NEI Nuclear Notes

Here’s something I did not know existed, even as far as it did exist: In the 1950s, perhaps the height of the so-called Atomic Age, Ford developed a concept car called the Ford Nucleon . This nuclear-powered automobile was designed, according to Ford , based on the assumption that future nuclear reactors would be smaller, safer, lighter and more portable. The design called for a power capsule located in the rear of the car, charging stations replacing gas stations and 5,000 miles of driving before recharging or replacing the fuel. As is the case with many concept cars , Ford never built the Nucleon-only a model car half the size of a normal car. Obviously, the most famous nuclear car is the DeLorean DMC-12 from the Back to the Future movies. The nucleon could not be powered because the technology to do it wasn’t plausible at that time – still, pretty neat, even if we are waiting for a flux capacitor . In the meantime, where nuclear energy and cars can find common cau...

Germany wants to put one million electric cars on the road by 2020 but is falling a wee bit short – to date there are about 4500 such cars clogging up the autobahns. And maybe that’s a good thing, at least in the short term : But the Ministry of Economics and Technology argues that placing strict limits on vehicle charging would require electricity providers to concentrate renewable energy generation in areas with large shares of electric vehicles. This could overburden the power grid and threaten the country with blackouts, according to renewable energy experts within the ministry. Given the short time left to get 996,000 electric cars onto the road, I was poking around to see if the country was offering tax rebates, as the United States and other countries are doing to seed the marketplace. It appears not, at least not yet: Germany has not decided whether it too will offer subsidies to electric vehicle consumers. The government estimates, however, that subsidizing as muc...

Although IBM is largely focused on computer science issues, it has labs all over the world that do all kinds of things – after all, IBM is also focused on making money. This page contains a good slice of what IBM is doing in the energy sphere. But I was most interested in its battery technology project for electric cars. IBM correctly notes drivers’ range anxiety, the fear that they’ll be in the middle of nowhere when the battery runs dry. Using today’s lithium-ion technology, electric cars can get about 100 miles on a charge – with the air conditioning blasting, 4 miles (kidding.) So that’s the problem. Here’s the proposed solution : Recognizing this [range anxiety], IBM started the Battery 500 project in 2009 to develop a new type of lithium-air battery technology that is expected to improve energy density tenfold, dramatically increasing the amount of energy these batteries can generate and store. Today, IBM researchers have successfully demonstrated the fundamental chem...

Yesterday the Union of Concerned Scientists published a new study about how using electric vehicles could help the U.S. cut fuel costs and reduce emissions. When auto companies begin manufacturing electric vehicles in larger numbers, the nation's 104 nuclear reactors (and counting) will be standing by to supply that zero emission electricity that UCS loves so much. Unfortunately, the press team at UCS apparently forgot how to spell the word nuclear (I know you're shocked) when they put together their report. From the press release : [T]o fully realize the benefits of EVs will require changing not just the kind of vehicles people drive, but also the power that drives them. Electric drive vehicles can be zero emission today, when powered by renewables like solar and wind. But it will take continued steps to ramp down coal and ramp up renewables so that every region can enjoy clean energy and the best benefits EVs have to offer. Given that wind and solar only generated about 3% o...

Energy Secretary Steven Chu wants you to know: “The rise of automobiles was driven by environmental pollution,” Chu said, explaining that horse manure had become a major problem in urban streets like New York City. “Carbon dioxide now is like horse manure then” — except, Chu noted, that carbon dioxide doesn’t have the same kind of odor problem that manure does. This caught my attention because it seemed to speak to a frustration that electric cars have not gained the traction that seemed likely by this time. But there may be more at work here. The change from horse to car was a key paradigm shift of the 20th century and had nothing whatever to do with clean air. Less smell and cleaner streets, yes, plus of course the technological advances that made the horseless carriage possible. Industrialization. The assembly line. Ford, etc. With such a large change comes large concerns. Here’s what Eugene Morgan, the fictional automobile pioneer in Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Amberso...

There’s talk of turning one of the furloughed plants in Japan back on: The turning point could be the northernmost region of Hokkaido, which is on the verge of formally restarting the first nuclear plant to come back online since the March 11 disasters. Hokkaido Gov. Harumi Takahashi announced at a press conference Wednesday that she will be asking the government for final approval, effectively giving the green light from the local level to restart the nuclear plant. Writer Cheng Hergn Shinn tries out the idea that Japanese opposition might take all nuclear facilities off-line next year, but that seems highly unlikely and is certainly the first we’ve heard of such an potential outcome. That supposition, though, is what creates this “turning point.” What seems as likely – more likely, really – is that HEPCO (correx: not TEPCO, as I originally wrote. Thanks to commenter Jose A. for the heads-up) has done a good job testing the Hokkaido plant, enough to satisfy Gov. Takahashi. An...

What about electric cars ? Plans in Europe call for about 1 million EVs on the road by 2020, and a lot that push centers around increasing the number of nuclear power plants to feed these vehicles. Let's face it, an EV that's charged via electricity generated at an oil or coal-burning plant doesn't do much to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels, so nuclear makes a lot of sense. And as costly and time-consuming as it is to erect a nuclear facility, it's likely easier and less expensive than relying on solar, wind or hydro-electric energy sources. So what does all this have to do with electric vehicles? If the events unfolding in Japan lead governments to question the safety and viability of nuclear power, then new plants will be slow to come online. If car buyers know that their EV is likely burning the same CO2-emitting fossil fuels as their neighbor's internal combustion engine, what's the point of paying more for something that's just as dirty,...

