The Energy Bill Passes the House

Not by much – 219-212 – with a fair number of Democrats voting against it and all but eight Republicans likewise. But it passed. The Senate has a parallel bill wending through committee that is now scheduled for a September vote, so we’ll have to wait to see if, and in what form, this bill passes. But there’s been plenty of reaction to it at this stage.

John J. Castellani, President of Business Roundtable: “The bill ignores the role that oil and natural gas must play in the transition to a low-carbon future, as well as nuclear energy’s central role in reducing America’s carbon footprint. To achieve the GHG reductions called for in the bill, we not only need to use energy more efficiently, but also must deploy a balanced, comprehensive portfolio of new low-energy technologies.”

The Associated Press (H. Josef Hebert): The House-passed bill contains provisions to make it easier to get loan guarantees and expands the nuclear industry's access to loans for reactor construction. An Environmental Protection Agency analysis that shows modest future costs from a low-climate energy world assumes a significant expansion of nuclear energy. The Senate could add more incentives for the nuclear industry.

President Obama: You look at the constituent parts of this bill -- not only a framework for cap and trade, but huge significant steps on energy efficiency, a renewable energy standard, huge incentives for research and development in new technologies, incentives for electric cars, incentives for nuclear energy, clean coal technology. This really is an unprecedented step and a comprehensive approach.

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ken.), Minority Leader, on Fox News Sunday: Well, I hope it won't pass the Senate. The president himself said last year that it will lead to skyrocketing electricity increases. Think of it as a light switch tax. I think the president's right. I think it's going to lead to significant increases in electricity across America in an effort to try to deal with a global problem.

If we do have a global warming problem, and many people believe we do, we need to target it on a global basis. The way to get at it is to build more nuclear power plants which don't have a CO2 emission problem and to develop the kind of technology to burn coal cleanly.

Friends of the Earth (President Brent Blackwelder): It’s a shame we can’t celebrate the passage of the first-ever bill intended to reduce global warming pollution. Unfortunately, big oil, dirty coal, corporate agribusiness, and Wall Street lobbyists neutered this bill and it now fails to deliver the transformational change that is needed. This bill will produce nowhere near the emissions reductions that are needed to solve global warming, and—astonishingly—it will eliminate existing EPA authority to fight pollution from coal-fired power plants. [We’re actually surprised nuclear escaped their rogues gallery.]

U.S. Chamber of Commerce (Senior Vice President of Environment, Technology and Regulatory Affairs William Kovacs): Despite the good intentions of this bill's drafters to transition the U.S. to a 'clean, green economy,' H.R. 2454 [the number given the energy bill] still suffers from a large number of flaws. It fails to ensure that enough renewable or alternative energy sources, which include not only wind and solar but also nuclear and coal with carbon capture and sequestration, will be brought online to compensate for the fossil energy that will be de-selected by the bill's aggressive caps.

Naturally, we’re cherry picking – if we went with environmentalists or business types exclusively, it could get pretty gruesome. And even from this selection, you may be surprised that the bill passed at all.

Pass – the House bill – or fail – as McConnell foretells for the Senate – and you’ve still got a useful tool for Copenhagen:

"The passing of this legislation will give good encouragement for Copenhagen negotiations as it shows that the US is starting to move on climate action," ACF executive director Don Henry said in a statement on Saturday.

"It is a reminder that we need to get cracking and pass good climate laws in Australia; otherwise we will be left behind."

And:

The climate bill being debated today [last Friday] in the U.S. House represents a “sea change” and “points to the fact that the United States [is] very serious on climate,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a visit to the White House this morning.

See? If an eventual failure of the bill indicates a desire to see the rest of the world get on board – see McConnell again – it’ll still have been a valuable exercise.

Senator Mitch McConnell. Not sure if he’s signaling peace or two. (NEI’s reaction to the House energy bill is here, by the way.)

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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