NEI Nuclear Notes

Some interesting movements at the G8 Energy Ministers’ Meeting this week in Rome. The energy ministers of the G8 countries offered their thoughts on nuclear’s role in energy security and emissions reductions. In a joint statement with the European Energy Commissioner, the G8 energy ministers called for international cooperation on nuclear energy: “…We encourage all countries interested in the civil use of nuclear energy to engage in constructive international collaboration. To this end we support international co-operation to ensure the highest possible available technical standards…” In another joint statement from the G8 energy ministers; the European energy commissioner; and the energy ministers of Brazil, China, Egypt, India, South Korea, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and South Africa recognized the importance of nuclear power for “those of us interested.” Perhaps most compelling was an IEA background paper prepared for the conference, “ The Impact of the Financial and Economic...

If you cover the nuclear news world during the later years of the Bush administration, there was no missing Ward Sproat, who turned up at virtually every Congressional hearing having anything to do with nuclear energy. He was Director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management and essentially the voice of Yucca Mountain from 2006 until last year. Despite expressing some doubt that his office would submit the the brown mound’s license application to the Department of Energy by the office’s target date (see here for some gloom on his part), he and his staff did get the application done, a nice capstone for his tenure. We can only hope it won’t be the last good news about Yucca. Anyway, we were quite happy to see him land some work post government service: Bechtel today announced the appointment of Edward F. (Ward) Sproat, III as Senior Project Manager at Bechtel Power Corporation, effective May 11, 2009. He will become the Project Director f...

We’re pretty sure this is how we got The Incredible Hulk: The NIF [National Ignition Facility] team will fire nearly 200 individual laser beams generated by an accelerator the size of a football field. The beams converge on a single target chamber containing a capsule of hydrogen. The hope is to compress it, and creating a subatomic reaction called fusion, ultimately igniting a controlled version of the same thermo-nuclear combustion that takes place on the sun. Yes, this would indeed be fusion, under the auspices of the Lawrence Livermore Labs in California. We have demonstrated that we can break every barrier," said NIF project manager Bruno Van Wonterghem. "We have broken the energetics barrier for the largest laser in the world. This is not only the highest energy laser, it is also the most precision laser in the world." "And believe it or not, this is where we take the hydrogen in water and using Einstein's equation, turn mass into energy...

Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander called Wednesday for doubling the number of nuclear reactors nationwide, a potentially $700 billion proposal that calls for building 100 more over 20 years. That’s what he said to the Associated Press. Why think small? And he’s got all the right reasons lined up. "I am convinced it should happen because conservation and nuclear power are the only real alternatives we have today to produce enough low-cost, reliable, clean energy to clean the air, deal with climate change and keep good jobs from going overseas." Allow for a bit of hyperbole and that’s okay. And he totes up the numbers that might go for his idea. Alexander said he would deliver that message next week speaking on the floor of the Senate, where he said all 40 Republicans and many Democrats support nuclear energy. He said he hopes President Barack Obama's administration would embrace his call under efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Read the rest an...

Does nobody care ? One might think the NRC would be concerned about this. It's not. Is Constellation Energy Group, which runs the place? Not really. And why not? Granted, it would take a lot more than a few bullets to knock over a reactor… Well, there’s that. So what happened? Apparently [actually, no “apparently” about it] officials created a firing range on the secured grounds of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Lusby, Md., and use it about 200 days a year. But the shooting was halted earlier this month after someone's off-target shots during SWAT exercises shattered glass and struck a command center near the reactors. Just think! If the bullets had got any nearer to the reactors, they would have – well, gotten nearer to the reactors. And not only at Calvert Cliffs: Firing ranges are common on the sprawling grounds of the nation's nuclear facilities, [NRC spokeswoman Holly] Harrington said. At Calvert Cliffs, the range is use...

CASEnergy Co-Chair and former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman is making the media rounds in NYC today, with appearances scheduled on CNN , Fox Business News and MSNBC . Here she is on " Morning Joe ." Host Joe Scarborough teed up the interview with a provocative question: "I think it's asinine, what we've done over the past 30 years, where we've allowed France to fuel 80% of their economy on nuclear energy and we have fallen so far behind. Why is that?"

