Around the World in 80 Seconds or So

A few quick hits.

New or newish to the nuclear party – Chile

Chile will send 30 professionals abroad to fine-tune their knowledge and expertise in nuclear energy, which is an integral part of government plans to someday decide on building an energy-producing nuclear power plant, the nation's president said Wednesday.

The Chileans are moving at a deliberate pace – might be something in the national character, as some other countries want their plants up and running now.

"Chile has to prepare itself for the world of nuclear energy...The decision won't be made now, not even during our government. But our government has the obligation to prepare our engineers, scientists and technical workers," [President Sebatian] Pinera said, while on tour in Paris, his first official visit to Europe.

It does take awhile, but the Yellow Brick Road does eventually get to the Emerald City.

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Sri Lanka:

The Sri Lankan government is planning to establish a nuclear power plant here to meet the growing demand for power in the country, a government minister said on Saturday.

Champika Ranawaka, minister of Power and Energy said the government had already commenced prefeasibility study.

Unlike the Chileans, the Sri Lankans are already talking to potential partners – France, Russia – and where the Chileans may be answering to a need for more electricity, Sri Lanka is looking to industrialize. Doing this with nuclear energy is a way to ramp up the effort quickly while keeping climate change at bay.

The environmentalist argument has an interesting local tang to it:

But environmentalists warn of dire consequences if the plan goes ahead.

Centre for Environmental Justice spokesman Hemantha Withanage told the BBC that Sri Lanka is "too small" for a nuclear power plant.

"How a country which struggles to manage ordinary household refuse thinks that it will be able safely to dispose of nuclear waste is a very important question," he said.

There is no proper rubbish management in Sri Lanka - residents who live near garbage collection centers continuously complain of unbearably bad odors among other environmental issues.

Sri Lanka has talked to Russia about taking used nuclear fuel, so this is kind of a non-issue.

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Gulp! Libya:

France wants to do business with Libya in areas including nuclear energy, a French minister said on Thursday on a visit aimed at narrowing Italy's lead in building lucrative trade ties with the oil exporter. [Libya is a former Italian colony.]

Now, note that “including:”

"This agreement will lead to strategic cooperation with Libya in the areas of transport, health, construction, oil and gas and peaceful nuclear energy," he [Libyan Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi] said.

Well, he hopes so, anyway.

He did not give details about what form any nuclear cooperation might take.

I’m surprisingly more content than usual that this is vague and indefinite. If this stays vague for an extended length of time, still content. Not that the Libyans are instantly suspect – they’re not – but old hurts die hard and Libya has been notably hurtful.

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How about something happier to wrap up the week?

Last week, TVA announced an initiative by the Tennessee Valley Corridor to promote the nuclear power industry in Tennessee. The Tennessee Valley Nuclear Energy Coalition, formed from nuclear and economic development organizations through the Tennessee Valley Corridor, will partner with the Deloitte Consulting firm to do market analysis and develop business plans for growing regional nuclear supply chain opportunities resulting in new jobs, exploring possibilities for using new modular nuclear reactors in the region and meeting other goals.

Really just the next step in TVA’s expansion of nuclear energy in its official planning. There’ll be more to say about this in the months to come, but read the whole article for a primer on what TVA is doing and why.

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera. Seems a plausible shot for an American politician. Pinera is a businessman and millionaire (he owns a TV network) whose hard won campaign led to the first elected conservative government – by Chilean standards – in some fifty years. It’s a test of a kind – the Chileans suffered badly under Pinochet, and Pinera’s opponents tried hard to make a comparison between the two. Didn’t work. But it will show if Chile can remain stable when the direction of the country changes – not always a sure thing in South America.

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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