NEI Nuclear Notes

For more than 100 years, the shape and location of human settlements has been defined in large part by energy and water. Cities grew up near natural resources like hydropower, and near water for agricultural, industrial and household use. So what would the world look like with a new generation of small nuclear reactors that could provide abundant, clean energy for electricity, water pumping and desalination and industrial processes? Hard to say with precision, but Third Way , the non-partisan think tank, asked the design team at the Washington, D.C. office of Gensler & Associates , an architecture and interior design firm that specializes in sustainable projects like a complex that houses the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. The talented designers saw a blooming desert and a cozy arctic village, an old urban mill re-purposed as an energy producer, a data center that integrates solar panels on its sprawling flat roofs, a naval base and a humming transit hub. In the converted mill, high ...

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the body that sets the rules for the competitive energy markets around the country, will soon take up a proposal from the Department of Energy (DOE) to adjust the pricing system, to ensure the survival of electricity generators that keep at least 90 days of fuel on hand. The department believes the current trend of unusually low power prices is pushing more of these plants, including nuclear reactors, into early retirement, and threatening the power grid’s resiliency and reliability. At the heart of the DOE’s proposal is the idea that everybody values resilience, but at the moment, nobody pays for it. In the electricity markets today, consumers pay for energy, and they pay for capacity – that is, the ability to make energy when needed. They pay for other services on the grid, like voltage control, that keep the electrons flowing smoothly. But there isn’t a mechanism to pay for resiliency, which the federal government defines as “the ability t...

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut residents who work there," said NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick. "By opening the door to Millstone having equal access to auctions open to other non-emitting sources of electricity, the state will help preserve $1.5 billion in economic activity, grid resiliency and reliability, and clean air that all residents of the state can enjoy," Korsnick said. Millstone Power Station Korsnick continued, "Connecticut is the third state to re-balance its electricity marketplace, joining New York and Illinois, which took their own legislative paths to preserving nuclear power plants in 2016. Now attention should...

Using the short-term energy markets to make long-term decisions about the electric grid will irreversibly damage the system’s diversity and resiliency, the nuclear industry told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Monday, as the Commission prepared to take up a request by the Secretary of Energy to reform the rules for regional electricity pricing. The markets are well set up to minimize short-term electricity costs, but they are blind to “critical non-price factors, such as resiliency, fuel diversity and environmental performance,” the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the industry’s trade association, said in comments filed Monday with the Commission, known as FERC . FERC sets the ground rules for the competitive energy markets that are now in place over more than half the country. But those rules have turned crucial decisions over to a very narrow set of considerations, as if the system operated in a “price-only vacuum,” NEI said in its comments. The markets set price...

One of the strengths of the electric system is its diversity, with energy flowing from generators that use a variety of fuels. But conflicting government policies and poorly constructed markets are reducing that diversity, and the result will be electricity that is more expensive, more prone to price spikes, and less reliable, according to a new study. The problem may not be immediately evident to consumers, for whom the light switch on the wall is like a water faucet connected to a vast system of reservoirs and feeder streams. As long as the water comes out, the user doesn’t really care where each drop came from. The consumer is well served by the diversity of supply, even if the diversity isn’t obvious. The same is true for electric current. But the power grid is changing, according to a report issued Tuesday by the economic analysis firm IHS Markit, Ensuring Resilient and Efficient Electricity Generation: The Value of the Current Diverse U.S. Power Supply Portfolio , which l...

And the winner is…Cassini-Huygens, in triple overtime. The spaceship conceived in 1982 and launched fifteen years later, will crash into Saturn on September 15, after a mission of 19 years and 355 days, powered by the audacity and technical prowess of scientists and engineers from 17 different countries, and 72 pounds of plutonium. The mission was so successful that it was extended three times; it was intended to last only until 2008. Since April, the ship has been continuing to orbit Saturn, swinging through the 1,500-mile gap between the planet and its rings, an area not previously explored. This is a good maneuver for a spaceship nearing the end of its mission, since colliding with a rock could end things early. Cassini will dive a little deeper and plunge toward Saturn’s surface, where it will transmit data until it burns up in the planet’s atmosphere. The radio signal will arrive here early Friday morning, Eastern time. A NASA video explains. In the years since Cassini ...

There's an invisible force powering and propelling our way of life. It's all around us. You can't feel it. Smell it. Or taste it. But it's there all the same. And if you look close enough, you can see all the amazing and wondrous things it does. It not only powers our cities and towns. And all the high-tech things we love. It gives us the power to invent. To explore. To discover. To create advanced technologies. This invisible force creates jobs out of thin air. It adds billions to our economy. It's on even when we're not. And stays on no matter what Mother Nature throws at it. This invisible force takes us to the outer reaches of outer space. And to the very depths of our oceans. It brings us together. And it makes us better. And most importantly, it has the power to do all this in our lifetime while barely leaving a trace. Some people might say it's kind of unbelievable. They wonder, what is this new power that does all these extraordi...

The South Texas Project As Hurricane Harvey battered southeast Texas over the past week, the devastation and loss of life in its wake have kept our attention and been a cause of grief. Through the tragedy, many stories of heroics and sacrifice have emerged. Among those who have sacrificed are nearly 250 workers who have been hunkered down at the South Texas Project (STP) nuclear plant in Matagorda County, Texas. STP’s priorities were always the safety of their employees and the communities they serve. We are proud that STP continued to operate at full power throughout the storm. It is a true testament to the reliability and resiliency of not only the operators but of our industry. The world is starting to notice what a feat it is to have maintained operations through the catastrophic event. Forbes’ Rod Adams did an excellent job describing the contribution of these men and women : “STP storm crew members deserve to be proud of the work that they are doing. Their famil...

