Dutch Utility Delta Seeks Permit to Build Second Nuclear Power Plant

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Dutch power utility Delta NV (Middleburg, Netherlands) has submitted a start-up memorandum to the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment as the first formal stage in the process to obtaining a permit to build a second nuclear power station in Borssele in the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands.

Delta already owns 50% of the Netherlands' only nuclear power plant, a 456-megawatt (MW) plant that is also located in Borssele. The company initially announced plans for a second plant at the same site in September 2008. The fact that there is an existing nuclear plant in Borssele, with associated infrastructure, readily available cooling water and local support, are the major reasons for choosing Borssele as the location for setting up another plant. The first plant was commissioned in 1973, so the municipal and provincial authorities have many years of experience with nuclear power. In addition, the Dutch radioactive waste disposal company Centrale Organisatie Voor Radioactief Afval (Vlissingen) has the capacity to handle additional waste produced from a new plant.

Following the submission of the application by Delta, the next stage of the process is to set up guidelines for an environmental impact study, which will be reviewed by an independent commission before formal submission to the Dutch government. The government, which previously set aside plans for a phase-out of nuclear power, has declared that it will not allow the building of any new nuclear plants under the current term of office. To get around this policy, Delta intends to make its permit submission at the end of 2011, after the end of the present government's term of office.

With a formal application for a building permit planned to be submitted early in 2012, Delta would then start construction in 2013 and have the plant producing power by 2018. Although no details have been announced, Delta estimates that the estimated total investment in the proposed plant will be between $5.6 billion and $7 billion.

One of the issues that needs to be resolved is the ownership of the operator of the Borssele plant, EPZ, which was a joint venture organization set up by Delta and the public energy company Essent NV (Arnhem, Netherlands). In January this year, RWE AG (OTC:RWEOY) (Essen, Germany) purchased Essent for $12.5 billion. However, in April of this year, Delta announced that it had written to Essent and RWE proposing legal action to ensure that EPZ remains in public ownership, rather than allowing control to be assumed by RWE.

The Netherlands relies heavily on gas-fired power plants, which account for more than 60% of the power generated in the country. Renewable energy sources currently supply about 8.2% of power, a considerable rise from the 2005 figure of 2.5%. The general European Union baseline target is for 20% of all energy generation to come from renewable sources by 2020, but individual countries have their own targets. In the case of the Netherlands, the target for 2010 is 9%, rising to 14% by 2020.

An interesting project aimed to help meet these targets is the biomass power plant operated by Delta at Moerdjik. This plant, said to be the largest biomass plant in the world and costing in excess of $210 million, runs exclusively on chicken manure and consumes 440,000 tons per year of the fuel to produce 36.5 MW of electricity. The byproducts from the combustion of manure are rich in phosphates and are sold as fertilizer. Although the plant emits carbon dioxide, these emissions are estimated to be no more than if the manure were simply spread over the fields.

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