You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap
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Commercial nuclear energy has neither killed nor injured one soul in the US. Fossil fuel burning, however, does. And every time NIRS opposes clean, safe nuclear power, its efforts end up supporting, however indirectly, fossil fuel burning and its pollution.
Perhaps the motives of NIRS are good. I would agree if it supported Nuclear Safety. But it doesn't; rather, it supports the complete abolition of nuclear power and its leadership is fully aware that so-called renewables such as solar, wind, etc., and conservation are insufficient in and of themselves to provide sufficient energy to a plant of 6 billion plus.
So is this a personal attack against Paul Gunter or Michael Mariotte, or is it an expose of the human suffering and death that NIRS has helped contribute to in a very real way?
I write this with all due respect to Paul Gunter or Michael Mariotte.
And be respectful, even if you don't respect the person you're arguing with.
Harry for far less polite than I, but perhaps far more accurate.
I therefore sincerely apologize for the name calling & personal attack.
But Harry is nevertheless essentially correct.
There is a world of difference between what (for example) Dave Lochbaum of UCSUSA does in trying to improve nuclear safety at Davis Besse or Hope Creek, and what NIRS does. I often may not agree with Dave, but I have great respect for him because he does make every effort to speak with the facts.
I have little to no regard for those in NIRS and similar organization (e.g., 'Greenfleece - Greenpeace') who have for 35 or more years (as Harry pointed out) used outright lies to scare the public into a frenzy of anti-nuclearism.
The sad fact in all this is that perhaps the nuclear industry (NEI, INPO, etc.) has no one to blame but itelf for not fighting back during these decades. Unlike the educational programs France ran on nuclear power for its citizenry, we in the US nuclear power industry have done little to nothing till now to help educate the public.
I therefore applaud the efforts of NEI Nuclear Notes and other such blogsites in this regard, but the campaign against enviro-wackism has languished for far too long. We need real environmentalism and that means nuclear energy, and that means exposing to the light of day for all to see the lies from such organizations as NIRS.
Mr. Lochbaum does command a great deal of respect both in the industry and in the NRC. As an example, just the other week a letter he wrote on liquid releases to the environment was referenced as the basis for a Condition Report at a commercial nuclear power plant - one with a history of spent fuel pool leaks.
I respect Dave even though I often disagree with him. Treating him with the respect and consideration that he is due is not granting him 'kid-glove treatment'; rather, it is behaving as a decent human being to another decent human being.
As far as most of the rest in the anti-nuclear circles go, I am inclined to feel as Harry does. While sometimes individuals such as Paul Blanch may have worthy concerns (e.g., using containment overpressure to maintain ECCS pump NPSH in a BWR, or BWR shroud cracking issues with EPU), they ruin all discourse with pro-nuclear people by making outrageous and false claims on a utilities motives or actions. They automatically assume in true socialist form that any profit-making is inherently evil, especially if the profit is made by breaking the strong nuclear force. And the control they exercise with the liberal leftist news media knows no bounds. Such is the Brattleboro Reformer or (to a lesser extent) some of Westchester County's newspapers. They paint bull's eyes on pictures of Indian Point plastered on billboards throughout the Westchester area with no other motive than to terrorize the local citizenry into shutting down the only real source of wealth the area has. Who then becomes the real terrorist?
I realize that NEI wants liberals and conservatives to come together and recognize that our energy future requires nuclear as well as clean coal. Yet the hippies of yesteryear led by a few rabble rousers from NIRS, WISE, CAN, NECNP, Riverkeeper, NCI, Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, etc. end up commanding the majority of attention in a gullible liberal news media and a dysfunctional television system which glorifies in nuclear science fiction disasters (e.g., West Wings recent episode).
I say that we should respect and listen patiently to people like Dave Lochbaum. But rabble rousers from NIRS or NECNP should be properly and appropriately put in their place. If they really have a nuclear safety issue, then they need to bring it to the table. But instilling fear and hysteria is simply wrong and makes them in a very real sense our own home-grown Al Qaeda.
