NEI Nuclear Notes

Michael Purdie The following is a guest post by NEI's Michael Purdie. Major cities in Texas were subject to numerous 100 degree-plus days this month . Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin all had record setting electricity demand. If you have ever been to these cities during one of these days, it’s hot and there is very little breeze to cool you down. The most extreme day for the grid was August 13, when power prices peaked above $1,000/MWh. When this occurs, the grid operator (in this case, ERCOT ) takes action. ERCOT called for conservation measures because electricity reserves were below 2,500 MWs during the peak. Why did this occur? Simple. The wind generating units in Texas produced less than 20% of what they’re capable of providing. By operating at less than a 20% capacity factor, wind units provided 633 MWs of power less than what ERCOT predicted during the daily peak demand. The chart below depicts the planned and actual wind generation during hours of...

Notice anything about the green bars in the graphic at right?  What caught our eye was the huge bar for "Nuclear power tech" in Texas.  So what's the story?  Is everything bigger in Texas? The graphic appeared in the Wall Street Journal on June 24 in an article on the value of two-year and four-year college degrees.  Authors Mark Peters and Douglas Belkin cited recent studies by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the American Institutes for Research .  The green bar that caught our eye is based on data presented in the AIR report.  It shows the first-year earnings of graduates of Associate's degree programs in nuclear technology in Texas as averaging more than $98,000.  The report is not clear about the specific jobs tied to the reported first-year earnings by nuclear technology graduates in Texas.  (There are two nuclear power plants in Texas : Comanche Peak in Glen Rose , and South Texas Project in Bay City , offering thousands ...

And liked what he saw. Rep. Barton (R-Texas) wanted to visit the plant in his district because he worried it might not be safe in case of a large earthquake. It went well : "Our safety systems in the United States are much more robust than in Japan," said Barton, R-Arlington and former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "If there's ever an earthquake, I want to be in the control room at Comanche Peak. ... It can withstand the largest earthquake we could have and then some." Which doesn’t mean Barton doesn’t want some more – official - assurances. But Barton said he'd like to convene a committee hearing in Congress so members can learn about safety plans in place at all U.S. nuclear power plants. He said he doesn't believe that support for these facilities will wane, despite Japan's problem, if Congress and plant operators "can continue to show these plants are safe, new designs are safe and safety regulations...

Two days ago on DallasNews , Arjun Makhijani from the anti-nuclear group Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) gave his usual commentary that nuclear can't cut it but renewables can . Having failed miserably to deliver on the 1950s promise that nuclear electricity would be "too cheap to meter," the industry now says it will save us from climate change. Can't the antis come up with something better than to hold the industry to a claim made 50 years ago? Since the 1980s, it's been clear nuclear plants were not cheap. I'm sure if we dig hard enough we can find old claims made from all industries that never came to fruition. On to Comanche Peak: And then there is the problem of cooling water. The two proposed reactors would consume about 40 million gallons of water per day. Even assuming that the water is available, Texas is risking a less reliable power system, given that droughts are estimated to become more extreme in a warming world. I guess ...