A Cornucopia of Nuclear Notes

One of the themes – or is that memes – we’ve been following here is the growing support for nuclear energy among Congressional Democrats. We might be expected to consider nuclear energy a post-partisan issue – that is, one where Republicans and Democrats more-or-less agree on its value generally if not always in detail – but this reality is beginning to penetrate the wider media world.

Consider this piece by U.S. News and World Report’s Kent Garber:

Sen. Barbara Boxer, a liberal California Democrat, has included a whole set of goodies for nuclear energy in her climate bill in an effort to win Republicans' and moderate Democrats' support. Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the bill's cosponsor, recently penned an op-ed with South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham calling for expanding the industry.

And earlier this month, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia and Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee proposed legislation to double the U.S. production of nuclear power in the next 20 years.

There’s more, including the climate change component of Democrat’s increasing support of nuclear energy. We’d add that polls show pretty broad support for nuclear and if there’s one thing politicians follow, it’s polls.

We were amused by this:

This calculation is outraging many of the administration's environmental-minded supporters…

A fair number of environmental activists are seeing the benefits of nuclear energy, too. Maybe Garber can do a story on them next.

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Tunisia is having a meeting on the future of energy in its corner of Africa. We may have thought the best solution obvious – lots of sun down Tunisia way – and solar may be the energy winner ultimately, but we’ll take our chances:

The meeting will also examine the use of cogeneration in the industrial sector, as well as the prospects for the use of nuclear energy in Tunisia following agreements signed in 2008 with France, for the setting up of an electric-nuclear plant in Tunisia by 2020.

Here’s a brief bit about the Tunisian National Committee of Atomic Energy – sounds like the country is pretty serious.

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Consider this headline:

DOE chief visits SC, touts nuclear and green power

This comes from an AP account in The Sun News (in Myrtle Beach? -the site doesn’t say). It continues:

[DOE Secretary Steven] Chu attended a morning groundbreaking at the Savannah River Site for a facility that will burn leftover wood products to create steam. Then, during an afternoon tour of a Greenville plant that makes turbines, he reminded reporters that President Barack Obama is committed to expanding nuclear power.

And:

Chu then headed to Greenville where he toured a General Electric plant, where 3,000 workers build gas and wind-powered turbines.

The Obama "administration is very supportive of nuclear energy," Chu said, according to The Greenville News.

Given the places he was visiting, it sounds like he was asked questions about nuclear energy rather than offering comments spontaneously. Which, if true, shows where the reporters’ curiosity lies and that Chu might find himself saying a fair amount about nuclear energy whatever the venue. Oh, and here’s The Greenville News’ account referenced above. It explains why Chu was in North Carolina:

Chu’s visit came one week after the Energy Department announced that it had picked Clemson to receive the biggest research grant in the school’s history — $45 million to develop a testing center for wind turbine drive trains in North Charleston.

And yet a fair amount of nuclear interest here, too. Hmmm!

Blame it on the Greeks. It seems there was this goat, Amalthea, the wet nurse to Zeus, who broke off a horn while rough housing with her charge. Aggrieved, Zeus replaced it with a magical horn that could dispense whatever anyone wanted. We’re not sure how it became associated with Thanksgiving.

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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