How about this recent bit of news on "good neighbor" Exelon Nuclear-
In a 25 of January 2006 statement
(not made in Nuclear Notes) by Exelon officials, Thomas O'Neill, Exelon’s vice president of regulatory affairs admitted, "We should have done better…this is a black eye for Exelon Nuclear. We are
not happy about this…. We put tritium into the ground
in a place where it is not supposed to be. We acknowledge our failing in that regard, and we are going to fix it and make it right."
In other words, they got caught trying to hide two 3,000,000 gallon spills of tritiated water into surface and groundwater around Braidwood nuclear station in 1998 and 2000, only to report it seven years later in a December 1, 2005 Preliminary Notice of Occurrence (PNO).
My guess is that it was getting a little too hot at headquarters, perhaps as the result of growing disclosures of groundwater contamination around their Dresden site first discovered in August 2004.
Must be that there is something else along with that tritium that got out. What do you suppose that might be?
Dog, that's how you make page 1 with the Chicago Tribune and a slew of AP Wire stories across the country.
If you have a problem with our information, write a letter to the editor, but Dog, your froth doth show.
By the way, the Davis-Besse story is not done by a long shot. Check out the next post below from conservative republican's commenting on the "good neighbor" policy of First Energy Nuclear Operating Corp.
Paul, NIRS
Bite on this Februray 2, 2006 Editorial in the Port Clinton Herald, Port Clinton, Ohio:
'Record penalty isn't enough for FirstEnergy'
"As Americans, we're fond of touting the notion that guilt and punishment aren't determined by the financial resources of those who run afoul of our laws. Of course, we recognize that some people can pay for better legal representation than others, but welike to think position and money aren't guarantees of a free ride through the legal system.
So what do we take from the recent agreement between federal authorities and FirstEnergy that allows the owner of the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station to avoid federal charges by paying a $28 million fine?
Is it that corporations don't go to jail, they just pay penalties, as U.S. Attorney Greg White said during
a press conference in January? Or is it that corporations with deep pockets can be horribly negligent and still not be made to truly account for their misdeeds?
We think the latter question is truest in this case. This area came dangerously close to a nuclear disaster in 2002 when massive corrosion was discovered on
Davis-Besse's reactor vessel head.
FirstEnergy has said it accepts responsibility for failing to accurately communicate with the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, which displayed its own weaknesses
in the incident. And the company did agree to the $28 million fine, but as was pointed out by The Associated
Press, the fine is a fraction of the company's $878 million income.
As it is, only a handful of mid-level managers and others have been made to account for the situation. We don't accept the premise that companies only pay for
their wrongdoings through penalties.
We wonder why officials higher in the FirstEnergy power structure have avoided legal consequences. The
legal troubles facing Enron and others didn't stop below the executive suites.
While $28 million sounds like a lot of money, such a penalty is not significant enough in this case. This might be the largest penalty in the history of the nuclear industry, but that might say more about the
questionable oversight of this industry than about any sense of justice."
Failure to properly discharge responsibility under regulation and the law is NOT an indictment of the technology itself.
Exelon executives in the case of the tritiated water spill and FENOC executives in the case of the DB RPV corrosion event should be held accountable. Sadly, at least in the later case, five lower level employees have had their careers ruined while executives protected by golden parachutes ride the tidal wave of nuclear success from one plant to another. That is NOT because nuclear technology is unsafe; in fact, that happens in any industry where executives are no longer accountable to their customers and stockholders. This includes chemical, petroleum, airline, medical, etc. I would wager that big coal executives with the recent mining deaths are far more culpable than the nuclear industry which has killed NOT ONE soul in all its 50 year history. The real solution is to bring these executives to justice, not to damn the only non-polluting means we have of generating large amounts of stable, baseload electricity that everyone needs, including you.
The Ken Lays started in the fossil industry whose pollution NIRS however indirectly supports. The nuclear indutsry needs to purge itself of these individuals and events such as tritiated water leaks and RPV corrosion won't happen. And I state again - neither of these injured or killed a single human life. So what's your point?
http://www.braidwoodtritium.info/pages/1/index.htm
Braidwood's most recent news release on this subject is at web page:
http://www.braidwoodtritium.info/images/News_Release_Braidwood_III.pdf
Links to more news releases may be found at web page:
http://www.braidwoodtritium.info/pages/3/index.htm
Now a note to Paul Gunter:
I searched the NRC Event Reports for the past couple of months and found dozens of examples of medical mis-administration of radioactive sources. I found dozens of examples of radioactive gauges used in the fossil fuel industry stolen or missing. Your organization has complained about not one of these. Yet an event that has neither killed nor injured a single human life - the Braidwood event - NIRS holds up with the same kind of horror that one would hold up the toxic chemical leak at Bhopal, India in 1984. This tritium leak is indeed insignificant in the grand scheme of things, except for its use as anti-nuclear propaganda fodder.