Well, that’s going a little far – and silly, to boot. But the Russians have actually found a way to do a little nuclear business on this side of the world without setting off alarm bells. Of course, we’ve noted many times the big bear’s activities around Europe and Asia, where it has competed with every other country, including the United States, with a developed nuclear business. And, of course, there’s Iran, where Russia built the plant at Bushehr and, in so far as Iran can be leashed in its ambitions, Russia has an interest in not having its efforts corrupted . If the tests [at Bushehr; this was written in February] are successful, [Iranian official Mohsen] Shirazi said it will clear the way for the use of nuclear fuel rods containing enriched uranium that was supplied last year by Russia under a contract estimated to be worth about $1 billion. That fuel is currently under the seal of UN nuclear inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency …  [B]oth Russi...

As you may have heard, the climate change bill, your gateway to the world of cap-and-trade, successfully made its way out of the House Energy Committee – on its way to Ways and Means, Transportation, even Agriculture, the “cows doing what they do” people (in Rep. John Boehner’s memorable phrase). You can read more about the bill’s passage here . But since this is Friday, and leading into a long weekend at that, here’s a fun sidelight to the climate change bill. Fearful that the Republicans would insist on a reading of the 900-page bill as a stalling tactic, the Democrats hired a speed reader. It didn’t happen, but our friend Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) didn’t want the day to slip away without hearing what the speed reader could do. That’s what happens here. Enjoy - and Happy Memorial Day.  

We’ve ramped down discussing Yucca Mountain – it gets to seem whiny after awhile – but that doesn’t mean the discussion is over. The New York Times demonstrates the mountain’s continued relevance in an editorial today that only begins by excoriating the administration for letting politics trump science: It is no secret that the president and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, who hails from Nevada, want to close down the Yucca Mountain project, which excites intense opposition in the state. The administration has proposed a budget for fiscal year 2010 that would eliminate all money for further development of the site, and Mr. Reid has pronounced the project dead. But eliminating or scaling back the licensing process, now in progress, is where the Times really has an issue: These ramp-downs are occurring at the worst time. The regulatory commission is just beginning its licensing process, which is scheduled to take three to four years, and its relevant boards have ru...

Via the Green Inc blog : Worried that an important loan-guarantee program has ground to a standstill, renewable energy industry associations sent a letter Wednesday to President Obama urging him to speed the program along. The signers represented virtually every type of clean energy — wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, nuclear, combined heat and power, and biomass — and reflected the industry’s concern that a loan guarantee program for clean energy projects approved in the stimulus package was stuck in the federal bureaucracy, as has been a similar loan program that predates the stimulus. The letter, seen by Green Inc, cited “disagreements” between the Department of Energy and the Office of Management and Budget over regulations to carry out the loan guarantees. Three months have gone by since the stimulus packaged passed, the letter stated, “and we have little confidence that ongoing discussions between D.O.E. and the Office of Management and Budget over these regulations will produce a ...

This should thrill the natural science world: On Tuesday morning, researchers will unveil a 47-million-year-old fossil they say could revolutionize the understanding of human evolution at a ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History. And cause a bit of a shudder: But the event, which will coincide with the publishing of a peer-reviewed article about the find, is the first stop in a coordinated, branded media event, orchestrated by the scientists and the History Channel, including a film detailing the secretive two-year study of the fossil, a book release, an exclusive arrangement with ABC News and an elaborate Web site. Heaven knows, a jackpot has accompanied big discoveries since at least the uncovering of King Tut’s tomb back – hey, almost a century ago, in 1922 – but this coordinated outreach for the big bucks smells a little ripe, like gettin’ while the gettin’s good. Think if those guys with the gorilla suit really did have Big Foot in their basement free...

We’ve sometimes focus on silly politician quotes, but not really their context. When people hear something they think is stupid, they have every right to think it is stupid, but when they hear the same stupid thing repeatedly, or with mild variations, then the nub of the idiocy can get stuck in the head. There must be something to it or why does it keep getting said? Thus, the constant conflating of industrially produced carbon dioxide with what we produce as individuals has become an effective bat to swing against cap-and-trade. Now, it may not work ultimately, because it’s Republicans swinging the bat and Democrats hitting the ball – er, so-to-speak – but it’s effective and can always be revived come the next election cycle. Think Drill baby drill and you’ve about got it. We brought this up the other day, but we realize it can work in something like reverse. And in your own favor. Take, for example, this quote from Sen. Lamar Alexander : U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Te...

