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, ...

This morning in a conference call with nuclear energy bloggers , NRC Chairman Allison Macfarlane, in response to a direct question about the safety of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, said "[We] believe the plant is safe ... Otherwise it still wouldn't be operating." For the why behind that conclusion, you ought to review two reports that were released yesterday afternoon. On Wednesday, PG&E released a report confirming the seismic safety of Diablo Canyon Power Plant . The report, the Central Coastal California Seismic Imaging Project , is 14 chapters long, but the bottom line is delivered succinctly by The Tribune , the paper of record in San Luis Obispo. The report will now be peer reviewed by an NRC committee that includes Neal Driscoll , a professor of geology and geophysics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego . When asked about the report after its release yesterday ... [Driscoll] said PG&E marshaled many state-of-the-art tools f...

The following post was sent to us by Pacific Gas & Electric’s (PG&E) Meagan Wilson for NEI’s Powered by Our People promotion . Powered by Our People is part of the Future of Energy campaign that NEI launched earlier this year . This promotion aims to communicate innovation in our nation’s nuclear facilities in the voices of the people working at them.  Meagan is an Operations Shift Foreman for Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant and has worked in the nuclear industry for ten years. Meagan is also the Region IV President for U.S. Women in Nuclear (U.S. WIN). Check out some of the highlights from this year’s U.S. WIN Conference . For more on this promotion, take a look at the featured content on our website and follow the #futureofenergy tag across our digital channels.  Meagan Wilson Nestled just south of America’s Happiest City is the Diablo Canyon Power Plant. This powerhouse is the largest private employer in San Luis Obispo...

Another public health department has taken a closer look at Joe Mangano's work and determined it's fatally flawed. This time it's the Public Health Department of San Luis Obispo County, Califoria . You'll recall that Mangano most recently released a study claiming all sorts of ailments arose around Diablo Canyon in the wake of its opening. From the press release  ( our emphasis in bold ): “As the Health Officer for San Luis Obispo County, I take the health of our residents very seriously, and when a claim was made that excess cancer and infant mortality was occurring in our County, I made it an immediate priority to investigate further. However, upon examination of the report issued by the World Business Academy (WBA) of Santa Barbara, it became evident that flawed methodology and selective exclusion of populations of interest were used to achieve a result not consistent with standard scientific investigation and practice ” states Dr. Penny Borenstein, Health O...

You knew it would only be a matter of time before Joe Mangano resurfaced. This time, he's brought his brand of junk science to California's Central Coast in order to make some scurrilous claims about the Diablo Canyon Power Plant . This time, a story appeared in the Santa Barbara News-Press (paywall), which is where NEI's Steve Kerekes steps into the picture: While antinuclear groups hail Mr. Mangano’s study, others argue that the science behind Mr. Mangano’s report is far from settled. “(Mr. Mangano) is a traveling roadshow of fearmongering,” said Steve Kerekes, director of media relations with the Nuclear Energy Institute. “Once to twice a year he pops up in some corner of the country,” Mr. Kerekes said. “It’s always a similar scenario: he throws a bunch of data at the wall and sees what sticks, but there’s no direct cause and effect between the data and the nuclear facility he is smearing.” Mr. Kerekes said his organization has regularly debunked Mr. Mangano’s ...

Ed Halpin, SVP & CNO of PG&E Ed Halpin, Senior Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer at PG&E , was in Japan this week with virtually all of his American colleagues as part of the U.S.-Japan CNO Summit. He shared this diary entry with us after reflecting on what he saw at Fukushima Daiichi earlier this week. Be sure to follow all the updates from Japan on Twitter using the #CNOSummit hash tag. As nuclear operators, we have earned a special trust from the communities we serve. My time here reaffirms my belief that the U.S. nuclear industry must always maintain its strong focus on safe operations, intensive training programs, effective peer-review processes, and the continued sharing of lessons-learned across the nation and throughout the world. The U.S. industry has always relied on redundant layers of safety in operating its facilities and is making exceptional gains in implementing a program known as " FLEX " to further enhance safety in the face of ex...