Patrick Moore’s Economic Justice

Patrick Moore, ex-Greenpeace, sees in nuclear energy an interesting argument for what he terms “environmental justice,” which is true enough, and economic justice, used in the headline, works as well:

African-American and Hispanic advocacy groups have historically been focused on civil rights, but they're "morphing into economic development," Moore said, and looking at energy policy for the first time.
Unlike many other big industrial facilities, he noted, polls show nuclear power plants have increasing popular support the closer people live to them. Nuclear plants are "wealth creating machines," Moore said, with no pollution, better roads and schools financed by the plants' property taxes, and large payrolls.

Moore is right about this. Nuclear energy facilities are also often union shops, which offers a good path to the middle class and out of economic uncertainty. A city of industry can be a world of opportunity and nuclear energy plants have the added benefit of not turning communities into pollution laden sump holes. A cooling tower is not a smoke stack.

Moore told AOL Energy that he is reaching out to African-American and Hispanic business and labor groups, telling them that nuclear plants, in contrast to projects like coal plants, are long-term community assets.

I’m sure the coal industry might say a few words about that, but Moore has a point.

[N]uclear not only needs thousands of skilled workers when plants are built new but generations of skilled workers to keep the units running for 60 or more years.

Moore addresses other issues, too, including natural gas and small reactors – and his comments on these are interesting – but his comments on the economic value of nuclear plants seems particularly germane at this moment in time. Visit the Clean and Safe (CASE) Energy Coalition for more on his current activities.
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And Greenpeace? Constructive as always:

"A Greenpeace activist arrived with a motorized paraglider around 7:40 am (0540 GMT). He flew over the plant, threw a smoke bomb and landed inside, where he was detained," police near the Bugey plant in southeastern France told AFP.

See blog post below for more information on the paragliding story.

Hangliding over Le Bugey. The idea was to show a security breach, but it may well be the French decided not to kill a nitwit (or a regular joe, er, pierre who went drastically off course). In any event, he couldn’t have hurt the containment structure even if he had been explosives laden and blew up against it – something the plant workers also would have known. But zut alors! The workers would sure have a nasty job hosing off the structure afterward.

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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