The debate over nuclear energy in the Great Lakes Region will likely heat up again in the coming months. In Canada, three reactors are coming back online after they were closed for years, and as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports, a new nuclear power plant might be built:
Transcript
The debate over nuclear energy in the Great Lakes Region will likely heat up again in the coming
months. Ontario is about to bring three reactors back on line after they were closed for years.
And as Dan Karpenchuk reports, the province is also considering building a new nuclear power
plant:
Ontario is facing an energy crunch. Demand during the summer months, last year, had tested the
province’s reserves to the limit, and an especially cold winter has placed even more demands on
the system.
Now Ontario premier, Ernie Eves, says he’s considering new ways of dealing with the energy
shortage and nothing will be left out.
“That includes everything from wind power to large nuclear projects.”
Bruce Power owns two nuclear plants on the shores of Lake Huron. Recently its President,
Duncan Hawthorne, met with Ontario officials and made it clear his company wants to be
involved in any new nuclear projects.
“We’ve got a strong capable workforce, we’ve got every favorable community around us, we’ve
got a formula that we can build on.”
But environmental groups and opposition politicians were quick to denounce the plan, saying the
industry does not have a good record.
They say Ontario has some of the oldest reactors in North America. And history has shown that
every time a nuclear plant has been built in the province, the cost overruns have been enormous,
with taxpayers ending up with the bill.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Dan Karpenchuk.
Two Great Lakes states and one Canadian province are near the top of the list when it comes to the production of toxic chemicals. That’s the finding of the latest study from an international agency set up under NAFTA. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen reports:
Transcript
Two Great Lakes States and one Canadian province are near the top of the list when it comes to
the production of toxic chemicals. That’s the finding of the latest study from an international
agency set up under NAFTA. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen reports:
If you want to find the largest producers of dangerous chemicals in all of North America, look no
further than the Great Lakes Region. Officials from the Commission for Environmental
Cooperation say coal-fired power plants, steel mills, and waste treatment facilities put the region
high on the list.
Victor Shantora is director of the agency:
“The ranking is Texas number 1, Ohio number 2, the province of Ontario is number 3, and
Pennsylvania is number 4. They represent over about 25% of total releases in North America.”
Among the toxic chemicals cited are hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, and mercury. But the report
isn’t all bad news. It indicates while some of the toxic chemicals wind up as pollution in the air,
water, and soil, a growing amount of it is simply being transported for proper disposal in
landfills or for recycling.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bill Cohen in Columbus.
A recent study on pollution in North America shows a drop in environmental pollution between 1995 and 2000. The study was conducted by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, which was set up under the North American Free Trade Agreement. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports, one trend being noted is that smaller industries across the continent are becoming the big polluters:
Transcript
A recent study on pollution in North America shows a drop in environmental pollution between
1995 and 2000. The study was conducted by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation,
which was set up under the North American Free Trade Agreement. But as the Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports, one trend being noted is that smaller industries
across the continent are becoming the big polluters:
Officials for the Commission say it’s a good news-bad news picture of what’s going on across the
continent. The environmental watchdog says the biggest polluters such as electrical generating
plants and steel factories are releasing fewer hazardous chemicals. But smaller industries, who
have tended to pollute less are showing a significant increase in their emissions.
Victor Shantora is with the Commission.
“The smaller polluters, probably about 15,000 such facilities across North America, are actually
tracking upwards. And we think that that’s problematic.”
The study shows a seven-percent decline in the amount of toxins released by big industries from
1998 to 2000, while the smaller polluters showed a 32-percent increase over the same period.
Environmental groups like the Sierra Club say negative publicity has shamed the big polluters
into cutting down on emissions. They say that hasn’t worked against the small polluters. So it’s
up to governments to force them to make the reductions.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Dan Karpenchuk.
On March 31st, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will be holding public hearings across the country about changes to Clean Air Act regulations, called New Source Review. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell has more on the upcoming meetings:
Transcript
On March 31st, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will be holding public
hearings across the country about changes to Clean Air Act regulations, called New
Source Review. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell has more:
The proposed changes to the New Source Review would relax standards for pollution
controls on power plants that are more than 25 years old.
Environmentalists worry the new standards could allow old power plants to pollute more.
The EPA will hold forums in Albany, N.Y.; Dallas, Texas; Romulus, Michigan; Salt
Lake City, Utah; and the EPA’s Research Triangle Park headquarters in North Carolina.
Bill Harnett is the Director of the Air Permitting Division of the U.S. EPA. He says the
meetings will give the public a chance to ask questions and make comments about
changes to New Source Review.
