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Judge: TVA Deal for Bellefonte Nuclear Plant Stays in Place

May 17, 2019

A federal judge this week ruled the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) must continue to honor an agreement to sell the unfinished Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant to a real estate developer who has said he would complete construction of the long-idled project.

U.S. District Court Judge Liles C. Burke, in a 17-page opinion issued after a hearing this week in Huntsville, Alabama, declined to dismiss a lawsuit brought by developer Franklin Haney, who sued TVA in November 2018 for breach of contract after TVA said it could not complete the sale of the Bellefonte site and its assets to Haney’s Nuclear Development LLC.

Haney in 2016 was the winning bidder in an auction for Bellefonte, agreeing to pay $ 111 million for the twin-reactor nuclear plant. He sued TVA last year after the federally owned utility said it needed approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to authorize the sale.

TVA at the 2016 auction said the winning bidder would have two years to complete the purchase.…

Holtec Adds Indian Point Nuclear Plant to Decommissioning Portfolio

April 17, 2019

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Entergy on April 16 said it will sell its Indian Point Energy Center to Comprehensive Decommissioning International, a Camden, N.J.-based jointly owned subsidiary of Holtec International, a company buying nuclear plants that are closed or scheduled for retirement.

Holtec in the deal will receive funds that Entergy has invested in a decommissioning trust, currently worth about $ 2 billion. Entergy has now agreed to sell all its remaining fleet of merchant nuclear reactors to decommissioning firms; the company last year said it would sell its Vermont Yankee plant, which closed in 2014, to New York-based NorthStar.

NorthStar said it would complete decommissioning and restoration of the Vermont Yankee site by 2030. Entergy in its decommissioning report filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) had said its work would not be completed until 2075.

Entergy has said it will shut down the last two of Indian Point’s three reactors in 2021. Unit 1, a 257-MW reactor that came online in 1962, was retired in 1974.…

POWER Notebook: New 1,600-MW Coal Plant in India; Low-Price Solar Deal in Idaho

April 9, 2019

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Financing has reportedly been secured for a 1,600-MW coal-fired power plant in India’s eastern state of Jharkhand. Qatar’s Gulf Times newspaper reported April 6 that Power Finance Corp., a state-run lender in India, and its subsidiary REC approved a $ 1.5 billion loan for the project. The report said the new plant would be funded through loans and equity, with Power Finance and REC covering the entire cost of the project, which Bloomberg estimated at just more than $ 2.1 billion.

The plant is being designed to sell power to Bangladesh through a power purchase agreement with the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB). Adani Power Limited, part of India’s Adani Group, one of the world’s largest coal-mining companies, is building the plant. People familiar with the project reportedly said the plant is eligible for tax breaks, as India’s commerce ministry has designated the region as a special economic zone, and the plant as an export industrial facility. BPDB said Bangladesh currently gets about 56% of its power generation from natural gas, with oil and diesel providing most of the rest.…

Dominion Reaches Deal to Keep Millstone Nuclear Plant Open

March 18, 2019

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Dominion Energy has reached an agreement with utilities in Connecticut to keep the Millstone Power Station, the state’s only nuclear power plant, in service for at least another decade.

Dominion announced the deal March 15, the deadline the company had to tell ISO New England, the regional grid operator, whether it would retire the two reactors at the 2,088-MW plant.

The Millstone station produces about half the electricity in Connecticut. Analysts have said it also accounts for 98% of the state’s carbon-free power, and its operation is seen as key for the state to meet its carbon reduction goals.

“This is a huge win for Connecticut, the region, and our colleagues at Millstone,” Paul Koonce, president and chief executive of Dominion’s Power Generation Group, said in a statement. “Not only does this preserve the vast majority of Connecticut’s carbon-free electricity, it preserves good jobs for the 1,500 women and men who work at Millstone and keeps 4,000 other residents employed.”

Dominion, headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, has for years said that the Millstone station is no longer economic to operate.…

Carbon Capture Proposed to Save New Mexico Coal Plant

March 3, 2019

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The New York-based hedge fund aiming to take over New Mexico’s San Juan Generating Station (SJGS), targeted for closure by state lawmakers, wants to refit the 46-year-old, coal-fired plant to use carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology.

Acme Equities LLC said last week that retrofitting the 847-MW plant with CCS technology would cut carbon emissions by 90% and offer the plant another revenue stream—selling the captured CO₂to help produce oil. Acme is negotiating with local Farmington, N.M., officials to take over the San Juan plant, a major employer in the area, and keep it operating.

Injecting carbon dioxide into older oil fields has been done for years to encourage wells to continue producing oil.

But state lawmakers expressed doubts about the technology even as they pushed a bill (Senate Bill 489) that would close the plant by 2022, limit the financial hit to the plant’s current ownership, and preserve tax revenue for local schools.

Lawmakers wondered about the economic viability of the CCS technology during discussions March 2 with the state’s Senate Corporations and Transportation Committee.…

Groups Reach Deal to Keep New Mexico Coal Plant Open

February 25, 2019

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A private New York-based real estate investment company that focuses on North American energy projects has reached an agreement with officials in Farmington, New Mexico, to keep the coal-fired San Juan Generating Station open beyond 2022.

The city is part-owner of the 847-MW plant, and the other owners—which include Tucson Electric Power, Los Alamos County, and Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, along with majority owner Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM)—have said they do not plan to receive power from the SJGS after 2022. The agreement with Acme Equities LLC, a hedge fund founded by Jason Selch in 2012, was reached late February 23, according to a news release from the city.

Farmington officials have worked to find a new operator for the plant after PNM in 2017 said it would close the plant’s two remaining units in 2022, 30 years ahead of schedule. According to a plant fact sheet, PNM owns 46% of the SJGS.

Several California-owned utilities formerly owned some of the plant’s generation, but they ended their ownership agreements in 2017 after 2015 legislation in California required them to divest from coal-fired generation.…