Not Stooges of the Nuclear Industry

Here’s a line to perk up a Friday:

These are not corporate stooges of the nuclear industry.

Because heaven knows there are a lot of those out there trying to look legitimate.

To a person, their embrace of nuclear power is motivated by a deep concern about climate change and the conviction that no other carbon-free source of energy is sufficient (and safe) enough to replace coal and gas.

Write Keith Kloor’s story is on a strong topic – the embrace by some environmentalists of nuclear energy. Kloor talks to an impressive number of them, starting with NASA’s lead climate scientist James Hansen and moving on from there:

He’s not the only environmental luminary who is bullish on nuclear power. Last year, Columbia University’s Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute, echoed Hansen’s argument. A number of other champions of nuclear power have stepped forward in recent years, from Australian climate scientist Barry Brook to American writer Gwyneth Cravens, author of Power to Save the World: The Truth about Nuclear Energy. A breakaway group in the traditionally no-nukes environmental movement has also begun advocating passionately for nuclear power. That story is the subject of a new documentary that is premiering this month at the Sundance Festival.

That would be Pandora’s Promise, one of the more interesting cinematic efforts for 2013. About environmentalists, the story misses Dr. Patrick Moore, who recently left his position as co-chairman of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition. It makes a bracing argument for the weaknesses of renewable energy:

This is, to put it charitably, wishful thinking. Renewable energy analyst Vaclav Smil lays out the major drawbacks with wind and solar: The energy it produces is intermittent, there is marginal storage capacity, it is still too costly, and it takes too long to scale up to become a meaningful substitute for coal.

These are problems for the industries to sort out, not stopping points. But for now, this is true and makes discussions in places like Germany so much hooey – or, to be kinder, wishful thinking.
But the story aims to be fair and lays out the most dire outcomes for nuclear energy. This is the part that doesn’t make me purr, but that could be the sign of a balanced article:

At this point, if there is going to be a revival of nuclear energy anywhere, it appears it will happen only with the arrival of new technology (what is referred to as "fourth generation" design) that resolves longstanding concerns and is competitive price-wise with coal and gas.

Well, nuclear energy already is competitive with coal and nuclear plants so have a lifespan of at least 60 years, which allows for a lot of depreciation on admittedly very expensive plants. One thing we can say for sure, the current low cost of natural gas will not sustain itself for 60 years.

The article also picks up the Pew argument that it’s not possible to build nuclear plants fast enough to have an impact on climate change – but that misses a large part of its appeal internationally, which is that it can be the first major electricity plant that many developing nations use – the choice of energy producers is much broader now than when the developed world electrified. It’s true that many countries are proceeding with the facilities they have now, but there’s a lot of growth to come – China and India currently (and both invested in nuclear energy) and many more to follow.

Still, a fair and valuable article.

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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