NEI Nuclear Notes

A group that includes oil and gas companies in Pennsylvania released a study on Monday that argues that twenty years ago, planners underestimated the value of nuclear plants in the electricity market. According to the group, that means the state should now let the plants close. Huh? The question confronting the state now isn’t what the companies that owned the reactors at the time of de-regulation got or didn’t get. It’s not a question of whether they were profitable in the '80s, '90s and '00s. It’s about now. Business works by looking at the present and making projections about the future. Is losing the nuclear plants what’s best for the state going forward? Pennsylvania needs clean air. It needs jobs. And it needs protection against over-reliance on a single fuel source. What the reactors need is recognition of all the value they provide . The electricity market is depressed, and if electricity is treated as a simple commodity, with no regard for its benefit...

Researchers at the Penn State College of Medicine  recently published a study  claiming that analysis of thyroid tumors showed tissue differences, based on where the patient lived. People who lived near Three Mile Island at the time of the 1979 accident had tumors more likely to have come from radiation exposure than people who developed thyroid cancer while living elsewhere, according to the researchers. Science is advanced by experts who publish new findings, and readers who then evaluate the conclusions and how they fit into the existing body of knowledge. We welcome all contributions to knowledge. But scientific studies should be read with care, so their claims can be understood, and so we can determine how the findings fit with what was previously understood. And these findings don’t fit. Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station Despite what a reader might assume from a news headline, this paper does not assert that Three Mile Island is the cause of any canc...

Tom Kauffman The following is a guest blog post by Tom Kauffman, NEI's Director of Media Relations. Over more than three decades since the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear accident , claims that radioactivity from the plant caused negative health effects have been refuted time and time again. In over twelve studies, not one found any detectable impacts. Any claim that cancer or other diseases have been caused by the accident doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny. That holds for the industry as a whole too. In research conducted for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Dr. James Hansen concluded that  the use of nuclear energy has saved 1.8 million lives that otherwise would have been lost due to burning of fossil fuels . Despite this compelling scientific evidence, a former resident of the area, Jill Murphy Long, is trying to distort the truth with a new film, Meltdown . In her conversations with the press, Long has said, "I think this conversation ne...

My name is Alyxandria Wszolek and I am a senior at the University of Tennessee, majoring in nuclear engineering with a minor in reliability and maintainability. I could not be more appreciative of the Department of Nuclear Engineering here. I have been given so many opportunities and experiences through this school, and many doors have been opened to me. Alyxandria Wszolek Although I only recently accepted a full time job offer to work in the nuclear industry , I have been surrounded by it all my life and passionate about pursuing this career for many years. I have interned at Exelon Generation in BWR core design group, Reactor Engineering at Three Mile Island, and both Reactor Engineering and Electrical Systems at Nine Mile Point. I accepted a full time position at Nine Mile in Reactor Engineering. I am currently president of the University of Tennessee Women in Nuclear Section. I am also involved on a national level in the U. S. Women in Nuclear Communications Committee, servi...

Idaho National Laboratory's Director John Grossenbacher explains how the U.S. nuclear industry has boosted its safety procedures as a result of the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident in 1979 and how the industry plans to use current events at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plants to further enhance safety. See a number of great video on all kinds of topics at the NEI Nuclear Network

National Public Radio has a short bit on the lessons learned from the Three Mile Island accident that happened this day back in 1979, here’s a snippet: “The most important changes were what were called human factors,” [former NRC historian Sam] Walker says. “That was the lesson that was most obvious was one, you had to improve operator training. You had to give the operators the knowledge and the tools they needed to be able to deal with a situation like they faced on the morning of March 28, 1979.” Today every nuclear power plant is required to build a replica of its control room for training purposes. "It's real," says Ralph DeSantis, communication manager at Three Mile Island. "It's as real as it can be. Like a cockpit simulator for airline pilots, the training is very realistic." And just like TMI, the nuclear industry will continue to learn and improve upon its safety and operations from the lessons that come out of the Fukushima-Daiich...

