Simona De Silvestro, Off and On the Track

Simona De Silvestro —and the industry—gets some nice pub with the lead story on today's ClimateWire,

A stunning Swiss blonde parked her racecar in the most unlikely of places: a hotel ballroom in Chicago filled with nuclear industry representatives at an annual conference.

The 19-year-old Simona de Silvestro was fresh from winning the Atlantic Championship season opener in Long Beach, Ca., driving the sleek, 300 horsepower Swift 016, powered by a modified Cosworth engine. Now she was entering a competition of a different sort. The vehicle, which is emblazoned with the phrase "Nuclear Clean Air Energy," is part of a racing team backed by actor Paul Newman.

De Silvestro and her car's pro-nuclear message are both being used by the nuclear power industry to turn heads, but not just at the track. The industry plans to show off her car and its message on university campuses.

NEI recently provided partial sponsorship of Newman Wachs Racing -- de Silvestro's movie star-supported team -- in exchange for the right to brand her vehicle on the racing circuit and take her on multiple campus visits to generate interest in nuclear power. Entergy, the second largest nuclear power operator in the United States, also is a sponsor of the campaign.

Full article is available here (sub req'd.)

Simona will seek to maintain her position as points leader in the Atlantic Championship Series at this Sunday's race at Laguna Seca in Monterey, CA.

Au Revoir, EDF?: British Energy Rounds Up Some More Bidders

We wrote a couple of days ago we may have jumped the gun on the British Energy story by declaring Electricité de France (EDF) the last company standing in the bidding for the nuclear utility. We did - or might have. While British Energy says it has more interest, it will not say who has expressed the interest or how serious the various parties are.

Here's how Bloomberg puts it:

Two of the three proposals received by British Energy were for more than 680 pence [about $13.29] a share, yesterday's closing price, said a person with knowledge of the offers, who declined to be identified because the matter is confidential. Centrica Plc, the U.K.'s biggest energy supplier, made one of them, a second person said.

Centrica is a bit of a surprise as earlier stories had them partnered with EDF.

Even more surprising is that one of the bidders is thought to be Suez, the French energy concern that complained that EDF might lock them out of the British nuclear market. We said then they might want to consider just competing and here they are - competing. Good for Suez, if the rumor is confirmed.

Various article are suggesting different bidders, including Germany's RWE (although Bloomberg thinks they're out) and E.ON and Spain's Iberdola.

Sit tight - this one's going to take awhile to play out - and let's see what happens next.

This Island Earth: Following Up on Some Recent Stories

One thing journalist types like to do is follow up on previous stories to see where they've gotten to, if anywhere. It provides continuity for the reader and, yes, fills space in the newspaper. So, if Mayor Jones decides everyone should have a monkey, then let's see if everyone has gotten one (though avoid monkeys named Caesar - only grief will come from it.) If a cat was a rescued from a tree, let's check up on that darn cat and see if he learned his lesson.

So, without further ado:

We wrote recently that Bruce Power is looking to build a nuclear power plant in Alberta, though the provincial government is going to convene an expert panel to offer advice on how to proceed. Now, some University of Calgary students have beaten the panel to the punch and stirred up a little controversy:

A group of University of Calgary students are causing a stir over their recent conclusion that nuclear energy is a safe and viable option for Alberta. The fourth-year environmental science students completed their comprehensive research project which studied site selection, background radiation, media perception, modeling worst case scenarios, comparing technology sources and risk assessment.

They don't think the Peace River site chosen by Bruce Power is the best:

"When it comes to technical feasibility and the Alberta landscape, nuclear is a competitive option," said Kowalewski. "The biggest limitation for what we looked at was the actual feasibility of the Peace River [site] that is currently proposed, based on soil stability, proximity to vaults and water balance issues."

Well, okay. Our old friend The Pembina Institute also weighs in, but it's boilerplate nuclear-is-bad stuff.

