The NEI Afternoon Clip File

Here are some of the news clips we're reading at NEI this afternoon.

The energy bill continues to make headlines. The Albuquerque Tribune writes that Sens. Domenici and Bingaman, both from New Mexico, are feeling positive:

"It helps us move the country in the direction of our energy needs," [Bingaman] said.

..."I anticipate strong bipartisan support in the Senate," Domenici said in a statement. "I am particularly proud of the conservation and efficiency measures in this bill. We do everything we could think of to diversify our energy supply and develop new energies that don't rely on fossil fuels."

Farmers are also satisfied with the bill, reports The Daily Nonpareil:

"It's very landmark legislation for rural America," Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) told reporters Tuesday. "Renewable fuel standards sets a 7.5 billion gallon mandate for ethanol and biodiesel. The tax package includes farmer-friendly provisions, including tax incentives for biodiesel, wind energy and ethanol biomass."

USA Today agrees, adding that the nuclear energy industry is pleased with the legislation:

The nuclear industry, corn farmers and the coal industry did particularly well with the legislation.

The bill would require refiners to double the use of ethanol, mostly from corn, as an additive to gasoline to 7.5 billion gallons a year by 2012.

A boon to farmers, it also would cost the taxpayer because ethanol gets a substantial tax break compared to gasoline, said Myron Ebel, an energy analyst for the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

...The nuclear industry hailed the legislation. It reaped major benefits, including "risk insurance" totaling $2 billion if there are permitting or regulatory delays in construction of the first six new nuclear power reactors.

The bill also provides loan guarantees for future reactors and a green light for building a $1.25 billion next-generation nuclear plant that could produce hydrogen as well as electricity.

Louisiana is looking forward to receiving its share of the bill:

Louisiana and five other states that allow oil and natural gas drilling off their shores are set to get about $1 billion in royalty money from offshore leases. The money would be distributed between 2007 and 2010 with Louisiana getting about 54 percent of it.

Louisiana wants to use the money to fix its eroding and sinking coastline, which has lost about 1,900 square miles since the 1930s.

Reuters is also keep the public up-to-date with a list of key elements included in the energy bill.

In international news, Nigeria is realizing that nuclear simply must be part of its energy mix:

The federal government is articulating an energy mix profile to move national energy supply capacity to over 30,000MW in the next 10 years.

...The current national generation capacity stands at between 3,000 to 4,000MW

[Minister of Science and Technology Turner] Isoun said that the mix under consideration included the nuclear energy power plant, coal, wind, bio mass, hydrogen fuel cell, wave and tidal options.

He said that the decision to explore other alternatives such as building and utilising nuclear power plants, were guided by the fact that the current energy mix was grossly inadequate for the nation's industrial growth.

And in subterranean news, nuclear is helping geophysicists dig deeper. Subatomic particles called antineutrinos are providing insight into the chemical makeup of the earth. And where do we get antineutrinos? You guessed it: nuclear reactors.

Geophysicists have a new tool for studying the Earth's interior, reported in the July 28 issue of the journal Nature.

That tool is a gift from unlikely collaborators-physicists who study neutrinos, subatomic particles that stars spew out, and their antiparticles, called antineutrinos, which emanate from nuclear reactors and from the Earth's interior when uranium and thorium isotopes undergo a cascade of heat-generating radioactive decay processes. A detector in Japan called KamLAND (for Kamioka liquid scintillator antineutrino detector) has sensed the geologically produced antineutrinos, known as ''geoneutrinos.'' This new window on the world that geoneutrinos open could yield important geophysical information.

Come back tomorrow morning for more news from the NEI Clip File.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Environment, Energy, Politics, Technology, Economics

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...

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