NEI Nuclear Notes

In putting together our new website section on nuclear energy's unmatched reliability , we uncovered some facts that the folks who aren't familiar with our industry might find surprising. Feel free to share them, and the below infographic, on social media. 1. Nuclear power plants are the most efficient source of electricity, operating 24/7 at a 90 percent average capacity factor . 2. A nuclear plant refuels once every 18 months, in spring or fall , replacing one-third of the fuel each time—so just-in-time fuel deliveries are never an issue. 3. One uranium fuel pellet creates as much energy as one ton of coal or 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas . 4. A typical nuclear plant generates enough electricity for 690,000 homes without creating air emissions. 5. Nuclear energy generates more electricity than any other source in Connecticut, Illinois, New Hampshire, New Jersey, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia.

It’s not even summer yet and it’s time to break out the handkerchiefs and mop the swampy brow. Could it be – El Nino? No, too soon, and anyway, meteorologists are backing away from their earlier forecasts that the young one will be particularly strong this year. It appears less likely than it did a few months ago that a “super El Nino” will develop. “Earlier in the spring we had rapid warming beneath the surface in the central Pacific and it was headed east,” said NBC News meteorologist Bill Karins. “That is why you heard many headlines saying ‘super El Nino possible this fall,'” Karins said, and that it “might be as strong and as bad as 1997-98. But since then the rapid warming has leveled off and even lessened.” So it’s an early blast of summer, likely to be followed by more summer, as Sol just does its annual thing. We can’t discount world temperatures creeping upwards every year – or for that matter, air conditioning. Because the cities are getting hotter ...

Uvdiv, the author, writes some quality stuff . Never thought I'd see someone take a unit of measure and turn it into a blog but he's done it and he's done it well. Make sure to stop by!

We are now on part five in the continuing series that seriously looks at RMI’s latest nuclear bashing paper. RMI tries extremely hard on pages 21-26 in their paper to show that nuclear plants are unreliable. Sadly for RMI, a widely publicized set of data refutes their claim: capacity factors. A capacity factor is the amount of electricity a power plant actually produces in a period of time divided by the amount of electricity the plant is rated to produce during that same period of time. A high capacity factor implies high reliability. From RMI, page 24 (pdf): Though micropower’s unreliability is an unfounded myth, nuclear power’s unreliability is all too real. In arguing that nuclear plants are unreliable, the RMI paper brings up a Union of Concerned Scientists’ report on long outages , refueling outages, heat waves , the shutdown of seven Japanese reactors due to an earthquake , and the 2003 Northeast Blackout. Other than the Japanese shutdowns, the four issues RMI brings up are al...