NEI Nuclear Notes

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...

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...

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...

The nuclear energy industry is encouraged by the news that the preliminary budget for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) includes funding to both re-start licensing activities for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository and initiate a robust interim storage program. We’re committed to working with Congress and the administration to put the used fuel management program back on its feet.  Until the government is meeting its legal obligation to accept the fuel, the industry will continue to safely and securely store it at our facilities. On the other hand, the budget blueprint has energy innovators nervous. As the administration and Congress establish funding levels they need to remember that DOE programs historically have supported public-private partnerships to bring nuclear technologies to market because of the benefits the nation enjoys from a strong domestic nuclear energy industry. Reducing the nuclear energy research budget now would send a signal around the world th...

The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior director of policy analysis and strategic planning at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald . Nuclear energy is by far the largest source of carbon prevention in the United States, but this is a rough time to be in the business of selling electricity due to cheap natural gas and a flood of subsidized renewable energy. Some nuclear plants have closed prematurely, and others likely will follow. In recent weeks, Exelon and the Omaha Public Power District said that they might close the Clinton, Quad Cities and Fort Calhoun nuclear reactors. As Joni Mitchell’s famous song says, “ Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone .” More than 100 energy and policy experts will gather in a U.S. Senate meeting room on May 19 to talk about how to improve the viability of existing nuclear plants. The event will be webcast, and a link will be available here . Unlike other energy sources, nuclear power plants g...

To continue building nuclear energy as a viable U.S. energy source, safety must continue to be the utmost priority. Nuclear safety is certainly Anne McCartin’s number one goal. As a nuclear safety analyst, she is responsible for creating and maintaining the nuclear facility safety basis for the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) Complex at the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory . Anne's work ensures the appropriate controls are established to maintain safe operations that are in compliance with nuclear regulations and laws. She also provides independent reviews of safety basis documents, such as experiment safety analysis plans and core safety assurance packages. Anne McCartin Anne knows all too well how important nuclear energy is to the future of America’s energy industry. “ Our nation’s energy needs will only continue to increase,” she explains. “Nuclear energy provides a safe, reliable, carbon-free energy source on a scale that can meet those demands.” The ...

Climate Central notices that nuclear energy technology is not standing still. The writer, Bobby McGill, makes it clear that nuclear “isn’t likely to grow much in the United States” and that the “the EIA [Energy Information Agency] has forecast flat nuclear power (through 2040).*” So that’s that –or is it? The $60 million the Department of Energy is dedicating to nuclear research will go to more than 40 different projects at universities across the U.S. focusing on nuclear energy modeling, nuclear security and safety and new reactor concepts and fuels. U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz , speaking Monday at the Energy Information Administration’s annual energy conference in Washington, said he is bullish on nuclear power as a clean energy source. However, the high costs of developing nuclear energy have to come down, he said. Fair enough, I guess. Other accounts of Moniz’s keynote suggest he talked mostly about the U.S.Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the need to relea...

The idea of nuclear professionals gathering in a Starbucks and exchanging their credentials with an eye toward future happiness has a certain appeal. And perhaps as quickly as it takes an atom to split. Love at first fission. But the Department of Energy has a (slightly) different idea in mind: The future of nuclear energy needs smart, creative thinkers. That's why more than 120 experts met up last week to "speed-date" each other's ideas. To its credit, DOE did pick a beautiful location, Boise, which is near the Idaho National Labs, for one of the meeting sites. So that’s one point in DOE’s favor. The Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory led the charge. More than 120 experts gathered for simultaneous workshops in six different cities, representing National Labs, universities, nonprofits and major companies. And you’ll note the word “energetic” in the following bit. The workshops kicked off with energetic remarks by Dr. Lynn ...

Dr. Everett Redmond The following is a guest post by Dr. Everett Redmond , NEI's Senior Director, Policy Development. Yesterday the Department of Energy released its “ Assessment of Disposal Options for DOE-Managed High-Level Radioactive Waste and Spent Nuclear Fuel .” This report is in response to a recommendation made by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future  (BRC). The BRC had recommended that the Administration conduct a review of the current policy to dispose of defense and commercial high level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel in a single repository or repositories. The DOE report states: “Specifically, this report recommends that the DOE begin implementation of a phased, adaptive, and consent-based strategy with development of a separate mined repository for some DOE-managed HLW and cooler DOE-managed SNF, potentially including some portion of the inventory of naval SNF. This report notes that, in addition to early development of a separate...

