Latest Nuclear Stats - February 2007

For all you stat gurus out there, I'm going to begin periodically posting new and updated statistics as they come out. Here you go.

Electricity Demand
According to EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2007, forecasts show that the United States will need an estimated 40 percent more electricity by 2030 (xls). In terms of capacity, the U.S. is projected to need an additional 292 GW by 2030 (xls).

2005 Voluntary Reporting of Greenhouse Gases
According to EIA, U.S. nuclear plants avoided 36% of all reported emissions avoided in 2005 (pdf). This is more than any other category in the program.

Nuclear Waste Fund Statistics Q1 FY 2007
As of December 31st, 2006, total ratepayer commitments to the Nuclear Waste Fund are $28.938B.

Comments

Stewart Peterson said…

What data does that chart actually reflect?

February 22, 2007 at 4:45 PM

David Bradish said…

Million metric tons of CO2 equivalent reductions in EIA's Voluntary Program.

February 23, 2007 at 7:09 AM

Stewart Peterson said…

What exactly is a reduction?

February 23, 2007 at 6:57 PM

David Bradish said…

Any way to reduce, sequester or avoid GHG emissions. Read the report (pdf) for more info.

February 26, 2007 at 5:28 PM

How Nanomaterials Can Make Nuclear Reactors Safer and More Efficient

The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior communications advisor at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald.

From the batteries in our cell phones to the clothes on our backs, "nanomaterials" that are designed molecule by molecule are working their way into our economy and our lives. Now there’s some promising work on new materials for nuclear reactors.

Reactors are a tough environment. The sub atomic particles that sustain the chain reaction, neutrons, are great for splitting additional uranium atoms, but not all of them hit a uranium atom; some of them end up in various metal components of the reactor. The metal is usually a crystalline structure, meaning it is as orderly as a ladder or a sheet of graph paper, but the neutrons rearrange the atoms, leaving some infinitesimal voids in the structure and some areas of extra density. The components literally grow, getting longer and thicker. The phenomenon is well understood and designers compensate for it with a …

Missing the Point about Pennsylvania’s Nuclear Plants

A group that includes oil and gas companies in Pennsylvania released a study on Monday that argues that twenty years ago, planners underestimated the value of nuclear plants in the electricity market. According to the group, that means the state should now let the plants close.

Huh?

The question confronting the state now isn’t what the companies that owned the reactors at the time of de-regulation got or didn’t get. It’s not a question of whether they were profitable in the '80s, '90s and '00s. It’s about now. Business works by looking at the present and making projections about the future.

Is losing the nuclear plants what’s best for the state going forward?

Pennsylvania needs clean air. It needs jobs. And it needs protection against over-reliance on a single fuel source.

What the reactors need is recognition of all the value they provide. The electricity market is depressed, and if electricity is treated as a simple commodity, with no regard for its benefit to clean air o…

Why America Needs the MOX Facility

If Isaiah had been a nuclear engineer, he’d have loved this project. And the Trump Administration should too, despite the proposal to eliminate it in the FY 2018 budget.

The project is a massive factory near Aiken, S.C., that will take plutonium from the government’s arsenal and turn it into fuel for civilian power reactors. The plutonium, made by the United States during the Cold War in a competition with the Soviet Union, is now surplus, and the United States and the Russian Federation jointly agreed to reduce their stocks, to reduce the chance of its use in weapons. Over two thousand construction workers, technicians and engineers are at work to enable the transformation.

Carrying Isaiah’s “swords into plowshares” vision into the nuclear field did not originate with plutonium. In 1993, the United States and Russia began a 20-year program to take weapons-grade uranium out of the Russian inventory, dilute it to levels appropriate for civilian power plants, and then use it to produce…

NEI Nuclear Notes

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