---

We wrote recently about Vietnam's intention to move forward with nuclear energy. Nothing new on that front, but Hanoi is now hosting The third international nuclear power exhibition. Here's what it's about:

It is designed to provide [the] Vietnamese [information] about the world development of the industry.

The exhibits include displays of Japan's advanced pressurised water reactor and France's third-generation pressurised reactors.

(I've helped the translation here a bit.)

Sounds like AREVA and Toshiba are exhibiting. We wondered if France was going to weigh in here - looks like the answer is yes.

---

We've written several times about the growing interest in nuclear energy in the Arab world, but have always read that the go-to partners were France and the United States, with Russia darting about. Now, score one for the British:

United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom signed here today a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) concerning cooperation in peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

We suspect that "peaceful uses" phrase will be used a lot as Iran's neighbors will very much want to avoid the taint of Iran's activities. Here's a little more, from the British side:

Asserting that nuclear power can make a real contribution to meeting UK's commitments to transition to a low carbon economy whilst enhancing energy security, the Minister pledged his country's support to the development of safe, secure, and economically viable civil nuclear power generation and research programmes.

And no Pembina Institute to pour vinegar on the good times.

AFL-CIO Backs "Clean Energy Bank"

Add Mark Ayers, President of the Building & Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO, to those supporting the creation of a "Clean Energy Investment Bank." At the NEA conference last week, Ayers said, “Our primary mission [during the current Congress] is to secure an extension of the loan guarantee program to ‘kick start’ the renewal of nuclear power generation in this country.” He also expressed the desire to explore ways to advance the concept of a “clean energy bank” that would help finance construction of capital-intensive energy projects, including nuclear plants.

The Clean Energy Investment Bank Act of 2008 was introduced by Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) and is co-sponsored by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY), Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID), Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL), and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).

Bon Jour, EDF: British Energy Finds a Bidder

Well, maybe. The British Government solicited bids for its 35% share of British Energy, which runs eight of the ten nuclear energy plants in the country. The last several weeks have seen stories about the Germans (E.ON) and Spanish (Iberdola - they now own Scottish Power) dropping by to kick the tires, and they might still submit bids, but it looks like Electricité de France (EDF), in concert with the British Centrica, has won the prize. This could be considered a disappointment for investors, as the stock has been rising in hopes of a bidding war.

So far, EDF is mum about how much it is bidding, but:

The Daily Telegraph said Friday that EDF and its advisers, Merrill Lynch, were putting together a deal worth between 9.2 billion pounds (11.7 billion euros, 18 billion dollars) and 10.2 billion pounds.

This story from Agence-France - there are many stories about this development out there - suggests that EDF is pushing into the UK market regardless of British Energy.

The Financial Times said the firm had acquired land near Wylfa on the island of Anglesey, north Wales, and Hinckley Point, in the county of Somerset, southwest England.

It said such "stealthy purchases" could allow EDF to build up to three new atomic power stations, regardless of whether it is successful in its bid for British Energy.

And all these aggressive moves have caused alarm for a French competitor, Suez.

Suez has begun intensive lobbying of the Government and the board of British Energy to ensure EdF would not be able to stop other operators building nuclear power stations in the UK.

Seems crybabyish. We're not expert on French business practices, but perhaps Suez ought to just get out there and compete.

---

We may have jumped the gun a bit on this one - this is a story containing a fair number of hairpin turns - but we've wanted to get it on our gps devices for awhile and this particular turn in the road seems a good place to leave a marker.  As they say in TV Land, stay tuned.

The Choreographers of Nature: Michio Kaku on Nuclear Energy

Michio Kaku, co-founder of string field theory and professor of theoretical physics at City University in New York City, makes some interesting points in a short interview with The India Times' Narayani Ganesh:

We're moving from being passive observers of nature to its active choreographers. This historic transition in science is enabled by discoveries in three fundamental areas: The DNA theory of life, the atomic theory of matter and computer technology that demonstrates that the workings of the mind are based on logic and electrical circuits.

