Online Poll: Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station Needs Your Help

From time to time, we see newspapers run online polls to pulse the public mood about nuclear power plants (stories about our plants tend to generate a lot of click-throughs and online media naturally tries to take advantage of that). With that in mind, it's not a big surprise that the Cape Cod Times is running a poll concerning the future of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station owned by Entergy.

The poll (pictured to the left) is embedded on the newspaper's local news section in the middle of the page. Just click the link and scroll about half-way down the page and you'll find it embedded slightly off center to the right. When you get there, let the editors know that you support clean, safe and reliable nuclear energy.

Comments

Anonymous said…

From the story, it sounds like everything worked as it should. I don't understand why the anti-nuke kooks insist on hammering the industry when things function as designed. When they don't work as designed is cause for concern. The nuclear industry is the only one I know of that gets hammered when things work properly.

September 10, 2013 at 11:59 AM

Anonymous said…

"when things work properly."

I'm not saying there's necessarily a safety issue involved. However, shutting a large baseload plant twice in a few weeks, when it's supposed to run continuously for 18-24 months, is stretching the definition of "things working properly."

September 10, 2013 at 1:48 PM

Anonymous said…

I was referring to safety issues. If something fails that requires shutdown, the shutdown systems should work, and they did in this case.

As far as operational issues go, they'll have to do some checking and study, but the first priority of assurring public safety was not compromised.

As far as complaining about the unavailability of installed capacity, save it for the 20-25% capacity factors of the unreliables. You know, they of the "must take" provisions?

September 10, 2013 at 7:26 PM

How Nanomaterials Can Make Nuclear Reactors Safer and More Efficient

The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior communications advisor at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald.

From the batteries in our cell phones to the clothes on our backs, "nanomaterials" that are designed molecule by molecule are working their way into our economy and our lives. Now there’s some promising work on new materials for nuclear reactors.

Reactors are a tough environment. The sub atomic particles that sustain the chain reaction, neutrons, are great for splitting additional uranium atoms, but not all of them hit a uranium atom; some of them end up in various metal components of the reactor. The metal is usually a crystalline structure, meaning it is as orderly as a ladder or a sheet of graph paper, but the neutrons rearrange the atoms, leaving some infinitesimal voids in the structure and some areas of extra density. The components literally grow, getting longer and thicker. The phenomenon is well understood and designers compensate for it with a …

Why America Needs the MOX Facility

If Isaiah had been a nuclear engineer, he’d have loved this project. And the Trump Administration should too, despite the proposal to eliminate it in the FY 2018 budget.

The project is a massive factory near Aiken, S.C., that will take plutonium from the government’s arsenal and turn it into fuel for civilian power reactors. The plutonium, made by the United States during the Cold War in a competition with the Soviet Union, is now surplus, and the United States and the Russian Federation jointly agreed to reduce their stocks, to reduce the chance of its use in weapons. Over two thousand construction workers, technicians and engineers are at work to enable the transformation.

Carrying Isaiah’s “swords into plowshares” vision into the nuclear field did not originate with plutonium. In 1993, the United States and Russia began a 20-year program to take weapons-grade uranium out of the Russian inventory, dilute it to levels appropriate for civilian power plants, and then use it to produce…

Nuclear Is a Long-Term Investment for Ohio that Will Pay Big

With 50 different state legislative calendars, more than half of them adjourn by June, and those still in session throughout the year usually take a recess in the summer. So springtime is prime time for state legislative activity. In the next few weeks, legislatures are hosting hearings and calling for votes on bills that have been battered back and forth in the capital halls.

On Tuesday, The Ohio Public Utilities Committee hosted its third round of hearings on the Zero Emissions Nuclear Resources Program, House Bill 178, and NEI’s Maria Korsnick testified before a jam-packed room of legislators.

Washingtonians parachuting into state debates can be a tricky platform, but in this case, Maria’s remarks provided national perspective that put the Ohio conundrum into context. At the heart of this debate is the impact nuclear plants have on local jobs and the local economy, and that nuclear assets should be viewed as “long-term investments” for the state. Of course, clean air and electrons …

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog