Environmental Management - Nuclear Power and Bhopal

<- Environmental Issues Home

Nuclear power:
One resolution about nuclear power risks is pending; it asks DTE Energy to

commission an independent economic analysis of the potential cost avoidance and the potential financial benefit to Shareholders and Ratepayers of closing the Fermi 2 prior to the expiration of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission license. Shareholders request that this analysis include financial projections indicating the most advantageous date of closure, and that opportunity costs are examined.

Shareholders request that a report be provided and presented at the next DTE Shareholders Meeting.

SEC action—Another resolution, from the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, asking Ameren about its Callaway power plant sought a report by the end of the year on:

estimating shareholder losses for the continued storage of high-level waste at Callaway 1. The report will estimate the potential range of shareholder losses over the course of 10, 50, 100, 500, and 1,000 years into the future, beginning with the year 2000. The report shall include, but is not limited to, the cost of planning, construction, and maintenance of the current and future dry cask storage system(s), including costs associated with regulatory compliance, potential hardened onsite storage facilities, personnel costs for the maintenance and security of the cask storage facilities, costs associated with the transfer of fuel assemblies from one dry cask storage canister to a new dry cask storage canister, the disposal costs of used dry cask canisters, and any other associated costs for complying with the safe long-term storage of high-level spent fuel at Callaway 1.

The proposal was a resubmission that was substantially like one the coalition filed in 2017, but it has been omitted on ordinary business grounds since SEC staff agreed it relates to regulatory compliance. The company also said it was too imprecise in its discussion of nuclear waste, and that the time period of estimated losses was too long, although the SEC did not comment on this argument. Last year the proponent failed to provide sufficient proof of stock ownership and that proposal also was omitted.

Bhopal:
Amnesty International wants DowDupont, the new global combination, to report by October “providing objective, quantitative metrics and analysis regarding how the public’s association of the company with the Bhopal tragedy may be relevant to plans for investment in India until 2025.” Calvert Investments withdrew a similar proposal in 2015 after discussions with Dow Chemical. Dow had successfully challenged that proposal in 2014, arguing it already had reported fully on the Bhopal incident. The plant had been owned by Union Carbide at the time of the accident. No challenge has surfaced so far this year.