The Crystal River Nuclear Power Plant is located in the Crystal River Energy Complex eight miles north of Crystal River, Florida on the Gulf of Mexico. The reactor is a pressurized water reactor capable of generating eight hundred and sixty megawatts. It shares the complex with four fossil fuel power plants.
The Crystal River plant was constructed by Florida Progress Corporation and went into operation in 1977. It was operated by a subsidiary, Florida Power Corporation. In 2000, it was purchased by Carolina Power & Light and a new company called Progress Energy was formed. In 2012, it was bought by Duke Energy which now operates it. Duke controls around ninety percent and the other ten percent is owned by nine municipal utilities. Its license was scheduled to run out in 2016.
In September of 2066, a 5.8 magnitude earthquake occurred about three hundred miles to the southwest of the plant but no damage to the plant occurred. The odds of an earthquake powerful enough to damage the reactor are estimated to be very low. The NRC plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of ten miles contains more than twenty thousand people. The NRC ingestion pathway zone with a fifty miles radius contains over one million people.
In September of 2009, the plant was shut down for refueling and to increase the power output. A hole was cut into the containment vessel to replace the steam generators but it turned out that the concreted of the containment vessel had been overstressed by the workers cutting the hole and the concrete was damaged. That section was repaired but the repairs caused problems in other areas of the concrete shell. The plant had been scheduled to restart in April of 2011 but in June of that year, the restart was put off until 2014.
The initial estimate of the cost of repairs was between nine hundred million dollars and one billion three hundred million dollars. In October of 2012, that estimate was revised by an independent review to between one billion five hundred million and three billion four hundred million dollars. In February of 2013, Duke Energy announced that the Crystal River Nuclear Power Plant will never be restarted. They are going to shut it down permanently. It may take up to sixty years for the site to be dismantled and decontaminated.
Duke will provide eight hundred and fifty million dollars in settlements to the customers who had to purchase electricity at a higher cost. Duke claims that the Nuclear Electric Insurance company shortchanged Duke customers for the more expensive electricity. Duke will also try to recover the one billion six hundred and fifty million dollars that it paid for the purchase of the plant from its customers.
Here we have a case of an old nuclear power plant that may have had a poorly constructed containment vessel in the first place and had the containment vessel damaged by incompetent contractors. It would seem a poor decision on the part of Duke Energy to purchase an old reactor near the end of its license that was in the middle of expensive and problematic repairs. There are also issues with the integrity and/or competence of the company insuring in the customers of a nuclear power station. And finally, I question whether or not a company with the poor judgment of Duke Energy will actually be able to survive long enough to oversee the sixty year process of decommissioning the power plant.
Picture from Nuke plant:
