Monticello Nuclear Power Plant

6o Year Life of Nuclear Power Plant Core

Excel Energy is conducting public hearings concerning its proposal to increasing its electrical output from the Monticello, Minnesota Nuclear Power Plant (MMNPP). I attended a meeting held at Saint Cloud State University (SCSU).

Ninety percent of the attendants are students that were likely required to attend as an requirement of a course in chemistry, physics, or social science. The few elders viewed in the audience were likely connected with SCSU's infrastructure.

The speaker Ray Dennis is a Project Manager of Civil Engineering at Excel Energy. His monologue is accompanied with pictures visualizing the enormity of the Excel's MMNPP.

Mr. Dennis begins stating that he has twenty-six years of employment at MMNPP. He moved efficiently in expounding nuclear power's part of the total energy mix in the United States as twenty percent (20%).

This particular power plant along with Excel's other nuclear power plant at Prairie Island and the other carbon fuel power plants are part of Excel's base load. The company's wind, hydro and, small photovoltaic electric plants are considered variables due to environmental restrictions, therefore, excluded as the energy mix base load.

Excel's projected electric power increase demand , due to this country's population and consumption demand, is forecast at 3 to 4 percent per year. This estimate seems to have been projected before the present economic recession (2008). The demand may increase but the inability to pay for that demand may not be beneficial to Excel.

Like all base load power plants in operation today the common natural resource required to exchange the potential energy of inputs; oil, coal, uranium and municipal wastes, to consumer electric energy is water. The present nuclear core powering MMNPP uses 14,867 gallons of water per minute that is converted to steam that drives the turbines that generate the electrical energy.

The water source suppling the fourteen million gallons per minute is the once environmentally hospitable Mississippi River. Upstream from Excel's Monticello plant is Excel's Becker Coal power plant. As with all base load power plants that plant also uses vast amounts of water that produce steam.

Both power plants cool the steam\water that is extracted via condensation then stored in cooling towers at the sites. When the stored heated water needs to be removed to make space for the next amount hot water from the nuclear core it is returned to the Mississippi.

Mississippi Mishap

Because of the vast amounts of water that needs to be cooled, it can be doubted that temperature of the water cooled in the power plants towers is the same temperature of the water when extracted originally from its source the Mississippi river. With the returned water from the Becker, Minnesota power plant and the returned water from the Monticello power plant something also must be asked; what else is missing from the water removed from the river?

Imagine the fine particulars that can't be filtered. What part does the microbiology of the filtered water and the particulates that are not filtered play to health of the river? What about the filtered environment of the river water? What happens to it? Obviously the intense water temperature to make steam kills all microbiology of the river water.

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The questioning of the natural habitat in a moving body of water that is the collection point of numerous water sheds; subjected to agriculture, industrial, and past municipal wastes deposits plus barge ballast tank exchanges seems moot. I'm sure the residents of towns and cities a few miles south of Lake Itasca feel safest drawing water and seeing a wildlife habitat thrive from the Mississippi.

Nuclear Nuance

In 1971 the nuclear reaction at the Monticello plant began. The political climate at that time is witnessing the protesting of several changes. The misnamed “Green” movement or the industrialization of agriculture began the grouping of educated people that started seeing their culture decimated because population growth and natural resource shortages.

The Vietnam conflict, human rights, liquid fuel shortages, and pollution caused many distractions. In the mid sixties nuclear power is presented as the driving force to implement the cultural shift from agriculture to industrialism. Most information concerning nuclear power is tied to the Atomic Bombs dropped on Hiroshima and is repelled.

The number of construction jobs associated with the building of electric power plants would permit industries to build assembly plants that would employ millions of “Baby Boomers” remaining after Vietnam. That cultural shift is seem as a “win win” for the American Capitalists.

Uranium 235

Nuclear power is named “alternative energy” in the 2008 Presidential election debates. I agree with that enticement on the grounds that “alternative” in the case of being applied to nuclear power is; meaning of lesser importance (see web article http://www.progressivesurvival.com/dont-use-alternative-energy) to technologies not dependant on natural resource depletion or degradation.

The process of nuclear electrical generation also requires a fuel. Uranium 235 is processed from the raw material uranium. Uranium has in the past been mined in the western United States. States such as Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Nebraska have been mined.

According to the United States Nuclear Power Commission uranium is better assessable in countries such as Africa, Australia, Canada and Eastern Europe. Those mining locations are likely sought for the same reasons the drilling of oil is conducted in foreign countries. The environmental destruction of the mining processes would not be conducive to environmental tolerances by U.S. citizens.

Two large veins of uranium have reported to been located in the State of Virginia. According to a report by Anita Kumar of the Washington Post (01/02/08) 60,000 tons of uranium are estimated to be possibly mined in rural south central Virginia.

The amount of environmental degradation in the highly populated areas of eastern United States is hopefully a stop to further litigation to such a folly. If the populace in that area can be convinced that mining of uranium will be safely mined in their back yard perhaps the people with a thirty seven year old nuclear power plant being beefed up in their backyard will rest assured.

After the uranium is mined it needs to be milled. The milling removes 70% of the mined mineral substance. The mineral remaining called “yellow cake” has the correct charge to initiate the fission of atoms. The 70% that is not used still has radioactive charge and proper disposal of the waste is still debatable.

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Cost/Benefit

Ray Dennis stated that nuclear energy generation is rated on Energy Efficiency Rating scale as 37%. That rating he stated does not include disposal/storage of the waste. As with all energy production processes involving oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear have a efficiency rating that does not include the costs of its effluence to the environment.

Even wind and solar cells have a negative cost to our environment from the production and/or its being in the natural environment. The size of the environmental foot print for the said energy production methods vary in size. How the foot print is measured depends who owns the measuring stick.

