Love Among the Cooling Towers

He’s young and scruffy, with puppy dog eyes:

She’s fresh and vivacious, who likes to – do – something out front of the facility (must be a windy day):

When they meet, can love be far behind?

Vodka and cooling towers? Will there be a second date?

World Nuclear News has the story of a new Russian film called Atomic Ivan (not the young fellow – his name is Vanya):

Snigirev Dobrygin and Julie Gregory take the starring roles under direction from Vasily Barkhatov, who uses family and nuclear culture to explore themes of commitment, stability and continuity between generations. Rosatom said that nuclear work is portrayed as prestigious and exciting, as complicated and intricate as personal relationships, and coming with extensive training and great responsibility.

That sounds – awful – like something the old Soviet Union would produce to extol agricultural achievements. There certainly are interesting pictures that could be made using the nuclear industry as a background, but the idea of offering a parallel between young love and an industrial setting suggests that both will come out diminished. Of course, I haven’t seen the movie – it could be a masterpiece.

A Rosatom presentation listed some of its goals in this unique public communication project: projecting an image of modern young scientists; promoting the idea of continuity of skills and culture between generations of nuclear workers; illustrating the true nature of the nuclear industry; and attracting a target audience through modern, topical cinematic language and expression.

Shoot me now. On the other hand, the stills (and young couple) are lovely and director Barkhatov said he will use film rather than video to shoot the landscape of the plant, so it will certainly have some texture. And really, funning aside, it might be good: Barkhatov might surprise us all with a touching romantic tale merged with science and industry. Time will tell.

Note: NNN reader Brian Mays tells us Vanya is the diminutive for Ivan – you don’t expect a two syllable diminutive for a two syllable name, but there you are. So I guess Atomic Ivan is indeed our hero.

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...

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