Editorials and Polls

It’s too soon to understand what impact the events in Japan will have on the American nuclear energy industry or even on public opinion about nuclear energy. But the approach to these open questions taken by newspapers has been interesting - editorials for the most part remain supportive of nuclear energy and some even offer constructive advice. Polls, meanwhile, provide a snapshot that show the industry remaining in good shape.

First, some editorials:

Here is the Denver Post:

Just this past week, more than 300 people turned out in Pueblo to voice their opposition to a proposed nuclear energy park there. But now is not the time to be making long-term decisions about the future of nuclear power in the U.S. First, we still don't have all of the details about what's happening in Japan, how it might be avoided elsewhere, and exactly what the impacts will be to people, the environment and the industry. … Then, when the emergency has subsided, cooler heads can debate the future of nuclear energy in the U.S.

That’s judicious enough for right now.

Here’s the Oshkosh (Wisconsin) Northwestern:

To be fair, completely swearing off nuclear power in wake of the disaster in Japan may be a short-sighted reaction. But the public and policymakers need to have an honest, comprehensive discussion about the risks, drawbacks and other options before opening reactors that will operate for decades.

A short sighted reaction, indeed. Policymakers and the industry are already discussing the elements listed above and more – we have some posts below about that. Again, reasonably judicious.

Other editorials have taken a sort of “a plague on all energy sources” approach. As USA Today put it, “No major source of energy the United States is using comes without a heavy cost.”

That seems to go too far. “No major source of transportation the United States is using comes without a heavy cost” is just as accurate but just as off.

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Here’s a USA Today/Gallup poll:

Americans oppose building more nuclear plants by 47%-44%, the poll finds. Support for using nuclear energy was at 57% when Gallup asked a similar question about a week before Friday's earthquake and tsunami left Japan struggling to avert catastrophic meltdowns and fires at three damaged nuclear plants.

And here’s a Fox News poll:

But a slim 51-percent majority of American voters said they still believed nuclear power is a safe source of energy, down only 2 percentage points from the 53 percent who thought so earlier.

Among groups, men (64 percent) are much more likely than women (40 percent) to believe nuclear power is safe. A 61-percent majority of Republicans thinks it is safe, while the largest number of Democrats says it isn’t (48 percent). For those ages 55 and older, 57 percent think nuclear power is safe, compared to 40 percent of those under age 30.

All over the map, perhaps, but not unexpected – actually, rather better that I would expect – after the tide of alarmist and sensationalist reporting (and admittedly, some good reporting, too) on the cable news channels. People are voicing reasonable if cautious support.

These are a snapshot in time. Opinions – both in polls and on newspaper editorial pages - are bound to stabilize as the emergency in Japan passes.

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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