Valuing Nuclear Assets in A National Energy Review

President Obama in January directed the heads of nearly two dozen federal agencies to create an integrated review of U.S. energy policy “in the context of economic, environmental, occupational, security, and health and safety priorities.”

The task force is charged with developing “integrated guidance to strengthen U.S. energy policy,” building on the administration’s Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future and Climate Action Plan. The first of the quadrennial energy reviews is due this coming January. It will be updated every four years thereafter, if future administrations continue with it.

Quadrennial might sound like a old European dance (that’s a quadrille), but it’s a kind of roadmap timed to occur near the mid-point of an administration’s term. Even if the review is based on administration priorities that the next president does not follow, it will encourage continuity and transparency in energy policy.

Public comments were due October 10. NEI submitted a few, focusing on several points, including the review’s focus.

[T]his first-ever review will focus on energy infrastructure and will identify the threats, risks, and opportunities for U.S. energy and climate security, enabling the federal government to translate policy goals into a set of integrated actions.

And NEI’s response:

Although DOE has indicated that the first edition of the QER focuses on infrastructure, NEI does not believe it is possible or prudent to separate delivery from supply and production, particularly in the electric sector. It is not possible to examine transmission of electricity or natural gas in isolation without also examining, for example, the number and locations of the power plants that might need natural gas.

Of course, NEI is most interested in the role of nuclear energy in the electricity market, but not considering energy generators impacts them all, denying them the value they bring to the marketplace. An energy review that ignores this risks being of limited use.

Sound competitive market design should follow basic economic principles and begin with a systematic inventory of the attributes of the various forms of electric generating capacity that have value to the grid. Then the competitive markets should develop mechanisms to provide compensation for those attributes. Unless and until these attributes are recognized and priced, markets run the risk that they will gradually disappear.

Some of those attributes are obvious for nuclear energy: carbon-emission free, non-stop baseload energy that can be very inexpensive to run. NEI’s response expands on several of these qualities, notably how nuclear energy fulfills the energy review’s specific concerns:

Affordable, clean, and secure energy and energy services are essential for improving U.S. economic productivity, enhancing our quality of life, protecting our environment, and ensuring our Nation's security.

With a tweak here and there, this could be the mission statement of the nuclear energy industry. We’ll see how the final report goes when it emerges in January.

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

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