“It gives them more of a direct feed into the agency and the process, and it’s
something we always do on our rules is offer this kind of opportunity. And on
major rules like the one we’re doing, we always offer it in multiple places in the
country.”
Harnett says he expects a good turn-out, and the hearings could last all day.
After all public comments have been received, the EPA will review them and
decide whether to make the proposed changes.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Annie MacDowell.
An Ontario power company would like to see a high-powered transmission line built to Chicago. The plan includes stringing a high-voltage power line under Lake Superior. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson has more:
Transcript
An Ontario power company would like to see a high-powered transmission
line built to Chicago. The plan would include stringing a high-voltage
power line under Lake Superior. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike
Simonson has more:
This plan is part of a project that would build high-capacity generating
plants in Ontario, selling excess power to the United States. Larry
Hebert is the general manager of Thunder Bay Hydro. He says this is at
least five years off. By that time, Hebert expects the demand for power
in the U.S. to increase.
“Certainly, the need for power doesn’t seem to be diminishing, despite the cries for conservation
and wise use of power. Certainly in this province of Ontario, we seem to be
using more and more every year.”
Hebert expects the most controversial part of the project will be laying
a 90-mile long cable under Lake Superior to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula,
and run a high-voltage line down Wisconsin’s eastern side to Chicago.
Mary Pat Blankenheim with the Wisconsin-based American Transmission
Company says Thunder Bay Hydro’s proposal is intriguing.
“And especially given the fact that we are
looking for new ways of getting energy to the
areas where it’s needed.
But again the only way to get it there is by transmission.”
Hebert says they’re investigating permit applications with the Army Corp
of Engineers.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mike Simonson.
The U.S. Justice Department is suing several utility companies in the Midwest and South. The charge is that they didn’t install state of the art pollution controls when they renovated their power plants, a violation of the federal Clean Air Act. The first case is being heard in a federal courtroom in Columbus, Ohio. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen reports:
Transcript
The U.S. Justice Department is suing several utility companies in the Midwest and South. The
charge is that they didn’t install state of the art pollution controls when they renovated their power
plants, a violation of the federal Clean Air Act. The first case is being heard in a federal
courtroom in Columbus, Ohio. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen reports:
About a decade ago, First Energy corporation fixed up a power plant built in 1959 in
Steubenville, Ohio, but it didn’t put in the latest high-tech scrubbers. The company insisted it was
just routine maintenance, so the requirement for top of the line pollution controls didn’t apply.
The justice department disagreed and sued, and states in the Northeast are cheering. They say
soot and smog from the Great Lakes region travel hundreds of miles to New England.
Environmental activists like Jack Shaner say maybe the pollution travels, maybe it doesn’t, but
either way, a crackdown is needed.
“Study after study have shown it’s the folks that live in the shadow of these power plants within a
hundred miles or so that bear the brunt of it. That’s why it’s particularly important for Ohio and
for the Midwest to clean up these power plants. If it helps New England, God bless ’em, but we
gotta start in our own backyard here first.”
President Bush is reportedly pushing for changes, so that state of the art pollution controls
couldn’t be required so often.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bill Cohen.
Scientists are talking about a new way to address global warming. Their idea is to take carbon dioxide from coal-burning power plants and inject it deep into the earth. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell explains:
Transcript
Scientists are talking about a new way to address global warming. Their idea is to take carbon
dioxide from coal-burning power plants and inject it deep into the earth. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Annie Macdowell explains:
It’s called carbon sequestration. The idea is to use a chemical process to remove carbon dioxide
from power plant emissions and pressurize it into a liquid form. The liquid would then be injected
into saline aquifers up to ten thousand feet below the ground.
The government wants to create 4 to 10 regional partnerships to study the possibility of carbon
sequestration. One of the potential sites is in the Illinois Basin. The basin extends throughout three
quarters of Illinois, into Western Indiana and Western Kentucky.
Robert Finley is the director of the Center for Energy and Earth Resources at the Illinois State
Geological Survey. He says carbon sequestration could be a good transition for the country as it
moves away from using fossil fuels.
“It would allow us to use coal in a more environmentally responsible way while we look toward the
future with additional use of renewables and ultimately, perhaps, going to a hydrogen economy.”
Finley says at this point, sequestration doesn’t work with other pollutants found in power plant
emissions, such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Annie MacDowell.
