Another Blogger for Nuclear Energy

A lot of people realize that global heating is the biggest environmental problem mankind currently faces. On a short term, nuclear energy is the only realistic and economically viable option to fight this.

Greenpeace, however, will not accept this as a fact nor start promoting nuclear energy as a lesser evil than fossil energy. Since the organisation has been very succesful in fighting nuclear energy since the seventies (and boosting CO2-emissions), this would be like a guilt confession admitting they are an actual accomplice of the greenhouse effect. Which, of course, they are.

By sustaining old fashioned, dogmatic and simplistic environmentalist ideas, organisations like Greenpeace show they are ultimatley more interested in their own survival as a charitative organisation, than in the endurance of our world.

As we've seen in the past, not everyone associated with Greenpeace is engaging in hysteria any longer.

UPDATE: Meet the Neo-Libertarian:

If you're worried about global warming, carbon/methane pollution, or the cost of oil/gas, then let's get some more nuclear plants in construction. More research would also be really great (especially if they ever prove cold fusion as possible).

It's great for the people scared of global warming, because it doesn't throw carbon, methane and other heat-trapping elements into the sky. Personally I have my doubts about some of the features of global warming theory, mostly focused on our inability to really prove much of anything about it, but it's moot if we move to nuclear power.

For those concerned about the negative effects of air pollution, nuclear power's negative pollution is more easily contained and controlled. I'll concede that disposing of nuclear waste is definitely an issue, especially given lengthy half-life issues, but I'll take pollution we can handle, transport and bury over pollution that's simply thrown up into the air. Nuclear waste is one of the biggest problems connected to the source, but I'd argue that it's more controllable and ultimately safer.

And here's the New York College Republican on why New York needs nuclear energy now:

There's never been a better time. Petroleum-based fuel prices are at their highest, making public awareness about the importance of "energy independence" (don't the words just roll off your tongue?) at the highest you'll see it for a long time (before the supply problems *really* start to set in)... These aren't your grandfather's nuclear power plants: their cores run for longer without refueling. They're more efficient, providing more energy and producing less waste, and most importantly, they're safer.

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...

NEI Nuclear Notes

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