One of the speakers at this year’s Nuclear Energy Assembly was Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He had stirred up a bit of controversy a couple of weeks ago by seeming to dismiss not only nuclear energy but all baseload energy in favor of, we think, smaller electricity grids that would be able to make do with a combination of renewable energy sources and natural gas. Here’s what he said about nuclear on Clean Skies TV (transcription: see here to be sure we haven’t misquoted): From a cost standpoint, from the numbers I’ve seen, the plans [for nuclear energy] seem very costly. They look much more expensive than the alternatives, including not only renewables but also energy efficiency. Also combined heat and power and other distributed systems that would use natural gas. So, I think there are a whole plethora of alternatives that are less expensive that the nuclear alternative. He was more explicit with the New York Times a little earlier :...

The Nuclear Energy Assembly is the annual conference of the Nuclear Energy Institute. It brings together all the bigwigs of the industry, plus a lot of the littler wigs, to listen to speeches, pick up awards for innovations in the field, catch up with industry colleagues – you know, the kinds of things people do at conferences. We thought we’d share you some of the bits and bites from the speeches given the opening morning – it was a virtual parade of politicians and regulators saying realistic but upbeat things. For example, here’s House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer: “My message to you is a simple one: nuclear energy is part of the solution. I say ‘part’ because there is no one single solution to America’s energy needs. I will keep arguing that nuclear power has a vital place in that mix, and that it deserves our government’s support.” And here’s House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Peter Visclosky: “If you look at these (energy) issues on a factual basi...

Okay, we know that’s not going to cause as much excitement in some quarters as it does ours, but it does look, at least in the House, like an all-hands brawl in the making. And that’s always fun: the Republicans have lined up over 400 amendments to introduce during the mark-up of the bill (which, according to the Politico story, can be squelched by Energy Committee chairman Henry Waxman.) Many of the amendments have no chance of passing the committee but do slow down the process of getting the bill out of committee. But the bill, officially called the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, has also gathered unusually broad support. Here’s Exelon : In a speech today [Friday] at the National Press Club, Exelon Chairman and CEO John W. Rowe joined the debate in Washington centered on the Waxman-Markey bill, calling on Congress to pass climate legislation this year that features a cap-and-trade system to encourage investment in low-carbon energy. And here’s League of...

Back in 2003, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a study on nuclear power because they believed "this technology, despite the challenges it faces, is an important option for the United States and the world to meet future energy needs without emitting carbon dioxide (CO2) and other atmospheric pollutants." The 2003 study identified "the issues facing nuclear power and what might be done to overcome them." Today, MIT released its Update to the 2003 study (pdf), and while some great progress has been made over the past six years, more needs to be done: After five years, no new plants are under construction in the United States and insufficient progress has been made on waste management. The current assistance program put into place by the 2005 EPACT has not yet been effective and needs to be improved. The sober warning is that if more is not done, nuclear power will diminish as a practical and timely option for deployment at a scale that would constit...

This image was created by Jadon Mann, a seventh grader in Georgetown, Texas.  Here’s what he says about his entry: “I believe that we all should chose a cleaner energy and keep the planet green for years to come.” If you want to vote for Jadon’s entry – or any of the others; they’re pretty nice – go here . Jadon’s is under the grades 7-9 tab. Here’s how Google describes the contest: Welcome to Doodle 4 Google, a competition where we invite K-12 students to play around with our homepage logo and see what new designs they come up with. This year we're inviting U.S. kids to join in the doodling fun, around the intriguing theme "What I Wish for the World." Both our country and the world are undergoing significant change. At Google we believe in thinking big, and dreaming big, and we can't think of anything more important than encouraging students to do the same. The winner will appear on Google.com on May 21.

When we say that new nuclear plants are engines of job creation, we don’t just mean the new jobs created to construct and run the plants, but all the jobs that can grow up around it. Here’s an example : Siemens Energy Inc. plans to hire more than 200 engineers in Charlotte – the latest step toward turning the region into an energy hub, state and local leaders said Thursday. During a news conference at the Charlotte Chamber, Siemens officials said they'll add 226 jobs over the next five years, with an average annual salary of about $49,100 this year and $66,500 by 2013, plus benefits. Nice in itself, nicer even when you consider: Last month, a nuclear power unit of electronics giant Toshiba announced the addition of nearly 200 workers, averaging six-figure salaries, to staff a national project management and engineering center opening in August. More than 30 new nuclear reactors are proposed nationwide, including six in the Carolinas. Hmmm. So it makes a little ...

