NEI Nuclear Notes

From the department of unintentional irony : Chestertown resident Hope Clark said Exelon has a history of being against clean energy generation and policies. She cited the company’s use of nuclear power as an example. This is from a Bay Times (Maryland) story about a public meeting concerning the proposed merger of Exelon and Maryland’s Pepco electric utility, specifically in this gathering Pepco’s Delmarva subsidiary. (Exelon’s Calvert Cliffs facility roosts on the western shore of the Chesapeake and might be what Ms. Clark is concerned about locally.) As you may know, everything in Maryland has always been (and will always be) about the Chesapeake Bay if the bay is in any way involved in an issue. Partisan politics has no role here and is non-functional – the bay must be kept as pristine as possible by any human being that interacts with it. There is no higher purpose than that. It would be cynical to call this absolutism a blue crab thing , but even if it were, so what...

This is called overselling your story : Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Facility in Lusby, Maryland recently began a lengthy roof replacement process, due to take over a year. During such renovations, it is common for dust and debris to become a menace, quickly covering all the surfaces in the building below. While such a mess is often a nuisance, in the case of a nuclear facility such as Calvert Cliffs, it can become a serious safety hazard. The tiniest wood splinters, or the smallest nails, could fall into the turbine’s mechanical openings and cause a nuclear accident. For this reason, the services provided by ShieldWorks are absolutely invaluable. Well, no, it could likely not even cause a turbine accident. What’s supposed to happen? – all the nuclear electricity backs up from the broken turbine, overloads the reactors and causes untold grief? It’s like a nuclear Rube Goldberg machine. A bit of a shame, really, because the story about ShieldWorks is pretty interesting. Nuclear fac...

We can’t help but think that Die Welt, the German magazine, has an ulterior motive for looking at Maryland’s Calvert Cliffs plant. If they do – like knocking over Germany’s ban on new construction – they don’t reveal it. But we wonder . Members of the Maryland Chamber’s board visited the existing 1,735-megawatt nuclear power plant, which first went online in 1975, and which is recognized internationally for its high level of performance. Calvert Cliffs Unit 2 set a world record this year for pressurized water reactors by operating non-stop for more than 692 days, and in 2008 had a record capacity factor, a measure of efficiency, of 101.37 percent. Sterling! In addition to helping Maryland meet its energy and climate change goals, the privately funded initiative to build a new nuclear unit would be one of the largest industrial development projects in Maryland history, resulting in 4,000 construction jobs and 400 permanent operational positions. Golden! The Nuclear...

Last week , we pointed NNN readers to Angie Howard's video submission to the upcoming PBS special, Planet Forward . Today, we feature the clip submitted by Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley . Titled We're Way Behind , O'Malley makes the case for expanding nuclear energy production in his state and the U.S.

The Baltimore Sun has an interesting op-ed by Jack Spencer, a research fellow in nuclear energy and Nicolas Loris, a researcher at the Heritage Foundation. Noting that Allegheny Energy suffered a slight embarrassment after sending customers two compact fluorescent light bulbs - and then charging them for the bulbs (they later relented and picked up the bill) - Spencer and Loris focus on common-sense reasons for Maryland to look seriously at nuclear energy as a way to meet Governor Martin O'Malley's goal of supplying 20 percent of their energy from renewable fuel sources by 2022. Spencer and Loris take a dimmish view of conservation - that would be the conservative Heritage Foundation talking - but the article makes an excellent case. (The article does not mention Maryland's Calvert Cliffs plant, so this may be an op-ed working its way through different local newspapers.)

Jack Spencer from the Heritage Foundation is at it again: Electricity demand is projected to increase 40 percent by 2030, according to government estimates. Meanwhile, overzealous regulators make it difficult to expand energy capacity. ... Proponents make it sound so simple. Just buy a new dishwasher, build a couple of windmills, put some solar cells on the roof and — voila — energy problem solved. Not really. Maryland would have to reduce its electricity consumption by about a fifth of today's use — or the equivalent of a half a million households — to meet Mr. O'Malley's objective. Since Maryland produces only 1.3 percent of its electricity from renewables, increasing that to 20 percent in the next 14 years would be daunting, to say the least. ... The legitimacy of these draconian efforts is rooted in the notion there is an energy shortage. Conservation, after all, makes sense when there is a shortage of something. But energy is not in short supply. There are fossil fue...

Here's something that might be of interest to the friends of the nuclear power plants at Calvert Cliffs in Maryland and North Anna in Virginia. The folks over at the Chesapeake Climate Action Network blog are asking their readers what they think of nuclear energy. Here's their position : In terms of greenhouse gas reductions [nuclear energy] is not a deal breaker. Despite the many negatives of nuclear energy, one positive is that it generates almost no carbon dioxide. [CCAN does] not advocate building a single new nuclear power plant, but neither [does it] advocate shutting down existing ones in the face of rapid global warming. While I'm happy to see the folks at CCAN acknowledging the contribution that nuclear energy plays in helping to constrain greenhouse gas emissions going forward, I can't help but be struck by this balancing act. After all, if you're going to concede that point, isn't it implicit in this position that environmentalists were wrong to o...