NEI Nuclear Notes

Diablo Canyon Pacific Gas & Electric Co. made national news when it announced last week that it will operate the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant through its original license period and then retire the facility in the mid-2020s. Some parties are suggesting—wrongly—that the agreement is a blueprint for nuclear plant retirements in other states. Don't buy that argument. To be clear: The convergence of policies and events that drove the Diablo Canyon agreement is not desirable and should not be replicated. California residents now confront a risky experiment based on an unbalanced energy future. As NEI's Revis James wrote yesterday at Real Clear Energy : The anti-nuclear lobby says that a future primarily powered by renewable sources of energy is upon us. We’ve done the math, and the equation doesn’t balance. Rather, this seems more like a flawed experiment that will put greater pressure on consumers through higher electricity prices while increasing, not decreasing, ...

Got an interesting piece of information I wanted to pass along. Back on June 28, Tom Cochran Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's nuclear program, testified before the California Energy Commission . Following his testimony, Commissioner James D. Boyd asked Cochran whether or not storing used nuclear fuel in dry casks was safe given California's history with earthquakes. Here's how he answered: As an organization we haven't developed a view but I'll give you my personal view. First of all I think it's nonsense to think that an earthquake is going to damage a dry cask storage container. I think you can shake those as long as you want to and you're not going to -- you might want to go back and re-rack or something in a safe facility but I cannot envision it being shaken open. So I don't think that's an argument, seismicity, for moving dry casks. I think it makes sense to have a place to move spent fuel and store it in dry casks from...

From Green Car Congress : Two studies released by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) show that widespread use of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) in the United States could significantly reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and has the potential to provide small but significant improvements in ambient air quality in most areas of the US. Widespread adoption of PHEVs could reduce GHG emissions from vehicles by more than 450 million metric tons annually in 2050—equivalent to removing 82.5 million passenger cars from the road. Cumulative GHG emissions reductions from 2010 to 2050 could reach 10.3 billion metric tons under the most aggressive scenarios for the development of a lower-carbon electrical infrastructure and PHEV penetration. The analysis is the first to combine models of the US electric system and transportation sector with atmospheric air quality models to account for the future evolution of both sectors in te...