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has never hidden his support for nuclear energy. In 2011, before he took up his current post, he wrote an article for Foreign Affairs surveying the nuclear landscape, finding some sump holes and crevices (as well as gold-infused hillocks and verdant valleys), and concluded : As greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, finding ways to generate power cleanly, affordably, and reliably is becoming an even more pressing imperative. Nuclear power is not a silver bullet, but it is a partial solution that has proved workable on a large scale. … The government's role should be to help provide the private sector with a well-understood set of options, including nuclear power -- not to prescribe a desired market share for any specific technology. And: The United States must take a number of decisions to maintain and advance the option of nuclear energy. As energy secretary, he has embraced President Barack Obama’s “all-of-the-above” energy ...

Alex Flint Earlier today, Alex Flint , NEI's Senior Vice President for Government Affairs, sent the following letter to Senators Dianne Feinstein and Lamar Alexander, concerning the possible reinstatement of the Uranium D&D tax: Dear Chairman Feinstein and Ranking Member Alexander: The $200 million tax on the customers of nuclear utilities proposed in your mark of the fiscal year 2015 Energy and Water Development Act is unreasonable and unjustified. The tax is ostensibly to pay utility customers’ share of decommissioning the federal government’s uranium enrichment plants because of enrichment services U.S. utilities purchased from the federal government from 1969 to 1992. However, those utilities’ contracts with the Department of Energy and its predecessor organizations required full cost recovery. As a result, the utilities’ share of clean-up costs was paid even though the plants, which had produced enriched uranium for the weapons programs, were already contaminat...

Marv Fertel The following guest post was written by NEI's President and CEO, Marv Fertel. Nuclear energy is an essential source of base-load electricity and 64 percent of the United States’ greenhouse gas-free electricity production.  Without it, the United States cannot meet either its energy requirements or the goals established in the President’s Climate Action Plan. In the decades to come, we predict that the country’s nuclear fleet will evolve to include not only large, advanced light water reactors like those operating today and under construction in Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina, but also a complementary set of smaller, modular reactors. Those reactors are under development today by companies like  Babcock &Wilcox  (B&W),  NuScale and others that have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to develop next-generation reactor concepts.  Those companies have innovative designs and are prepared to absorb the lion’s share of design a...

Ellen Ginsberg The Nuclear Energy Institute today issued the following statement from Vice President and General Counsel Ellen Ginsberg after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied the Department of Energy ’s request that the original panel and the entire court review the November 2013 decision in NARUC v. DOE . In that decision, the D.C. Circuit held that the department could not continue to collect the one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour surcharge to pay for used nuclear fuel management . In the lawsuit, NEI and National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners asserted that DOE’s termination of the Yucca Mountain repository program and the absence of a congressionally approved alternative to Yucca Mountain prevented DOE from determining whether an appropriate fee was being collected because there is no program to be evaluated. In a unanimous decision, D.C. Circuit Senior Judge Silberman wrote that, “Because the Secretary is apparently unable to c...

Let’s see what’s behind the headline , via the AP: The U.S. Department of Energy said Thursday that it has awarded an Oregon company a grant to help it design and obtain federal approval for a kind of nuclear power plant - small modular units that can be built in a factory and shipped to installation sites. That Oregon company is NuScale, a startup company with strong ties to Oregon State University The first DOE award went to the mPower small modular reactor design being developed by long-established Babcock & Wilcox , a company that has been building small reactors for the U.S. Navy for decades. NuScale’s technology approach is unique and allows capacity additions in 45 megawatt increments. In addition, its safety features directly address the lessons learned from the Fukushima Daiichi accident. It’s a pressurized water reactor – as is mPower – with a lot of new ideas regarding safety. [NuScale offers] a smaller, scalable version of pressurized water reactor technology w...

