Nuke Workers Flock to U.S. Small Towns for Can't-Wait Refueling

(Bloomberg) -- Over the last few weeks, hundreds of itinerant nuclear-plant workers converged on a sleepy lakeside town south of Detroit. They arrived in pickup trucks, campers and SUVs, and are now working side-by-side to refuel the Fermi 2 reactor. It’s one of 32 in the U.S. scheduled to have fuel rods replaced this spring — pandemic or not.Installing new rods is a huge undertaking, sometimes involving crews of 1,000 or more descending on a site for a month or so before moving on to the next one. The jobs are planned far in advance, for times when power demand is low and a plant can be taken out of service, and the tasks can’t be put off.“Outages have to happen when they have to happen,” said Michael Rennhack, the founder of NukeWorker.com, a jobs board for the industry.Reactors are considered critical infrastructure, and servicing them is deemed essential work as the coronavirus shuts down much of the U.S. economy. Utilities said they’re doing what they can to protect crews, regularly taking temperatures and pressing the importance of hand-washing and trying not to get too close to one another. Still, there are limits.“I don’t know how you practice social distancing while you’re overhauling a nuclear reactor,” said Chris Gadomski, head nuclear analyst for BloombergNEF. “It’s a major, major construction overhaul.”At least one person at the Fermi site has been diagnosed with the virus, according to Abe Babcock, a dispatcher for the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers in Rossford, Ohio. Stephen Tait , a spokesman for plant owner DTE Energy Co., said he couldn’t confirm that, under company policy.“While we are disclosing we have positive cases of the coronavirus within our organization, we are not disclosing specific work locations,” he said. “We are going through extraordinary efforts to check the health of employees daily and anyone with flu-like symptoms is asked to return to home and seek medical attention.Babcock sent about 50 of his union members to Fermi and said that some had to go into 14-day quarantine after being exposed to the virus, though they’ve since been cleared to return to the job.“It's definitely a concern,” Babcock said. “Our work is very seasonal, and you have to do it when you can.” Towing over the shores of Lake Erie, the Fermi 2 plant is about 30 miles south of Detroit, which has emerged as a hot spot for the coronavirus. Officials in the nearby town of Monroe, a suburb of 20,000 with a quaint downtown and treelined streets, have been in touch with DTE Energy.  “We definitely have some concerns about the situation,” said Kim Comerzan, director of the Monroe County Health Department, without elaborating.Spring is peak season for refueling, because the relatively mild temperatures mean people aren't cranking air conditioners or heaters and driving up demand for electricity. The task is usually done in conjunction with other repairs and required inspections. Most plants are in small towns, and they typically welcome the specialized labor force that fills hotels, restaurants and bars.Plant operators in Europe are also pushing forward with refueling and maintenance, with caution. The French nuclear safety authority said Friday that it suspended on-site inspections of Electricite de France SA and Orano sites when not necessary. Engie SA is continuing ongoing work at three of its seven reactors in Belgium. EDF, meanwhile, is prioritizing essential work at its 57 reactors and said the pandemic will lead to lower nuclear output as it revamps its maintenance schedule.Precautions are being taken in Monroe County, where Fermi 2 employs about 850 people. The Days Inn & Suites is offering grab-and-go breakfasts instead of the regular buffet and monitoring the lobby so it doesn’t get too crowded, said Jennifer Davis, the general manager. “It does feel different, because of everything that’s going on.”The project at the 1.2-gigawatt Fermi plant includes thousands of tasks, and DTE Energy will consider reevaluating the scope of the job to find any tasks that could be deferred, Tait, the spokesman, said. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is drafting rules to grant delay requests. Besides replacing a third of the fuel rods, the big job this time at Fermi is recoating the torus, a donut-shaped component that encircles the reactor and can provide cooling water to safety systems during an accident. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates the project will take more than five weeks.The torus is a must-do job, but not everything is as critical. “There are some ancillary activities during an outage that can be deferred,” said Scott Burnell, a spokesman for the NRC.The largest operator of U.S. nuclear plants, Exelon Corp., is seeking to streamline its remaining refueling job this year. Its started work in early March at its Byron and Nine Mile Point plants, and it has four others scheduled for refueling outages this season.“We’ve looked at whether we can change the scope, or limit the number of people on site,” said Lacey Dean, an Exelon spokeswoman. But the main work will continue on schedule. “These refueling outages are really necessary.”Rennhack, the jobs-board founder, said he hasn’t heard complaints from people on the refueling teams. “They’re contract workers. Contract workers are always worried about their next paycheck.” For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Univ. of Washington studies antimalarial drug’s use to head off COVID-19, with Gates Foundation’s aid

University of Washington researchers are among the leaders of a newly announced clinical trial investigating whether hydroxychloroquine, a drug that's commonly used to counter malaria and autoimmune disease, can prevent COVID-19. The multi-site trial, managed by UW in collaboration with New York University's Grossman School of Medicine, aims to determine definitively whether taking the drug can prevent transmission in people exposed to the virus. "We currently don’t know if hydroxychloroquine works, but we will learn in as short a timeframe as possible what the outcome is,” principal investigator Ruanne Barnabas, associate professor of global health in the University of Washington… Read More

