From Monkeys to Nuclear Energy in Rhea County

We often talk about the economic boon that nuclear energy plants bring the counties and towns in which they are located. This is true of many types of big industrial structures, of course, which tend to locate in relatively out-of-the-way places – they are, however you cut it, big structures and need room to spread out. (well, wind farms aren’t big per se, but they certainly do spread out.)

So you could say that what is true of a nuclear energy plant is also true of a coal plant or gas works. Workers like to be in their vicinity. Why?

The Watts Bar Nuclear Plant has turned into one of East Tennessee's biggest employers with 5,000 TVA and contractor employees working around the clock to build a new reactor and refuel another.

"These workers are eating in our restaurants, shopping in our stores and staying at area hotels and campgrounds and that is putting a lot of needed money into our economy," said Rhea County Mayor George Thacker, who built the 42-room Howard Johnson hotel in Spring City seven years ago to help house Watts Bar workers. "Watts Bar is a great asset for our region."

Outage workers – that’s unique to nuclear energy. I wouldn’t have guessed that outages happen frequently enough to justify a Holiday Inn, but business there will only increase when Watts Bar has two reactors (Unit 2 will start up next year) rather than one. And at all the other businesses in Rhea County, too.

Writer Dave Flessner allows for a bit of trolling:

"There's more than providing jobs in the here and now," said Garry Morgan, an anti-nuclear activist for BEST (Bellefonte Efficiency and Sustainability Team). "In the long term, we have no solution for the storage of the radioactive wastes from these plants and ratepayers eventually have to pay the enormous expense of these facilities. There are far more jobs at much less cost from energy conservation and efficiency."

I’m not sure there are “far more jobs” from using less energy – the arguments for energy efficiency are strong but the jobs picture isn’t the strongest one. But you’ve got to have something to say. It’s also worth pointing out that having nuclear energy in the mix makes electricity less expensive not more.

In any event, Flessner’s story may well have been motivated by the co-chair of the Clean and Safe (CASE) Energy Coalition dropping by for a visit.

[Ron] Kirk, who also is a former mayor of Dallas, visited Watts Bar this week and said Friday he was impressed by the size of the workforce and the workers commitment to safety.

"I spend most of my time highlighting the clean air advantages and reliability of nuclear power, but as a former mayor who worked a lot of economic development I was struck by seeing 5,000 workers at that plant," Kirk said. "Watts Bar is the real economic lifeblood of that community. They've had more than 23 million work hours without an accident, which really shows the professionalism of those workers and their commitment to safety."

The other co-chair, by the way, is former New Jersey governor and EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman.

One thing you can say about nuclear advocates, they don’t make wispy statements. They don’t have to – the benefits of the plant are manifest and Kirk just says them out loud. He almost doesn’t need to say anything – Rhea County is clearly well aware of the value of Watts Bar.

---

Rhea County (which is about halfway between Chattanooga and Knoxville) is most notable outside its locality for hosting the Scopes “monkey” trial in 1925, which became a bonanza for the yellow journalists of its day (and early radio – it was the first broadcast trial). It was so sensational that it attracted the services of two very highly regarded men, William Jennings Bryant. the former U.S. Secretary of State, and Clarence Darrow, the most famous attorney of his time and an early civil libertarian (as we understand the term now), to argue for the county and for teacher John Scopes respectively.

Obviously, the topic is much too big for a couple of paragraphs and way, way outside the brief of this blog. So you can research it further on your own.

But that’s Rhea County – which has a Scopes Trial Trail for you to follow if you’re so inclined.

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