San Antonio CPS knew of higher Nuclear STP cost year ago

[Fledermaus]

CPS Energy knew a year ago that contractor Toshiba Inc. wanted at least $4 billion more than San Antonio was willing to pay for the nuclear expansion, according to several sources close to the deal.

Despite this, utility officials used a much lower figure as they pitched the project at public meetings during the summer, arguing that nuclear was the most cost-effective way for San Antonio to meet its future energy needs.

They took the same message to elected officials who were to vote on a $400 million bond issue and rate increases to finance the multibillion-dollar expansion of the South Texas Project near Bay City.

The response of City Council members and CPS Energy trustees to the 2008 estimate was muted Saturday. “Nothing can surprise me anymore,” Councilwoman Elisa Chan said.

“It concerns me greatly that neither the council nor the board was informed,” said Mayor Julián Castro, who acknowledged he, too, recently learned of the existence of the 2008 high estimate.

Those who've been fighting the proposed nuclear deal for months, warning it would cost much more than CPS Energy was promising, were more pointed.

“That means at the district meetings and the public forums they held all summer, CPS was lying to the public,” said Karen Hadden of the SEED Coalition, an Austin-based environmental advocacy group. “This is a massive deception.”

http://www.mysanantonio.com/livinggreensa/70733907.html

[jpak]

1. The nuclear industry lies to the public?

Who knew?

:shrug:

[Fledermaus]

4. Somebody or a group of people at CPS were hiding the true cost. The city owns CPS.

As a citizen of San Antonio, I think they should be fired. They went to every distinct in the city and held meetings with the citizens to try to pump it up. Apparently, the whole time they were selling it, some, in CPS, knew it was BS.

[bananas]

2. This also belongs in LBN - so I just posted it there

link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4156874

[kristopher]

3. This was predicted in 2008 independent analysis

Assessing Nuclear Plant Capital Costs for the Two Proposed NRG Reactors at the South Texas Project Site

Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D.1

March 24, 2008
A. Main Findings and Recommendations

NRG, a merchant electricity generating company, proposes to build two new nuclear power
reactors, totaling 2,700 megawatts at the South Texas Project site near Bay City, Texas. NRG
owns a part of the two units that already exist at that site. CPS Energy, San Antonio’s electricity
and gas municipal utility, which owns a 40 percent share of the two existing units proposes to
purchase a 40 percent share of the proposed new reactors. This analysis is a preliminary report
on the likely capital costs of the two reactors, as best they can be determined at the present time.
It also contains some preliminary observations regarding efficiency and distributed renewable
energy sources to put the CPS decision that might be made regarding investment in the NRG
plant into context.

Central conclusion and recommendation

The overall finding of this report is that NRG’s range of $6 billion to $7 billion is obsolete.
The best available estimates indicate that capital costs would likely be about a factor of two
or more higher, even without taking into account the potential for real cost escalations
during construction, delays, and other risks. The risks to CPS, as a municipal utility and to
its ratepayers as well as to the taxpayers of San Antonio are great. Due diligence demands
that CPS participation in the project should not be pursued until an independent, detailed
study with current cost estimates of the plants and alternatives to it are complete and have
been publicly disclosed and discussed.


1 Arjun Makhijani is president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, and Fellow of the American
Physical Society.

[madokie]

5. So far the only constant with nuclear energy is

They lie, sometimes even when the truth would sound better