What Could Have Been: Some Thoughts on Crystal River and Levy

Photograph of Fort Island Trail Beach with the Crystal River Power Plant complex in the background, by the author.

Most of you who follow the business and politics of American nuclear power know that this past spring, Duke Energy made the difficult choice to shutter their Crystal River 3 Nuclear Power Plant for good after structural issues with the concrete containment structure for the unit's pressurized water reactor entailed repairs that the utility felt were too costly to undertake in contrast to the alternatives for power generation and the age of the plant, which was built in 1977. Just this month, the same company terminated plans to construct two new power reactors in nearby rural Levy County (the county north-east of Citrus County, where the Crystal River plant is) citing delays in the NRC issuing the construction and operating license required plus uncertainty about whether nuclear was the best option for providing power to the population served. While Duke stated that it would certainly consider the Levy location in the future if growing power demands portend a new nuclear plant, for now the project is over and done with in full. 

I'm not going to second-guess Duke or write an op-ed on what they did right or wrong with these two cases: Duke has expectedly gone in short turn from favorite uncle to least-favored demon with many Citrus County residents, politicians, and members of the media over this, and for my part, I can only attest that everyone I've met from Duke has always been very polite and fully professional. I understand this situation brews strong emotions, but I'm not an expert on the finances germane to the planning and construction of a new plant nor the complex renovation of an extant one, and frankly, that's what Duke's difficult decisions came down to here. I can only assume that they made, at least, what they felt were the best and most-certain choices predicated on all factors of both the CR-3 situation and the planning of the new plant. You couldn't pay me a million dollars and hand me the keys to a new Maserati right now to be a Duke Energy executive who had to go to Citrus County or deal with the aftermath of these choices though, I'll just say that. People in Citrus County feel understandably let down, first with the loss of the jobs associated with the CR-3 plant and now with the loss of the prospect of the Levy plant which would have created more jobs and also been able to take on many workers who had been over at CR-3. Citrus County and the area around Crystal River are rural, but unique, with an economy based on ecotourism, health care, and the power plant. While coal-burning operations will continue at the Crystal River plant, nuclear now is off the table (though we all know there's ample work to be done still germane to the stewardship of the CR-3 reactor). The impact on an already faltering economy was immediate and harsh: the local mall which looks like a ghost town anyways just saw their JC Penney's close and Belk's—the other remaining anchor—has stated they will close that location in January of 2014. This isn't all due to the loss of the nuclear plants: Crystal River is a little over an hour's drive north of Tampa, Florida which has some of the best shopping in the entire state and less than an hour from Ocala which has a decent mall. One must ask if the very presence of an indoor mall in this city of just under 3,500 people is merited or not and could be sustained by the population at hand even if the new Levy plant was constructed. I've always felt that Crystal River—a very nice community of very nice people—had cast too much of its economic lot with the nuclear plant and also overbuilt a bit in the first place with the mall and other enterprises. 

Still, we must ask "what could have been?". As a nuclear buff, CR-3 was the power reactor nearest to where I live (the University of Florida's research reactor is even closer, so it gets the prize for being my "home" reactor I suppose). I've always kind of regarded it as "mine" though I've never worked for Duke or Progress Energy which had it prior to Duke. It's always felt like family and now it's gone. The Levy plant was even more exciting. I have friends who worked for contractors who would help build it and other friends who probably would work there once it was operational. It mattered even more to Levy and Citrus counties though, because again, the economy here isn't that great. Most of the economic base is in raising cattle, some field crops, seafood harvesting out in the Gulf of Mexico, and tourism with health care and K-12 education coming up as secondary economies that exist here because people who live and work in these primary economies need those supportive services. Obviously, if you have fewer farmers, power plant workers, and fishermen, you will need fewer teachers and nurses, too. Much of south-west Levy County is bona fide marshlands. A nuclear power plant would find an ideal location here in many regards, but very little else can even consider this landscape as a valid place to start up a business. Ecotourism is big and its growth is a perfect example of how having a nuclear plant nearby neither harms the environment nor wildlife nor drives off people who would be attracted to a beautiful natural area. Indeed, the whole region's nickname is "the nature coast" and that's quite well-earned. 

Duke's claim that the NRC poked along on the construction and operating license for the new plant interests me: I do not know if that's fully the case or if Duke's wrong on this and of course, there are going to be at least two sides to this story if not many more. Beyond this issue, I feel that whatever the material and economic concerns germane to the repair of CR-3, Duke also was the victim of very very bad luck: the Fukushima Daiichi disaster happened just as Duke was considering the repairs and when they needed to invite public comment. Indeed, I believe they had a meeting for public comment planned for the week after the Fukushima Daiichi incident. I had planned to go in support of Duke and the plant, but recall it was cancelled. Certainly, having to explain to the public right after the most serious nuclear accident in recent history that your own nuclear plant, despite having suffered a complex and expensive structural fault and needing repair, could be brought back to safe and full operation is a task that no one would ever desire to undertake. Yet had Duke elected to go ahead with bringing CR-3 back into service that would have been the task they'd have faced. I know that was not the only—or even main—reason for their decision to shutter the plant, but it is clear that the entire situation happened at pretty much the worst time for them. Would the local community have been supportive? Overall, probably, for the same reasons they're upset now: they wanted and needed those jobs. It's possible that people who live in neighboring counties would have been rather vocal in opposition to the restart of CR-3 though as you have people who live just close enough to be wary but just far enough away to not see a direct benefit to themselves in having the plant. Mostly though, the economics were what brought Duke—by their own admission—to the tough choices they made. And it will be an economic impact overall that those choices will have for these rural counties for a long time yet to come. I don't blame Duke at all: obviously they did not want, per se, to cancel projects they'd already invested millions into, but they did what they felt was best overall. So I don't blame them, but I think it's a very serious loss to Citrus and Levy counties all the same, and a real shame. 

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  • Anonymous
    Anonymous

    One can understand calling the late '70's Three Mile Island fiasco an 'incident,' but to call Fukushima an incident is a gross understatement.

  • The term is not meant to be prejorative in one way or another. "Incident" is used in most fields of engineering to indicate a mishap, whether a fairly minor one or a very horrible one. NTSB investigators and other aviation professionals will call a crash involving a hull loss "an incident" and not "an accident" in most cases. So it's not trying to downplay anything.

  • Anonymous
    Anonymous

    Didn't the outside contractor that caused the crack in containment have insurance? I think so, so where did the money go for that?

  • I'm not certain what the situation there was but it appears to have been rather complex. I'm not sure one single party was at blame, either. In any case, Duke and its contracting engineers determined it was not viable to proceed with repairs and bring CR-3 back to service.

  • Anonymous
    Anonymous

    Anonymous, the author called it "the Fukushima Daiichi disaster". Not an "incident".

  • Anonymous
    Anonymous

    What was broken in the manner in which it was broken, was not insured.