NEI Nuclear Notes

Here's a summary of the performance of the U.S. nuclear fleet in September: For the third month in a row, U.S. monthly nuclear generation lagged compared to the same periods in 2011. September 2012 nuclear generation was 3.7 percent lower than September 2011 generation and year-to-date nuclear generation was 0.9 percent lower than generation in the same period in 2011, 585.1 bkWh vs. 590.6 bkWh, respectively. The capacity factor in September 2012 was 88.2 percent compared to 91.6 percent in September 2011. The average capacity factor for the nuclear fleet for the nine months of 2012 was 87.7 percent compared to 88.9 percent for the same period in 2011. Nineteen units have refueled or are currently refueling during Fall 2012 as of October 17th compared to 16 units in Fall 2011 as of the same date. The FitzPatrick and Palo Verde 2 units are refueling after completing 702 days and 518 days of continuous operation, respectively, from their previous refueling outages. Fo...

No argument here : One of the world’s fastest-growing economies, Turkey has significant energy needs. The majority Muslim nation’s energy demands will double by 2023, according to one projection. Nuclear Energy perhaps? Turkey has contemplated it for some years, but lacked a partner to help cover the expense of building the facility- running nuclear energy plants is inexpensive, building one is expensive. Now it has a partner – and in an arrangement that seems close to unique: The $20 billion venture will be wholly financed by a subsidiary of Rosatom , Russia’s state-controlled nuclear energy corporation. The Russian firm has agreed to build, own and operate the plant for its entire productive life, with spent fuel sent to Russia for reprocessing. The deal represents an unprecedented level of cooperation between the former adversaries. Various Turkish officials have a lot of questions about this, some of which involve national sovereignty, always a touchy subject. F...

It’s been a few weeks since I posted about Entergy responding to Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) on the strontium-90 (Sr-90) issue at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant . NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko has since weighed in, on the NRC’s behalf, with a letter he sent to the congressman. Of note, the chairman’s letter echoes what Entergy officials and the Vermont Department of Health (VTDH) have been saying all along: Because there are multiple potential sources of Sr-90, including nuclear weapons testing by multiple countries in the middle of the last century, it is very difficult to draw conclusions about the source of any particular Sr-90 contamination that is found in the environment unless there is additional supporting evidence. Because of this fact, Jaczko believes that Entergy’s Laurence Smith, manager of communications, is fair in one of his statements that “There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Vermont Yankee is the source for the strontium-90.” He writes: ...

UPDATE AS OF 11:30 A.M. EDT, SUNDAY, APRIL 10: Management of water continues to be a top priority at Tokyo Electric Power Co. 's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. TEPCO has begun to install steel sheets and a silt barrier at the intake structure for reactor 2 to prevent further spreading of radioactive water that is leaking from the power plant, Kyodo news service has reported. Plans are under way to install similar barriers at other locations near the plant in an effort to contain contaminated water within the plant's bay. Last week, TEPCO used a sealant to block a leak from a concrete enclosure near reactor 2. Meanwhile, 60,000 tons of contaminated water must be removed from the reactor 1, 2, and 3 turbine buildings and nearby underground enclosures, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported. The water will be pumped into the condensers of each reactor and into a radioactive water storage tank. TEPCO made room in the tank by discharging low-level radioac...

From NEI’s Japan Earthquake launch page : UPDATE AS OF 1:30 P.M. EDT, MONDAY, MARCH 21: Fukushima Daiichi Workers were making progress Monday to bring off-site power to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. External electricity has been connected to reactor 2, and work continued to energize the reactor's cooling systems. Reactors 5 and 6, and the used fuel pools at those reactors, were switched from backup diesel generators to the off-site power supply. Work also continued to establish electric service to reactors 3 and 4. Spraying seawater into the spent fuel pools of reactors 3 and 4 and providing additional cooling water to fuel pool at reactor 2 continue to be a priority for TEPCO's recovery workers. Water spraying at the Daiichi site's common used fuel pool began Monday morning, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Briefing Bill Borchardt, the executive director for operations at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commiss...

Here’s some news , from Reuters: The level of radiation detected at the Tokyo Electric Power Co Fukushima plant has fallen steadily over the past 12 hours, an official at Japan 's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said on Thursday. A level of 752 microsieverts per hour was recorded at the plant's main gate at 5 p.m. (0800 GMT) on Wednesday, said the official, Tetsuo Ohmura. The monitoring point was then changed to the plant's west gate and readings were taken every 30 minutes, he said. At 5 a.m. the reading was 338 microsieverts per hour. That level was still much higher then it should be, but was not dangerous, and that by comparison absorption of a level of 400 was normal from being outside over the course of a year, Ohmura said. If you think in terms of millirem, divide the numbers in microsieverts above by ten.

Further to David’s post below, we thought we’d feature our old friends at FOE, that is, Friends of the Earth, using that discredited several year old default figure to gin up fear over loan guarantees. Frankly, the idea - to link them to bank bailouts - is a good way to make something rather abstract to the public seem really sinister – not to mention the use of music that seems to come from The Shining – but we think it’s for naught. Using nuclear plants as fear engines just isn't a very successful ploy anymore. As we usually find with FOE, the group does not really feel bound by truth and facts, preferring an approach driven by misinformation and fear. We really mean it: dislike nuclear energy to your heart’s content, but try to make your case with the best data possible and then put together scary ads. We still won’t agree, most likely, but we’ll respect you more. Really.

If you’re not too busy during this second week of my favorite holiday month, there are a number of readings on nuclear energy I recommend (in no particular order). First is from Brian Wang who’s the main writer at Next Big Future . Brian, in a rebuttal to Michael Dittmar’s series at The Oil Drum claiming the “world’s uranium supply situation is unsustainable,” is making a small bet with Dittmar about who will be wrong in their nuclear generation and uranium forecasts out to 2020 . The two have been really duking it out in the comments section which has made for quite the entertaining read. The second piece comes from This Week in Nuclear’s John Wheeler who discussed the incident at the Kaiga nuclear plant in India where a worker contaminated his fellow employees’ drinking water with tritium . After all the facts were presented, John expressed his beef with the inaccurate reporting from the media of this incident: What REALLY caught my eye about this story was the irrespons...

The latest is up , below are two tidbits you may find useful: Uranium prices continued their trend downward as prices fell to $42-$42.50/lb U3O8 last week. The EURATOM Supply Agency (pdf) “reported that, compared to 2007, total worldwide uranium production in 2008 rose more than 7% to 44,248 tU [metric tons of uranium]. Canada is still the world’s largest uranium producer (20% of world production) with a total of 9,000 tU. Contrary to 2007, Australia lost its position as the second largest producer and was replaced by Kazakhstan, which produced a total of 8,512 tU. For Kazakhstan, this represents nearly a 30% increase in production compared to 2007 (6,654 tU). Australia’s 2008 uranium production declined to 8,430 tU from 8,577 tU in 2007. After Kazakhstan, the second largest increase in uranium production came from Africa with a total of 7,926 tU (a 20% increase in comparison to 2007)” (UxConsulting, pages 1 and 3). According to data from Ventyx Velocity Suite , 42,000 megawatts of ca...