Nobody Trips Over a Mountain

The used fuel repository at Yucca Mountain has found itself in a bit of a corner. The Obama administration intends to withdraw all funds for it except what is necessary to allow the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to evaluate its license application. Obama had stated a preference for intermediate storage at the plant sites while trying to figure something out, as expressed here:

I believe a better short-term solution is to store nuclear waste on-site at the reactors where it is produced, or at a designated facility in the state where it is produced, until we find a safe, long-term disposal solution that is based on sound science.

Which is pretty much what has been happening anyway. Yucca Mountain is based on sound science, so Obama presumably means sounder science.

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The scaling back of the project at least allows the politics around it to recede as well. While Senate majority leader Harry Reid generally supports expanding the use of nuclear energy, he never liked Yucca Mountain – it’s in his state - and opposition to it is a given in Nevada. Reid’s lately pretty happy:

Make no mistake: this represents a significant and lasting victory in our battle to protect Nevada from becoming the country’s toxic wasteland. I have worked for over two decades with help from our state’s leaders and thousands of Nevadans to stop Yucca Mountain.

And it certainly doesn’t hurt going into the the 2010 midterms, when Reid’s up for re-election. (And that’s not being snotty – Reid’s been very consistent both on nuclear energy and Yucca Mountain, whether the Democrats were in or out or power at a given moment.)

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But let’s assume Yucca Mountain does present too big a NIMBY target – it can be pretty tough to site windmills much less a used fuel repository.

NEI’s President and CEO Marv Fertel, offered an op-ed at Energy Daily that does a good job laying out, shall we call it, the plagues and pleasures of moving forward with a reduced, or perhaps more accurate to say, an altered focus on Yucca Mountain. How about recycling?

Given the clear need for expansion of nuclear energy programs in the United States and worldwide, the nuclear industry proposed two years ago that our nation should revisit the decision to use a once-through fuel cycle and instead pursue a closed fuel cycle that includes recycling. This integrated approach includes at-reactor storage, private sector or government-owned centralized storage, research and development on recycling technology and continued development and licensing of a federal repository.

And long term storage?

Even with a closed fuel cycle, a geologic repository will be needed for the ultimate disposal of the waste byproducts. Licensing of the Yucca Mountain repository should continue, but the characteristics of the waste form requiring disposal will influence the design of the repository.

Did we mention plagues above? Plagues there may be:

If the administration unilaterally decides to abandon the Yucca Mountain project without enacting new legislation to modify or replace existing law, it should expect a new wave of lawsuits seeking further damage payments as well as likely requests for refunding of at least $22 billion already collected from consumers that has not been spent on the program from the Nuclear Waste Fund.

But read the rest yourself at the NEI site. Lots of good content and realistic about – well, how does the rest of that saying go? "Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain.” May sound a bit Kung-Fu, but say it as Keye Luke would have, and it’s wise enough. It moves us forward.

Yucca Mountain. What might have been, what might still be.

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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