Aluminum (electricity in virtual solid form): Government issue

["Bjorn Cedervall" <bcradsafers@hotmail.com>]

A friend of mine has kindly forwarded the NYT article below - well here is 
only the first part of it to avoid too much off-topic (don't comment too 
much!). I nevertheless believe that this is of interest to many Radsafers - 
as fuel to the nuclear debate as well.

My reflections only,

Bjorn Cedervall  bcradsafers@hotmail.com
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December 29, 2000
Lack of Power in the West Proves a Boon for Some
By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK
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SEATTLE, Dec. 28 — Of all the ways in which the West's electricity problems 
are creating havoc in the marketplace for power, here is one of the 
strangest: there is a fortune to be made these days in not producing 
aluminum.

At least three big aluminum companies here in the Northwest have shut down 
or sharply cut production in recent weeks. Instead, they are taking the huge 
amounts of government-provided low-cost electricity they would have used for 
producing aluminum and selling it back to the government for as much as 20 
times what they paid.

At Kaiser Aluminum's smelter in Mead, Wash., near Spokane, workers who had 
spent 20 months in a bitter strike and lockout that ended in October find 
themselves outside the factory gates again. Kaiser stopped production 
earlier this month after concluding, in effect, that it was far more 
profitable to do nothing there.

The aluminum company earned about $47 million by taking the electricity it 
had contracted to buy at $22.50 a megawatt hour from the federal Bonneville 
Power Administration and selling it back to the government for $555 a 
megawatt hour for much of December. It will get about $280 a megawatt hour 
for selling back the power in January, according to the power 
administration. A megawatt is enough to power about 1,000 average-size 
homes.

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