FPL Wants to Build Its Third Nuclear Plant in Florida

By Kristi Swartz, The Palm Beach Post, Fla.

Apr. 4–Florida Power & Light Co. says it wants to build another nuclear plant in Florida.

The utility Monday filed a letter of intent, which is basically a courtesy at this point, with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, saying it wants to “potentially pursue a new nuclear power plant in Florida” — the first in the state since the utility received its license to operate its second unit at the St. Lucie plant on Hutchinson Island in 1983.

The company told the NRC it plans in 2009 to file an application for a license to build a plant. FPL said it doesn’t have a site in mind, nor has it settled on a specific reactor technology.

“That’s where the whole industry is. We’re all trying to evaluate how long it’s going to take, how much it’s going to cost, all of those issues,” FPL spokeswoman Rachel Scott said Monday.

FPL estimates it would take more than a decade to build a nuclear plant because of environmental, regulatory and security measures that would have to be addressed. The company’s decision to build one also will be based on regulatory and financial market conditions, as well as the cost of fuel.

“If we were to decide today to build, the current estimate is 12 years,” Scott said. “That’s the earliest that one could come on line.”

The company operates four reactors: two at Turkey Point in Miami-Dade County, and two at the St. Lucie plant. Progress Energy-Florida operates the single-reactor Crystal River plant in Citrus County.

The last U.S. nuclear plant to receive an operating license was one in Sprint City, Tenn., owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority, in 1996. No new nuclear plant has formally been ordered in the United States since 1973, according to The Associated Press.

Two companies — Dominion Power and NuStart Energy Development LLC, a consortium of utility companies to which FPL belongs — have filed what is known as an “early site permit” with the NRC to handle environmental studies on proposed nuclear plants in Virginia and Mississippi, NRC spokesman Roger Hannah said Monday.

FPL mentioned its nuclear plant proposal in a filing Monday with state utility regulators to lay out its new 10-year site plan. Such plans are filed annually. FPL’s new plan also says the company wants to add a coal plant and a natural gas plant, and is keeping alive an idea for a pipeline that would deliver liquefied natural gas.

“I think it would be impossible to overstate the importance of fuel diversity in today’s economy,” said Kevin Bloom, spokesman for the Florida Public Service Commission, which would review any utility’s proposal to build a new power plant of any kind and determine whether there is a need.

FPL provides electricity to 4.3 million homes and businesses and said it expects to add about 100,000 customers a year. Because of this growth, the utility said, it will need to increase the amount of power it is producing by 27 percent during the next 10 years.

The NRC is charged with monitoring the safety and environmental issues at a nuclear plant and doesn’t have a say in whether the billion-dollar projects get built, Hannah said.

Nuclear power now makes up 19 percent of FPL’s fuel mix. FPL President Armando Olivera told The Palm Beach Post in December he would like nuclear power to provide 50 percent or 60 percent of the mix.

“It’s right for our state. It’s right for our customers,” he said at the time. “But it will take a couple of decades for that.”

The utility’s parent company, FPL Group Inc., announced that same month it was buying Constellation Energy Group Inc. of Baltimore in an $11 billion deal that would make it the third-largest nuclear plant owner and operator in the nation.

Holly Binns, clear-air policy director for the Florida Public Interest Research Group, said Monday she has several concerns about utilities wanting to build more nuclear plants.

“If we can’t make nuclear cost-competitive, then maybe it’s not the right solution,” Binns said.

She said she also is worried that there will not be enough space to store more highly radioactive waste.

“Seems like we’re rushing along into making this problem a lot worse,” she said.

Meanwhile, FPL is pursuing a natural gas plant in western Palm Beach County to help meet the immediate demand for power and is continuing to search for a home for a new coal plant.

FPL wanted to build a “clean” coal plant in St. Lucie County but county commissioners turned it down. The utility has not abandoned plans to build such a plant in another county but said it also will study gasification technology for a future plant, FPL spokeswoman Scott said.

Environmental advocates have been pushing utilities to use the gasification technology if they decide to build a coal plant.

“We continue to encourage Florida Power & Light to continue to look at the gasification technology if they are going to consider coal, a technology that considers the harmful mercury emissions and the potential to capture carbon dioxide,” said Susan Glickman, Florida policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group.

Florida lawmakers are considering several bills that would change the way the state develops, gets and uses its power.

One proposal (SB 888), which passed the Senate Committee on Environmental Preservation Monday afternoon, streamlines the process for building power plants and removes proposed nuclear power plants from the process that requires utilities to see whether a less-expensive plant can be built.

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