Point Beach Nuclear Power Plant, Wisconsin Electric's most profitable generating station, is going through a very public midlife crisis. Once a low-profile highly efficient plant, Point Beach now requires expensive repairs and a controversial above ground waste storage facility on premises if it is to continue producing power at current levels until its 40-year license expires in 2013. From the company's perspective, replacing the steam generators at Unit 2 this fall is as high a priority as is consummating its merger with Northern States Power in early 1997. However, steam generator replacement, which will cost $120 million, cannot be economically justified if the plant shuts down before 2013.

To make such continuous production possible, WEPCO needs authorization to build a above-ground waste repository to house spent fuel rods from Point Beach, as the plant's spent fuel pool is full. Without such a facility, the plant would have to shut down in 1998. But neither the PSC nor the U.S. Department of Energy can say when the wastes would be taken away to a permanent site. Naturally, not everyone is comfortable with the prospect of waiting, perhaps indefinitely, for Congress and the Executive Branch to agree on a viable permanent solution while highly radioactive wastes from Point Beach accumulate on the shore of Lake Michigan.

WEPCO has run into enough resistance from several clean energy groups, including RENEW, to slow down the company's timetable in acquiring the permits. Last December Dane County Circuit Court Judge Mark Frankel threw out the PSC's initial approval of WEPCO's waste repository, issued in February 1995, stating that the environmental impact statement (EIS) prepared by the PSC didn't address all of the relevant issues and concerns. The judge sent the case back to the PSC with instructions to correct the deficiencies in the record.

Of particular interest to RENEW was Judge Frankel's finding that the EIS didn't seriously look at alternative scenarios for replacing power from Point Beach, including those using renewables and heightened energy efficiency measures. In support of his finding, Judge Frankel relied heavily on the state's two-year-old energy policy (1993 Wisconsin Act 414), which defines and ranks priority energy resources for Wisconsin.

Responding to heavy pressure from WEPCO, the PSC stitched together a supplemental EIS in two weeks and fast-forwarded its way through the evidentiary process. The truncated hearing schedule prevented intervenors from assembling alternative generation scenarios to continued operation of Point Beach. All RENEW could do under the circumstances was to enumerate the many deficiencies in the PSC's hastily cobbled-together analysis.

Brushing aside the concerns raised by clean energy groups, the PSC in mid-May gave WEPCO exactly what it wanted: authorization to store spent nuclear fuel outdoors in 18-foot-tall concrete-and-steel casks and replace the steam generators at Unit 2. But just as WEPCO thought it was home free, the unexpected happened. On May 28 as WEPCO personnel were removing the last fuel assembly from the Unit 2 reactor core, an explosive fire abruptly blew a three-ton cask lid three inches in the air, leaving it cocked at a slight angle. As a result of the May 28 fire, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) launched an investigation into the safety of these particular casks and ordered WEPCO to halt its cask-loading operations. The investigation is still in progress.

The explosive fire occurred when water from the spent fuel pool came into contact with the zinc coating inside the cask, producing hydrogen. It is revealing that the PSC's environmental impact statements never addressed the potential for producing explosive gases like hydrogen during the cask loading process. Unperturbed by the possibility that its Staff could have left a few stones unturned, turned down a request Citizens' Utility Board in July to hold additional hearings on cask safety questions.

Unfortunately, that decision left standing the order approving steam generator replacement, and WEPCO is hustling to install the new replacement equipment in time for the winter peak season. WEPCO's sense of urgency has no doubt been heightened by the rapidly deteriorating condition of the Kewaunee Nuclear Power Plant, just 10 miles north of Point Beach. The plant, which has been off-line since early October, needs not only a new set of steam generators in 1998 but also an experimental laser-weld repair just to keep it operating until then. Even the most optimistic projections do not foresee Kewaunee coming back on line until next January.

RENEW and Wisconsin's Environmental Decade have joined CUB and Lake Michigan Coalition in seeking an injunction from a Dane County judge to prevent WEPCO from going forward with replacing Unit 2's steam generators.

Meanwhile, WEPCO attorneys are playing the Kewaunee card to negate the threat of an injuction, much to the consternation of Wisconsin Public Service (WPS). the utility that operates Kewaunee. The spectre of WPS and WEPCO battling each other to keep their ailing nuclear plants afloat, in addition to providing some delicious irony, is yet another indication that the risks posed by continued nuclear generation may prove too much to bear in a more market-driven environment.