NEI Nuclear Notes

For more than 100 years, the shape and location of human settlements has been defined in large part by energy and water. Cities grew up near natural resources like hydropower, and near water for agricultural, industrial and household use. So what would the world look like with a new generation of small nuclear reactors that could provide abundant, clean energy for electricity, water pumping and desalination and industrial processes? Hard to say with precision, but Third Way , the non-partisan think tank, asked the design team at the Washington, D.C. office of Gensler & Associates , an architecture and interior design firm that specializes in sustainable projects like a complex that houses the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. The talented designers saw a blooming desert and a cozy arctic village, an old urban mill re-purposed as an energy producer, a data center that integrates solar panels on its sprawling flat roofs, a naval base and a humming transit hub. In the converted mill, high ...

Say “nuclear reactor” and what leaps to mind is a giant machine, powerful enough to run an entire city, with thousands of moving parts. But UPower Technologies has a different concept: a nuclear power plant that is mostly built in a factory, and arrives on site in two standard shipping containers. After set-up, it runs a cluster of buildings or a village. The reactor is more like a nuclear battery, with no moving parts. UPower is one of several new reactor concepts that will be the topic of discussion in the next few days. Third Way , a centrist think tank, holds an Advanced Nuclear Summit and Showcase  on Wednesday. Third Way recently issued a report on the future of nuclear power, in partnership with three Department of Energy laboratories: Idaho, Argonne and Oak Ridge. In November, the White House held a summit on nuclear energy . Behind the events is the conviction that with technological progress, nuclear power, like microchips or composite materials or a lot of othe...

The Third Way, a policy organization in Washington, held a conference yesterday called the New Millennium Nuclear Energy Summit , which proved to be exceptionally consequential . Energy Secretary Steven Chu called for nuclear power to be part of the mix as the nation moves toward mandating that power companies use more clean and renewable energy. As much as 25 percent of the country's power could be from clean energy by 2025, That’s a start, but not that different than what Chu has said consistently. The consequential part comes with the push for a clean energy standard, which would include nuclear energy along with renewable energy sources as a means to reduce carbon emissions. “Our Republican friends in the Senate are less comfortable with a renewable electricity standard. They are more comfortable with a clean energy standard that would allow some credit early on for nuclear [and] some credit early on for clean coal,” said Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.). “Some kind of c...

Third Way , a strategy center for progressives, today released a policy memo entitled, Another Inconvenient Truth: Solving Global Warming and Energy Security Requires Nuclear Power . The memo supports expansion of nuclear power and calls on political progressives to support it for three reasons: 1. Expanding nuclear power will make a difference in addressing the problem of global warming. 2. Embracing nuclear power by progressive leaders would have a galvanizing impact on the public, demonstrating the severity of the climate change problem and the need for everyone to make hard choices. 3. Moving forward efficiently on nuclear power could help provide momentum to take additional steps to curb carbon emissions. But what really caught my eye in the report was this passage concerning the position of environmental activists on the expansion of nuclear energy: Many advocates have taken this approach, attempting to keep the debate fixed solely on conservation and renewable sources. And no o...