Early Responses to Kerry-Boxer

Just in case you thought we’d have to wait a bit for some comment on the Kerry-Boxer climate change bill introduced yesterday, think again. Here’s Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska):

“We’ve got to be honest with ourselves if we are truly going to decrease emissions,” Murkowski said. “Nuclear energy must be a part of our energy mix if we are going to do so.”

We guess some of our readers consider that Republican boilerplate, but remember that the bill itself is very friendly in its preamble to nuclear energy. Since Murkowski is on a committee that gets a crack at this – Energy and Natural Resources - look to her (among others, of course) to push for the nuclear imperative.

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And she’s not the only one. Here’s Sen. John McCain (R—Ariz.):

The bill introduced Wednesday by Sens. John Kerry, [D-Mass.], and Barbara Boxer, [D-Calif.], has "nothing about nuclear power," McCain complained in the interview, which was part of the "First Draft of History" forum sponsored by The Atlantic and the Aspen Institute. "It's the left-wing environmental organizations that are not allowing us to move forward with nuclear power."

The second part of his quote is somewhat curious, since all kinds of organizations had meetings on the Hill about this bill. Clearly, the legislation is, by design, like a Christmas tree waiting for its ornaments; McCain will probably be hanging some of those when he gets the chance. And like Murkowski, we expect he’ll be looking at the nuclear portion very carefully.

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And Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.):

“These are fancy, complicated words for high-cost energy that sends jobs overseas looking for cheap energy. Instead, we should take practical steps to produce low-cost, clean, carbon-free energy and create jobs. Specifically, we should build 100 new nuclear plants, electrify half our cars and trucks, expand exploration offshore for American natural gas and oil, and double funding for energy research and development.”

We’ve always liked Alexander’s thinking about energy – for the obvious reasons, of course – but also because, as seen here, he thinks very broadly and has a good grasp of the complexities of energy policy. He thinks big and captures the breadth of the subject..

Here’s a little more:

We need to commit to building new reactors. Even Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said that he supports using nuclear energy to solve the energy crisis.”

So there you go.

Sens. Kerry and Boxer

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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