Duke Energy last week announced plans to spend more than $1.5 billion to build a 1,600-MW natural gas-fired plant at its Crystal River site in Florida and said it will build another 750-MW gas-fired plant in South Carolina.
The company said the new Crystal River plant, on the same site as the soon-to-be decommissioned nuclear generating station and two coal-fired plants slated for retirement, will be in operation by late 2018. The site is about 90 miles northwest of Orlando.
The South Carolina combined cycle plant will be built on the site of the soon-to-be-retired Lee Steam Generating Station in Anderson County, S.C. The company gained approval from the Public Service Commission of South Carolina in April. Construction should start in early 2015. The company didn’t put a price tag on the South Carolina plant.
More: The Orlando Sentinel, Greenville News
Pump Inspections Delay PSEG’s Salem 2 Outage
The discovery of a “bolting issue” with one of the four reactor coolant pumps at Public Service Enterprise Group’s Salem Unit 2 will prolong the 1,160-MW station’s refueling outage period indefinitely, the company said last week.
PSEG said the problem was discovered during inspections conducted during the outage, which started in April. After the finding, which the company said did not pose a danger, a decision was made to check all four reactor coolant pumps. The outage, which usually takes about a month, will now extend past mid-May, but the company did not say when the unit would come back on line.
More: Reuters
PPL, IBEW Agree On 3-Year Deal
One day before the old contract expired, PPL Corp. and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1600 last week reached a tentative agreement for a three-year contract.
The new contract provides 7.75% in wage increases spread over three years, a revised retirement savings program for new hires, work rule changes and new health care benefit rules.
The union represents about 3,000 workers at PPL Electric Utilities, various corporate support operations and power plants. Both sides agreed to work under current contract rules while the new contract is finalized and put up for ratification.
Beaver Valley Unit Trip Caused By Static Electricity
FirstEnergy officials and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission agreed that static electricity caused a transformer to fail at the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Shippingport, near Pittsburgh, during the polar vortex in January. The transformer failure caused one of the station’s reactors to trip.
Company officials said transformer oil pump procedures “did not provide proper guidance” for pump operation during such low temperatures, leading to static buildup and, in turn, the transformer failure. The discovery came after the company conducted a root cause analysis and reported to the NRC.
More: Greenfield Daily Reporter
PSE&G, PPL Give $66M To Del. Water Gap Park
The National Park Service last week said PPL and PSE&G provided $66 million in donations and project funding as remediation for building a transmission line that crosses part of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.
The compensation is part of the $1.42 billion Susquehanna-Roseland 500-kV line project, which crosses part of the park, linking Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It includes $20.5 million to purchase 288 more acres for the park, as well as $12 million for wetland restoration projects and $10 million for the Appalachian National Scenic Trail.
Work on the transmission line is about 75% complete, and it should go into service by June 2015. PSE&G’s portion of the project is budgeted at $790 million, while PPL’s portion is about $630 million, company officials said.
More: The Express-Times
Panda Power Starts Building 829-MW Shale Gas Plant
Panda Power last week broke ground on an 829-MW combined-cycle plant designed to take advantage of cheap gas from the Marcellus Shale formation.
The Liberty Generating Station is in Bradford County, near the Pennsylvania-N.Y. border. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, during a ground-breaking ceremony last week, said the plant will contribute nearly $6 billion to the area economy during construction and its first 10 years of operation. The plant will use an air-cooled, closed-loop cooling system to avoid the need to draw water from the Susquehanna River. It is scheduled to be on line in 2016.
Panda, a Dallas private equity firm, has five combined-cycle power plants currently under construction in Texas and Pennsylvania with a total capacity of nearly 4,000 MW. It also has announced a 750-MW combined-cycle power plant in Northern Virginia and an 859-MW power facility in Southern Maryland.
More: Herald Online
NRC: Indian Point Workers Mishandled Fuel Bundle
Workers at Entergy’s Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York twice tried to place a bundle of spent fuel in a spot in a storage pool that was already holding a bundle, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said last week. The incident, which took place in March, did not result in a radiation release and did not damage any of the spent fuel bundles involved, according to the agency.
The commission report pointed to an outdated computer program that tracks fuel bundle placement. While the NRC classified it as of “very low safety significance,” it ordered Entergy to take corrective actions.
More: The Journal News