We’ve been focusing so much on the politics of cap-and-trade and the miseries of Nevada mountains that we’ve forgotten to bring you some nuclear good-time news. It’s not like there isn’t any, though you might not know it from hanging around here. Last week, Thaddeus Swanek of NEI’s member-only newsletter Nuclear Energy Overview visited a conference that brought together folks from  Congress, the administration and other interested parties to talk about the prospects going forward – a little luminance to go with the radiance. Enjoy:  Nuclear energy is a key piece of a strategic energy plan for the nation, congressional leaders said this week at a conference hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the United States needs to move forward with a comprehensive energy plan that includes nuclear energy.  Salazar noted that President Obama often speaks about the necessity of a diverse mix of ...

A couple of weeks back, we pointed readers to "the unlikeliest beach book of the year:" David MacKay's Sustainable Energy - without the hot air . Yesterday, this well-produced trailer for the book was passed along to us. Using a common 40-watt light bulb, MacKay provides a lucid demonstration of an individual's daily energy consumption. Touring the English countryside on his bicycle, the Cambridge physicist asks, and answers, what does the landscape look like when a country moves away from fossil fuels? Good show, indeed.

Along with a bunch of other personnel announcements, Gregory Jaczko, who has been an NRC commissioner, now assumes the post of Chairman, replacing Dale Klein. Here’s the news from the NYT: A former adviser to Senator Harry Reid is President Obama’s choice to lead the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, giving opponents of a nuclear waste repository in Mr. Reid’s home state of Nevada another well-placed ally. The new chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, has served on the five-member commission since January 2005. He will now serve as the commission’s official spokesman and as its chief executive, overseeing day-to-day operations as well as long-range planning. Despite the comment on Yucca Mountain, we think its role in the near term was set before now. Jaczko has plenty to do; we doubt Yucca Mountain will dominate his agenda. You can read the NRC’s mini-bio here . Here’s NEI’s congratulations : “The Nuclear Energy Institute congratulates Commissioner Jaczko on his ascension to the...

A company called Report Linker has released a, well, report called “Nuclear Energy Technologies Worldwide: Components and Manufacturing.” It can be yours for the low, low price of $3,195 (we get the idea of pricing something at $9.95, but we think Report Link could have gone sporty and priced this at $3,200). We checked for change under the couch cushions, then decided to settle for the press release instead: The U.S. is the global leader in nuclear energy technology manufacturing, having a total market value of nearly $45.2 billion in 2002 and growing to an estimated $50.8 billion by year-end 2009. By 2013, SBI estimates that the U.S. market value will reach $61.1 billion, growing at an eleven-year Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 2.8%. The U.S., France, and Japan comprise more than half of the global value of nuclear energy technology manufacturing. SBI estimates that France’s market value will grow from $28.9 billion in 2009 to $34.8 billion in 2013 (3.4% CAGR) and...

We had a bit of fun with Rep. Joe Barton yesterday, but politicians say all kinds of things and a good amount of it leads to fun. But fair’s fair and Barton has put up an article more fully explaining his position on cap-and-trade. It can be found at American Daily Review, which describes itself as “News, politics and conservative commentary without compromise,” so Barton can speak with at least some political filters dialed down. His article is called “Democrats Cap & Trade Plan: Sending us back to 1875” Here’s a taster : Nobody understands exactly what the legislation means in dollars and cents - more on this later - but to experience how it would feel to lower your personal carbon footprint to the size this bill proposes, set the flux capacitor to 1875. That’s the last time Americans’ carbon emissions matched the goals set by the Waxman-Markey legislation. What, the old DeLorean is up on cinder blocks in the front yard again? In that case you can test drive Waxman-...

At least that's what scientists at the University of Gothenburg may have determined. Science Daily has the story : Ultra-dense deuterium is a million times more dense than frozen deuterium, making it relatively easy to create a nuclear fusion reaction using high-power pulses of laser light. “If we can produce large quantities of ultra-dense deuterium, the fusion process may become the energy source of the future. And it may become available much earlier than we have thought possible”, says Leif Holmlid. “Further, we believe that we can design the deuterium fusion such that it produces only helium and hydrogen as its products, both of which are completely non-hazardous. It will not be necessary to deal with the highly radioactive tritium that is planned for use in other types of future fusion reactors, and this means that laser-driven nuclear fusion as we envisage it will be both more sustainable and less damaging to the environment than other methods that are being developed.” And...

We’ve noticed several times an argument against regulating carbon emissions without actually noticing that it’s the same argument with different examples. For example, Here’s House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio): The idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you've got more carbon dioxide. And Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.): It's plant food ... So if we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere? ... So all our good intentions could be for naught. In fact, we could be doing just the opposite of what the people who want to save the world are saying. At the time, we noted these comments lacked much in the way of logic or responsiveness to the issue. But this quote from Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) cinched it for us: “So if you put 20,000 marathoners ...

