FirstEnergy Corp. sees its upgrades to the Davis-Besse nuclear reactor as a boon to the economy.
AKRON - At a time when nuclear reactors are closing rather than upgrading, FirstEnergy Corp. is poised to spend well over $1 billion on nuclear upgrades over the next several years.
The company is now beginning a $600 million construction project to replace the two steam generators at its Davis-Besse reactor in Ottawa County, about 25 miles east of Toledo on Lake Erie.
Babcock and Wilcox, the company that made the Davis-Besse reactor, fabricated the steam generators in Ontario, and shipped them to the Port of Toledo.
The project is part of the company's commitment to nuclear energy in the face of tougher emission standards for coal-fired power plants.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering the company's application for a 20-year-extension of its operating license. Steam generators are important to a plant's safe operations because they handle radioactive reactor water.
Davis-Besse's current NRC license expires in 2017. Opponents of the renewal have pointed out the plant's past history of safety problems,which included a two-year shutdown beginning in 2002, initially for corrosion of the reactor lid but then expanding into numerous operational violations.
FirstEnergy replaced the damaged reactor lid, initially with a second-hand-but-never-used one in 2004 and then with a new one in 2011. Total cost of those two projects was about $400 million.
Beyond Nuclear, an anti-nuclear group, has unsuccessfully objected to the plant's license renewal, arguing that new steam generators are not identical to those they will replace and that the hairline cracks throughout the reactor's shield building have compromised its strength. The group also argues that FirstEnergy has not proven it will be able to protect the public from the dangers of on-site storage of spent fuel rods.
Although the NRC's license renewal decisions are based on an overall assessment of whether a company can manage aging equipment, reactor lid and steam generator replacements are important to any company with a pressurized water reactor like Davis-Besse seeking to extend its operating license. Components in both have failed across the industry because of corrosion and cracking.
Replacing them is expensive. But spending that amount of money acts as an economic stimulus and FirstEnergy is pitching the steam generator project as a boost both to the rural Ottawa County economy and even to the state as a whole.
To make the point, the company hired an economist to do an analysis.
"The project is expected to boost the local economy by more than $108 million, with overall economic benefits expected to exceed $150 million statewide, according to an economic study recently completed by Phoenix-based consulting firm Applied Economics," FirstEnergy claims.
About 2,300 workers from 13 local trade unions and specialized national nuclear contractors are involved in the project, which will also include, at an additional unspecified cost, refueling the reactor. They join the more than 700 employed at the power plant.
In 2017, FirstEnergy will replace the reactor lid and a trio of steam generators at one of its two reactors at the Beaver Valley power about 35 miles downstream of Pittsburgh on the Ohio River.
FirstEnergy has spent hundreds of millions in the last eight years on similar projects.
Beaver Valley's other reactor got a new reactor lid and set of steam generators in 2006. The NRC has granted 20-year operating extensions to both of the Beaver Valley reactors.
FirstEnergy has made it clear to Wall Street types that it would rather spend money on its four-reactor nuclear fleet that spend it on its smaller or older coal-fired power plants to meet tougher air pollution rules.
"The majority of the remaining capital investments over the next several years will be focused on projects to extend the life of our nuclear assets with new steam generators at Davis-Besse this year and new steam generators and a reactor head at Beaver Valley Unit Two in 2017," Anthony Alexander, FirstEnergy's CEO, told analysts in January.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based industry trade group, see's the expensive replacements as not only necessary for safety and licensing but also as financially smart.
"That is a good investment," NEI spokesman Mitch Singer said of FirstEnergy's projects. "The company will get many more years of operation out of the investment. And the new steam generators do increase the efficiency of operation."
In contrast to FirstEnergy's commitment to keeping its reactors operating, other utilities recently closed four reactors, three of them because of botched steam generator replacements and the other because the plant was too expensive to operate.
A fourth reactor will close at the end of this year, following years of local protests against its remaining in service.
Weighing close to 500 tons each, the two new steam generators at Davis-Besse will stand more than 70 feet high once installed inside the reactor containment building.
Their function is to move heat from the 600-degree pressurized reactor water to a separate system or loop containing clean water that instantly flashes to steam - super saturated steam with the oomph to spin the power plant's turbines and ultimately the generator.
This article was revised to reflect correct weight of the steam generators the true cost of new reactor lids at Davis-Besse: $400 million.