Skip to main content

Caldicott off the Mark on the Nuclear Fuel Cycle

By Eric McErlain
In a March 16 interview that appeared in the Toldeo Blade, Helen Caldicott of the Nuclear Policy and Research Institute made a number of erroneous statements concerning the environmental impact of the nuclear fuel cycle.

In today's edition of the paper, the Blade published a letter from NEI Vice President for Communications, Scott Peterson, refuting her claims:

Helen Caldicott's March 16 diatribe against the Nuclear Energy Institute was loaded with false claims about the nuclear fuel cycle.

Her claim that uranium enrichment plants use electricity generated from "two coal plants" is untrue. There is only one enrichment plant in the United States - in Paducah, Ky. By contract, it obtains electricity from the Tennessee Valley Authority's fleet of power plants, so about 40 percent of its electricity comes from non-emitting nuclear and hydroelectric power plants.

Ms. Caldicott also mangles the truth with her claim of CFC gas emissions from the uranium enrichment process. The Paducah facility doesn't produce CFC-114, more commonly known as "Freon." It uses it as a coolant for safety purposes in its enrichment operations. There is some leakage into the environment, but this amount is well within Environmental Protection Agency guidelines. In addition, Freon is no longer manufactured in the U.S. The enrichment plant uses Freon recycled from cars and home air conditioning units.

USEC, the company operating the Kentucky facility, has an active Freon leak-reduction program under way and has applied for a license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to a build and operate a centrifuge enrichment plant that will not use any CFCs.

Although all industrial and manufacturing activities have environmental impacts and produce waste byproducts, nuclear power has one of the smallest environmental impacts of any source of electricity and manufacturing processes.

In fact, a study by the International Energy Agency in 2003 showed that the entire nuclear energy life cycle resulted in the second-lowest emissions of greenhouse gases next to wind, which is hardly a technology Americans can rely on today to provide the round-the-clock, bulk electricity supplies that nuclear power plants provide.

For an NEI fact sheet on emissions life-cycle analysis for sources of electrical generation, click here. For more on the nuclear fuel cycle, visit USEC.

UPDATE AND CORRECTION: The nuclear energy life cycle study we refer to above was done in 2000, not 2003. Again, it can be found by clicking here.

Technorati tags: , , ,

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fluor Invests in NuScale

By
You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap...
1 comment
Read more

Wednesday Update

By
From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nuclear Utility Moves Up in Credit Ratings, Bank is "Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy"

By
Some positive signs that nuclear utilities can continue to receive positive ratings even while they finance new nuclear plants for the first time in decades: Wells Fargo upgrades SCANA to Outperform from Market Perform Wells analyst says, "YTD, SCG shares have underperformed the Regulated Electrics (total return +2% vs. +9%). Shares trade at 11.3X our 10E EPS, a modest discount to the peer group median of 11.8X. We view the valuation as attractive given a comparatively constructive regulatory environment and potential for above-average long-term EPS growth prospects ... Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy. SCG plans to participate in the development of two regulated nuclear units at a cost of $6.3B, raising legitimate concerns regarding financing and construction. We have carefully considered the risks and are comfortable with SCG’s strategy based on a highly constructive political & regulatory environment, manageable financing needs stretched out over 10 years, strong partners...
Post a Comment
Read more