News

June 24, 2009

Watchdogs: PPL’s nuke plan tentative

Two men who monitor Salem Twp. activities say utility might sell its existing plant.

WILKES-BARRE – Don’t expect PPL Corp. to actually build the new nuclear reactor it’s proposing in Salem Township, according to the projections of two of the project’s opponents.

It’s more likely, they said on Tuesday, that PPL could end up selling its existing two-reactor plant and that it could use the proposed site next door as a repository for spent fuel.

“If they get a license and don’t build a plant, maybe it’s a shrewd move for PPL,” said Eric Epstein, the chairman of nuclear watchdog organization Three Mile Island Alert. “They have their repository in place.”

He acknowledged, however, the company would have to get approval for the changes in its plan for the land, and that’s all predicated on the site being approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which won’t be happening until at least 2012.

Joe Scopelliti, a spokesman for PPL’s nuclear operations, argued all that and more, but stopped short of assuring that the site wouldn’t be repurposed for spent-fuel storage.

“That’s not on the radar screen. … I know if we do something outside of Susquehanna property that has to do with Susquehanna, we’ll have to get that approved,” he said. “You’re asking for a guarantee. … If we don’t have a place to safely store the fuel, that would be a problem, and we’d have to seek another location.”

He said there is space still available at the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station’s on-site repository, but more importantly, the federal government is being paid to approve and build a permanent site.

He also shied away from guaranteeing the reactor would be built. “At this point, I can’t say whether we’re going to build the plant in the near term,” he said. “Right now, PPL is looking for partners and (federal) nuclear loan guarantees. That’s today. The future? I’m not predicting what the future will bring us.

He said the license would simply give the company leeway to build when it’s more economically attractive.

“If that happens that the funding isn’t there at the time, that doesn’t mean that it’s going to stay that way forever. So it (the license) still has value. The use of electricity is going to increase in the future, so there’ll be other opportunities at other times.”

Epstein and Gene Stilp, a Wilkes-Barre native lured to Harrisburg for taxpayer activism, said PPL is in a unique situation among the state’s nuclear operators because it has no other plants with which to spread out expenses or shuffle workforce.

Epstein and Stilp, who usually attend governmental meetings and public hearings, were in town to make the case to The Times Leader’s editorial board against PPL’s proposed 1,600-megawatt Bell Bend reactor.

“We haven’t moved one inch from the immigrants working in the coal mines,” Stilp said. “Now they’re working above ground” in reactors, but still being exploited as “radiation sponges” by big energy companies, such as PPL, he said. “They’re a multinational whose job it is to charge as much as they can.”

Scopelliti said he has “no indication” that PPL would sell its existing plant or that it might sell the Bell Bend license, if approved.

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