The NEI Afternoon Clip File

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

The new issue of Technology Review notes that "current trends favor a nuclear renaissance" and asks, "Why not simply build new plants, which would benefit from three decades' worth of technology advances in materials, sensors, and control software?"

Today's 104 operating U.S. nuclear power plants, after all, reflect the designs of the 1960s and the technologies of the 1970s. But the job of actually building plants requires much more than better technology; it requires partnerships, public relations, and lobbying to overcome the ghosts of the recent past.

Entergy Nuclear of Jackson, MS, already operates 10 nuclear power plants over eight locations, and it would like to build more at some of those sites. But as a practical matter, the company realized it needed to band together with others in the industry to reduce its exposure to market risk, promote enough competition between major reactor suppliers to yield an affordable design, sell the communities near the sites on the plants' economic benefits, and extract federal subsidies.

The result of this banding together was the NuStart consortium. And we shouldn't forget the recent efforts at Grand Gulf, Clinton and North Anna by our friends with NA-YGN. Individual utilities, like Duke Power, also are applying for permits:

None of the utilities applying for NRC permits has ordered a new reactor. But if one or more actually goes ahead, it could open the door to investments in a new generation of more efficient plants. "If they are successful in getting new plant construction started in the United States during the next three to five years, that will open the door for other nuclear technologies," says Regis Matzie, chief technology officer and senior vice president at Westinghouse, who is also a director of the South African consortium seeking to build a pebble bed plant in that country. "Further, restarting nuclear build in the United States will have a profound impact on new nuclear build around the world."

The Kalamazoo Gazette urges the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to issue a new 20-year license for Consumers Energy's Palisades Nuclear Plant in southwest Michigan:

We, too, have been concerned about the storage of nuclear waste in casks along the Lake Michigan shoreline. That is why we support the opening of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. It is time to take the casks away from one of the planet's largest supplies of fresh water and place them in a secure repository.

But we're opposed to taking 38-year-old Palisades off-line, especially at a time when demands for electricity continue to mount and concerns about coal-burning power plants, which emit greenhouse gases and mercury into the air, are growing.

The United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency is organizing an international scientific workshop in India this month to re-examine risks to nuclear plants from natural disasters such as last December's catastrophic tsunami in the Indian Ocean:

The five-day International Workshop on External Flooding Hazards at Nuclear Power Plant Sites will begin on 29 August at India's Kalpakkam nuclear power plant, which withstood the giant waves that engulfed the small township, home to India's centre for atomic research.

Battered but safe, the plant shut down automatically after detectors tripped it as the water level rose. There was no release of radioactivity. The reactor was restarted 1 January 2005, six days after the catastrophic waves struck India's east coast.

"There are scores of nuclear power plants operating in coastal areas and some of these may need to take a renewed look at this external hazard," IAEA Director of Nuclear Power Akira Omoto said. "It is also true for plants presently under construction."

It is common for nuclear power plants to be built in coastal areas, drawing the seawater to cool the reactor. The IAEA has stringent safety standards designed to guard nuclear power plants against natural calamities like earthquakes, volcanoes, flooding, tsunamis and cyclones. The non-legally binding guidelines cover site and design requirements, as well as appropriate monitoring and warning systems.

... The IAEA issued the Kalpakkam reactor a clean bill of health in the tsunami's wake, rating the event a 'zero' or of 'no safety significance' on the International Nuclear Events Scale.

After a major earthquake hit northern Japan today, Tohoku Electric Power Co.'s three nuclear power generators at the company's Onagawa plant shut down automatically. The earthquake did not affect the company's new Higashidori nuclear plant in Aomori. Tokyo Electric Power Co., Asia's biggest utility, said its nuclear power plants in northern Japan -- the only other commercial nuclear reactors in the affected region -- were unaffected by the quake.

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

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