The Infrastructure of the Renaissance

If nuclear energy is going to push forward to a true international renaissance, it’s not enough to apply for licenses and and clear some land for new plants. An entire infrastructure has to be exist to support them – now, of course, there is such an infrastructure, since plants have been puttering along for a long while and need replacement parts, a supply of uranium and so on. But a marked increase in plant construction and operation promises a shockwave of new activity in associated industries and suppliers.

Take a look at this article from Smart Money, which offers advice(which we do not recommend you follow without a lot of additional research – you really could find that your next home is your car) on where your investment dollars might flow in the nuclear sphere. This caught our eye:

Nuclear plants also need fuel, of course, and tight supplies of enriched uranium should benefit USEC, one of only four commercial uranium processors in the world.

So true, and what about USEC? Well, they’ve put together a nice set of pages about what they’re calling The American Centrifuge, a next generation technology – they’ve got a logo for it and everything. Interestingly, one of USEC’s selling points revolves around rebuilding the nuclear industrial base:

America stands to gain significant economic benefits by investing in a reinvigorated nuclear industrial manufacturing base. More than one million jobs could be created in the United States if American companies capture a significant share of the growing global nuclear energy market, according to the American Council on Global Nuclear Competitiveness. USEC and its American Centrifuge manufacturers have taken the first step in this national nuclear industrial resurgence.

We should note that, with infrastructure much in the news as a means of spurring the economy through massive investment, virtually any company with a viable project is going to put their best foot forward. USEC may be overselling a touch, but they’re not wrong. The U.S., at least lately, has been aggressively competing with Russia and France in the international nuclear marketplace and the U.S. itself badly needs these kinds of projects. The coming stress on investment may well benefit USEC but also any nuclear-tilted company with viable manufacturing capabilities.

Even in its niche, however, USEC isn’t without competition, as this story from last week demonstrates:

A unit of France's Areva Group on Tuesday applied to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to build a $2 billion uranium enrichment plant in Idaho, the company said.

Areva Enrichment Services, based in Bethesda, Maryland, last May announced plans to build the Eagle Rock Enrichment Facility 18 miles from Idaho Falls. The plant, which will be near a federally run lab where nuclear energy work has been done for more than 50 years, is to open in 2014.

And AREVA calls theirs a “newer-technology uranium enrichment plant.” We wonder if they have a logo for it like USEC.

The American Centrifuge logo. Nuclear companies certainly like swirly things.

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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