Progress postpones nuclear plant plan

http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2007/05/28/daily24.html

Progress postpones nuclear plant plan
Triangle Business Journal - 4:52 PM EDT Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Progress Energy is delaying the construction on a potential new reactor at the Shearon Harris power plant by at least two years, the company said Wednesday.

If the Raleigh utility decides to build an extra reactor at the Harris site in Wake County - a choice that hasn't yet been made - the reactor will not come online until at least 2018. That's two years later than originally planned.

Instead, the company said it hopes to displace 2,000 megawatts of power generation - equivalent to the capacity of several plants - by boosting efficiency and reducing energy use. It said it would do so by "greening" existing and new facilities, asking commercial and industrial customers to reduce energy use, and offering a series of programs through which residential customers can cut use.

Progress also will not propose any new coal plants in the next two years, it said.

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The company's announcement comes on the heels of a similar declaration by Duke Energy, the Charlotte-based utility that provides service to much of the western Triangle. Duke announced earlier this month an efficiency plan that it hopes will offset about 1,700 megawatts of power.

I think it's great that they're saving energy through conservation, but this is the usual "picking the low-hanging fruit" scenario. You get the easy energy savings first, but from there on out it becomes much more challenging to conserve anyways near the amount conserved in the first round of utilities greening, as you now have to start reaching for the higher-hanging "fruits". It only gets harder from here on out.

While this plan will reduce the per-person amount of fossil-fueled electricity consumed by the area residents, it doesn't reduce the TOTAL amount of fossil fuels burned. The energy conservation plan is to provide power to the 25,000-30,000 NEW residents expected to live in the area over the next decade. No coal or natural gas fueled power plants will be closed by this plan, and in case you still haven't understood the seriousness of the situation we're in, we need to CUT greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% in the next few decades to prevent catastrophic disaster. Simply maintaining the current status quo of 75% of our electricity generated by coal or natural gas will KILL us.

Why not enact the conservation measures to save several thousand MW's of power, AND build nuclear reactors to replace coal-fired plants?