NEI Nuclear Notes

One of the tasks nuclear energy plants could easily do is desalination. Desalination, the process of removing salt from water to make it drinkable (potable, that is), is especially important in more arid lands – say, for example, California : The massive project, in Carlsbad, teems with nearly 500 workers in yellow hard hats. When it’s done next year, it will take in more than 100 million gallons of Pacific Ocean water daily and produce 54 million gallons of fresh, drinkable water. While this adds up to just 10 percent of the county’s [San Diego]water delivery needs, it will, crucially, be reliable and drought-proof—a hedge against potentially worse times ahead. In this case, the Carlsbad facility is co-located with the Encina natural gas plant, which will supply it with power. There are some 16,000 desalination facilities around the world, many of them co-located with gas and coal plants. The Technology Review article linked above provides a lot of useful data on the subje...

A company called Research and Markets has put out a report called France Power Report 2010. I couldn’t begin to afford it – almost 600 Euros – but the description includes some interesting tidbits: Nuclear energy is the dominant fuel in France, accounting for 38.4% of primary energy demand (PED), followed by oil at 36.2%, gas at 15.9%, coal with a 4.2% share of PED and hydro-electric power with 5.4%. This is for all power sources, not just electricity generation – France is at about 80 percent there with nuclear energy. And this: The new France Power Report from the analysts forecasts that the country will account for 7.77% of power generation in developed markets by 2014, and to remain a net exporter of electricity to neighboring states. The analyst-developed power generation estimate  for 2009 is 7,152 terawatt hours (TWh), representing a decrease of 4.8% over the previous year. We are forecasting a rise in regional generation to 7,745TWh between 2010 and 2014, r...