Nuclear Energy Industry Transitions

Christopher Clark has been named chairman designate of Urenco Group. Clark will replace the current chairman, Neville Chamberlain, Jan. 1, 2006.

Entergy Corp. has elected former Congressman W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.) to its board of directors. Tauzin is the former chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

TXU Corp. has elected Glenn Tilton and Leonard Roberts to its board of directors. They replace Erle Nye and Herbert Richardson, who are retiring.

The U.S. Department of Energy has named Carl Bauer director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). Bauer has served as acting director of NETL since February 2005, when Rita Bajura retired from the post. Bauer had served as deputy director since October 2003.

Yukiya Amano, Japan's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, has been elected chairman of the agency's board of governors for 2005 -- 06. He will succeed Ingrid Hall of Canada. Amano has served as director of the science and nuclear energy divisions within Japan's Foreign Ministry, and as director-general of the disarmament, nonproliferation and science department.

Joseph Maloney will resign as secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trade Department, effective this month. Maloney had been secretary-treasurer since January 2000.

General Dynamics has elected Jeffrey Kudlac a vice president of the corporation.

Patrick Henn will become chief financial officer of Indus International Inc. on Oct. 13.

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

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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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