Warren Buffett Can Hunt Elephants From Home

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- This is a market for Warren Buffett, and U.S. investors sure could use some of his positive vibes right now. So where is America’s biggest booster and hungriest dealmaker?Buffett, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has been noticeably quiet since an explosion in coronavirus cases sent much of the populace into self-isolation and the country hurtling toward a recession. New York City, the capital of finance, is the new epicenter of the outbreak. But even 1,200 miles west in Buffett’s more airy state of Nebraska, the number of known infected residents is approaching 200, showing just how widespread it’s become.Buffett’s age — he’ll turn 90 in August — puts him among those most at risk of severe complications from the virus. (He was also treated for early-stage prostate cancer in 2012.) It may be that he’s avoiding in-person interviews for safety reasons, as he should. Nobody wants to be the one who gave the world’s most celebrated businessman and philanthropist Covid-19 and set in motion the most momentous CEO transition of our time.  Still, with so much panic and prognosticating about the damage the pandemic might inflict on the economy, investors could use Buffett’s habitual reminder of his unwavering belief in American prosperity. In 2008, amid the last recession, and again in 2010, Buffett signed off both his annual letters to shareholders saying that he and Charlie Munger — his longtime business partner and the 96-year-old vice chairman of Berkshire — were “lucky beyond our dreams” in part for being born in the U.S.Berkshire’s own investments are like a cross-section of the U.S. economy, with large stakes in airlines, banks, grocery stores and makers of consumer goods — even tech giants Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. About $70 billion of value has been erased from its stock portfolio since mid-February (though we don’t yet know what Buffett bought and sold during the first quarter). The conglomerate also has outright ownership of one of the nation’s most expansive freight railway systems and a giant utility network, as well as businesses that sell everything from furniture and modular homes, to airplane-engine parts and various types of insurance. Shares of Berkshire itself are down 18%, headed for their worst year — like many other stocks — since 2008. “If you stick around long enough you’ll see everything in markets, and it may have taken me to 89 years of age to throw this one into the experience,” a still chipper Buffett said on Yahoo Finance during his last televised interview. That was March 10, before the virus situation became so dire that states stretching from California to Massachusetts began issuing stay-at-home orders to buy time for hospitals running out of ventilators and other crucial equipment.Three days later, Buffett announced he was canceling the festivities associated with Berkshire’s annual meeting to be held in Omaha in May. No investors are allowed to attend (they’ll have to stream it online). That means no shopping for See’s Candies, no posing with Buffett cardboard cut-outs, no running in the Brooks 5K and no sightings of the man himself for the tens of thousands of fans who show up each year wondering if it’s their last chance to see him up close.Buffett really has seen it all, though, which for him diminishes the frightful nature of events that to the rest of us seem so unprecedented in their gravity. When the Black Monday crash hit in October 1987, Buffett was already 57 years old. During World War II, when the news headlines couldn’t have been worse, he bought his first shares of stock as a kid — dumping them only four months later. At the 2018 Berkshire shareholder meeting, Buffett recounted the lesson he learned from that. Here’s a condensed version:Imagine yourself back on March 11, 1942. … I’d like you to imagine that at that time you had invested $10,000 … to hold a piece of American business and never look at another stock quote. … You’d have $51 million [now] and you wouldn't have had to do anything. … All you had to do was figure that America was going to do well over time, that we would overcome the current difficulties. … It’s just remarkable to me that we have operated in this country with the greatest tailwind at our back.In some ways, this is the market he’s been waiting for — a chance to finally scoop up durable, if temporarily beaten down, businesses on the cheap and put Berkshire’s $128 billion pile of cash to work. Likewise, private equity firms will be on the prowl, too. Financial buyers, including Berkshire, are already eyeing vulnerable targets in the travel, lodging and entertainment industries, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing unnamed sources. Here are others that fit the mold of a Berkshire takeover target, based on criteria Buffett has spelled out in the past: In recent years there were too many competing acquirers willing to pay prices Buffett thought were absurd. Now, many are looking to conserve capital; others receiving assistance from the federal stimulus package may be more limited in their financial maneuvers. So where President Donald Trump opened a window to dealmaking with this more lax antitrust regulation, the virus has shut the door. Merger-and-acquisition activity is already down 24% globally this year, while in the U.S. it’s retreated 31%. The S&P 500 index now has a price-to-earnings ratio of 17, compared with more than 22 in February.“It would be more fun if the phone would ring,” Buffett said in 2017 at the start of his M&A dry spell. It's sure to be ringing now as large corporations seek cash and the glow of the Buffett halo. Banks are quietly discouraging investment-grade borrowers from tapping their existing credit lines, according to a Bloomberg News report Monday. Berkshire played the role of a bank last year, providing $10 billion of financing to Occidental Petroleum Corp. in return for high-yielding preferred stock. As my colleague Liam Denning has noted, even though the oil crash recently forced Oxy to slash its regular dividend, Berkshire still receives its fat check.Though it may be no mystery how Buffett views America’s ability to get through this latest crisis, it’s anyone’s guess where he’ll deploy his billions in it. Whatever the case, he should do his elephant hunting from home. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Tara Lachapelle is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the business of entertainment and telecommunications, as well as broader deals. She previously wrote an M&A column for Bloomberg News.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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Elton John’s warning during coronavirus benefit: ‘There was another infectious disease that was ignored’

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