NEI Nuclear Notes

Dan Lipman The following is a guest post from Dan Lipman, Executive Director, Policy Development and Supplier Programs at the Nuclear Energy Institute. Prior to his stint at NEI, Dan was responsible for managing the global deployment of new power plants at Westinghouse. While there, he led new plant projects in Korea and the deployment of 10 new AP1000 EPC contracts in China and the U.S.  Later this morning, I will be testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on The Future of International Civilian Nuclear Cooperation . Having spent several decades around the world working for Westinghouse, I've seen first-hand how international nuclear commerce  can help support American influence abroad as well as create  jobs and economic growth back home .  NEI believes that the global expansion of nuclear energy infrastructure provides the United States a unique opportunity to meet several national imperatives at the same time:  (1) increasing U.S...

Ted Jones The following is a guest post by Ted Jones, Director of International Supplier Relations for NEI. This afternoon, the House Foreign Affairs Committee  held a hearing on H.R. 2449 , to authorize the President to extend the current U.S.-South Korea nuclear cooperation agreement until March 2016.  U.S. and South Korea negotiators had hoped to conclude negotiations for a long-term successor to the 30-year agreement earlier this spring, but ran out of time.  Temporary extension of the current agreement will avoid a disruption of U.S.-ROK nuclear energy cooperation while negotiation of the long-term renewal agreement is finalized.  Bilateral nuclear energy trade flows in both directions and increasingly to third countries.  For example, U.S. Export-Import Bank last year authorized financing for $2 billion in U.S. exports to a South Korean-led project in the U.A.E.   Seamless continuation of U.S.-ROK nuclear cooperation is essential fo...

Ted Jones of NEI The following is a guest post by Ted Jones, Director of International Supplier Relations for NEI. Global Security Newswire recently published an article that quotes Tom Moore , a well-regarded nonproliferation expert at CSIS , that South Korea is a “gold standard state.” Mr. Moore has graciously posted my response to this assessment of South Korea in a blog post at Arms Control Wonk . In my comment, I explain that while it may be correct that South Korea’s domestic development of enrichment or reprocessing technologies is inconsistent with the 1992 Joint Declaration on Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula , the pact between the Koreas is distinct from the “gold standard.” I argue that conflating the two commitments obscures a critical lesson that the case of South Korea can offer to U.S. policymakers about the “gold standard” as a universal policy: The important lesson of U.S.-ROK nuclear cooperation is that a Section 123 agreement without the “gold stan...

At the beginning of June, I recorded a short video with Dan Lipman, Senior Vice President with Westinghouse Electric Company , concerning the need for Congress to renew an agreement for peaceful cooperation on nuclear energy between the U.S. and South Korea. Without these arrangements -- known as 123 agreements -- the ability of companies like Westinghouse to export nuclear technology around the world would be severely compromised. Just a few weeks later, Dan had an opportunity to return to that same topic when he was interviewed by Alan Ahn of the Global America Business Institute . You can listen to the 28-minute interview by clicking the player below. Podcast Powered By Podbean Alternately, you can click here to download the interview to your PC. It was in 2009 that a Korean government consortium led by KEPCO won a contract to build four nuclear reactors in the United Arab Emirates . Just last week, the UAE's Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation awar...

We cannot fully endorse everything that puts nuclear energy in a favorable light: It isn't hard to see the one energy source that's grown lockstep with South Korea's economic ascension... The country built its first nuclear power plant in 1977. Its rise to economic powerhouse began in 1980. Today nuclear accounts for 30% of generation, but because of its high reliability, it accounts for 45% of the country's total electric consumption. Since that first reactor in the late seventies, South Korea has built 22 more. The United States hasn't built any. (The U.S. ranks 26th in Internet connectivity and has no high-speed rail. You decide if there's correlation.) Korea plans to bring 11 more reactors online between now and 2021, bringing nuclear's share of electric generation up to 60%. It's not true that no U.S. plants went online after 1977, but the point here is that the author overloads nuclear energy with responsibility for South Korea’s phenomen...

This last part discusses Paul Gipe’s analysis of nuclear’s costs and risks which was based on questionable assumptions from a California Energy Commission study, a report published in German by the country’s renewable energy association, and an unknown study on energy externalities. Let’s get into it. From Mr. Gipe: The CEC's 186-page report, " Comparative Costs of California Central Station Electricity Generation " [PDF], found that a 1,000-megawatt pressurized water reactor would generate electricity in 2018 from as little as $0.17 per kilowatt-hour to as much as $0.34 per kilowatt-hour. The study from the California Energy Commission was published in January 2010, more than a year ago. Yet the first sentence in his Grist post says the “nuclear industry continues to take a battering,” suggesting that he’s offering new information and that one report from California constitutes battering. There is new info since January 2010 but it’s not mentioned in Mr. Gip...

Let’s call it Partnership Friday : Japan has submitted a bid to construct a nuclear energy power plant in Turkey through the mediation of Toshiba, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Taner Yıldız has said. And the Turks seem amenable: “We see this offer from Japan as an important bid in terms of our efforts to construct nuclear power plants in Turkey. However, we told them that we cannot give them a definite answer before concluding our negotiations with South Korea,” Yıldız said. But if the South Koreans lose? Well: Korea signed an agreement on the peaceful use of nuclear energy with South Africa Friday, completing the necessary procedure to make Korean firms eligible to access the nuclear energy market there. The announcement came about a month after South Africa announced plans to build more nuclear reactors to cope with soaring demand for electricity. Oddly, South Africa doesn’t seem to acknowledge two Koreas. Maybe the South Koreans call it Afric...

Carol Browner, President Obama’s energy and climate advisor, said some nice things about nuclear energy: "We have not built a nuclear plant in this country in a long time but we want to work with the industry to make that happen in the not too distant future," Browner said in a live chat on the White House website. "We have been working with the nuclear industry to understand exactly what it is they need." This adds Browner to the list of relevant administration figures to endorse nuclear energy (Chu, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, Obama himself), so we’ll take it. --- We were interested to see South Korea make a plant sale to UAE – the country had not seemed a major competitor before then – but the sale has unleashed ambition . South Korea is aiming to grab at least 20 percent of the global market for nuclear reactors in the next 20 years, the government announced Wednesday. A lot of ambition. [ Kim Young -hak, vice minister for Know...

Some bits and bytes from the radiant world around us: Hoh Kui-seek provides an almost poetic overview of the nuclear half-century before settling on his point: the rise of his native South Korea as a supplier of nuclear technology: This is the valuable fruit of Korea’s 50-year effort to develop nuclear energy technology, including the sacrifices of the local residents who spent their careers working in nuclear power plants, the sweat of scientists and the dream of former presidents. I send a big round of applause to the people who worked hard to nurture Korea’s nuclear energy development. We do, too. (He’s talking about the sale of a plant to UAE.) Not a substantial piece, but it has an individual quality we really liked. --- At Good.is, Cyrus Wadia wonders where the heck solar energy is and comes up with free reasons for its lag: (1) the cost is still too high for most geographic regions (2) issues of scale (3) the sun sets every day These are all leg...