Falling Into Molehills

IEEE has published a very strong account of the first 24 hours at Fukushima following the earthquake and tsunami that crippled the Japanese plant. Almost novelistic in depth, it is long and impossible to extract – well, not impossible, I just don’t want to. Read the whole thing here. Terrific job by Elizabeth Strickland.

We’ll be seeing some official timelines on the accident before the end of the year – consider this a considerably fleshed out coming attractions trailer.

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The folks at IEEE have also put up an interesting if slightly misleading chart called Fukushima Daiichi’s Messy Future. It aims to show how the cleanup will go at the stricken Japanese plant at the 1 year, 10 year and 100 year marks.

The misleading part is that setting the future at 10 and 100 years doesn’t really indicate when the cleanup or disposition of various components – reactor buildings, reactor cores, etc. – will be finished, only that they will be finished by then.

Maybe this is fair enough – one can’t really know what the future will bring – but it might have helped if IEEE had used current estimates to pin down the target dates a little more. With that caveat in place, it’s worth a look.

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From the department of keeping it real:

This is the headline from the Washington Post’s Federal Eye blog:

Energy Department Couldn’t Manage Stimulus Money, Watchdog Says

Here’s the evidence:

Friedman’s appearance Wednesday is meant to summarize the more than 100 investigations conducted by his office into the department’s stimulus spending. To date, the office has recovered $2.3 million in stimulus fraud and has sparked five criminal prosecutions.

A little more data:

Gregory H. Friedman is slated to tell lawmakers that the Energy Department‘s efforts to quickly distribute $35.2 billion in economic stimulus funding “was more challenging than many had originally envisioned.”

Hmm! $2.3 million out of $35.2 billion distributed equals 0.07 percent of the funds that went to fraudulent activities. That’s not a bad outcome at all.

Energy Department officials have defended their management of stimulus dollars, noting that a majority of the money has been distributed to recipients on time. But the $535 million government-backed loan given to Solyndra, the now-shuttered solar company, has raised questions about the rush to distribute stimulus dollars …

But one of the complaints about the Energy Department stimulus funds early on was that it was taking too long to distribute the funds – I heard this at more than one hearing. And loan guarantees really are stimulus, in fact, one of the most stimulative aspects of the stimulus bill. As the Economist put it, they were:

optimal stimulus policy: the money was spent, it flowed out into the economy and added to demand, rather than going to wealthy individuals or firms who in a period of high risk aversion were likely to park it in Treasury bonds.

And a final overlooked point: Solyndra’s $535 million loan guarantee is 1.3 percent of DOE’s current $37.8 billion loan guarantee portfolio. Yes, of course there should be investigations, but there’s a lot of molehill-into-mountaining going on here – and it’s unfortunate the Post is falling into the molehill.

Solyndra’s building in Fremont, Calif.

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...

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...

How Much Land Does Nuclear, Wind and Solar Really Need?

Not too long ago, we reviewed a report that looked at nuclear energy (and other energy sources) as biodiversity agents. This had to do, in part, with the amount of land a facility needs to function. Nuclear energy and fossil fuel plants use relatively little, wind farms and solar arrays quite a lot of land . Based on an objective and transparent analysis of our sustainable energy choices, we have come to the evidence-based conclusion that nuclear energy is a good option for biodiversity conservation (and society in general) and that other alternatives to fossil fuels should be subjected to the same cost–benefit analyses (in terms of biodiversity and climate outcomes, as well as sociopolitical imperatives) before accepting or dismissing them. Writer Barry Brook, who collected 75 scientists to endorse his paper, is interested in land use as it impacts flora and fauna. Biodiversity concerns do not get as much play as they might – and, when they do, it annoys many when land is withdraw...

NEI Nuclear Notes

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