Watts Bar may not help TVA meet EPA carbon limits

Public power leaders urge change in federal carbon counts

photo The newly-constructed Flex building, designed to protect emergency equipment in the event of a disaster, is seen in front of the reactors at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant on Wednesday near Spring City, Tenn.

State targetsEPA is recommending reductions in carbon emissions for each state:Georgia: 44 percentTennessee: 39 percentAlabama: 27 percentSouth Carolina: 51 percentSource: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

The Tennessee Valley Authority is cutting in half the share of power it gets from coal-fired power plants and should reduce its carbon emissions from its peak levels by nearly 40 percent by 2020.

Such cuts would appear to more than meet the overall target proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reduce power plant carbon pollution 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 to help curb greenhouse gases linked with global warming.

But TVA may not get credit for much of that reduction under the way the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is counting carbon cuts by electric utilities. Other Southern utilities adding more nuclear power to replace aging coal plants face a similar regulatory hurdle unless EPA alters its proposed Clean Power Plan.

Public power advocates who toured TVA's Watts Bar Nuclear Plant said Friday they want EPA to change its carbon count. Leaders of the American Public Power Association and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association called upon EPA Friday not to exclude nuclear power plants now under construction in calculating the carbon emission reductions proposed for each state.

"At this moment, it does not appear that the enormous investment that the industry has made in these units under construction will get any credit and that is just patently unfair and could have a huge detrimental effect on ratepayers," said Jo Ann Emerson, CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.

Work began at TVA's Watts Bar Unit 2, Georgia Power Co.'s Vogtle plant Units 3 and 4 and South Carolina Electric & Gas Co.'s VC Summer plant expansion prior to 2012 when EPA proposed the new rules. As a result, the carbon reductions realized by replacing coal power with such reactors can't be included under the proposed EPA carbon regulations.

EPA is proposing that carbon dioxide emissions be cut in Tennessee by 39 percent, in Georgia by 44 percent and in South Carolina by 51 percent.

Sue Kelly, president and CEO of the American Public Power Association, said meeting those targets will be expensive and difficult if the new nuclear reactors being built can't be counted in reaching those targets. Kelly said EPA should modify its rules so that the utilities now investing tens of billions of dollars in new nuclear reactors in those states can use the new reactors to help attain the carbon reduction targets.

"I don't think the EPA has sufficiently considered, although I would like to think that they are starting to learn, that nuclear power is not like throwing up a combined cycle gas plant or some other type of alternative power source," she said. "This is an entirely different order as we can see here with the massive effort being made to finish Watts Bar."

EPA has already received more than 5 million comments from interested parties in its proposed Clean Power Plan, or Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act. The federal agency is receiving such comments until Dec. 1 and then is scheduled to issue its final order.

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Earlier this week, an industry group opposed to the EPA rules released a study by NERA Economic Consulting that estimates electric rates in Tennessee will go up by 18 percent if the current carbon rules are not changes. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity claims that 43 states will have double-digit rate increases if carbon emissions have to be cut and hundreds of coal plants are ultimately shut down.

Former TVA Chairman Mike Duncan, the head of the industry group, said EPA's current plan "is enormously expensive and will result in marginal global benefits."

But EPA, which has spent nearly a decade trying to regulate carbon emissions from power plants, said coal-fired power generation produces 38 percent of the man-made carbon emissions in the United States and cutting such emissions would help to not only limit global warming but cut smog and other pollutants in the air.

In its announcement of the rules, EPA estimated that airborne particle emissions would be reduced from the rule by more than 25 percent, providing up to $93 billion in climate and public health benefits. Those health benefits in 2030 would include avoidance of an estimated 6,600 premature deaths, 150,000 childhood asthma attacks, and 490,000 missed days of work or school.

TVA began building its Watts Bar nuclear plant in 1974 but suspended work in 1988 when power demand slowed. TVA Senior Vice President Mike Skaggs said the Unit 2 reactor at Watts Bar is now 93 percent complete and TVA should be ready to load nuclear fuel into the reactor by May, and start generating electricity by December 2015.

Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 757-6340.

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