Talk:Trojan Nuclear Power Plant

History

I'll add a timeline when I get around to it. It's a fascinating story. The plant was closed a few days after the utility won a referendum that would have closed it. The reason appears to be that they'd already committed to closing the plant early, in order to win that vote and a previous one, and this commitment to early closure made fixing the steam tubes uneconomic. So, why go to the expense of the referendum at all? Maybe some legal and political types can tell us one day. Andrewa 20:13, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the referendum that citizens of Oregon voted on pertaining to Trojan was a choice between a "phaseout" (in which Trojan would gradually shut down) and an immediate closure. PGE (and a majority of Oregonians) advocated the phaseout option. However, a few months after the election in November 1992, the plant was immediately closed as a result of structural failures. --Micahbrwn 04:31, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I've added some history. Most of the web pages that used to describe the Trojan story seem to have been deleted since my last involvement in online discussion of Trojan. Others are now part of paid archives and I don't have access to them.

Some things I'd still like to add:

• The precise date at which steam tube problems were first reported.

• Actual dates of the state polls.

• Dates of particular newsworthy demonstrations at the plant. It is claimed that on at least one occasion demonstrators entered the plant and assaulted plant workers, and were filmed by news cameras and arrested but not prosecuted. Others, while not denying that it happened, challenge the details of these accounts.

• Dates of commitments by PGE to close the plant early.

Without these dates, a timeline just doesn't work! Andrewa 20:56, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Some other questions:

• What is the installed wind capacity now in Oregon?

The only large scale wind to date seems to be the Stateline Wind Project. Exactly what is installed and even planned seems to vary a lot depending on which site you're reading, 123 MW is the current installed figure from the Oregon government site. Andrewa 06:31, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

• In that it can be measured, how much have energy conservation measures made up for the lost capacity of Trojan?

• Is the Trojan unit still the biggest PWR unit yet built, or have upgrades of others now overtaken it? 1130MWe is larger than any of the third generation LWR designs AFAIK, and the techniques used to scale up the steam generators to this capacity was a factor in their failure. Andrewa 01:03, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

And I was quite wrong! The EPR is 1600 MWe. Andrewa 16:55, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

So would I, and I'd also like to know if it was poor primary chemistry control or defective steam generators or a combination of both DanSolitz (talk) 07:41, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Cooling towers

I changed the words cooling towers into cooling tower. Trojan is only equipped with a single cooling tower, standing at 499 feet tall. KelsoKid18 17:47, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Neutrality

Who's the slantheaded admin who thinks that this article is not completely on center? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.64.50.138 (talk • contribs) 01:36, May 22, 2006

The Neutrality of the Page is disputed, when somebody edits the main text to include words like :"rubbish"

"This is incorrect"

"charade"

Somebody who has access to the correct facts need to fix this page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.20.243.93 (talk • contribs) 04:37, May 22, 2006

I think it is definately slanted, the writer is obviously biased towards the company that operated the plant.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.243.13.66 (talk • contribs) 03:58, May 23, 2006

Agreed it does have a slant, but at the same time it is the truth. Clean, cheap power that some people didn't want and the public is still paying for it. What is wrong with the truth? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.231.52.217 (talk • contribs) 17:39, May 24, 2006

Cleaning up the article

What exactly needs worked on in this article? I will try to jump on anything that is out of whack. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.64.50.138 (talk • contribs) 01:27, May 26, 2006

I went ahead and cut non-NPOV material and moved it here. I think there is some good information here, but much of it is not neutral or encyclopedic. With some careful editing, I think a good chunk of this could be worked back in. Alternatively, this might better be placed into a separate article - perhaps one about PGE?

After a heavy-duty cleanup, I have removed the {{tone}} and {{POV}} tags. Twisted86 07:22, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

<moved material>
Nevertheless, PGE continued to charge its ratepayers for the full cost of the plant, including decommissioning and waste disposal, and the same profit it would have earned if the plant had remained operating. The Oregon Public Utility Commission (OPUC) also allowed PGE to charge ratepayers for the new projects built to replace the plant, along with profits on the new plants.

In 1978, Oregon voters had adopted by a vote of 69% to 21% a ballot measure to prohibit utilities from charging ratepayers any cost of plants not currently providing utility service to customers. Lloyd Marbet and other activists worked on this measure.

