Skip to main content

Talking The Talk on Nuclear Energy

It's one thing to be a blogger, but speaking to your local Rotary Club is another great way to get the message out about our industry and how it can protect the environment while supporting energy security.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Not surprising that the GE engineer is peddling such misinformation as "nuclear plants give off no toxic emissions as their only airborne discharge is steam (water)."

This is simply not true.
Carbon emissions aside, which he did not qualify in his statement, from the fuel fabrication process, routine operations release a wide variety of radioisotopes to both the air and water and eventually the soil. Simply look at the annual radioactive discharge reports for each and every nuclear power station and you will see a wide variety of routine release rates.

Oyster Creek for example released more than 1 million curies out the elevated stack in 1979 alone and nobody at NRC as much as batted an eye.

Such claims are also in denial of the radioactive waste stream that comes from reactors and remains unresolved.

So alot more than water vapor is coming off every reactor. Clearly the hope here is that if you tell a lie enough times, people will start to believe it.
Anonymous said…
gunter wrote: "Clearly the hope here is that if you tell a lie enough times, people will start to believe it."

Well, Mr. Gunter, working for NIRS, you should be well equipped to educate us about that. Only, you call them "factoids."
Anonymous said…
Weak gunter, weak. Try a little harder with the misinformation. I mean it's only misinformation if it's somewhat plausible, yet not really true. Your post here doesn't even qualify as misinformation because it is so obviously false.

Anyone in the nuclear power industry can tell you that routine discharges from commercial nuclear power are trivial by way of comparison with the fluctuation in natural background radiation. Note I said the "fluctuation" and not the actual level. Even releases from incidents such as TMI-2 were inconsequential.

Popular posts from this blog

Fluor Invests in NuScale

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

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin