Energy Northwest Employees Tout Benefits of Nuclear Energy in New PSA

In conjunction with Earth Day, our friends at Energy Northwest have issued a new public service announcement touting the benefits of nuclear energy. What's the twist? The message is deliverer by their own employees: Here's a copy of the press release that the company issued in conjunction with the video:

In honor of Earth Month, Energy Northwest is releasing a new public service announcement, “Clean Energy.” It features employees from departments throughout the agency, including training, chemistry, security and engineering. The 30-second PSA will be aired on broadcast stations throughout Washington over the next several weeks.

The employees are spreading the message that nuclear energy is one of the cleanest baseload sources of energy, surpassed only by hydroelectric as a carbon-free source of full-time power.

“Energy Northwest and its employees want the region to understand that power from Columbia Generating Station is a vital part of the clean energy mix for the Northwest,” said Rochelle Olson, Public Affairs manager for Energy Northwest. “We believe conservation is the best way to meet the demand for additional power. After that, a diverse mix of carbon-free sources, including nuclear, is ideal.”

In fiscal year 2011, Columbia produced 7,247 gigawatt hours of electricity while keeping an average of 7.9 million metric tons of greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, nuclear energy facilities provide nearly 70 percent of all of America’s clean-air electricity.

For more videos from Energy Northwest, please visit their YouTube channel.

Comments

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

Search This Blog