NEI Nuclear Notes

Here's a snippet of what went on in the energy markets last week: Electricity peak prices fell slightly last week at ERCOT and Palo Verde, averaging $32/MWh at those hubs. Meanwhile at the Northeast and PJM hubs, prices rose $7 to average $40 and $45/MWh, respectively. “Next-day power markets were mixed to conclude the first week of the new month Friday, Oct. 5, as traders looked to cover short positions ahead of the impending weekend but also with choppy demand outlooks and recent ho-hum moves for natural gas also coming into play.” (SNL Energy’s Power Daily – 10/8/12) … West Texas Intermediate crude oil fell 54 cents to average $90.81/bbl last week. “EIA projects average household expenditures for heating oil and natural gas will increase by 19 percent and 15 percent, respectively, this winter (October 1 through March 31) compared with last winter. Projected household expenditures are 5 percent higher for electricity and 13 percent higher for propane this winter. Ave...

In 2008, NEI published a study based on an analysis by the Management Information Systems, Inc. that detailed the amount of subsidies that go to each energy source. The study has just been updated and now shows 60 years of energy incentives . Here’s the intro: With concern about the price and availability of energy increasing, public interest in the role of federal incentives in shaping today’s energy marketplace and future energy options has risen sharply. That interest has met with frustration in some quarters and half-truths in others because of the difficulty in developing a complete picture of the incentives that influence today’s energy options. The difficulty arises from the many forms of incentives, the variety of ways that they are funded, managed and monitored, and changes in the agencies responsible for administering them. It is no simple matter to identify incentives and track them through year-to-year changes in legislation and budgets over the 50-plus years that...

The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan has an informative brochure on Japan’s current and future energy plans (pdf). It provides stats on the 10 companies that service Japan, the country’s long-term supply and demand outlook, lifecycle CO2 emissions, and the hourly supply and demand electricity curve. A few images from the pdf are pasted below. This is just some of it. There are tables on all of the power plants by fuel type, maps of the locations of power plants and transmission grid, details on their nuclear fuel cycle and much more. It’s an excellent short and sweet piece on the country worth checking out.

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria urged folks not to jump to conclusions about nuclear because of the accident in Japan: I think it's very important to consider all the facts, put this terrible event in context, and let reason rather than emotion play the larger part in our judgment. It's difficult not to get spooked by terms like "meltdown," "radiation clouds," and "radioactive leakage." But let's remember that nuclear reactors have operated peacefully, quietly, and safely for decades in countries from Japan to France to the United States. … all energy sources have their risks when being extracted. Oil and coal have far worse safety records than even decades-old nuclear plants. … I know there is something about nuclear power that worries us. But it's important not to make huge public policy decisions based on perception rather than reality.

IHS Global Insights (parent company of Cambridge Energy Research Associates ) provided an analysis of the economic impact the earthquake will have on Japan, the world economy, the US, Europe and the rest of Asia. Below are some pulled nuggets: The near-term impact on Japanese growth is likely to be negative and potentially quite large. However, by the end of this year, the reconstruction effort is likely to get under way and provide a substantial boost to growth. The big uncertainty about this disaster (and what sets it apart from other such disasters) is that roughly 10% of electricity generation capacity (both nuclear and coal) may be offline for a few months, until oil- and gas-fired plants can ramp up. In the near term, this could have major negative ramifications for Japanese industrial sectors; some steel and automotive factories have already been closed. … Based on very crude and preliminary estimates, IHS Global Insight estimates that Japanese real GDP growth...

Personally, I’ve always had my doubts about Saudi oil supplies. Sure, there’s some room for strategic ambiguity here. But when someone is playing their cards too close you always have to wonder if they’re just bluffing. The following article would seem to indicate that’s just what the Saudis have been doing. This morning’s story in the Guardian that US diplomats believed Saudi Arabia to have overstated their oil reserves should ring alarm bells around the energy world. Every time there is a debate about whether OPEC should raise production to lower oil prices [subscription req’d], many commentators argue it is irrelevant: that the Middle East doesn’t have as much oil as it says and that it can’t raise production enough to bring prices down. If this is true, it has serious consequences for the oil price. If OPEC doesn’t have the slack to up production and bring prices down, they will have a lot further to go above the $100 barrier. Simply put, the argument is this: Du...