Even without including the environmental costs of mass energy production nuclear energy is still dependant on fuel mostly mined in foreign countries. Although Canada is part of the North American electrical grid Canada is another political entity with different values.

Super-Sizing Monticello's Nuclear Output

Excel Energy wants to increase the mega watts of energy produced at the nuclear plant by 12%. That means that the amount of uranium 235 spent increases by 12%. Water intake from the Mississippi increase 12%. Heating , storage/cooling and released back to the river increases by 12%.

Ray stated that the engineers of the nuclear core said that the core was designed to handle the proposed increase of the energy production. I want to believe the engineers of the nucleat core have full responsibility to recommend increasing the output of a 37 year old machine with a average life span of a 60 years by that stated amount. I hope the input/output calculations by nuclear core engineers are in writing and that increased output is backed by an insurance policy to back any miscalculation.

I am not a nuclear engineer but with the limited association with automobile engines I understand that putting a larger carburetor on a engine with over half of its life spent to increase its output will likely result in mishap.

U.S. Energy Policy

During the 2008 Presidential Election Senator John McCain projected that his Energy Policy will initiate more nuclear energy to replace the carbon based polluting infrastructure active today. Senator Barack Obama cautiously referred to nuclear energy as part of the energy mix.

I inferred Obama's statement as meaning that the present nuclear electric generation being utilized today will be part of the energy mix until the original decommissioning time is upon each nuclear plant. I see Obama's Administration as negotiating with the centralised energy producers to accept and interact with smaller independent energy producers.

Independent energy producers are likely part of the local community, thereby, implementing conservation as a prerequisite to electrical generation. Roof top photovoltaic and rural wind electrical systems are limited in initial consumer demand but used in conjunction with centralized electric generation a new and self-sustaining energy ideology will develop.

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Energy Ideology Revived

The replacement of polluting burn technologies with nuclear powered uncertainties will at best be a short term solution. This solution first needs a ecological plan for the storage of the waste.

A depository in the Yuccan Mountain in Nevada is currently in doubt of being implemented because of public fright of storage of 70 million tons of radio active waste.

The uncertainties not only involve American Indian tribal rights and devaluation of property but the geologic changes that will accrue within the 250,000 year half life of the nuclear waste. Plate tectonics never rest.

To declare that the present nuclear technologies are here so lets just live with them; is a slap in the face to research and development of energy productions that are beyond nuclear fission. In a similar way to declare that global climate change is occurring because of the effluences carbon based technologies are causing, therefore, lets switch to nuclear power is just as illogical.

It has been proposed that people of the United States be educated on the relative safety of stored spent nuclear fuels; but the current opposition by environmentalists and the traditionalists to such a proposition would take two or three generations to implement and a constant battle with the “ists” .

A better use of educating the masses would be in education in energy conservation, population, and conspicuous consumption control. Naturally that education would end the need of the energy industries to propose growth expansions.

Potential Solution

A quicker and more economical way to implement charge of ideology is to raise the rate of kilowatt hour charge only to the residential customers of electric power. To increase the commercial and industrial sectors of the electrical market would reduce the consumer economy to rapidly.

The rate increase would be increased in small increments over a number of years. An average electrical residential usage base could be established.

Let's hypothetically set the base at 600 kilowatt hours (kwh) per household. Any household that can contain their electrical use at or below the kwh amount of 600 would pay the rate the current utility charges. The consumers with the means, needs, or lack of self control to use more than the base kwh amount would pay a greater kwh rate for the excess.

The capital collected on users that exceed the allotted 600 kwhs would be used to help fiance the economically disadvantage to update their inefficient appliances and housing structures. Their purchases of energy efficient appliances and structural improvements to the living space will allow them the means to contribute to positive climate change. People of all economic abilities will witness an increase in employment opportunities in housing improvements and efficient appliance manufacturing.

The commercial and industrial segments of the economy would likely change their electrical usage as well. Not only because of a changed attitude by the staff employed at the industry or commercial business but also because of the new found demand for energy efficient products and associated services.

Accompanying a public relations presentation that the particular business is part of positive energy change will also increase purchases at that business. A prosumer culture will likely develop.

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Conclusion

The permitting of Excel Energy to increase the amount of kilowatts the Monticello nuclear power plant is currently producing is not the safest or an ecological solution to curtailing Excel's greenhouse gas emissions. Excel would do greater justice to the local communities and Northern America's inhabitants by promoting demand reduction through kwh rate promotions.

It will be argued a price increase will persuade Excel customers to purchase electric power from other electric utilities. Legally the rights of the consumer to pay the electric supplier of their choice are protected under the U.S. Constitution. Obviously this electric pricing plan would be implemented through all energy producers.

Distribution and production should share the same responsibility. Even if the utility is only suppling the service to consumers but not producing they would be charged the same wholesale rate from the supplier.

Using the same reasoning concerning Constitutional Rights, the people that are witnessing environmental degrading because of base load electric utilities, have the Constitution Right to a healthy environment. They can constitutionally subject the population as a whole to higher rates and conservation to protect the rights of all.

President Elect Obama is educated in legal litigation and likely finds the Constitutional Rights of some are in violation of others. I believe Pres. Obama will need to publicly persuade the citizens of the United States as well as the the elected heads of State of Canada and Mexico that our survival on the Planet Earth is dependant on energy conservation.

Just because entropy is the finality of animal, vegetable, and mineral the Constitutionality of humans does not permit some the right to accelerate that process for their short term gain,

I can only hope that the readers of this essay will write to their City, County, State and Federal governing representatives as well as your State Public Utilities Commissioners alerting them of your concern that our excessive energy use is choking U.S. Please write me your thoughts on this subject.

R.L. Philippi

Copyright Best Energy Conservation Opportunities, Inc. 2008

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