NEI Nuclear Notes

“Nuclear will always make up at least half of our energy (electricity output)," he was quoted as saying during a Franco-Chinese seminar in Beijing on Friday to commemorate a 30-year partnership in the nuclear sector. "Nuclear energy is a sector of the future," he added. That’s Arnaud Montebourg , the French industry minister, speaking, so he knows whereof he speaks. France is building two nuclear reactors in China, which raises an important point – nuclear energy technology is not just a economic boon to ratepayers like those in France but to companies like the French-owned AREVA, which is building the Chinese reactors. The Reuters story also mentions in passing that the French utility EDF is building a new reactor in England. This is how trade works. --- Which may be why we’re hearing this out of Japan: In an attempt to overturn the previous administration's pledge to phase out nuclear power, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's gover...

Here’s the news : The 16-billion pound ($25.9 billion) project, which was agreed on Monday with France's EDF energy and a group of Chinese investors, aims to keep the lights on in Britain amid declining supplies of North Sea gas and rapidly escalating fuel costs. "If people at home want to be able to keep watching the television, be able to turn the kettle on, and benefit from electricity, we have got to make these investments," Energy Secretary Ed Davey told the BBC. "It is essential to keep the lights on and to power British business." That sounds decidedly apocalyptic, but it’s a theme picked up by other stories. Here’s The Telegraph : During her reign [Queen Elizabeth’s], our atomic expertise, which promised a future of clean, green and affordable electricity, has been handed to foreign competitors on a plate, and Britain’s grid is now under such strain that 57 years later, we find ourselves relying on China and France to keep the lights...

There are things you  really oughtn’t to do, even if you have the best of intentions : Une vingtaine de militants de Greenpeace ont été interpellés lundi 16 juillet pour avoir pénétré dans la centrale nucléaire du Tricastin, dans la Drôme. L'association entend pointer des failles de sécurité et provoque directement François Hollande, notamment sur le "risque terroriste".  Which means (my translation – buyer beware): Twenty Greenpeace activists were arrested Monday, July 16 after trespassing at the Tricastin nuclear power plant, in the Drôme [southeastern France]. The association intended to point out security vulnerabilities and directly provoke [Prime Minister Francois] Hollande, notably about the "terrorist threat" [presumably of a vulnerable nuclear plant.] Tricastin proved not to be as vulnerable as the activists thought. There are some interesting details in the L’Express story. The security detail knew quickly that the plant ground...

A poll over at Ouest France shows that support for nuclear energy has risen over the last two years, to the point that the percentage of people who do not support it has become strikingly small – at least among those with an opinion. Since there is no English version of the site, let’s look at the numbers as reported by World Nuclear News : Of the 2004 respondents, 36% declared themselves to support the use of nuclear energy in France, up from 33% in November 2011 and 32% in July 2011. Meanwhile, the proportion expressing opposition to the use of nuclear energy had fallen to 14%, down 3% from the November 2011 figures and 6% from July 2011. That leaves out half the population. What about them? About a third of the population polled (34%) described themselves as "hesitant", or undecided, towards nuclear energy. Ifop [the polling firm] notes that for the first time since Fukushima, the pro-nuclear percentage of the population outnumbers the undecided. Meanwhil...

On the one hand, people jabber about energy diversity – simply, the practice of not betting the megawatts on one energy source – but if the price is right, there is a rush for, say, natural gas. Now, that’s still within the context, in this country, of a pretty broad energy mix. And natural gas isn’t exactly a villain, as utilities have embraced it as a means of reducing carbon emissions and shuttering coal plants. But what about France? It gets between 75 and 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy. That’s not very diverse, though it doesn’t seem to have caused a lot of problems. Yet. I ran into this little story at Autoblog Green, about Renault’s warning that the grid may not be able to handle a big influx of electric cars: The culprit is a combination of France's extensive use of nuclear power, which lacks the flexibility to cope with power-demand surges, and the widespread use of electric heaters during France's cold spells, which already strains the...

We sometimes bring up nuclear fusion as an object of fun, because activists say that fusion will scale successfully and become commercially viable in 10 years or so – and have been saying so for at least  20 years. That’s one joke. Another one is that it takes a city to power a town with fusion energy because it requires a lot of electricity to produce a little energy. None of this is (completely) fair, of course, and there are several projects exploring the use of fusion. The most significant of these is the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). ITER is a large-scale scientific experiment that aims to demonstrate that it is possible to produce commercial energy from fusion. This undertaking requires a full-scale reactor – in fact, a full-scale facility. ITER is located in France and financed by the European Union, China, Russia, South Korea, Japan, India and the United States – the big boys and girls of the nuclear world. (The EU is shouldering ab...