If you want a sense of what Ernest Moniz, the MIT physicist who is President Barack Obama’s pick for energy secretary , thinks about nuclear energy, read some of his writing. There’s a lot of it, and he’s pretty direct : It would be a mistake, however, to let Fukushima cause governments to abandon nuclear power and its benefits. Electricity generation emits more carbon dioxide in the United States than does transportation or industry, and nuclear power is the largest source of carbon-free electricity in the country. Nuclear power generation is also relatively cheap, costing less than two cents per kilowatt-hour for operations, maintenance, and fuel. Even after the Fukushima disaster, China, which accounts for about 40 percent of current nuclear power plant construction, and India, Russia, and South Korea, which together account for another 40 percent, shows no signs of backing away from their pushes for nuclear power. This is from November 2, 2011. A little more: Nuclear power...

The following statement can be attributed to NEI President and CEO Marv Fertel: “The nuclear energy industry extends our thanks to Secretary Chu for his service to the nation and our best wishes to him and his family in his future endeavors. “The industry greatly appreciates Secretary Chu’s strong belief in the expansion of nuclear energy as a vital clean-energy technology for our nation. His leadership with regard to the construction of new nuclear energy facilities was important symbolically and substantively. This applies to the larger reactors that already are part of the backbone of our nation’s electricity grid, as well as innovative small reactor designs that offer great promise as a complementary technology. “The energy, environmental and economic challenges confronting our nation make it imperative that Secretary Chu’s successor continue to recognize nuclear energy as a vital part of our energy and environmental policy. As a reliable provider of affordable, low-carbon el...

Politico has the story : Energy Secretary Steven Chu is stepping down, ending a four-year tenure marked by milestones in green-energy spending along with withering attacks from Republicans and the collapse of the solar company Solyndra. Chu announced Friday that he intends to resign once a successor is confirmed, according to a memo sent to Energy Department staff and obtained by POLITICO. He was the last of President Barack Obama’s long-serving Cabinet members to announce plans to leave or stay for the second term. Read the rest at the link. We’ll certainly have more about this later. For the moment, a tidbit: Chu will be the longest serving energy secretary since the founding of the department.

Construction at the Sanmen Nuclear Power Station in China. Earlier this week, the law firm of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw LLP issued a report concerning the legal and regulatory obstacles that stand in the way of U.S. companies fully capitalizing on the international growth of the nuclear energy industry. From the NEI press release : To the detriment of U.S. national security interests and the economy, U.S. energy companies and manufacturers face impediments in capitalizing on the enormous market opportunities presented by the global growth of nuclear energy, business and industry leaders said today in unveiling a new report on nuclear export challenges . The report comparing nuclear energy trade regimes in five leading supplier nations concludes that “the U.S. export control regime places (U.S. companies) at a serious disadvantage next to their competitors in the international export market.” Following the release of the report, representatives from Pillsbury, NEI, Exelon Gen...

Vying for federal funds to support a potential small reactor demonstration project in the state, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (D) joined more than 20 business leaders, utility executives and state politicians Monday to reinforce his support for the project. Speaking from the University of Missouri campus, Gov. Nixon said that the potential project by Westinghouse Electric Co. and Ameren Missouri could “spark a new global industry” and be “transformational” for the Show-Me State. PoliticMo has the highlights from the press conference: “The returns of this industry are potentially tremendous,” Nixon said, noting impact on the construction, restaurant, and transportation infrastructure in the state. “When it comes to creating jobs, transforming our economy and building our future, projects just don’t get any bigger than this.” Nixon said public sector funds — including over $450 million available from the federal government — will help get the emerging industry off the ground, a...

Here comes tomorrow : Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced, The Department of Energy will be giving more than $47 million in scholarships, fellowships, research grants and university research reactor upgrades to train and educate the next generation of leaders in America's nuclear industry. There are 143 of these awards. What’s interesting is that there are potentially 143 stories for reporters to track down. What will the money be used for? This story comes from Washington state, so: Washington State University in Pullman received a little under $2 million in funds.  Ken Nash,  a radioactive chemistry professor says he'll use the money for a project to help them find a better way to deal with nuclear waste that comes from a power plant. Illinois : At Northwestern University, researchers will receive $1.6 million for two research projects on advanced nuclear fuel and fuel cycle technologies. Researchers will evaluate the effectiveness of chalcogenide-b...