The right solution is to fix the leak and prevent future recurrences, and make any executives who fostered a degraded SCWE responsible to the customers and stockholders.
If NIRS really supported nuclear safety and instead of using the same kind of scare tactics that one would expect of a terrorist organization, then I would find merit in its actions. Until then, with all due respect, Mr. Gunter, I shall have to agree with Harry, Dog on the Hudson.
BTW, burning coal still releases far more radioactivity to the environment in the form of uranium, thorium and radium that occur naturally in coal than any radioactivity that was released from the Braidwood leak. NIRS's concern is disingenuous at best.
Does it occur to you that many of the same companies burning that polluting coal also operate poisoned nuclear power?
Moreover, many of those same polluters are fighting the installation of more effective scrubbers on their fossil units, like Dominion Nuclear and Constellation Nuclear, etc.
So what's your point?
Paul, NIRS
The point is that the regulatory playing field should be leveled. Coal plants discharge tens of thousands of tons of pollutants per day, but a nuclear power plant produces 30 tons of spent nuclear fuel per year that can be recycled and reused. If coal plants were held to the same regulatory requirements as nuclear power plants, then we would all end up with a safer world; and since coal plants would no longer be able to externalize the cost of their pollution, the free market would naturally favor nuclear power plants (and right now it does).
Additionally, your term 'poisoned nuclear power' is inappropriate. Because of nuclear power millions of tons of pollutants from coal fired plants are avoided. Furthermore, unlike spent nuclear fuel, the mercury emissions from coal plants never ever decay away.
Again, I find your concern over nuclear power plants disingenuous. You base your concerns on fear of radiation and radioactivity. Yet you ignore the far greater danger of mis-application of such in the medical industry - misapplication which - unlike Braidwood, Davis Besse and TMI - actually has resulted in killing people. A case in point is NRC IN 2001-008:
< http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/gen-comm/info-notices/2001/in01008s1.html >
A brief excerpt suffices:
"On June 1, 2001, NRC issued IN 2001-08 to promptly alert licensees to an ongoing investigation concerning cancer patients in Panama who had received excessive radiation therapy doses. As noted in IN 2001-08, ION representatives announced on May 18, 2001, that 28 patients treated at the institute for colon, prostate, and cervical cancer may have received radiation doses from 20 to 100 percent above what was prescribed. Eight patients are reported to have died, and five of the deaths have been attributed to the excess radiation received during the treatments."
It is the commercial nuclear energy industry which has set the standard for controlling radiation and radioactivity. It is this standard - one so high that not even non-nuclear coal-fired plants can meet its limit on radioactive emissions - that has served the public so well. Yet your doctor who may prescribe for you x-rays, radiation treatments, etc., lacks the very basic radiation safety training typically given to even the lowest employee at a commercial nuclear power plant. And this worries you not at all?
That's what I mean by disingenuous concern.
Now as to the hazards of radiation exposure, perhaps you have heard of the term radiation hormesis. Here are a few articles:
Radiation Hormesis: Demonstrated, Deconstructed, Denied, Dismissed, and Some Implications for Public Policy
< http://www.scientificexploration.org/jse/articles/pdf/17.3_kauffman.pdf >
Luckey98 Radiation Hormesis
< http://cnts.wpi.edu/RSH/Docs/Luckey98_Biopositive.htm >
Maybe (just maybe) your fear of radiation is simply an unwarranted phobia. In fact, 1.7 billion years ago in Gabon, West Africa a natural ocurring reactor went critical and spread its radioactivity uncontrollably all over the area. It is called Okla. Here is the web link:
http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0010.shtml
It is quite possible that the radiation from this reactor helped to cause a variety of mutations in early life forms that eventually through the evolutionary process led to the development of homo sapiens of which you and I are members. We may very well owe our evolutionary lives to a fission reactor. Such serendipity!