The Patriot-Journal in Pennsylvania sees a solution : We talk and hear a lot about solar and wind power — in fact there are many government-backed programs providing grants and tax incentives for homeowners and companies willing to use these forms of energy production. But another part of our energy equation that is just as important but discussed far less is nuclear power. The only way the United States will ever become less dependent on other countries for our energy is to increase our commitment to nuclear energy. True. And it sees some of the problems with making this happen. Our government has yet to deal with the important issue of disposing of the nuclear waste. Incredibly the federal government has not disposed of any civilian nuclear waste and has no plan for doing so. Estimates show the government is more than 10 years behind schedule in its contractual obligations for waste disposal. And then it offers some advice: When he talks about green energy, ...

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...

WGAL Channel 8 caught the video and pictures of one of two 510 ton steam generators crawling off the barge in Maryland. Here's TMI's page describing the project : Exelon Nuclear entered into a contract with AREVA NP Inc. , to design and build TMI's replacement steam generators. The cost of replacing TMI Unit 1's steam generators is a $300 million investment into the plant. The replacement steam generators will have numerous material and design enhancements compared to the original steam generators, such as Alloy 690 tubing for reliability and longevity, use of forgings to minimize pressure vessel welds, and improved access for inspections. By now, both steam generators should be on their 75 mile, 20 day land journey to Three Mile Island from Port Deposit, MD. I wish I could be the driver for those mammoths!

Wasserman asks: Who Will Pay for America's Chernobyl? Answer: No one – Because it can’t happen here. The premise of Wasserman's article is erroneous. It is physically impossible for any U.S. nuclear power plant to explode like the Chernobyl reactor did. They are a completely different design that cannot run out of control and explode. And (unlike Chernobyl) all U.S. nuclear plants have heavily fortified containment buildings that are designed to withstand the worst case accident, nor can our reactors catch on fire. The fact is, Chernobyl can't happen here. The worst thing you can do to a U.S. light water reactor - overheat the fuel and cause it to melt - is what happened at Three Mile Island 30 years ago. But the TMI accident had no impact on the health of the people or the environment around the facility because of all of the safety systems built into the plant. With all of the changes and additional safety measures made because of the lessons learned from TMI, it is v...

Harvey Wasserman's HuffPo post, Cracking the Corporate Media's Iron Curtain Around Death at Three Mile Island , shows that he knows no bounds in his determination to scare and mislead the public. It is grossly irresponsible for him to claim that the accident at TMI killed people without offering a shred of evidence to support the claim. And by implying there has been a cover up, he also has severely insulted the good people of Pennsylvania. Wasserman claims that the "Soviet-style Iron Curtain" formed between corporate media and the "alternatives" is hiding deaths caused by the accident. This not only denigrates media outlets that won't embrace his unfounded allegations, it maligns Pennsylvanians. Would the people of the Middletown Press & Journal , the Harrisburg Patriot-News and numerous other local and regional newspapers, radio and TV organizations hide the truth from their friends and neighbors? Would local doctors, the Harrisburg Hospital, Pen...

With the anniversary of the Three Mile Island accident approaching, stories are percolating that use it as a hook to talk about nuclear energy. Let’s just say that a fair few of them would not have been written in 1979 : Nuclear reactors generate one-fifth of the nation's power. Some see nuclear as a stable, homegrown energy source in light of last year's oil price spikes. Others see it as a way to meet carbon-reduction goals. Some other see it as Satan incarnate, but this AP story by Marc Levy doesn’t have much room for them. Public interest is emerging, too: A Gallup Poll released in recent days shows 59 percent favor the use of nuclear power, the highest percentage since Gallup first asked the question in 1994. We mentioned the other day that Gallup polls carry weight that others cannot match – enough to influence policy. This is exhibit A. And here’s a bit of the takeaway on the accident itself: No one was seriously injured in the accident, in which a ...