Calvert Cliffs

Operators of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Southern Maryland have shut down one of the two reactors there because a control rod unexpectedly dropped into the reactor core, causing a reduction in power generation, a plant spokesman said Monday. The incident happened Sunday afternoon, prompting the plant's staff to shut the reactor down to find and fix the cause of the malfunction, according to Kory Raftery, spokesman for Constellation Energy Nuclear Group. Control rods are used in a reactor to limit the fission taking place among the reactor's enriched-uranium fuel rods.

Robert M. Douglass, former chief engineer of Baltimore Gas & Electric Co.'s Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant, died Monday of cancer at his home in Port Republic, Calvert County. He was 88. The son of an electrical engineer and a homemaker, Robert Mann Douglass was born in Hartford, Conn., and raised in Wethersfield, Conn., where he graduated in 1942 from Wethersfield High School. He served as a paratrooper with the 11th Airborne in the Pacific and with occupying forces in Japan during World War II. After the war, he enrolled at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., where he earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1950.

Federal regulators plan a hearing Jan. 26 on a challenge to a French company's bid to build a third reactor at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant, and will take public comments the day before. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board will air contentions by four anti-nuclear groups that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has not adequately weighed alternatives to building the facility. The hearing begins at 9:30 a.m. in the Albright Building, 205 Main St. in Prince Frederick.

Once promoted as the vanguard of a "nuclear renaissance," a proposed new reactor at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Southern Maryland now faces a major new roadblock, with federal regulators threatening to shelve the troubled $9.6 billion project unless the French-controlled developer comes up with a U.S. partner in the next two months. The ruling Thursday by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board was not unexpected, as the board's parent Nuclear Regulatory Commission had warned Unistar Nuclear Energy more than a year ago that it could not get a license for the Maryland reactor without a U.S. partner.

The agreement reached Tuesday between Constellation Energy Group and EDF Group giving the French company full ownership of a proposed expansion of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant may have kept the project alive — but perhaps only barely. The episode certainly produced its share of international corporate drama, from Constellation's threat to exercise an option that would force EDF to buy the company's non-nuclear assets at an inflated price to EDF's effort to put a notorious shark (pardon, an aggressively inquisitive attorney)

French utility EDF Group is asking the state for help in developing a third nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs in Southern Maryland. Thomas Piquemal, EDF's executive vice president of finance, met this week with Gov. Martin O'Malley in Washington, where the governor was attending the National Governors Association winter conference. Piquemal also met with Rep. Steny H. Hoyer of Southern Maryland. The two discussed ways to push forward the project, which has had some setbacks.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission upheld a decision Monday preventing a French company from building a third reactor at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in southern Maryland, but it offered glimmers of hope for the project's proponents. The commissioners directed their staff "to review issues relating to foreign ownership" — the sticking point for the Calvert Cliffs proposal — and recommend whether changes to agency rules or practice are appropriate. The five-person commission would not overturn a decision by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board that UniStar Nuclear Energy is ineligible for a new-reactor license because it is wholly owned by French energy group EDF. Federal law bans foreign ownership or control of nuclear plants.

Federal regulators denied a license Thursday to the French-controlled company for a proposed third nuclear reactor at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Southern Maryland, giving the company 60 days to find a U.S. partner. At the end of those 60 days, the three judges of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board wrote, they would be forced to terminate the company's application proceedings entirely. The decision follows warnings from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in April 2011 that UniStar Nuclear Energy, which is owned by Electricite de France, is not eligible to control the proposed $9.6 billion Calvert Cliffs 3 project under its current ownership structure.

Struggling to save plans for a third nuclear reactor at the Calvert Cliffs electricity plant, the French EDF Group offered Wednesday to buy out Constellation Energy's interest in their nuclear-development venture and seek a new U.S. partner for the Maryland project. "We feel an obligation to explore every reasonable avenue to keep the prospects for this project alive," Thomas Piquemal, EDF's executive vice president for finance, wrote in a letter to Baltimore-based Constellation.