The Collective Will to Survive

Europe has a plan for used nuclear fuel:

EU energy commissioner Günther Oettinger has urged member states to bury radioactive nuclear waste, saying burial is the safest form of disposal.

The draft directive on nuclear waste says geographical storage is "the safest and most sustainable" option for disposing of spent fuel.

The U.S. is currently working on the issue of used nuclear fuel via the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, which is due to report its findings late next year.

Santiago San Antonio, director general of Foratom, the Brussels-based organization that represents the European nuclear energy industry, points out in the article that used nuclear fuel is already safely handled and adds:

"We are particularly pleased that the directive acknowledges the fact that there is a world-wide scientific and technical consensus that deep geological disposal of high-level waste which has been proven by over 30 years of research, represents the safest and most sustainable option."

Safest and most sustainable might be open to some debate but safe and sustainable? No debate there.

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Armenia and UAE?

The UAE is interested in cooperation with Armenia in nuclear energy, Foreign Trade Minister Sheikha Lubna al Qasimi said in Yerevan.

This decision appeared to be unexpected for the Armenian side. Head of the Armenian Development Agency Robert Harutunyan said that he is not aware of the details but supposes that the point is scientific and technical cooperation in nuclear energy.

As happens, Armenia has a nuclear energy plant planned, but still, this just qualifies as – odd.

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The Philippines has opened the Nuclear Power Forum Philippines 2010. The country has a practical need for more electricity (“rotating 3-hour outages in Metro Manila, the country’s political and economic centre,”), so the road forward is clear enough:

Accordingly, the Philippine Energy Plan 2007-2014 indicates room for the existing Bataan Nuclear Power Plant as well as four more nuclear plants, the earliest to be commissioned by 2015.

And to hear the Filipinos tell it, the response has been terrific:

Investor interest is pouring in. “We’re overwhelmed by the response, in a really good way,” explains Frank Mercado, Director at the Center for Energy Sustainability and Economics, the forum host. “Indeed Southeast Asia is now an important emerging market for the nuclear industry worldwide.”

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Over at the Guardian, the often interesting if sometimes moonbatty English newspaper, a feature allows readers to post tough energy questions to a panel of experts. Nuclear energy does not usually get a very fair hearing at The Guardian, but I found an answer to a question about used nuclear fuel rather charming and on point, though not about used nuclear fuel.

Tanzania’s Pius Yasebasi Ng'wandu does not have a nuclear energy background; he was his country’s Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education. In most particulars, Ng’wandu probably should not have answered the question – he just doesn’t know enough about the subject.

But he does say this:

We must move away from the self inflicted fear of nuclear energy. Let us combine knowledge, technology and the collective will to survive. Fifty years after President Eisenhower's speech on "atoms for peace", we must build the will to tame these atoms for peace and development.

I think the atoms have been sufficiently tamed, but there’s no doubting the sentiment. Ng’wandu is a policymaker, so he’s clearly focused on the potential of nuclear energy in his country and continent.

Off in the distance. Armenia’s Metsamore Armenian Nuclear Power Plant. Armenia planned to shut it down in 2004, but decided against it when it could not find a way to replace the 40% of the country’s electricity generation supplied by the plant.

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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