Of course I am not suggesting for a moment we do this Braidwood or any other plant; but it puts your fear into proper perspective. The very atoms in our bodies came about from nuclear fusion in the hearts of super novae long dead. Radiation is as much a part of our lives as oxygen or water. To unreasonably fear it is to fear life itself.
It is evil to tell poor Ukranian and Eastern European women and children freezing in the dark this winter from lack of natural gas that electricity from nuclear power plants that could keep their babies warm will not be provided.
It is evil to condemn millions of people - mostly women and children - in third world nations to death from air pollution produced by biomass burning because NIRS / WISE says we must not build nuclear power plants.
It is evil to dump millions of tons of toxins into the atmosphere every year that ends up killing tens of thousands of our own citizens in the United States because of unreasoning fear against the only safe form of baseload power.
Evil must be opposed, but only with goodness.
I agree that we should make maximum use of renewable energy, but consider the following:
Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not "Green"
by Robert L. Bradley Jr.
< http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=1139&full=1 >
Wind does not work when there is no wind or there is so much wind that the turbines must be locked down.
Solar doesn't work at night or on cloudy or snowy days.
Capacity factors for so-called renewables will always be less than nuclear.
As far as the hazards of mining radioactives and the potential that mine by-products could be used in dirty bombs, your concern is completley mis-placed. See the following:
Backgrounder on Dirty Bombs
< http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/dirty-bombs-bg.html >
Fact Sheet on Uranium Mill Tailings
< http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/mill-tailings.html >
10 CFR Part 40 - DOMESTIC LICENSING OF SOURCE MATERIAL
< http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part040/ >
I say again, if the coal industry were held to the same standards that the nuclear industry is held to, then there would be no coal plants. And wishing that fickle Mother Nature would with a soft breeze and gentle sunlight obviate the need for large baseload power plants is simple that - wishful thinking.
One nuclear power plant can generate more electricity with no air pollution and no forest devastation than hundreds of square miles of wind farms. That's the advantage of uranium and thorium and plutonium.
Should we use wind to help replace coal? YES. Can wind replace the need for more nukes? NO.
The False Promises of Wind Energy
< http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=989 >
Please browse through the comments at the end of this article and contemplate what Joseph Somsel points out:
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Our kind author has been too generous to wind electric producers in the state of Washington. He assumed a 30% capacity factor for wind farms in his state.
Past performance in Washington state has not been that good. According to the US Energy Information Agency, in 2002 (last year data available and tabulated - see < http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/trends/tablec12.html > and < http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/trends/tablec4.html >), for a calculated 21.1% capacity factor.
These are the facts, according to the US government - neither ad hominem insults nor delusional pipedreams nor "bitter missive".
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Nuclear power has a greater than 90% capacity factor in the U.S. No renewable outside of hydro can beat that (well, maybe geothermal, but I'm not sure).
We welcome your comments and any comments which discuss nuclear and energy issues. It would be a pretty boring blog if it was just pro nuclear. Keep it up.
David
I agree that as more and more land area is used to provide wind generated electricity, such production could approach base-load given the variety of geographical locales using wind power. But wind power is still quite diffuse and requires hundreds of square miles to do what a single nuclear power plant on a small amount of property can do. And this requires tearing up vast sections of land on which to erect wind mill towers.
However, that being said, wind production of electricity should be used to the maximum extent practical. Nevertheless, it will never obviate the need for nuclear and there is no reason why both cannot exist side by side to provide pollution free electricity.
As to the possibility that "nuclear fuel production and use from yellow cake on until waste storage is a military/terrorist target", the same can be said of facilities manufacturing petrochemicals and ammonia fertilizers. Anything good has the potential of being a terrorist target, from NYC's Harlem Tunnel or GW Bridge to a shopping mall or a school. See the following web pages for information on the security currently provided to the already robust commercial nuclear facilities:
< http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=1&catid=13 >
< http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/safeguards.html >
< http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/brochures/br0314/br0314.pdf >
I wonder how many lives would be lost if a fully loaded 747 hit the Kensico or Croton dams in Westchester County, compared with how many lives would be lost if the same type of jet liner hit one of the two Indian Point containment domes. This issue is simply a red herring, one designed to instill unreasoning and unreasonable fear and hysteria. I am far more concerned about a sniper's bullet hitting one of the large propane gas storage tanks 2 miles from my house than a terrorist attack on a nuclear facility. Dave E., you need to put this in perspective.