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve updated a large number of stats on our website for the curious public as we normally do every April and May. After updating our stats for a number of years, it’s always been interesting to analyze and see how the latest numbers have changed. For instance, US nuclear plants generated slightly less electricity in 2009 than in 2008 , yet nuclear’s fuel share increased from 19.6% in 2008 to 20.2% in 2009. That’s simply because electricity generation declined by four percent in the US due to that major economic setback we’re finally coming out of. FERC’s latest state of the markets report noted the following (pdf): This [2009] was the greatest decline in a single year in at least 60 years and, with 2008, the only time electricity demand has fallen in consecutive years since 1949. Below are a few summaries of our latest updates as well as links to new stats that you may be interested in. 2009 Production Costs for Coal and Nuclear Tick Up, Gas a...

As with the Massey coal mining disaster, we have next to no comment about the whys and wherefores of the BP Energy disaster – well, except the energy sector has had too many incidents that can be described as disasters. The media is already too jammed with commentary about something that will not be fully explained for awhile and not fully understood until awhile after that. So why add to the static? But one minor meme made the nuclear radar hum and that’s the comparison of the BP spill with Three Mile Island. In practical terms, the comparison is not at all apt. The Three Mile Island accident had no environmental impact and no one died. Neither can be said of the oil spill (though no one has died due to the oil itself – the 11 rig workers, sadly, got caught in the explosion leading to the spill). Stephen Dubner at the New York times ’ Freakonomics blog gets this about right in a post titled (sigh!) “Will the Gulf Oil Spill Be This Generation’s Three Mile Island?” While othe...

We admit we’re not that interested: President Obama … proposed allowing oil and gas drilling for the first time in large swaths of water off the East Coast, in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and potentially off Alaska. Not only because it isn’t our brief, but because we think arguments against it (environmental havoc) and for it (oil jackpot) are wildly overstated. We have to hope the government doesn’t go crazy handing out leases to oil companies – these are taxpayer owned waters, after all – and it seems the plan takes account of the states that will be affected: Obama pledged to protect areas vital to tourism, the environment and national security and to be guided by scientific evidence. And we didn’t find a reference, but we hope states can opt out. And that’s about all we’d say about it. However : "Where's our half in all of this?" said Jim Metropulos, senior advocate for the Sierra Club in California. "Promoting offshore drilling and nuclea...

Here's some food for thought ... copying from Pro Nuclear Democrats' post , check out how much one million barrels of oil looks like compared to a person and a house (see if you can find the person): The US consumes nearly 21 of these cubes each day ! Jason Ribeiro also created a picture of what 1,600 wind turbines looks like compared to the Empire State Building: If we assume those wind turbines equal 2 MW each, then the array of wind turbines above would produce less electricity in a year than the average proposed new nuclear plant in the US. For comparison, here's NEI's picture of what one nuclear plant looks like compared to the Pentagon and World Trade Center: And here's the energy comparison numbers of uranium, coal, oil and gas from Cameco : Great job on the pics Ribeiro! Update : After a suggestion from a fellow blogger, Jason created a picture to show how much Uranium 235 is equivalent to the energy in one million barrels of oil . Just as he notes, though,...

That's according to the Nuclear Energy Agency's latest Nuclear Energy Outlook study. Here's a summary (pdf): The security of energy supply from nuclear power is more reliable than that for oil or gas, according to the authors of the first ‘Nuclear Energy Outlook’ launched today by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) . Additionally, uranium’s high energy density means that transport is less vulnerable to disruption, and storing a large energy reserve is easier than for fossil fuels, says the publication. It adds that one tonne of uranium produces the same energy as 10,000 to 16,000 tonnes of oil using current technology. Technological developments are likely to improve that performance even more. ... According to one scenario in Nuclear Energy Outlook, existing nuclear power technologies could provide more than a fifth of global electricity by 2050 as demand for power rises in countries such as China and India. Un...