Phoenix, Arizona's Channel 3 crew had the opportunity to record a few minutes of video of the inside of containment at one of the three Palo Verde units that was undergoing a refueling outage. Be sure to check it out .

So, if Yucca Mountain has been pushed onto a low-flame back burner, what then ? "Legally, it's a mess," explained Richard Stewart, a New York University law professor who has closely followed the project. Noting that nuclear power is the nation's largest energy source that does not emit greenhouse gases, Stewart said he worries that a continuing impasse at Yucca Mountain "could chill options for dealing with climate." This hasn’t gone unnoticed. But Yucca isn't dead yet. It has formidable backing in the House and from probably a majority of members of the Senate. Legally, it remains the nation's only approved long-term nuclear waste storage site. There’s that, though writer John Fialka points out that though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) does not have the votes to kill Yucca Mountain outright, he can prevent Congress from reactivating it more fully through an unbreakable filibuster. However, the legal issues remain ...

Hat tip to NNN reader Walker for passing along this Dallas Morning News Editorial that somehow didn't make it into our media clips. From Friday, May 8th: First step toward a balanced energy policy ...The [ Waxman-Markey ] bill is long on environmental policy mandates but short on energy. For instance, there's no mention of nuclear energy in the more than 600 pages, nor does the bill provide critical details about the cap-and-trade mechanism proposed to reduce CO{-2} emissions. [snip] No energy or environmental bill can be complete without a serious and comprehensive strategy to develop nuclear energy, essentially a carbon-free but reliable power source. [ Ed: emphasis added ] U.S. electricity use is projected to increase 45 percent by 2030. This means nuclear and other cleaner energy alternatives are necessary to wean the nation from coal and other fossil fuels, which today account for about 85 percent of U.S. energy production. Congress should not squander an opportunity t...

Adhering to Friday YouTube Fun precedent , we serve up the vegetables before the ice cream sundae. Two new ad campaigns caught our eye this week. The Alliance for Nevada's Economic Prosperity released two spots promoting the economic benefits of the Yucca Mountain project. The group seeks to reposition Yucca Mt. as a center for nuclear research and reprocessing, instead of a long-term storage facility. Somewhat unlikely advertising partners, Exelon and Environmental Defense Action Fund have teamed up to launch a national TV, print, and online campaign. Titled " a Smart Cap ," the ads tout the benefits of a national cap on carbon emissions. Exelon CEO John Rowe makes the pitch, delivering the tag line, "You'll be surprised." And now your YouTube sundae: an episode from the Walt Disney Science series from 1957, "Our Friend the Atom," introduced by Mr. Disney himself. Fifty plus years later, the animation still holds up.

This is definitely worth reading !

Here are some interesting facts on the potential of nuclear desalination plants : Assuming that the same efficiency as the BN350 [reactor] setup were achieved in a conventional regenerative steam distillation plant, such a two-reactor [8-9 GW thermal APWR and EPR] driven desalination plant could therefore deliver about one million cubic meters of water per day (over one quarter of a billion US gallons), as well as more than half a gigawatt of electricity - more than enough for all plant operations as well as activities like pumping water, operating equipment and other internal activities. To put this another way, since one acre-foot is equal to 1234 cubic meters, such a desalination plant could produce 810 acre-feet of water per day or about 283,500 acre-feet per year. What that equates to: Slightly less than half the water consumed by the entire city of Los Angeles. Facts like these make me believe that we won't have serious water consumption problems in the future. If we run out...

Wasserman asks: Who Will Pay for America's Chernobyl? Answer: No one – Because it can’t happen here. The premise of Wasserman's article is erroneous. It is physically impossible for any U.S. nuclear power plant to explode like the Chernobyl reactor did. They are a completely different design that cannot run out of control and explode. And (unlike Chernobyl) all U.S. nuclear plants have heavily fortified containment buildings that are designed to withstand the worst case accident, nor can our reactors catch on fire. The fact is, Chernobyl can't happen here. The worst thing you can do to a U.S. light water reactor - overheat the fuel and cause it to melt - is what happened at Three Mile Island 30 years ago. But the TMI accident had no impact on the health of the people or the environment around the facility because of all of the safety systems built into the plant. With all of the changes and additional safety measures made because of the lessons learned from TMI, it is v...