Fessenheim After the big, but rather ambiguous, news out of Japan, some reports have tried to join it to a less big but no less ambiguous declaration out of France : In Paris, President Francois Hollande confirmed his campaign pledge to cut the share of nuclear power in France's energy mix to 50 percent by 2025 from 75 percent. At the same time he urged the European Union to set tough targets for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions for 2030 and 2040. "We have an ambitious strategy," Hollande told an environment conference, calling for a 40 percent cut in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2030 and a 60 percent reduction by 2040 at the EU level, well beyond the 20 percent target set for 2020. Greenhouse gases are emitted mainly by burning fossil fuels - nuclear power plants are not big contributors. “Not big contributors?” Not contributors at all. I’m going to ignore the ambitious carbon emission reduction goals for this post because – really – what can say? – Bon c...

For now, anyway, Japan is doing without nuclear energy: Over the weekend, Japan's last remaining nuclear reactor shut down for regular maintenance. In the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, reactors have not been allowed back on. Japan is now the first major economy to see the modern era without nuclear power. Tomari Nuclear Power Plant's reactor 3 in Hokkaido shut down Saturday evening in a much-watched move by government, industry and environmentalists, who are waged in a public battle over the future of Japan's energy policy. This is especially tough as Japan enters one of its sweltering summers, but really, that’s the least of it: The party's deputy policy chief, Yoshito Sengoku, bluntly said without nuclear energy the world's third-largest economy would suffer. "We must think ahead to the impact on Japan's economy and people's lives, if all nuclear reactors are stopped. Japan could, in some sense, be committing mass s...

Cute and only somewhat cringe worthy, this anthemic pro-nuclear song by a French group called ACDC (les Artistes Chanteurs de la Droite Conservatrice – Singers of the Conservative Right) may be an intervention into the Presidential election (the YouTube page says no) that will wrap up this weekend after the second round of voting or may just be a gesture at this juncture in time. Or who knows? It could be an anti-nuclear parody. The lyrics are certainly weird enough in spots. I started transcribing and translating the lyrics when I saw the YouTube page already has this. Lucky you – and me. Song lyrics, like poems and jokes are murder to get from one language to another because they contain a lot of local knowledge and metaphors; it makes translation tough. --- Sometimes, the effort to make a rhyme in the original foils interpretation: Comme un oeuf dans un micro-ondes Nous allons changer le monde... or: Like an egg in a microwave We will change the world So...

Patrick Moore, ex-Greenpeace, sees in nuclear energy an interesting argument for what he terms “environmental justice,” which is true enough, and economic justice, used in the headline, works as well : African-American and Hispanic advocacy groups have historically been focused on civil rights, but they're "morphing into economic development," Moore said, and looking at energy policy for the first time. Unlike many other big industrial facilities, he noted, polls show nuclear power plants have increasing popular support the closer people live to them. Nuclear plants are "wealth creating machines," Moore said, with no pollution, better roads and schools financed by the plants' property taxes, and large payrolls. Moore is right about this. Nuclear energy facilities are also often union shops, which offers a good path to the middle class and out of economic uncertainty. A city of industry can be a world of opportunity and nuclear energy plants have the adde...

The French arm of Greenpeace is probably searching for a few new recruits after two of its activists were arrested today by French authorities for paragliding onto the grounds of the Bugey nuclear energy facility and dropping a smoke bomb. The stunt is nothing more than a political ploy by the organization to expose what it calls, “gaps,” in nuclear plant security ahead of the French presidential election. However, plant owner EDF assures the public that no such security gaps exist and that the plant remained safe and secure despite today’s criminal activity: Safety at the installation was never called into question. Safety measures put in place at the end of 2011 allowed the detection and immediate arrest of the intruder. But, some people still wrongly believe that the criminal activity proves just how easily someone could intrude a nuclear plant and wreak havoc. To their false notions, I’d like to point out a few facts about nuclear plant security. First, simply landing a...

We’ve followed the French election here a bit because we were interested to see whether challenger Francois Hollande would hold to his stand to close 30 nuclear plants – a promise he made to the Green party when it appeared he might need its help against incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy. He’d already broken away from his pledge, but let’s see how things are going. In the round one voting, Sarkozy (conservative) won about 25% of the vote, Hollande (liberal) about 28% and Marine Le Pen (reactionary) about 20%. Le Pen and the other minor party candidates now drop out and it’s Sarkozy vs. Hollande on May 6. Anyway, Hollande has backed away from his earlier negative view of nuclear energy (but see below – he’s basically returned to his original view): He wants to reduce the share of nuclear energy in the power supply to 50% from 75% by 2025, and promises to close the ageing Fessenheim nuclear plant but complete work on the advanced Flamanville European pressurized reactor power station....

We’ve written a bit about the upcoming French election and the fact that one of the candidates, Francois Hollande, is less nuclear friendly than incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy. Hollande has said he would like to knock nuclear energy down from 80 percent to 50 percent of electricity generation, though I ‘m not sure why. One could guess a desire for energy diversity, which would be defensible, but it could be a knee-jerk reaction to the accident at Fukushima Daiichi, not so defensible . Electricite de France SA , at the center of a debate over the future of nuclear power in France, may not fare as badly as feared if presidential hopeful Francois Hollande is elected because the Socialist candidate will discard promises to scale back atomic energy, HSBC Holdings Plc said. “We expect backtracking,” HSBC analysts wrote today in a report. Hollande’s pledge to lower France’s dependence on nuclear power is “unworkable” and lacks union as well as public support, they said. Note, EDF is...