The Energy Department’s study of the power grid is 187 pages long but it can be summarized in five words: the energy markets are failing us. "Society places value on attributes of electricity provision beyond those compensated by the current design of the wholesale market," the study found. Economists like to say that markets "optimize" production and consumption; that is, they set prices in a way that induces suppliers to bring forth the right amount of whatever is being traded, and lets consumers make wise decisions about how much to use, all in a way that improves everybody’s welfare. That’s true, as far as it goes. But markets are a little like computer programs; they only do what they’re told to. The best they can do is to optimize the factor they’ve been told to use, in this case, price. The market is a tyrant with a hyper-focused goal. The electricity markets are set up almost entirely to optimize price. But if the economy needs anything else, some...

Millions of Americans traveled long distances in hopes of getting a front-row seat for the dance of the heavens today, watching the moon eclipse the sun, from Portland, Oregon, to Charleston, South Carolina. Hundreds more had spent months preparing for an odd complication of the event: the very sudden loss of up to 9,000 megawatts as solar panels were cast into shadow, and then its very quick return. The lost production is the equivalent of about fifteen good-sized coal plants. How do you keep the lights on when the sun suddenly goes out? The loss and rebound of generation is much larger than the system usually faces, but experts made some serious advance preparation, and were hopeful  largely because of the diversity of generators. Nuclear plants continue to provide the backbone of the system, and generators running on natural gas were called on to power up quickly, and as the sun reappeared, power down even faster. Such diversity is important because the system has to functio...

Did you see the movie The Martian ? The hero, Mark Watney, an astronaut given up for dead by NASA, uses a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), a sort-of "space battery," to keep warm during his trek across Mars. The movie is science fiction but these devices are real- NASA has been using RTGs to power satellites for nearly forty years , and they've been used on major trips to the moon and other planets. But NASA recently announced plans to use nuclear power in a different way- one that hasn't been fully attempted in fifty years.  The RTGs like Mark Watney’s harness the heat from passive radioactive decay and produce a few hundred watts of electricity, which on Earth would be enough to run a handful of household appliances. But a mission to Mars would require far more power. Now, NASA is working on a reactor that splits atoms, as reactors on Earth do, to make 100 times more electricity than an RTG. The initial plan calls for 40 kilowatts, which on Ear...

Nuclear plants occupy an unusual spot in the towns where they operate: integral but so much in the background that they may seem almost invisible. But when they close, it can be like the earth shifting underfoot. Lohud.com, the Gannett newspaper that covers the Lower Hudson Valley in New York, took a look around at the experience of towns where reactors have closed , because the Indian Point reactors in Buchanan are scheduled to be shut down under an agreement with Gov. Mario Cuomo. Patty O’Donnell, chairwoman of the Vernon, Vermont, select board, had to drastically cut the town’s budget in the wake of the closure of Vermont Yankee. Photo courtesy of LoHud.com. From sea to shining sea, it was dismal. It wasn’t just the plant employees who were hurt. The losses of hundreds of jobs, tens of millions of dollars in payrolls and millions in property taxes depressed whole towns and surrounding areas. For example: Vernon, Vermont, home to Vermont Yankee for more than 40 years, had...

Energy experts are at war over a radical assertion that by mid-century the United States will be able to meet all its energy needs with wind, solar and hydro power. The claim was made in 2015 by four academic researchers , led by Mark Z. Jacobson, for the continental United States, and it asserts that those renewables will replace not just the coal and natural gas used to make electricity, but also the gasoline and diesel that run cars and trucks, and the gas used in home heating. The paper is regularly cited by environmentalists who claim that the current fleet of U.S. nuclear reactors could close without any consequences to grid reliability. But last week, a group of prominent researchers, some from Stanford and UC-Berkeley, and others from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, Carnegie Mellon and other mainstream organizations, published a second paper that said that while they support the expanded use of renewables, Professor Jacobson et al. were dreaming....

A group that includes oil and gas companies in Pennsylvania released a study on Monday that argues that twenty years ago, planners underestimated the value of nuclear plants in the electricity market. According to the group, that means the state should now let the plants close. Huh? The question confronting the state now isn’t what the companies that owned the reactors at the time of de-regulation got or didn’t get. It’s not a question of whether they were profitable in the '80s, '90s and '00s. It’s about now. Business works by looking at the present and making projections about the future. Is losing the nuclear plants what’s best for the state going forward? Pennsylvania needs clean air. It needs jobs. And it needs protection against over-reliance on a single fuel source. What the reactors need is recognition of all the value they provide . The electricity market is depressed, and if electricity is treated as a simple commodity, with no regard for its benefit...

Researchers at the Penn State College of Medicine  recently published a study  claiming that analysis of thyroid tumors showed tissue differences, based on where the patient lived. People who lived near Three Mile Island at the time of the 1979 accident had tumors more likely to have come from radiation exposure than people who developed thyroid cancer while living elsewhere, according to the researchers. Science is advanced by experts who publish new findings, and readers who then evaluate the conclusions and how they fit into the existing body of knowledge. We welcome all contributions to knowledge. But scientific studies should be read with care, so their claims can be understood, and so we can determine how the findings fit with what was previously understood. And these findings don’t fit. Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station Despite what a reader might assume from a news headline, this paper does not assert that Three Mile Island is the cause of any canc...

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 prod...