I actually don't think computer technology demonstrates anything of the sort - it took aliens from Jupiter, after all, to cause the HAL 9000 to jump from human simulacra to human - but Kaku can likely run rings around my paltry doubts.

He's not too fond of nuclear energy:

Going for nuclear energy is like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Fusion (based on hydrogen) is clean. But fission (based on uranium) generates tremendous waste. Nature uses fusion; for example, allowing the stars to recycle themselves cleanly. But nature does not use uranium, which is filthy. Nature only uses fusion, the power of the stars.

There appears to be some Gaia thinking in his formulation, but it's worth noting that nature doesn't actually "use" any energy source to generate electricity that man has harnessed for his own use, certainly not wind, solar, gas, coal, hydro or the rest. Using an energy source to generate heat has been understood as man's domain since Prometheus stole fire from the gods and man really did become the choreographer of nature. (Well, if he can do Gaia...)

Instead, he suggests:

Beyond 30 years, the goal of the ITER project in France is to find a way to control fusion. Within 40 years, commercial fusion power, which uses ordinary sea water as fuel, may become a reality.

He allows for this much wishful thinking because, he says, the polar ice sheets will have melted away by 2050 anyway. Kaku is a fascinating man and his current book Physics of the Impossible is well worth reading. His tendency is to think big - really big - and in the very long term. But practically, he reveals some of the pitfalls of an ivory tower genius brought low by the necessities of keeping society puttering along - at least until fusion gets itself together - maybe - someday.

New York Times Endorses Nuclear Energy

In a New York Times Editorial running this morning, The Post-Bush Climate, we find this nugget,

His [McCain] plan differs in other respects, too. He decided at the last minute to delete from his speech a proposed tariff on countries like India and China that defy international agreements on emissions, partly because the tariff could be misconstrued as hostile to free trade, which Mr. McCain supports. The Senate bill contains such a provision. Meanwhile, Mr. McCain is much more enthusiastic, and in our view rightly so, about nuclear energy as a cleaner power source than the Senate sponsors or the two Democratic presidential candidates are.

Since 2005, we've been running a feature on this blog titled, "Another Blogger for Nuclear Energy." Perhaps it's time to start "Another Editorial Board for Nuclear Energy."

Welcome aboard, NYT.

Bush Sends U.S.-Russia Civilian Nuclear Energy Pact to Congress

President George W. Bush has sent the agreement called Cooperation in the Field of Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy to Congress for approval. Here is a description of the pact from President Bush's letter to Congress:

The proposed Agreement provides a comprehensive framework for peaceful nuclear cooperation with Russia based on a mutual commitment to nuclear non-proliferation. It has a term of 30 years, and permits the transfer of technology, material, equipment (including reactors), and components for nuclear research and nuclear power production. It does not permit transfers of Restricted Data, and permits transfers of sensitive nuclear technology, sensitive nuclear facilities, and major critical components of such facilities by amendment to the Agreement. In the event of termination, key non-proliferation conditions and controls continue with respect to material and equipment subject to the Agreement.

Congress has been quite dubious about this pact, particularly because of Russian aid to Iran's nuclear efforts. The best hope for the pact is for Congress to do nothing; if no action is taken in 60 days, then the pact takes force. But the House has already passed a measure that essentially forbids this pact and the Senate has a similar bill with 70 or so co-sponsors ready to go. Congress appears ready to weigh-in, and a perceived toughness toward Iran will play well to voters. Much more to come, no doubt.

We've written about this pact recently. Take a look there for more details and links.

Explaining the Costs of Nuclear Power Plants

Conferences, campaign speeches, and media all contributed to an especially busy NEI Monday. At Brookings, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R) called for a bipartisan Manhattan project leading to "clean energy independence." The U.S. representative to the IAEA, Ambassador Greg Schulte, discussed nonproliferation initiatives at a Woodrow Wilson International Center event. Sen. John McCain (R) continued his policy tour, stopping in Oregon to deliver his address on climate change. And The Wall Street Journal published an article looking at the costs of new plant builds.

