project becomes. Remember the high cost producers set the price of electricity for everyone else and boost corporate profits.  

I wouldn't let this guys on the rate base...

Really, this indicates something dysfunction is going on with the electric utilities and the construction industry. I see Intel is building a $8 billion dollar giant computer factory in Arizona. It will be the third one built there. Why aren't they having gigantic problems with cost overruns and constant delays in construction. like Vogtle. 

I think it's the least cost bidding that causes this...

Dive Insight:

Moody’s cut Mississippi Power’s rating to near junk status in 2015. Since then, the utility has announced several more delays to its beleaguered Kemper integrated gasification combined-cycle project, most recently in early February when it delayed the expected online date for the project by one more month. 

The 582 MW project is designed to convert coal into a synthetic gas to burn in a combined cycle generator, and is now slated to begin operation by the end of February. Updated costs are just over $7 billion, more than double the original, $2.9 billion cost estimate. 

In all, Mississippi Power has extended the project’s online date nine times. Each delay can add tens of millions of dollars to the project’s cost. The most recent delay added $51 million to the cost estimate. 

Moody’s says the rising costs increase the risk that Mississippi Power will not receive full regulatory recovery of $2.88 billion of plant costs subject to a cost cap established by the Mississippi Public Service Commission, $1.5 billion of costs not subject to the cap, and higher operating costs once the plant is placed into service.
Moody’s also noted that Mississippi Power and Southern have said that their 2017 fuel system costs completed last year reflect significantly lower natural gas costs than previously estimated. Those lower costs will factor into the economic viability analysis the utility is now conducting on the project. 

That analysis may affect the prospects of the project’s ability to recovery costs and the “standalone financial condition” of the plant when it is fully operational, including whether the plant “will exhibit financial metrics consistent with an investment grade rating.” 

While Moody’s did not take action on Southern Co., Mississippi Power's parent, the rating agency said Southern’s rating could be negatively affected if, among other things, there are additional, material debt financed acquisitions at the parent company or further delays or cost increases at Georgia Power's Vogtle nuclear construction project.

The Southern Company's Stock Price Tanking on Scana Subpoena

Least the other Southern nuke plants are operating at 100%.

Scana Gets SEC Subpoena Related to Canceled Nuclear Project

Bloomberg: Scana Corp. has been served by a document subpoena issued by the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with the commission’s investigation of Scana’s V.C. Summer nuclear project, the company said in a statement.

Scana said it intends to fully cooperate with the investigation. In late September, shares of the company fell to the lowest in more than two years as state utility regulators weighed a request to suspend previously approved rate increases for its abandoned nuclear power plant expansion...

Junk Plant Grand Gulf: Huge Down Power Event Already

update Oct 18

They have screamed up to 100%. Can they do 100% for a week one wonders.

*I wonder if they ever got up to 100%? 99% percent yesterday. 89% today.

Junk Plant Grand Gulf: Holy Smokes Up 99% Power Today

Based on their history, I give them a week at full power before a big down power event or scram.

Isn't time for another southern fleet plant to big a down power or trip?

Junk Plant Grand Gulf-That Capacity Factor Thing

So they took a shutdown in the midst of the summer. Had feedwater pump troubles. Now upon startup, they been stuck at around 60% straight for three days.

Looks like they started up with one feedwater pump missing?

Grand Gulf Gets Screwed By FERC?

If only they could stay up to 100% power. 

FERC Opens Proceeding over Entergy Nuclear Power Sales

October 2, 2017

By Amanda Durish Cook

FERC last week opened settlement proceedings to address a two-state complaint against an Entergy subsidiary’s proposed return on equity for nuclear power sales to four other company affiliates.

Utility commissions in Arkansas and Mississippi earlier this year filed a protest claiming that the ROE used by System Energy Resources Inc. (SERI) in its current formula rate for energy sales from the Grand Gulf nuclear plant is excessive and outdated. They’ve asked FERC to open an investigation to determine the fairness of the return.

SERI owns 90% of the 1,400-MW facility in Port Gibson, Miss., and sells the plant’s output under a FERC-regulated wholesale rate to Entergy Arkansas, Entergy Mississippi, Entergy Louisiana and Entergy New Orleans under a power sales agreement.

The commission said it will forward the matter to a still-unnamed administrative law judge who will oversee settlement discussions and report whether parties can negotiate a fair ROE. Barring a settlement, the issue would move to a trial-type evidentiary hearing (EL17-41).

Regulators from the two states contend that Grand Gulf should sell its energy to Entergy affiliates at cost-based rates “to avoid overcharging retail customers.” They point out that SERI’s current ROE of 10.94% was calculated using an average of three discounted cash flow analyses produced in 1996 and seek to reduce the figure to 8.5%, in part reflecting a reduction in income tax from $125 million to $97 million.

