Chris Tomlinson, of the Houston Chronicle, reports that sitting in a file cabinet at the South Texas Project nuclear plant is a permit application for building an additional reactor. The partnership that owns the plant - NRG Energy, CPS of San Antonio and Austin Energy - suspended attempts to build a third reactor after the Fukushima incident and a forecast that predicted continued low power prices in Texas. But that proposal could find new life in helping to fight climate change. The Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation, encourages construction of new nuclear power plants and increases in electricity coming from existing nuclear facilities, according to an analysis by Standard & Poor's RatingsDirect.
If nuclear power plants run more than expected, operate more efficiently, or benefit from capacity increases, then they can readily help each state to meet its target reduction goals, according to the report. That is important for Texas, which has the highest carbon dioxide emissions in the country and must find a way to cut back under the CPP. The state power generators already plan to replace old coal-fired plants with new turbines fueled by natural gas, but that is not enough to hit the CPP targets. Nuclear energy does not produce any emissions, but does use a lot of water. The big problem, though, is the cost of building and decommissioning a nuclear reactor. A full life-cycle analysis shows nuclear energy is more expensive than most other forms of generation, including some wind and solar. That makes nuclear power difficult to justify in deregulated electricity markets like Texas where prices are extremely low. But the South Texas Project generates power 24 hours a day, accepting whatever prices the market is paying at the moment, which is sometimes zero. Since it was built before the market was deregulated, the owners consider the construction as a sunken cost. But read on for the rest of the story ...
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