Even in the context of a political contest, it’s nice to be reminded how nuclear energy benefits people in the nickel-and-dime sense: France's electricity bills will rise less over the next two decades if it continues to rely on nuclear power for its energy needs, a government-commissioned report showed on Monday, two months ahead of the country's upcoming presidential election. Neither President Nicholas Sarkozy (the conservative more-or-less) nor his main opponent in the upcoming election, Francois Hollande (the liberal give or take), wants to shut down the nuclear plants. Hollande wants to close an older facility and reduce the dependence on nuclear energy from 80 to about 50 percent. I’m not sure why, but there it is. Still, French users could pay around one quarter less at the end of the next decade if the country decides to keep relying on nuclear power for at least 70 percent of its power instead of boosting renewable energy's role and lowering nuclear ...

Suzy Hobbes over at Pop Atomic Studios makes the case .

From Digital Journal : Engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center installed a nuclear power source Thursday onto the Mars rover set to launch this month. The rover, named Curiosity, is the latest in unmanned missions to Mars, and is expected to provide new evidence about Mars history, including clues as to whether the Red Planet ever harbored life. Worth a read. This bit gave us an evil tingle: The nuclear source is also less affected by weather and daylight conditions on Mars, factors that have hampered previous missions, as when the twin Mars Exploration Rovers encountered dust storms that covered their solar panels while operating on Mars from 2004 to 2011. --- The New York Time’s Green blog tries some pushback on Curiosity: One alternative is to develop a better way to convert heat into electricity in space. The National Academy report said that the method NASA uses now is only about 6 percent efficient. A Stirling Engine system could produce five times as mu...

First, an additional tidbit on our coverage of IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2011 , where we learned that the rumors of nuclear energy’s demise are greatly exaggerated. Just consider this chart from page two of the “Key Graphs” part of the report.  As you can see, the IEA sees nuclear’s future more in line with the measured growth of renewables rather than coal or oil’s steady decline. In its report, the IEA imagines a world without (or actually, with very little) nuclear power . It’s called the “Low Nuclear Case” scenario. And surprise! It’s not the utopia some would have you believe. The net result would be to put additional upward pressure on energy prices, raise additional concerns about energy security and make it harder and more expensive to combat climate change. Of course, it’s a projection, so it has to be taken with a grain of salt. But the data coming in from countries that have scaled back their nuclear energy plans show that the IEA is onto something. Fir...

A new study from consulting company Capgemini said that Europe may have trouble “keeping the lights on” this winter thanks to the nuclear phase-out in Germany. Following its reactor shutdowns, Germany began to import electricity from its neighbors, including more than 2,000 MW per day from France. During the winter electricity peak, France mainly imports electricity from Germany and this will no longer be possible in coming years. This represents a real threat to some countries “keeping the lights on” for winter 2011/2012 and future winters. The report sums it up well: without German nuclear generation, energy security is down, emissions are up. First, security. The Europeans better cozy up to the Russians because they will be more dependent on them than ever. In 2010, the EU imported 113 bcm of gas by pipeline from Russia, representing 33% of total gas imports. In 2030, gas flowing through Gazprom pipelines is expected to represent 50% of all European gas supplies. ...

Even after the Fukushima Daiichi facility achieves a cold shutdown and even if no one becomes sick or dies as a result of the accident – no one has so far – the impact to the nuclear energy industry on a global basis is not yet in full focus. This lack of focus became, um, clearer after I read an interesting story in the New York Times that aims to address this issue – it’s here , called “After Fukushima, Does Nuclear Energy Have a Future?,” that does a reasonable job of surveying what different countries are doing with nuclear energy in the shadow of Fukushima. The story tilts toward what one might call the worst case scenario, but it’s not unrealistic and it points out inconvenient counter-facts, always a plus in my book. Despite this relatively dismal outlook for nuclear energy, the London-based World Nuclear Association predicts a 30 percent increase in global nuclear generating capacity over the next decade; it foresees 79 more reactors online by 2020, for a total of 514, e...

In France today : One person was killed and four were injured Monday afternoon in an explosion at a nuclear waste treatment site in southern France, according to the French Nuclear Safety Authority. I saw some reports that said this was a electricity generation facility. Not so. The site, about 20 miles from Avignon, has no nuclear reactors, the authority said. Since the Times points to the French authority, let’s see what it has to say : L’accident survenu ce matin dans l’installation nucléaire Centraco située près du site de Marcoule (Gard) est terminé. L’explosion d’un four servant à fondre les déchets radioactifs métalliques a causé un incendie qui a été maitrisé à 13 h. Le bâtiment concerné n’a pas été endommagé. Aucune contamination n’a été constatée : les blessés ne sont pas contaminés et les mesures réalisées à l’extérieur du bâtiment par l’exploitant et les services publics de pompiers spécialisés n’ont révélé aucune contamination . Phew! Here’s a...