A “re-examination of [the] current cost of equity is more than due,” the two states argued, especially considering that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last year extended Grand Gulf’s license another 20 years, until 2044.

In opening the proceeding, FERC brushed aside SERI’s argument that its existing ROE falls into the “zone of reasonableness” and does not require adjustment. The commission said it “has repeatedly rejected the assertion that every ROE within the zone of reasonableness must be treated as an equally just and reasonable ROE.”

Depreciation Rates also Under Review

The proceeding will also include an examination of SERI’s depreciation rates for Grand Gulf.

In a separate August FERC filing prompted by the license extension, SERI sought to revise Grand Gulf’s depreciation rates to an average 2.66% under the same power sales agreement for the four Entergy utilities (ER17-2219). The current 2.85% depreciation rate was based on the assumption that plant would operate only until Nov. 1, 2024. The Arkansas and Mississippi commissions, along with 10% plant owner Cooperative Energy, argue that SERI has not provided enough support for the new rates.

While FERC has for now accepted SERI’s proposed rates effective Oct. 1, it said its own review “indicates that a further decrease may be warranted” and consolidated the matter into the larger ROE settlement procedures.

Solar Versus Nukes

I think solar is more expensive than state and the cost of Vogtle is downplayed. But it give you a idea. 

The cost of wholesale electricity in NE today is $15 bucks per megawatts-hr. 

Who’sSmarter, Duke Energy or Georgia Power?

October 2, 2017 by Robert Hemphill Leave a Comment

The cost of utility scale PV plants has fallen dramatically over the last several years.  One analytical publication had data for H1 of 2016, indicating that utility scale solar plants cost from 1250 to 1350 per KW at that time. More recent reports tout the arrival of one dollar per watt ($1000 per KW) plants.  This would translate into five to six cents per KWh electricity, although the sun regime at the plant site can affect this number up or down. It seems likely that if Duke aggressively pursues a competitive third-party approach to their solar construction program, it should do even better than these numbers.  And they can use multiple suppliers to compete against each other for the key component, the solar panels.   A January 2015 Wikipedia article listed nine US and 48 non-US providers of this technology, and there are no doubt now many more, especially in China.

The Vogtle cost is unclear.  Most estimates have it at $25 billion, although some argue it could go as high as $29 billion.  The truth is that no one knows.  Georgia Power did originally try to cap the costs by signing a fixed price contract with Westinghouse, the reactor provider and constructor, and a subsidiary of Toshiba, but that has worked out badly, for all parties.

Cost to customers is perhaps the single most important variable in this analysis.  Since the capital cost is unknown for Vogtle, we have to use estimates.  Assuming that 25 billion is the final number, and using even very simple assumptions (30-year debt at 4.5%, mortgage amortization, a 50/50 debt to equity financial structure, 10% return on equity, and 85% capacity factor) then the cost to customers of the capital alone comes out at 12+ cents per kwh.  And nuclear plants have non-trivial operating costs which are generally acknowledged to add four to six cents per kwh to the cost of making electricity.  So the Vogtle electricity leaves the bus bar at north of sixteen cents per KWh.

Grand Gulf Starting Up And At 18%

??

$3.7 Billion Dollars: Vogtle's Nuclear Plant Last Stand

One wonders what the per kilowatt price will be on this dog. I didn't think it will have a great capacity factor. I think this is inconsequential, but it will provide cover to the administration when it fails.   

Trump Hands $3.7b Lifeline to Last US Nuclear Power Project

The administration of US President Donald trump has thrown a lifeline to the last hope for a US nuclear power revival, offering $3.7 billion in additional loan guarantees for Southern Co.’s troubled reactor project in Georgia.

The conditional guarantees announced on Friday by the US Energy Department come at a critical time for Southern. Georgia regulators are weighing whether to allow the company and its partners to continue building two new reactors at Plant Vogtle after costs soared above $25 billion amid construction delays, caused in part by the bankruptcy of contractor Westinghouse Electric Company, Bloomberg reported.

“This is great news,” said Stan Wise, chairman of the Georgia Public Service Commission. “It gives us an important piece for continuing the project and it’s important in lessening the impact on rate payers.”

The project represents the last, best chance for a much-hyped nuclear renaissance that has failed to materialize in the US following Japan’s Fukushima accident in 2011 and amid weak wholesale power prices. Scana Corp. this year canceled its plans to build two new reactors in South Carolina after expenses spiraled above $20 billion. Loan guarantees alone, though, won’t save the Vogtle expansion: Regulators also want to see a promised payment from Westinghouse parent Toshiba Corp. and federal tax credits for new nuclear generation…