NEI Nuclear Notes

Here in a Washington that's preoccupied with political spectacle, it can be easy to miss important details about the business of government that really matter. One of those is coming up next week when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) holds a two-day technical conference about electricity markets in the Northeastern U.S.  Since policymakers in Washington have not been able to find consensus on a comprehensive energy policy for the country, states have shown leadership in trying to ensure that the electricity system of the future will meet their needs. For some time, state governments have adopted renewable portfolio standards (RPS) to spur the growth of wind and solar to meet environmental policy goals. More recently, states like Illinois and New York have enacted similar programs to preserve nuclear power plants , in order to support nuclear energy's unique package of grid stability, zero emissions and fuel supply diversity. How these state policies are...

Matt Wald 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 . Building consensus is hard work, especially in energy policy. But when local governments, organized labor, environmental organizations and energy providers all come together, they can create a positive future for everyone. That’s what happened this week in the Illinois legislature in Springfield. The legislature, in a special session, approved the Future Energy Jobs Bill , with strong bipartisan support. Governor Rauner pointed out in a statement that the bill will save thousands of jobs, and will protect ratepayers from large increases for years to come. With this law, Illinois follows New York in recognizing that like wind and sun, nuclear is a zero-carbon energy source and should be valued as such. The bill went through many twists and turns over two years. Negotiations over its shape were long and hard partly b...

We have to hand it to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Their recent poll tries as hard as it can, but it can’t quite hide the truth about Illinois energy and its relative cleanliness, the subject of the poll. It finds , quite reasonably, that people there are much in favor of clean energy, which NRDC is quite sure includes only renewables. Why should that be, I wondered – well, until I looked at the questions . This is one of them: Some people/other people say we should transition to more clean, renewable energy sources like wind and solar power in Illinois. Illinois residents already get most of their electricity with nuclear power; the last thing we need is more safety risks from building more nuclear plants. This is part of another question. We already have more nuclear energy than any other state, and it is too risky for our health and environment. Yet, even with statements like that to ponder, 33 percent of respondents favor expanding nuclear energy i...

Washington state, as we’ve seen, is moving full speed ahead with legislation to explore the possibility of nuclear energy in that state, especially the revenue-raising, job-creating possibility of manufacturing small reactors there. This is heartening, of course, not to mention a good move by the state. Generally, nuclear energy measures in the states have come and gone and often come around again. State legislatures have shorter sessions (in general) than their federal brethren, so a lot of promising sounding bills hit the wall of sometimes very short meeting schedules – this is true of everything that is not directly budget-related. Some bills, such as repealing the moratorium on uranium exploration in Virginia*, get really close to passing, then the session ends. Of course, some bills just don’t pass muster and get voted down. It happens. But the Washington legislation points to new possibilities for nuclear energy action in the states, even if, as they say, one swallow doesn’t...

They write letters : Clinton Mayor Carolyn Peters joined the mayors of Morris, Oregon, East Moline, Braceville and Marseilles in letters sent to Gov. Bruce Rauner and top legislators like House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, stressing the importance of the plants to their cities and towns. So this would be – the Northwest? (Oregon) France? (Marseilles). No , it’s the apparently broadly settled section of Illinois that hosts nuclear power plants, notably the Clinton station. And Clinton’s mayor isn’t mincing words: “Illinois nuclear facilities provide thousands of good jobs; the kind of jobs you can support a family on...,” the mayors say in a letter dated Feb. 4. “Part of the upcoming debate in Springfield should focus on what these plants mean to their host communities. From our firsthand perspective, we can tell you that Illinois' nuclear facilities are essential to helping our communities thrive.” Exelon, which runs all 12 Illinois reactors at 6 sites, has b...

Exelon made its case – see post below – and now we get a chance to look more deeply into the economic impact of the company’s 11 nuclear reactors (not to mention its corporate headquarters) in Illinois. NEI has released a report containing an independent analysis using a nationally recognized model to estimate the facilities’ economic impacts on the Illinois economy. Consider: Thousands of high-skilled jobs. Exelon employs 5,900 people at its nuclear energy facilities in Illinois. This direct employment creates about 21,700 additional jobs in other industries in the state. A total of nearly 28,000 jobs in Illinois are a result of Exelon’s nuclear operations. Economic stimulus. Exelon’s Illinois nuclear plants are estimated to generate $8.9 billion of total economic output annually, which contributes $6.0 billion to Illinois’ gross state product each year. This study finds that for every dollar of output from Exelon’s Illinois facilities, the state economy produces $1.65. ...

