Muted response to Palo, Iowa, nuclear plant's sale plan shows changing times
April 20--By Dave Dewitte, The Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Bob Lam remembers clearly the spring day in 1974 when Duane Arnold Energy Center began generating power.
"I can look out my window and see the evaporated water almost every day,
and the first time I saw that, I thought it looked like a mushroom cloud,"
recalled the farmer and retired junior high school teacher.
Lam might outlive the Duane Arnold Energy Center: The plant's operating
license is set to expire, unless extended, in 2014.
The odds on that fell, however, in January when Alliant Energy announced
plans to auction the plant to a buyer willing to seek a 20- year extension of
the license.
The announcement was unwelcome news to some who have protested or simply
worried quietly about the plant over the past three decades.
But the absence of any major reaction to the news shows how times have
changed.
Once a prime target for environmental protests, the nuclear industry appears
to be making a comeback. At the same time, environmentalists have other
concerns.
"There are other things we need to focus on, and we can't do it
all," said Sierra Club member Wallace Horan of Marion.
An attorney, Horan has taken on the cause of small wind producers in Iowa
courts. He says fighting the utilities to win rights for small wind developers
is just one of the issues he now considers equally important to fighting for
nuclear safety.
The Iowa Environmental Council has no plans to take a stand on the Duane
Arnold sale or license extension at this point, according to Executive Director
Rich Leopold.
One of the few private citizens who's spoken out on the sale is renewable
energy advocate Tom Snyder of Dyersville. He says Bush administration is
attempting to redefine nuclear power as a form of renewable energy, on par with
hydropower or wind energy.
"Everybody's become very blase in accepting nuclear power," Snyder
said. "It scares me."
The retired science teacher said he worries that ownership of all the
nation's nuclear plants will become concentrated in the hands of a few huge huge
companies that will not be regulated by the states in the same was as the local
utility companies that own them now. He says the trend could make it hard for
regulators to force nuclear operators to maintain adequate decommissioning
reserves, or to protect consumers from decisions by producers to shut
uneconomical plants down suddenly.
Sale documents show Alliant expects to transfer the liability for
decommissioning the plant, as well as the amount already collected in trust
funds for decommissioning.
Horan is concerned that extending the licenses of existing nuclear plants
will worsen the already serious situation with regard to storage of spent
radioactive fuel rods.
The nation's only planned repository for such radioactive waste is the Yucca
Mountain site in Nevada, Horan said. But it will not be open for years, Horan
said, and is not planned to hold the volumes of nuclear fuel that could result
from extending the life of America's nuclear plants by 20 years.
Duane Arnold Energy Center Plant Manager Dean Curtland agreed that the
original Yucca Mountain plan would be inadequate in size, but says "it's no
different from storage here on-site, it's expandable." He says the current
on-site dry cask storage is safe.
One reason environmental activists aren't more concerned is the Duane Arnold
Energy Center's improved operating record in recent years, according to David
Osterberg, associate professor of occupational and environmental health at the
University of Iowa.
"The people out there have been running the plant pretty well, and we
should be happy about that," Osterberg said.
Osterberg would be happier, though, if Alliant simply decided to close the
plant at its present license expiration date.
"If the company doesn't have the confidence going forward to get an
extension on its own, I don't think we should have anybody else come in here and
run it for an extended period of time beyond what it's design was," he
said.
Osterberg said Sweden has placed a 40-year limit on the life of its nuclear
plants.
"There's a lot of people nervous about the metals in these plants that
have been bombarded with slow neutrons over such a long period of time," he
said.
Curtland said Duane Arnold's operators closely monitor the condition of the
plant. The owners are not selling the plant because they think it will become
less safe or reliable, Curtland said, but because of the financial risk. With
the plant fully depreciated, he said the owners do not know how much of a return
on future plant investments regulators would allow.
Residents living near the plant are not unanimous in their opinions of the
sale. But Palo Mayor John Harris believes the general opinion of the plant is
supportive.
"We as a town would like to see the license extended," Harris said
"The personnel that run the plant, we understand, would be likely to
continue running the plant. The relationship we've had with the plant would not
change very much," Harris said.
Plant majority owner Alliant Energy is committed to not relicensing the
plant, spokesman Ryan Stensland. If the plant cannot be sold, he says, Alliant
will decommission it in 2014, and that could mean higher rates until then to get
the decommissioning reserve adequately funded.
Stensland says the sale does not reflect a change in Alliant's belief in
nuclear technology, but its effort to "return to our roots" as a
traditional utility offering shareholders predictable returns.
"In the next 10 years, there will be a tremendous amount of discussion
regarding relicensing," he said.
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