Nuclear Energy Assembly 2014

Did you know that the Nuclear Energy Assembly is this week? NEA is the annual NEI conference and provides a good overview of the previous year’s accomplishments and a preview of what’s coming up next. The conference alternates between Washington DC and other locales, attracting nuclear leaders from around the world and across many related disciplines. This year’s assembly is in Scottsdale, Ariz. which means the heat is considerably drier.

The assembly is just about wrapping up now, but it doesn’t hurt to keep up. The twitter page and news wrap-up will provide you with a good sense of the state of the industry in 2014.

You can follow the doings on Twitter, hashtag #nea2014 – very busy account right now- and there are some news stories to peruse:

Ex-Cameco CEO Grandey Receives Nuclear Industry’s Leadership Award

Gerald “Jerry” Grandey, the former chief executive of Cameco Corp., was honored with the industry’s William S. Lee Award for Leadership at NEI’s annual conference this week.

While serving as Cameco’s president, CEO and director, the company played a central role in the implementation over a 20-year period of the highly successful Megatons to Megawatts program. The effort, which concluded last December, achieved the conversion of highly enriched uranium from 20,000 Russian warheads into low-enriched uranium that fueled commercial U.S. reactors and supplied as much as 10 percent of total U.S. electricity during that time.

NEI’s Incoming Chairman Cites Nuclear Energy’s Value to Electricity Diversity, Reliability

Nuclear energy’s importance in a diversified U.S. electricity portfolio makes it imperative that the industry build on 20 years of success by meeting three key challenges in the near term, NEI’s incoming chairman told industry leaders at the start of the Nuclear Energy Assembly in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Comments

jimwg said…

A Telling Poll:

Pose which is the truer "Birth" of the Nuclear Age: The Stagg Field Pile 1, or the Trinity test in New Mexico?

James Greenidge
Queens NY

May 26, 2014 at 3:01 PM

Mitch said…

If you watch World War programs on the History Channel they all say that Hiroshima was the dawn of the nuclear age. Who's there to correct them?

May 28, 2014 at 8:03 AM

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...

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...

How Much Land Does Nuclear, Wind and Solar Really Need?

Not too long ago, we reviewed a report that looked at nuclear energy (and other energy sources) as biodiversity agents. This had to do, in part, with the amount of land a facility needs to function. Nuclear energy and fossil fuel plants use relatively little, wind farms and solar arrays quite a lot of land . Based on an objective and transparent analysis of our sustainable energy choices, we have come to the evidence-based conclusion that nuclear energy is a good option for biodiversity conservation (and society in general) and that other alternatives to fossil fuels should be subjected to the same cost–benefit analyses (in terms of biodiversity and climate outcomes, as well as sociopolitical imperatives) before accepting or dismissing them. Writer Barry Brook, who collected 75 scientists to endorse his paper, is interested in land use as it impacts flora and fauna. Biodiversity concerns do not get as much play as they might – and, when they do, it annoys many when land is withdraw...

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