NEI Nuclear Notes

Seattle? Nuclear energy? We think of Seattle – and Washington state -as hydro, wind, perhaps coffee – but not really nuclear. But of course, Washington has a nuclear plant – Columbia Generating Station – and nothing really stops any state from using nuclear energy. Still, we were a bit surprised to find in the Seattle Times a pretty clear-eyed article . Demand can easily rise 10 to 15 percent over the several years it takes to permit and build a substantial power-generation facility. So, by all means continue to implement conservation and support all the wind, biomass, solar, geothermal, wave and tidal power that can be brought online. But realize we can't stop there. We must also have full-time baseload power generation to back up intermittent renewable-power sources to ensure we have power when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. In Washington, the two realistic options available today for full-time baseload power are natural gas and nuclea...

As the Electric Power Research Institute ( EPRI ) and others have documented, solving the energy-environment challenge today requires contributions from every sector and pursuit of all options. For a perspective on one of those options, carbon capture and storage (CCS), read the piece by Jeff Goodell in the Yale Environment 360 blog. Goodell summarizes a few of the challenges in moving CCS from concept to commercial scale operation. On the size of sequestration facilities needed, Goodell says: Right now, there are three major carbon capture and storage projects in operation in the world (at one of the projects in Saskatchewan, Canada, the CO2 is used to enhance oil and gas recovery; storing the CO2 is secondary). The most significant is the Sleipner Platform in Norway, where StatoilHydro, a big Norwegian oil and gas company, has been pumping nearly one million tons of CO2 into a reservoir beneath the North Sea each year since 1996. It is an enormous engineering project, deploying one ...

Someone asks an inconvenient question at a debate in Denmark .

Some hearings scheduled for next week that we'll be watching. Links provided where available: Senate Finance --Energy, Natural Resources and Infrastructure Sub May 1, 10am, 215 Dirksen " Advanced Technology Vehicles " House Energy and Commerce -- Energy and Air Quality Sub May 3, 10am, 2322 Rayburn "Small Electric Grid" House Natural Resources Committee May 1, 2pm, 1325 Longworth “The Future of Fossil Fuels: Geological and Terrestrial Sequestration ofCarbon Dioxide House Science and Technology -- Energy and Environment Sub May 3, 2pm, 2318 Rayburn "Changes in US Global Climate Change Research Program"