Want to see how complicated business can be? Consider : Nuclear Innovation North America LLC or NINA, the nuclear development company jointly owned by NRG Energy, Inc. and Toshiba, has awarded the engineering, procurement and construction contract for South Texas Project Units 3 & 4 to a restructured EPC consortium formed by Toshiba America Nuclear Energy Corporation, a US based Toshiba subsidiary, and The Shaw Group. Both the new nuclear units of the South Texas Project will use ABWR technology. The actual contract is a natural, as NRG owns 44 percent of the South Texas Project , so Toshiba and NRG have awarded a contract for an NRG part owned project to a Toshiba part owned subsidiary. Here’s how the Shaw Group fits in: Engineering service provider Shaw Group, Inc. announced Monday that it will expand its global strategic partnership with Japanese electronics maker Toshiba Corp. And one of the provisions: Under the global strategic partnership, Shaw will inv...

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins devoted his weekly column to a critical review of GM's electric car offering, the Chevy Volt. Mr. Jenkins made several important points, but perhaps the most important was recognizing that little will be gained if the electricity to recharge these cars comes from carbon-intensive sources. He notes the irony that "...the Volt rolls out amid news that an investor is abandoning a big U.S. nuclear project" (presumably he is referring to last weekend's announcement about Constellation's Calvert Cliffs 3 project). We're all for greater use of electricity in transportation. Using electricity produced by clean nuclear power plants, electric automobiles could help reduce carbon emissions from the transportation sector and begin to displace some of the oil used in motor fuels. That strikes us as a good thing for the nation and a great way to leverage our expertise in operating nuclear power plants safely and effic...

The electric car got another nudge—perhaps a significant nudge—towards reality with a new plan from the European Commission to standardize charging points for electric vehicles.  “The new European strategy will provide a supportive framework based on a twin-track approach: improving the efficiency of conventional engines and making ultra low-carbon mobility a reality for European consumers … The strategy also aims at achieving common standards for electrical cars so that they can be charged everywhere in the EU.” There is a bit of Eurocrat-ese to wade through here, but these two goals from the plan stood out:  Promote common standards that will allow all electric vehicles to be charged anywhere in the EU. Encourage installation of publicly accessible charging points. Sounds like a good start. A report released in conjunction with the plan , goes a little deeper on the two points. “However, fast charging with high voltage, public char...

Below we have a quote from the BBC about nuclear energy and electric/hybrid cars. It almost makes the point we wanted, but not quite, and it’s a little silly about where wind and solar fit into the equation. We poked around to see if someone has addressed this topic and stayed a little more on-point and found this from Halbert Fischel in the Weekly Standard: At the risk of some cross-border envy, Canada's Bruce Power Co. operates an eight-reactor plant on the shores of Lake Huron that produces 6.4 gigawatts. By upgrading our own 100-plus plants to that level, we could produce enough cheap electricity to competitively replace gasoline and charge the batteries of every potentially electrified car and light truck in the United States. An additional 40 such plants would be sufficient to power all our buses, heavy trucks, and trains. He goes a little pie in the sky after this, but why not? With 200 plants, augmented by existing and upgraded hydropower, we could replace al...

EWeek has up a roundup of electric, hybrid or incredibly fuel efficient cars that will be shown at the 2009 New York Auto Show and, presumably, at many auto shows around the country over the next year. You know what the first one will be : The third-generation Prius hybrid vehicle has more "oomph" under the hood than previous iterations, with an expanded 1.8-liter engine, 160 hp and roughly 50 miles per gallon for combined city/highway driving. But how about: The Mini E is powered by a 150 kw (201 hp) electric motor fed by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. The car has a range of 156 miles "under ideal conditions," and 104 miles "under normal conditions." The BMW Group’s public field trial will use 500 cars; actual mass production, however, could be a long time away. Or: The Karma’s sleek chassis moves from Point A to B utilizing a hybrid "Q Drive," featuring a gasoline engine that powers a generator that charges a lithiu...

We've sort of figured that if electric cars get a full hearing that they will not be plugged into a house socket, even a specialized one, but that a market will develop to sell voltaic gas. This seems at least intuitive, since the displacement of gas stations would encourage the development of an industry to replace them. We may well be wrong about this - how long it takes to juice a car may determine how it has to be done - but clearly some ideas need to start percolating. Here's one, courtesy of the always progressive city by the bay : The scheme involves a number of ground-breaking proposals to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles, including speeding up the installation of electric vehicle charging outlets on streets and in homes, and offering incentives for companies to install charging stations in the workplace. Local government will also work to harmonise standards across the region so that drivers of electric vehicles can travel the length and breadth of the Bay...

From the New York Times : Shai Agassi, a Silicon Valley technologist who was in competition to become chief executive of SAP, one of the world’s largest software companies, has re-emerged with a grand plan to reinvent the world’s automobile industry around battery-powered all-electric cars. Others are developing green cars, like the Tesla and Chevrolet Volt. However, Mr. Agassi is not planning to make cars, but instead wants to deploy an infrastructure of battery-charging stations in the United States, Europe and the developing world. The new system will sell electric fuel on a subscription basis and will subsidize vehicle costs through leases and credits. “We’re basically saying this is just like the cellular phone model,” he said. “If you think of Tesla as the iPhone, we’re AT&T.” Very, very interesting. Here's another passage that caught my eye: The economics will be more compelling in Europe, where gasoline is roughly twice as expensive as in the United States, he said. As...

It's called the Tender Scarlette. Read all about it at Hybrid Cars . Of course, because it's French, it might as well be a nuclear powered jeep.