What are the impacts that harsh weather conditions such as hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, etc. can have on wind mill farm installations? Being robust structures, nuclear power plants are relatively immune to the effects of Mother Nature. Waterford 3 (as a precautionary measure) did shut down prior to the arrival of Katrina, but was undamaged by that hurricane and started up with no ill effect shortly after its passage. I doubt that if wind mill farms had been built throughout Louisiana many of them would have been left operable.
I just can't see the wisdom in making our nation totally dependent on only renewables. Yes, we need to make far greater use of them. But we will also have to use clean coal technologies and nuclear power. Time is running out and with oil supply problems this condition is only going to get worse far faster than we can build wind mills, coal plants or nuclear power plants. Please read:
The 2006 Economic Forecast: Oil Remains a Wildcard
< http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=1200 >
BTW, I do try to be rational and civilized [though my wife denies that :-) ], and I sincerely apologize if any of my prior posts were construed otherwise.
To summarize, Jacobson has arrived at his cost of approximately $0.04/kWh by assuming that the wind farm is composed of large 1.5MW turbines, each of which operates 24 hours/day, 365 days/year, with an average wind speed of at least 7 m/s. Even using the most conservative numbers from his results, his analysis leads to an overall capacity factor of more than 35%.
This capacity factor appears to me to be unrealistic, and I remain unconvinced of the low cost of wind power.
One part of Jacobson's paper did catch my attention, however. It says, "...turbine output is unresponsive to electricity demand. This is moot when wind is one of many energy sources."
Check out this link on security:
http://www.nei.org/documents/
InfoGraphic_Security.jpg
Here's the assumptions:
http://www.nei.org/documents/
InfoGrahic_Security_Assumptions.pdf
The costs of security are part of O&M. O&M for nuclear is around 1.2 cents/kWh or $12/MWh.
I understand that the 7 m/s represents the average speed of the wind and includes time when the wind is not blowing at all. It strikes me, however, as a naive and overly simplistic methodology. For example, does it take into account the times when the wind is blowing too hard for the turbine, which has to lock its blades to keep from being damaged? Does it take into account the electricity that is actually consumed by large wind turbines to get the blades to start to turn when the wind speed is low? These are the types of questions that immediately come to mind when I read such a paper.
Besides, the 35%+ capacity factor that is implied in the paper contradicts historical experience with wind farms in the US and other countries. Thus, I am highly skeptical of this number, especially when it is used as the lower bound for the analysis.
As far as technology footprint goes, it is easy to show that a wind farm uses a significantly larger amount of concrete than a well-built nuclear power plant with equivalent installed capacity, and all of this concrete is buried in the ground. (It is used to anchor the large wind turbines.) Do the cost/kWh that are quoted for wind farms include the cost of digging up and disposing of all of that concrete at the end of the wind farm's 20 year life span? Or do they just leave all of that concrete -- which is spread far and wide -- in the ground? Well, if it's offshore, I guess you can leave it in the ocean.
Lisa
No source of energy is nearly as robust, secure and impregnable as a commercial nuclear power plant, and even with the costs of such security included, nuclear is STILL cheaper.
Cheaper - Safer - Better.
and by proxy, Dear NEI:
I had suggested that a strategy of aggressive expose',to satisfy the public's propensity for investigative journalism, would be the best way to demonstrate the actual fringe position of antinuclear groups, their dependance on fatcat foundation money, and their small size.
I also suggested revealing them publicly as the little hack PR grunts that they are, rather than their more common guise as "heroes" , "watchdogs" , or "activists".
Well, I don't know if you acted on my advice, but the other side has now very strongly begun using that strategy on YOU.
Link To:
http://www.nuclearspin.org/index.php/Nuclear_Energy_Institute
Have a nice day,
and have fun playing catch-up!
Harry, the Hudson Dog