Florida Power and Light (FPL) is trying to get permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build two new reactors at their Turkey Point power station. FPL will also have to build miles of ten-story power transmission lines to carry the electricity to the Miami area. FPL says that its new nuclear reactors would be environmentally friendly, economically beneficial and safe. There are critics of the project who state that none of these claims are valid.
Nuclear reactors require huge amounts of water to cool the reactors. Currently, FPL utilizes about one percent of the water consumed in Miami-Dade County. If the proposed reactors are constructed, that would rise to ten percent of the water consumption. Current projections of water use in the next twenty years estimate that consumption of water will rise dramatically without the additional draw of the proposed reactors. In response to this concern, FPL says that they will use reclaimed waste water to cool their reactors. However, the backup cooling system for the proposed reactors would draw more than seven billion gallons of water from Biscayne Bay and the Biscayne Aquifer. The Biscayne Aquifer is the only source of drinking water for the County. Overdrawing from the Aquifer would threaten the coastal Everglades, Biscayne National Park and wells in South Dade.
When first proposed, the construction of the new reactors at Turkey Point was seven billion dollars. The most recent estimates put the cost at twenty billion dollars. Approval of the new Turkey Point reactors would commit Miami-Dade County to use of nuclear generated electricity for the next sixty years. Critics of the project say that aggressive conservation would be cost one fifth the optimistic estimated of the cost of nuclear power. FPL has been lobbying against conservation proposals. Critics say that other sources of sustainable alternative energy would be much cheaper, cleaner and safer than nuclear power.
The utility laws in Florida allow FPL to charge its customers for the cost of licensing and constructing the new reactors. To data, FPL has passed over two hundred million dollars of such costs along to the Miami-Dade rate payers. Even if the new reactors at Turkey Point are not approved and constructed, FPL rate payers will not see that initial money refunded.
Included in the cost of construction are huge one hundred and fifty foot tall transmission towers and their transmission lines in Everglades National Park and in the middle of dense commercial and residential neighborhoods in Miami-Dade County. The loss from property taxes alone would run into the tens of millions of dollars annually. In addition, the lost businesses would remove thousands of jobs from the area. The proposed transmission towers do not meet Florida hurricane safety standards. If a transmission tower was toppled in a storm, it could destroy many businesses, homes and even cripple the County rail transit system.
The addition of new reactors to the Turkey Point power station was made fifty years ago, long before climate change, sea level rise and the probability of more power storms in the Turkey Point area were understood. The new reactors will be expected to function until at least 2080 by which time the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recommends that nuclear power reactors be designed to cope with as much as a six foot rise in sea level. The FPL application provides for only one foot of sea level rise. This is obviously inadequate given that sea level at Turkey Point has risen by five inches in the last six years. Although the site for the new reactors is twenty five feet above current sea level, a two foot rise in sea level would turn Turkey Point into a remote island. There is also the danger of extreme storm surges that may accompany more power storms there.
The expansion of Turkey Point is a bad idea environmentally and financially. There has also been no provision for the cost of the nuclear waste that would be generated by the new reactors. FPL ratepayers, Florida state government and the NRC should not approve these new reactors.
Turkey Point Power Station:
