Rod Adams Takes On NIRS' Scorecard on the Nuclear Industry's Recent Failures

Last week, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) issued a myopic press release dismissing the recent successes of the nuclear industry based only on how many states overturned their ban on building new nuclear plants. From Rod:

According to NIRS, there have been six attempts in 2009 by the nuclear industry to overturn existing state laws that effectively ban projects to build new nuclear power plants or the collection of construction work in progress payments (CWIP) before beginning to operate plants in rate regulated states. NIRS has claimed that each of these attempts has failed. The six states listed on the NIRS score card are Kentucky, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, and Hawaii.

Funny enough, Rod found this fact about one of the states that NIRS counted:

I learned something by listening to the conference call and the question and answer session on streaming audio that people who read the press release will not learn - Wisconsin has not even had their legislative session in 2009, so its vote has not yet been taken and certainly should not be counted in the loss column yet.

I guess NIRS' math is different than everybody else's. So is the nuclear industry having a bad year? Here's Rod's tally:

Here is the list so far - I would love to hear from you if I neglected any confirmed victories. (Unlike NIRS, I know that there are still many contests in progress and that this is going to be a long season with some highs and some lows.)
Areva and Northrop-Grumman broke ground on a 330,000 square foot nuclear components factory in Newport News, VA

The NRC issued Southern Company an Early Site Permit and Limited Work Authorization for a two unit nuclear plant project at Vogtle

Westinghouse opened new training centers for nuclear professionals

Southern Legislative Conference of The Council of State Governments, representing 16 states, unanimously adopted a proposal urging Congress and the administration to support an increase in the Title XVII Loan Guarantee Program by $25 billion and to create a Clean Energy Deployment Administration that includes nuclear energy as an eligible technology

B&W announces the mPower^TM modular nuclear plant that can be manufactured in their existing N-stamp holding US production facilities.

Florida approves Progress Energy's Site Certification Application (SCA) for a two reactor project in Levy County.

I would also like to add that both the Environmental Protection Agency (pdf) and the Energy Information Administration analyzed the impacts of the Waxman-Markey bill on climate change that passed the House earlier this year and found that nuclear energy will increase substantially in decades to come to help reduce CO2 emissions. Be sure to stop by Rod's post, Mr. Dave Kraft who was quoted in NIRS' press release joined the comments and has definitely added fuel to the debate.

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...

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