The NEI Morning Clip File

Here are some of the news clips we're reading at NEI this morning. President Bush recently made a speech at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center discussing his second term accomplishments and priorities. Among them were his efforts in our national energy policy:

I told the United States Congress this country needs to develop an energy strategy. We should have done that 10 years ago. We should have developed a strategy that would help us diversify away from foreign sources of oil. And finally, after years of work, I'm proud to announce I'll be signing next week a comprehensive energy bill. And it's a good piece of legislation. It's a legislation that encourages domestic production. It's a piece of legislation that encourages conservation. It's also a piece of legislation that recognizes over time we must diversify away from our dependence on hydrocarbons. That's why we're now promoting nuclear energy. It makes sense for this country to use safe, clean nuclear power.

Dr. Nils Diaz, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, was recently given the honor of being inducted into the HENAAC hall of fame:

HENAAC and its Hall of Fame Committee are proud to announce that Dr. Nils Diaz, Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been selected for induction to the HENAAC Hall of Fame.

...On April 1, 2003, President George W. Bush designated Dr. Nils J. Diaz as Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Chairman is the principal executive officer of and the official spokesman of the NRC. As principal executive officer, the Chairman is responsible for conducting the administrative, organizational, long-range planning, budgetary and certain personnel functions of the agency. The Chairman has ultimate authority for all NRC functions pertaining to an emergency involving an NRC license.

Dr. Diaz has been a Commissioner with the NRC since 1996. As a member of the Commission, Dr. Diaz participates in the exercise and direction of the Commission's licensing and regulatory functions. His duties include policy formulation and rulemaking, as well as issuing regulations, related orders, and guidance for protection of the public health and safety, the common defense and security, and the environment in the civilian uses of nuclear energy and materials. Dr. Diaz has played a leadership role in security issues affecting NRC licenses and was instrumental in strengthening security in the post-9/11 era using realistic and practical regulatory scenarios.

The bloggers over at Disillusioned Lefty are wondering why the world hasn't embraced nuclear energy more. Check it out:

Unless we want to go back to the good old days when a few sods of turf and a bucket of coal are enough to run a the country, we really have to look towards the seemingly flawless idea of nuclear power. Understandably, there is a lot of fear about even the word "nuclear", and there certainly needs to be debate about issues of safety. If it's deemed too risky, then fine. But, shockingly, the Indo puts it well,

"We have to think, and talk, about nuclear energy. In Ireland, that will not be easy. Public opinion - understandably affected by well-justified fears about Sellafield, which have undermined Irish confidence in the British nuclear industry - is strongly against it.

But we need to put prejudice aside and debate objectively what kind of power will keep the lights burning in our homes, factories and offices."

Also check out the sarcastic Susskins Central Dispatch:

On the whole, I'd like to thank the Environmental folks for pushing us away from Nuclear energy. Thanks for acting like every single reactor in the world is as highly dangerous and mismanaged as Chernobyl. (Look into pebble bed reactors. Inherently self-regulating. No China Syndrome possible.) Thanks for painting the image of barrels of radioactive goo spilling all over. (Real nuclear waste is not the spillable nightmare that they would have you believe.) Thanks for keeping us on the hydrocarbon route, because that's working out so well for everyone involved. (A coal plant puts more radiation into the atmosphere than a nuclear facility.)

Come back this afternoon 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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