For universities across the Midwest energy costs are becoming a huge expense. Schools are increasingly reliant on technology and many are adding new research facilities. With that growth has come an increased demand for electricity, and at a number of schools around the region, aging power plants can’t keep up with that demand. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports on this growing problem:
Transcript
For universities across the Midwest, energy costs are becoming a huge expense. Schools are increasingly reliant on technology and many are adding new research facilities. With that growth, has come an increased demand for electricity. And at a number of schools around the region, aging power plants can’t keep up with that demand. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports on this growing problem:
Jeff Bazzi is a freshman at Michigan State University. He shares a dorm room on campus with three other students. They use a lot of electricity.
In this one dorm room, there are four computers, two stereos, two televisions, three refrigerators, three fans, one microwave and four alarm clocks. Jeff Bazzi says even though he doesn’t get an electricity bill from the university every month, he’s aware of the amount of energy he uses.
“I know if I was at home my mom would yell at me for wasting electricity, running her bill up. So I still try to conserve. I don’t leave lights on around me and leave the TV on and all that, I try to conserve.”
And
that’s exactly what the university wants Bazzi and other students, faculty and staff to do…conserve. Last year, Michigan State launched an energy conservation campaign to promote ways to reduce electricity consumption. University officials say small changes on everyone’s part, such as turning off lights and computers, can collectively result in lower energy costs. Terry Link is the director of MSU’s Office of Campus Sustainability. He says just a five-percent reduction in electricity demand could save the university one million dollars a year.
“What we need to do is create that environment so that people become more aware that what they’re doing has an effect, it has a cost. It’s not immediate to their wallet, but it has other kinds of costs. And then to give them tools, examples, of how, if they feel they should do something to reduce that, what they can do.”
University officials say energy conservation is especially important now, as MSU struggles with a much tighter budget this year. Also, saving energy could delay a much larger problem. In the not-too-distant future, Michigan State’s power will no longer be able to provide enough electricity for campus. Bob Ellerhorst is the power plant director.
“Our universities are really becoming research-oriented, supported by a lot of high technology stuff. All of it takes electricity, a lot of it requires supplemental air conditioning.”
(Power plant sound up/under)
Michigan State’s power plant can make 55 megawatts of electricity, and during the hottest days of the summer, the campus uses all 55 megawatts. Over the next 15 years, MSU officials project the school will need at least 20 more megawatts of power. Schools throughout the Midwest are facing similar situations, as the demand for power on campus becomes too great for their aging power plants. Many are expanding their plants to meet demand. The University of Illinois is spending 60-million dollars on two new gas-fired turbines, Minnesota’s expansion will cost a-hundred-million dollars and the University of Wisconsin is building a brand-new power plant at a cost of 200-million dollars. Some schools, including Michigan State, are also considering buying more power from their local utility companies. But MSU power plant director Bob Ellerhorst says that electricity is almost twice as expensive as power produced on campus and isn’t nearly as reliable.
“Campus didn’t have a single outage, we had a lot of equipment failures in the plant that we just deal with. The campus has not had an interruption to service in over 36 months. I think that’s a lot longer than you’ve had to reset your clock at home.”
Michigan State is also looking into whether alternative sources of energy, such as wind and fuel cells, could play a part in a long-term solution. But in the meantime, they’re hoping students and faculty will begin conserving energy to help reduce demand and cost.
(Sounds of dorm up/under)
But that could be a challenge, from the looks of things at dorms and buildings on college campuses throughout the Midwest…where more electricity is being used than ever before.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.
The federal government is offering to buy special anti-cancer pills for people who live near nuclear power plants. There are 24 nuclear power plants in the Great Lakes states… and state officials are now pondering whether to accept the offer. In Ohio, the debate reflects the pro and con arguments across the region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen has details:
American Electric Power is working to stop blue clouds of sulfuric acid from descending on towns near the Ohio River. Ironically, the clouds are a by-product of a 200-million dollar system installed in May to help curb smog-producing emissions from the General James M. Gavin Power Plant. The search for a solution is being watched by other power plants in the U.S. that have to comply with stricter anti-smog regulations put in place by the federal government.
Blue clouds of sulfuric acid have descended upon towns in southeastern Ohio and West Virginia more than a dozen times since May. The clouds are from smoke stacks at American Electric Power’s General James M. Gavin plant in rural Cheshire, Ohio. It’s one of the largest coal-burning power plants in North America. The company blames a new 200 million dollar pollution control system for releasing more toxic emissions. If they’re right, other Midwestern power companies may face similar troubles when trying to comply with federal clean air laws. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Natalie Walston reports:
Transcript
Blue clouds of sulfuric acid have descended upon towns in south-eastern Ohio and West Virginia more than a dozen times since may. The clouds are from smoke stacks at American Electric Powers General John M. Gavin plant in rural Cheshire, Ohio. It’s one of the largest coal-burning power plants in North America. The company blames a new 200-million dollar pollution control system for releasing more toxic emissions. If they’re right, other midwestern power companies may face similar troubles when trying to comply with federal clean air laws. The great lakes radio consortium’s Natalie Walston reports.