Mark Flanagan responded via the NEI blog. Scott Peterson took to the airwaves, citing industry and independent analysis that shows nuclear-generated electricity to be cost-effective and competitive. Peterson also emphasized the bipartisan support for new plants in statehouses and Congress.

Let the Battle Begin: The Wall Street Journal on the Expense of New Plants

The argument that building new nuclear energy plants will represent ruinous expense for anyone to undertake has percolated among nuclear opposition folks without much mainstream notice. Now, however, the Wall Street Journal has taken a crack at it. It's nicely researched and written up to WSJ standards, although you've heard the argument of the piece many times. Here's the lede:

A new generation of nuclear power plants is on the drawing boards in the U.S., but the projected cost is causing some sticker shock: $5 billion to $12 billion a plant, double to quadruple earlier rough estimates.

$5 to $12 million? That seems a pretty big spread. Here's a longer taster, with a soupcon of that "on the one hand, on the other hand" thing journalists use to cover all bases:

Several things could derail new development plans. Excessive cost is one. A second is the development of rival technologies that could again make nuclear plants look like white elephants. A drop in prices for coal and natural gas, now very expensive, also could make nuclear plants less attractive. On the other hand, if Congress decides to tax greenhouse-gas emissions, that could make electricity from nuclear plants more attractive by raising costs for generators that burn fossil fuels. Nuclear plants wouldn't have to pay the charges because they aren't emitters.

Coal and natural gas are not really rival technologies. They are part of the energy mix and will be for a long time. So-called clean coal and carbon emission sequestration may cause their stock to rise in the greenhouse-gas-reduction sweepstakes, but likely not at the expense or even benefit of nuclear energy. Likewise, the rise and fall of prices in those markets would have next to no impact on nuclear energy because nuclear energy solves different problems.

The second point  - that Congress will turn a fishy eye on fossil fuels - is widely perceived to be certain, which is what has led in part to the nuclear renaissance and also to the increased interest in solar, wind and tide technologies. (Other non-emitting energy sources are not mentioned at all in the article, an odd omission.)

What the article represents is what newspapers are actually good at, which is pushing back at orthodoxy. That nuclear energy now seems the orthodox way to address climate change is heartening; that the Wall Street Journal would want to push back at nuclear energy and try out the expense argument is inevitable - it gets the issue into the public sphere. Fine: it had to happen sooner or later and it's not that tough an argument.

The article treats nuclear energy as though it were an all-or-nothing proposition; it's not. Coal, gas, wind, solar, nuclear and all the usual suspects will feed the energy grid. Nuclear has a place at the table, but it won't scarf down all the food.

---

Leave it to our friends at the Heritage Foundation to have a go of their own at the WSJ article:

The simple fact is that energy prices are increasing and if the nation wants to limit CO2 emissions, then nuclear must be part of the answer. So the question for policy makers is two-fold. First, what can be done to reduce energy prices overall and second what can be done to reduce the construction costs of nuclear power plants.

Heritage lists six proscriptive points, some of which reiterate our own, some of which are new:

...Commit to the free trade of commodities. Simply lifting tariffs on the products, like steel and cement mentioned by the WSJ would reduce construction costs. The U.S. would have the added benefit of gaining access to the resources to build the energy plants, of whatever source, to meet its energy demands.

And some of which are conservative boilerplate we could take or leave:

Sixth, minimize regulation. The nuclear energy industry is one of the most heavily regulated in the country. At best, it will take nearly four years before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will give approval to build a new plant. Furthermore, regulatory mandates have drastically increased the amount of construction materials needed to build a plant despite experience showing that such reinforcements were unnecessary.

Minimizing regulation has done this country so much good, hasn't it?

But read the whole thing - and the WSJ article too - and watch the fur fly.

Monday Morning Breakfast

...nuclear energy news you may have missed this weekend.