Kathleen Barrón, Exelon ’s senior vice president of federal regulatory affairs and wholesale market policy, had some strong words at a policy summit held by the Illinois Commerce Commission . “If the units at risk of closing today -- representing 43 percent of the state’s nuclear generation -- retire, they cannot be mothballed and later brought back online,” she said. “Together they represent more than 30 million metric tons of avoided carbon emissions, given that they will need to be replaced with fossil generation to provide the around-the-clock electricity needed to serve customers in the state.” That’s true. Nuclear energy is not really properly valued for its presence in the proposed EPA climate change rule (which of course could change before it is finalized), and one consequence of that would be that shuttered nuclear plants would lead to higher carbon emissions – and cause states to miss their targets. If you consider climate change an existential issue, it doesn’t g...

This is from an Exelon press release, but it’s the kind of thing nuclear advocate want because it’s a company touting the benefits of nuclear energy: Continuing its progress toward a clean energy future, Exelon announced today that it reduced or avoided more than 18 million metric tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2013, surpassing its goal of eliminating 17.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per year by 2020. And how did it do that? Retirement of fossil plants and company energy efficiency and process improvement efforts that resulted in a reduction of more than 9.8 million metric tons of GHG emissions; Addition of 316 megawatts (MW) of emission-free energy through uprates across the nuclear fleet; There’s more bullet points – these are the top two. More: Exelon’s industry-leading fleet of nuclear power plants plays an important role in its low-emissions profile, avoiding 82 million metric tons of GHG emissio...

NEI’s Top Industry Practice Awards recognize innovation in the nuclear energy industry. Presented at NEI’s annual conference, the awards honor accomplishments that help the industry improve safety, streamline processes and increase efficiency. In a special series of articles this week, our publication Nuclear Energy Overview highlights the challenges and successes of five winners. Eight-time TIP Award winner Jim Tusar is no stranger to ambitious projects. His most recent, which earned this year’s GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy Award, is no exception. The industry standard is to schedule refueling and maintenance outages once every 18 months or two years, but Tusar and his team at Exelon Nuclear pioneered an annual outage schedule at the Clinton Power Station in Illinois. “The idea came from acknowledging the value of [the facility] was decreasing due to the fact we had such high fuel costs, and at the same time power prices were decreasing,” said Tusar, Exelon Nuclear’s manager o...

Uh-oh. The level of Iodine-131 found at the Queen Lane treatment plant is the highest of 23 sites in 13 states where the particles have appeared following the massive radiation leaks from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. Lower levels were found at the city's two other plants. Er: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency told the Daily News yesterday that Philadelphia water samples from last August contained nearly twice as much radioactive iodine as the recent samples collected after the Fukushima disaster. Although numbers aren’t given, I’m going to take a guess and say that in neither instance was the level of iodine-131 high enough to raise a danger flag. No harm in being careful, of course. From the Philadelphia Daily News. --- Always on the lookout for interesting anti-nuclear energy editorials and op-eds, I’ve actually come up rather short. Sometimes, the ones I find are so weak that I don’t want to highlight them. It’s no fun smacking...

We won’t run every story along these lines, since it could be come tedious, but we mentioned last week that knocking down nuclear bans has gained momentum, and though there are failed attempts – as in Wyoming – there are successes, too – as in Iowa. Here’s another success, rather oddly introduced by The Chicago Sun-Times’ by Dave McKinney and Steve Contorno: The Illinois Senate voted Monday to undo a 23-year-old ban on the construction of new nuclear plants in a move one anti-nuclear activist predicted could turn Illinois into a “radioactive waste repository.” Well, no, not really, but why not lead a successful legislative story with a comment by someone against the legislation? “America will be overrun with dogs and cats,” said an anti-pet activist after a pro-pet legislation passed the Senate.  Seems a little sour, yes? Especially when you consider this: The lone dissenter in the Senate, Sen. Jeff Schoenberg (D-Evanston), said Illinois should focus on wind and s...

(4/18/2008) - This morning at 4:37 central time a 5.2 magnitude earthquake shook southeastern Illinois . Illinois is home to six nuclear plants operated by Exelon and are located in the central and northern parts of the state. Here is a statement from Exelon on the earthquake and its nuclear plants: None of Exelon Nuclear's six Illinois nuclear energy stations were affected by early morning seismic activity near the southern Illinois town of West Salem, the company said today. Plant equipment continued to function normally at each of the six operating nuclear stations. Station operators and technical experts conducted extensive pre-planned inspections when the seismic activity occurred. Operators performed "walk-downs" to search for potential effects and confirmed by this morning that the earthquake caused no damage to equipment or otherwise affected plant operations. Additional plant walk- downs are scheduled throughout the day. Each plant continued to operate at its nor...