Ask the Dust (at Calvert Cliffs)

Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Facility in Lusby, Maryland recently began a lengthy roof replacement process, due to take over a year. During such renovations, it is common for dust and debris to become a menace, quickly covering all the surfaces in the building below. While such a mess is often a nuisance, in the case of a nuclear facility such as Calvert Cliffs, it can become a serious safety hazard. The tiniest wood splinters, or the smallest nails, could fall into the turbine’s mechanical openings and cause a nuclear accident. For this reason, the services provided by ShieldWorks are absolutely invaluable.

Well, no, it could likely not even cause a turbine accident. What’s supposed to happen? – all the nuclear electricity backs up from the broken turbine, overloads the reactors and causes untold grief? It’s like a nuclear Rube Goldberg machine.

A bit of a shame, really, because the story about ShieldWorks is pretty interesting. Nuclear facilities are really big industrial plants and ShieldWorks has found a unique niche for itself – making sure dust does not fly all over the place during construction projects – though the article would benefit from more explanation of the actual process. Trade secret, maybe.

When I first read the term ShieldWorks, I thought radiation. Nope. Dust. Worth a read, if the breathless disasters of the first paragraph don’t throw you.

---

The shooting took place on May 7 in Genoa, Italy, and responsibility was claimed (in a letter sent to a newspaper) by a group calling itself the Olga Nucleus of the Informal Anarchist Federation, or IAF. The victim, Roberto Adinolfi, was the CEO of a nuclear energy firm owned by the Italian State Defense group, Finmeccanica.

[…]

Adinolfi may have been an easy target, but in the letter they warn that this attack is just the beginning and that Finmeccanica will be targeted a further seven times, one attack for each of the Greek anarchist members of the Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei currently in prison.

Adinolfi was not killed. I doubt we need to tell anyone that this line of action basically kills all support for whatever it is being supported. Terror is terror, whether directed at nuclear energy concerns or political enemies. The Italians have been through this kind of thing before – I’m old enough to remember the Red Brigades and Aldo Moro – and I expect they can dispatch these creatures pretty quickly.

---

International Herald Tribune headline:

Who Will Be Next to Call Nuclear Energy Indispensable?

All together now: Me! I’ll be the next!!

Roberto Adinolfi.

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