In 1995, the OPUC allowed PGE to continue to charge ratepayers both for return of the investment over the original expected 35-year life of Trojan and to charge ratepayers to receive a profit on Trojan of over 13% before taxes, for a total of $251 million of Trojan investment and $304 million for profit over the next 17 years. This is in addition to another $300 million in Trojan decommissioning costs over the next 17 years.

The Utility Reform Project, Lloyd K. Marbet, and CUB appealed this decision to the courts. In June 1998, the Oregon Court of Appeals agreed that allowing the $304 million in profit was a violation of Ballot Measure 9 of 1978. The utilities then substantially increased their contributions to candidates for the Oregon Legislature running in November 1998. As soon as the Legislature convened in January 1999, Enron/PGE had Rep. Jim Hill of Hillsboro introduce a bill to overturn the decision of the Court of Appeals. Jim Hill was quoted in the paper as saying that he was "carrying water for the utilities". The Legislature passed the bill and Governor Kitzhaber signed it. At the end of the 1999 session, over 60,000 signatures were collected within 90 days to place this bill on the November 2000 ballot as a referendum, Measure 90. The anti-Trojan forces won by over 88% of the vote and received more votes than any side on any Ballot Measure in Oregon history, over 1.2 million.

In the meantime, however, CUB entered into a Settlement Agreement with Enron/PGE, under which CUB withdrew from all of the lawsuits and supported a deal for PGE to collect from ratepayers the same amount as before or more. CUB got a payment from PGE of over $227,000 from PGE as part of the deal. The Utility Reform Project (URP) filed a complaint at the OPUC challenging this deal as illegal under Ballot Measure 9 of 1978 and the Court of Appeals' opinion. URP's expert witness concluded that, for ratepayers, the Settlement was worse than losing the lawsuits that URP had been winning. PGE ratepayers had already paid to PGE more than the full investment of Trojan, and $186 million more, as of October 1, 2001. The Settlement took away:

• $161.9 million in credits owed to ratepayers when PGE sold itself to Enron in 1996 and sold long-term power contracts to California
• $15.4 million in NEIL (nuclear industry insurance) distributions

It also imposed upon ratepayers an additional cost of $36.7 million (present value) cost in the form of a "new Regulatory Asset". "Offsetting" this admitted $214 million (present value) cost to ratepayers is a "Customer Credit" of $2.5 million, leaving ratepayers with a net cost of $211.5 million (present value) from the "CUB Stipulation". So it gave up over $400 million (present value) that would otherwise have been credited to ratepayers over the next 10 years.

PGE and the OPUC staff admitted, under oath, that the Settlement actually increased PGE's rates by $25.7 million as of October 1, 2001, and by a further $15.7 million as of each of the next two Octobers.

The OPUC again approved this deal in April 2002. URP again appealed to the courts and again won at the Marion County Circuit Court in 2004. In the meantime, PGE ratepayers filed class action suits against PGE for recovery of the unlawful profits. In December 2004, the Marion County Circuit Court granted summary judgment on liability to plaintiffs and certified a class of approximately one million ratepayers. PGE filed a petition for writ of mandamus with the Oregon Supreme Court to halt the Circuit Court class action. The Oregon Supreme Court heard argument in September 2005 but has not yet ruled.

==External links==

• Refusal of application for electricity rate rise

</moved material>

Contractor?

Who was contracted to construct Trojan? It seems like it was a "lemon" from start to finish. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.97.249.207 (talk • contribs) 16:07, April 22, 2007

China Syndrome Link

I'm not a regular wikipedia editor, but noticed in a behind the scenes clip from the China Syndrome that the production team toured Trojan and based their control room set off the photographs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.75.161.106 (talk) 23:12, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

External links modified

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Citations and References

Additional citations and references should be found in these links:

• http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-4174-1975.html
• http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2008/08/the_basics_on_nuclear_power_an.html
• http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2008/08/trojans_short_troubled_history.html
• https://www.nrc.gov/site-help/search.html?q=trojan&site=allSites#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=trojan&gsc.sort=date&gsc.page=4
  • https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0103/ML010370352.pdf
  • https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1614/ML16141B097.pdf
• http://www.oregon.gov/energy/facilities-safety/facilities/Pages/TRO.aspx
• https://kaetsu.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_uri&item_id=906&file_id=41&file_no=1 (Japanese)

— RossO (talk) 19:31, 30 August 2017 (UTC)