99th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers

Welcome to the 99th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers, a get together that we at NEI Nuclear Notes have been honored to host from time to time since its inception. This week, we've got selections from seven of the best blogs the online nuclear energy community has to offer. If you would like to host a future edition of the carnival, please contact Brian Wang of Next Big Future to get on the rotation. And please, don't ask to host the 100th edition of the carnival, as that honor has already been parceled out to a well-deserving blogger.

Nuclear Power Talk: What's Good for the Goose. Gail Marcus takes a hard look at Mark Cooper's claims about the economics of nuclear energy.

The Nuclear Green Revolution: The Clinch River Reactor Failure, Lessons Unlearned. Did AEC make a mistake by pursuing the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor over other designs? Read and find out.

Yes, Vermont Yankee: Green Jobs and Taxes. In this guest post, Guy Page of the Vermont Energy Partnership talks about how the plant provides green jobs and how the state's plan to levy punitive taxes on the plant threatens them. In a second post, Meredith Angwin explains why Vermont Yankee Isn't Fukushima.

ANS Nuclear Cafe: NAS Study of Cancer Risks Near Nuclear Facilities. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has released phase one of a study titled Analysis of Cancer Risks in Populations Near Nuclear Facilities. The release officially opened a 60-day public comment period in which stakeholders can provide their inputs to help guide the next phases of the study. Kudankulam Hot Start Within Reach. The provincial government of Tamil Nadu, India’s southern-most state, has dropped its opposition to hot start of twin 1,000-MW VVER reactors at Kudankulam and withdrawn support from local anti-nuclear protests. The long-running controversy over the start of NPCIL’s Russian-built twin 1,000-MW VVER reactors at Kudankulam *may* be coming to an end.

Idaho Samizdat: NRC Sets Conditions for San Onofre Restart. Our man Dan Yurman takes a look at the situation at San Onofre concerning the current situation with the plant's two steam generators. For more on this issue from NEI Nuclear Notes, click here. It would also be worth your time to view a video message from Southern California Edison. Later on Friday, Dan took another look at the SONGS situation in the wake of NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko's visit to the plant on Friday afternoon.

Atomic Power Review: Catching Up on Developments. Leslie Corrice's new book is out; also, APR addresses the new competitive situation in the SMR market with some small / portable reactor background (and the usual obscure illustrations) as well as links to descriptions of the present products for comparison.

Next Big Future: Brian Wang was awfully busy this week ... GE Continues Pushing Prism Reactor ... iRobot Warrior, Packbot To Be Used in Nuclear Plants in the U.S. ... South Korea Makes Big Overseas Nuclear Energy Push ... Transatomic Power's Waste-Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor.

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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