The Washington Post reports that at least 40 developing countries have approached U.N. officials about starting nuclear energy programs....According to the AP, Senator McCain will call for the expansion of nuclear power while speaking at a Vestas wind turbine plant in Portland, Oregon....The Wall Street Journal looks at the economics of new plant builds....UK hedge fund, The Children's Investment Fund (TCI), will seek sanctions against the Japanese government over its decision barring TCI from doubling its stake in J-Power. Per columnist William Hutchings, "The firm said the government's decision was damaging Japan's reputation as an open capital market."...The Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, the local that covers Luzerne County, PA (Susquehanna), is publishing a two-part series titled "Nuclear Reaction." Part one, "Powering Up," ran on Sunday....The Lawrence Journal-World's man-on-the-street asks its readers, "Would you prefer that the Legislature pursue nuclear or coal power in Kansas?" (They prefer nuclear.)...Diane Farsetta from PR Watch doesn't.

The Rise of Carly Fiorina

It's been a good few months for Carly Fiorina; the once-embattled former president and CEO of Hewlett-Packard is now an advisor and leading surrogate for the McCain presidential campaign. Fiorina has recently been mentioned as a possible running mate with Senator McCain. Today she appeared in the "B" segment on ABC's This Week. Here she is on McCain and nuclear energy,

There's no question that Senator McCain has said over and over again that we have to incent innovation. So that we are building these new green technologies. We have to incent innovation around things like clean coal. And by the way, we also have to incent innovation around nuclear power. Which is clean. It's abundant. Yes, there are issues. But nuclear power, if we would step up, and adopt nuclear power in this country, that's potentially many millions of jobs.

Note: Transcript is not yet available. Quotation appears at 3:43 in the video clip.

Everything Old Is New Again: Westinghouse Steps Forward

For a lot of folks, Westinghouse is a name associated with the  washing machines, TV sets and vacuum machines that graced their suburban tract homes growing up. Even at the time, though, the brand seemed a little old-fashioned, something with the ordure of musty velour.

But Westinghouse was then a powerhouse almost as broad based as General Electric. In recent years, as a division of Toshiba, Westinghouse Electric Company (the electronics and appliance maker still exists as Westinghouse Electric Corporation, owned by CBS) has largely focused on the nuclear market. Here's how they've spent the last several years:

For the past few years, amid a resurgence of the nuclear power industry, Westinghouse's Engineering Services group has been furiously upgrading and refurbishing aging plants—and minting money along the way.

But that work is almost done, and Business Week's Brian Hindo documents what Westinghouse is doing to move forward and retain its relevance:

Last fall the company won a contract to make repairs to Alloy 600, a metal that is found in old reactors. It had never done that before. Nor had it serviced a type of reactor that uses boiling, rather than pressurized, water to generate steam. Now it has a satellite office in San Jose, Calif., dedicated to such jobs.

But even this isn't the full point. That comes through Westinghouse's determination to push itself forward though taking on a culture of risk aversion and reversing it to allow the company to think outside hidebound assumptions and discover what else it could do and how it could do them:

[Engineering Services head Nick Liparulo] needed to send a strong signal that risk-taking wouldn't be a ticket out the door. At [University of Virginia's Darden School of Business professor Jeanne] Liedtka's suggestion, he took nine of his best managers and made them "growth leaders." Their sole responsibilities would be to chase down new technologies and markets.

As Liedtka's involvement suggests, this has more than a whiff of an academic business theory given form - expect many pop business books to come out about it if they haven't already - but the results are good and it has pushed Westinghouse forward. Read the whole article - it's a good, positive one and gets the weekend going right - and see if Westinghouse hasn't blown the dust off the velour and made it plush again.

Pennies from Heaven: A Nuclear Stock Fund

For those of you more engaged with your financial portfolios than we are, take a look at this, courtesy of Kiplinger:

Investors who want to ride nuclear's revival without betting on individual stocks have a new option. Invesco PowerShares last month launched an exchange-traded fund called the Global Nuclear Energy Portfolio (symbol PKN). The ETF tracks the performance of the World Nuclear Association (WNA) Energy Index, which contains 64 companies that design, construct and operate nuclear power reactors. The shares closed at $27.08 on May 8.