The small, rundown airport in Mt. Pleasant sits on a flat part of the hills of West Virginia.
It’s surrounded by thick trees. Its rural enough here that it’s common to see wild turkeys dashing across the runways. One summer afternoon airport manager Ben Roush looked out his window. But instead of seeing a plane land … he saw thick smoke clinging to the tops of the trees.
“It looked like, uh, exhaust out of a car or something like that. It wasn’t black smoke it was blue. Very, very visible.”
After the smoke appeared, his phone began to ring.
“The fire department down here called up here and wanted to know if we had a fire up here because it was all in these … it settled to the ground. And, it was in those trees.”
The clouds contain high concentrations of sulfuric acid. That’s not normal … even this close to a power plant that burns coal with a high sulfur content. For years, most coal-burning power plants have had pollution control devices called “scrubbers” to deal with that sulfur. The scrubbers do just what the name implies – they scrub the air clean of sulfur dioxide as well as some other pollutants. But, they don’t do a good job in removing nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide is blamed in part for causing acid rain and smog.
Paul Chodak is manager of American Electric Power’s Optimization Group. He says AEP installed a selective catalytic reduction system … or SCR … in an effort to remove nitrous oxide. Chodak says the SCR system is a relatively new technology. And, so far, it and the scrubber aren’t working well together. That’s because they are combining to make sulfuric acid, but in a different form. And that form then gets released into the air.
“The SO3 … or sulfuric acid is in very fine droplets … sub-micron size droplets. Very, very tiny. And they’re so small that they travel through the scrubber and they’re not removed. So, the scrubber works very well on the gas in removing SO2. However, it’s not very effective in removing SO3.”
Chodak says this is all because of an effort to reduce emissions that cause acid rain and smog in eastern seaboard states. But… as AEP scrambles to stop polluting the air hundreds of miles away … people who live beneath the smoke stacks claim their health is being sacrificed. They say that in the summer, when the sulfuric acid clouds move in it’s difficult to breathe.
(natural sound of NASCAR race and drunk people carrying on)
Gallipolis is a small city five miles south of the power plant. Today there’s a small crowd of people gathered at Sunny’s bar and grille. People here will only give their first names to an out of town reporter. A man named Steve is drinking a beer at a table with his sister. He says fallout from the plant makes the paint peel off cars.
“All that acid and stuff goes on these cars. They gotta repaint the cars … so you know it’s tearin’ us up. Our bodies. And, like I say, we worry about our kids and grandkids more. We’re old enough that it’s not gonna bother us no more.”
His sister Tammy drags slowly on a cigarette as Steve talks.
When he finishes, she jumps in to say that since the blue clouds started showing up, everyone in town has become sick.
“I have health problems. I cough all the time. Allergies all the time. Allergies to something’. Runny nose. Constantly. You know, I think everyone in town has health problems that live around here.”
But AEP claims the air is cleaner than it was before the SCR system was installed. Paul Chodak says the air turned blue this summer because the sulfuric acid reacted with sunlight on hot, humid days. He says people become scared because they could actually see what they were breathing.
“The hard thing for people to understand is that what is coming out of the stack is significantly cleaner than what was coming out before. This is an improvement from a pollution control perspective. However, it has created this local phenomena that is a problem. And, AEP is moving to address that and we will solve it.”
Sulfuric acid measurements taken by the company and examined by Ohio and U.S. EPA researchers meanwhile don’t show a major sulfuric acid problem. But there are no state standards in place in Ohio for levels of gaseous sulfuric acid in the air.
Kay Gilmer of the Ohio EPA says emissions from AEP have exceeded sulfuric acid standards set by other states. However, she says people near the plant stacks aren’t in immediate danger. But she hesitates to say the air is perfectly safe to breathe.
“We didn’t have anything that would um … that we would … that we looked at that was exceptionally high. But, that was, I don’t want to say that to say we’re not concerned with the problem.”
Meanwhile, people near the plant say they’re tired of having their health jeopardized so people far away from them can breathe easier. They are working with state environmental groups to possibly fight the power plant in court.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Natalie Walston.
