Wadsworth, Texas -- July 25, 2001 -- The South Texas Project nuclear power plant has the lowest average fuel cost of any power plant in the U.S., reports filed with federal regulators show. At four-tenths of a cent per kilowatt-hour (kwh) STP's cost is the best reported among American nuclear plants, and the uranium used in reactors is the least expensive power plant fuel.

The South Texas plant set a new U.S. benchmark by generating more than 19 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity with $76.4 million of fuel last year. STP's cost of 0.39971 cent/kwh was 17 percent below the national nuclear average of 0.481 cent/kwh, which also was a new record.

STP Fuel Engineering Supervisor David Hoppes said the low cost resulted from buying uranium during market price dips and by reusing fuel. "We 'mine' our spent fuel to find fuel assemblies that have been used but not exhausted," Hoppes said. "We've been getting extra energy out of about one-tenth of the assemblies in recent years," he added. The reclaimed fuel is used in the plant's two reactors during their 17-month production runs.

Uranium costs substantially less than other power plant fuels. Reports filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) show that fuel costs, in cents per kilowatt-hour, averaged 1.45 for coal, 2.41 for oil, 2.84 for natural gas and 0.5 for uranium in 1999, the latest year for which industry-wide figures are available. Including Operations and Maintenance expenses, electricity production costs (cents/kwh) were 1.83 for nuclear, 2.07 for coal, 3.18 for oil and 3.52 for gas in the 1999 FERC reports. The averages do not include significant subsequent price increases for gas and oil.

STP supplies electricity to nearly one-third of Texas, in an area stretching from Houston to Austin and San Antonio, and south to Corpus Christi, Laredo and Harlingen. The plant is managed by the STP Nuclear Operating Company and owned by American Electric Power's subsidiary Central Power and Light, Austin Energy, City Public Service of San Antonio, and Reliant Energy HL&P. STP produces 2,500 megawatts of electricity, enough to serve more than one million homes.