And the fund is jam packed with the usual suspects, minus of course Keyser Soze:

The ETF's biggest holding, at 8.5% of assets, is Areva (ARVCF.PK), a French company. "Areva is one of just a handful of publicly traded companies in the world that both designs and builds reactors," says Phillips.

Other big holdings include Japan's Toshiba (TOSBF.PK), Emerson Electric (EMR) and Canada's Cameco (CCJ), a leading producer of uranium, the raw material that becomes fuel for nuclear reactors.

Writer Amy Bickers reviews the reasons nuclear has sprung back to life and offers a definition of an ETF:

ETFs are funds that track a particular index and trade on exchanges just like stocks. ETF prices move up and down, in line with the value of the securities they hold. ETFs contain mechanisms that keep the share prices close to the value of their holdings.

Whether the electricity market in general is responsive to this kind of financial instrument, we have no idea. If you took our advice on stocks, you'd have only yourself to blame if your next home was a giant-screen TV box in a low traffic corner of your local public park.

Perhaps the more financially savvy members of our readership can weigh in on the virtues and vices of this kind of offering. For us, it's interesting that outfits creating such offerings find nuclear energy something that might appeal to potential buyers.

The CBO Study on Nuclear Energy

Your rainy weekend reading suggestion: the Congressional Budget Office's just released study,"Nuclear Power's Role in Generating Electricity." The pull quote:

In the long run, carbon dioxide charges would increase the competitiveness of nuclear technology and could make it the least expensive source of new base-load capacity. More immediately, EPAct incentives by themselves could make advanced nuclear reactors a competitive technology for limited additions to base-load capacity. However, under some plausible assumptions that differ from those CBO adopted for its reference scenario—in particular, those that project higher future construction costs for nuclear plants or lower natural gas prices—nuclear technology would be a relatively expensive source of capacity, regardless of EPAct incentives. CBO’s analysis yields the following conclusions:

• In the absence of both carbon dioxide charges and EPAct incentives, conventional fossil-fuel technologies would most likely be the least expensive source of new electricity-generating capacity.
• Carbon dioxide charges of about $45 per metric ton would probably make nuclear generation competitive with conventional fossil-fuel technologies as a source of new capacity, even without EPAct incentives. At charges below that threshold, conventional gas technology would probably be a more economic source of base-load capacity than coal technology. Below about $5 per metric ton, conventional coal technology would probably be the lowest cost source of new capacity.
• Also at roughly $45 per metric ton, carbon dioxide charges would probably make nuclear generation competitive with existing coal power plants and could lead utilities in a position to do so to build new nuclear plants that would eventually replace existing coal power plants.
• EPAct incentives would probably make nuclear generation a competitive technology for limited additions to base-load capacity, even in the absence of carbon dioxide charges. However, because some of those incentives are backed by a fixed amount of funding, they would be diluted as the number of nuclear projects increased; consequently, CBO anticipates that only a few of the 30 plants currently being proposed would be built if utilities did not expect carbon dioxide charges to be imposed.
• Uncertainties about future construction costs or natural gas prices could deter investment in nuclear power. In particular, if construction costs for new nuclear power plants proved to be as high as the average cost of nuclear plants built in the 1970s and 1980s or if natural gas prices fell back to the levels seen in the 1990s, then new nuclear capacity would not be competitive, regardless of the incentives provided by EPAct. Such variations in construction or fuel costs would be less likely to deter investment in new nuclear capacity if investors anticipated a carbon dioxide charge, but those charges would probably have to exceed $80 per metric ton in order for nuclear technology to remain competitive under either of those circumstances.

The study was written by Justin Falk, an analyst with the CBO's Microeconomic Studies Division, under the supervision of Joseph Kile and David Moore. Hat tip to the CBO Director's blog (?!), for the pointer to the study. You have to believe that when the Director of the CBO is blogging, this medium is here to stay.