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Nuclear plant comes at a cost

By GREG HAMILTON
Published June 23, 2006

Sometime in the next few weeks, the leaders of Progress Energy will make a decision that could forever change Citrus County. If the North Carolina-based utility chooses to build a second nuclear power plant at its Crystal River complex, the implications would be staggering.

Already, the sprawling energy complex pumps millions of dollars in property tax revenue into the county budget. The new plant, costing upward of $3-billion and taking 10 years to build, would add untold millions in tax revenue for decades to come.

Its work force, among the highest-paid in the region, also would contribute an enormous amount of money to the local economy through purchases of homes, cars and other essentials. And the company has historically been generous in its community goodwill donations to host communities.

For those reasons, the Board of County Commissioners is on record as unanimously inviting the company to build in Crystal River. But this is hardly a done deal. And before the county trips over itself, it needs to consider a few points.

For starters, there is the question of the spent nuclear fuel. Disposing of this radioactive stuff is a major issue nationwide, and Citrus County officials should not turn a blind eye to this enormous problem.

Since coming online in 1977, the reactor along the shoreline north of Crystal River has generated untold amounts of electricity for a wide swath of Central Florida. It has also created a huge pile of spent fuel pellets that are stored in a deep pool on the site.

The radiation diminishes over time in the pool, but the danger remains real. Exposure would be instantly fatal. Proposed EPA standards would call for keeping the spent fuel away from humans for 1-million years.

To use an entirely unscientific term, this is nasty stuff. And Citrus gets to keep it all, at least until the federal government figures out a better plan to dispose of it.

A second plant would naturally mean even more spent fuel on our doorstep. With space in the deep pool expected to run out by 2016, Progress Energy is considering another plan: storing it in huge dry casks.

These would be above ground. Yes, they would be hardened and, presumably, able to withstand hurricane-force winds and other natural threats.

But what about a terrorist attack? Citrus Sheriff Jeff Dawsy has pointed out that the regional antiterrorism task force lists the Crystal River site as the No. 1 potential target for terrorists. Would these huge casks of radioactive fuel be sitting ducks?

During a visit with the St. Petersburg Times editorial board last week, Jeff Lyash, the new CEO of Progress Energy Florida, downplayed such concerns.

"On-site storage is not a technical issue for the industry, but a political issue," he said.

The casks would be designed to handle such threats, he assured the board. However, this is a theory that has never been tested. No one ever expected the Twin Towers to collapse after being struck by jetliners - until it happened.

It would be foolish, and potentially disastrous, to underestimate the importance of this issue.

There are other, less-critical concerns. What about the potential impact on development?

Say a second, sprawling plant is built at Crystal River. That would push way back the 5-mile zone around the site in which the county prohibits development.

With renewed attention being paid these days to developing that part of Citrus County, how would the new plant affect these building proposals? It does not take much imagination to envision lawsuits from property owners who now would be prevented from developing their land.

Then there is the proposed Suncoast Parkway II project. One of the suggested routes for the highway expansion would follow the Progress Energy power lines that arc from Crystal River to the Hernando County line.

A second nuclear reactor would require either greatly upgrading the existing lines or putting up new ones. If the new lines follow the old path, would this limit or prohibit its use for the proposed parkway?

And if the enormous transmission towers go in another direction, say due east to feed the central part of the state, how would this affect developments already slated to be built across the central and eastern parts of the county? How many homeowners would object to having these towers as neighbors?

It is obvious that Progress Energy is strongly considering Crystal River as a home for the new nuke. CEO Lyash spelled out several of the site's advantages, such as its geology and proximity to cooling water, plus the fact that the community has embraced the plant.

He also noted some disadvantages, such as the concern over having too much power generation at a single site. Utilities try to spread generation sites around to avoid catastrophic disruptions of service.

But the planets are aligning in Progress Energy's favor. The federal government is throwing hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits to utilities to develop new nuclear plants. In Florida, the government has removed virtually all risk for investors in these utilities.

Battered by rising gasoline prices, the national mood seems ready to accept any alternative fuel, including nuclear power. Lyash expects the hard-core antinuke protesters to show up once the site is announced. But communities, he said, are asking to be considered for a site, not putting up barricades.

Count Citrus County as one of those open-arms communities.

While our elected officials and business leaders salivate over the prospects of a second nuclear plant in our borders, they should not forget that it will come with a price for the host community.

Greg Hamilton is editor of editorials of the Times' Citrus County edition.

[Last modified June 26, 2006, 10:48:34]