NEI Nuclear Notes

One of the strengths of the electric system is its diversity, with energy flowing from generators that use a variety of fuels. But conflicting government policies and poorly constructed markets are reducing that diversity, and the result will be electricity that is more expensive, more prone to price spikes, and less reliable, according to a new study. The problem may not be immediately evident to consumers, for whom the light switch on the wall is like a water faucet connected to a vast system of reservoirs and feeder streams. As long as the water comes out, the user doesn’t really care where each drop came from. The consumer is well served by the diversity of supply, even if the diversity isn’t obvious. The same is true for electric current. But the power grid is changing, according to a report issued Tuesday by the economic analysis firm IHS Markit, Ensuring Resilient and Efficient Electricity Generation: The Value of the Current Diverse U.S. Power Supply Portfolio , which l...

Energy experts are at war over a radical assertion that by mid-century the United States will be able to meet all its energy needs with wind, solar and hydro power. The claim was made in 2015 by four academic researchers , led by Mark Z. Jacobson, for the continental United States, and it asserts that those renewables will replace not just the coal and natural gas used to make electricity, but also the gasoline and diesel that run cars and trucks, and the gas used in home heating. The paper is regularly cited by environmentalists who claim that the current fleet of U.S. nuclear reactors could close without any consequences to grid reliability. But last week, a group of prominent researchers, some from Stanford and UC-Berkeley, and others from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, Carnegie Mellon and other mainstream organizations, published a second paper that said that while they support the expanded use of renewables, Professor Jacobson et al. were dreaming....

Matt Wald The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior director of policy analysis and strategic planning at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald . California researchers have sketched out an American energy system that they say can be powered almost entirely by wind, water and sunlight, by 2050 . It’s an interesting thought experiment, with some valid insights, but it’s a little like hopping from New York to California on one foot. Even if you could do it, would you really want to? The paper, summarized here , is not just a recipe for just powering the electric system, but for converting everything that uses oil or natural gas to run on electricity instead – including ships, cars and even airplanes. The airplanes would fly on hydrogen derived from water molecules split with electricity. Electrification is almost always a good idea, because it improves efficiency, cuts pollution, and can cut geopolitical risk. We are in the early stages (at least, we hope it’s th...

Tufts University Prof. Ujjayant Chakravorty From the earliest days of the blog, we've tried to introduce our readers to personalities who support the expanded use of nuclear energy. That was the whole idea of a series of posts called, " Another Blogger for Nuclear Energy ." In the same vein, I'd like to present Ujjayant Chakravorty , an economic professor at Tufts University who specializes in resource and environmental economics. A graduate of the prestigious IIT in Delhi, Prof. Chakravorty came to Tufts from the University of Alberta. For him, supporting the expansion of nuclear energy is all about helping the world transition to clean energy. Here's what he had to day in an interview with Phys.org: What are the advantages of nuclear power? If you look at where base load power comes from—the least amount of energy we need to provide power—you need a major source, something that is non-stop. Nuclear provides non-stop generation. It's not like dep...

In 2008, NEI published a study based on an analysis by the Management Information Systems, Inc. that detailed the amount of subsidies that go to each energy source. The study has just been updated and now shows 60 years of energy incentives . Here’s the intro: With concern about the price and availability of energy increasing, public interest in the role of federal incentives in shaping today’s energy marketplace and future energy options has risen sharply. That interest has met with frustration in some quarters and half-truths in others because of the difficulty in developing a complete picture of the incentives that influence today’s energy options. The difficulty arises from the many forms of incentives, the variety of ways that they are funded, managed and monitored, and changes in the agencies responsible for administering them. It is no simple matter to identify incentives and track them through year-to-year changes in legislation and budgets over the 50-plus years that...

For the sixth time in the carnival’s 15-month history, we have the privilege of hosting. Each time we’ve written, the number of contributions from pro-nuke bloggers has increased. Today we have posts from 13 folks discussing all sorts of topics. Inspiration Into Action Suzy Hobbs at the ANS Nuclear Cafe asked: Inspiring people to learn about energy issues is a huge step, but how do we turn that inspiration into action? Her answer: My best piece of advice to a newly minted nuclear supporter is to be bold and talk about it . Talk about it every chance you get. Bring it up, even at the risk of creating or escalating a conflict. … Will Davis at Atomic Power Review did just that. He recently chatted with a friend who had seen the Davis-Besse plant at a distance while on vacation. Addressing his friend’s concerns, Davis started a frank discussion about perceived risk and how big media drives and controls it. … Rod Adams hosted two gentlemen on his Atomic Podcast S...

In 2008, the Energy Information Administration published a report that provided a snapshot of the amount of federal incentives each energy technology received during the year 2007. Three years later, EIA released an updated analysis that looked at the federal incentives received in 2010 . Below is the summary table EIA generated by examining the energy incentives for all sectors (p. xii). Renewables by far have received more incentives in 2010 than any other beneficiary: 40 percent of the total. If we look at the incentives received in just the electric sector (a subset of the overall energy sector), the numbers expose even more favor for renewables, which garnered 55 percent of the electric sector’s incentives in 2010 (p. xviii). What about nuclear? Incentives for nuclear have largely been for research and development. Since 1978, nuclear has received more R&D incentives than any other technology. Most of the R&D expenditures for nuclear took place in the 1970s a...

Earlier today Congressman Ed Markey sought to score political points for renewables by referencing a monthly report on energy use (pdf) by the Energy Information Administration. Here’s Markey: Buried in a report issued by the U.S. Energy Information Administration are these facts: domestic production of renewable energy has now surpassed nuclear energy, and is swiftly gaining on oil. In their “Monthly Energy Review” released last week, the EIA said that in the first quarter of 2011, total domestic production of renewable energy (2.245 quadrillion BTUs of wind, solar, water, geothermal, biomass/biofuels) outpaced domestic production of nuclear energy (2.125 quadrillion BTUs). While words and numbers can explain a lot, below is the applicable chart that shows trends in U.S. energy production since 1973. Nuclear energy surpassed renewable energy in the early 1990s and has been ahead for most of the last 20 years. Primary Energy Production (Quadrillion Btu) p. 4 There’s ...

Over the past week or so at Grist, it’s been hit-jobs galore against nuclear. A fellow by the name of Arne Jungjohann published four negative pieces loaded with jaded contentions to stir up discussion. Later in the campaign, another fellow by the name of Paul Gipe brought up a flawed study on nuclear costs and risks to add to Grist’s polemic. Here is the first of what will be a 3-part series of responses: Grist’s Part 1 - Why is the United States so obsessed with nuclear power? To begin, here’s Mr. Jungjohann’s dramatic start to his series : Fukushima provides enough grounds to take every single nuclear power plant on the face of the Earth off-line. Regardless of whether the cause is an earthquake, a tsunami, a flood, a plane crash, a terrorist attack, or simple human error, failure of the emergency power system leads to uncontrollable consequences. Enough grounds? Uncontrollable consequences? Although Fukushima Daiichi is still recovering, an historical tsunami is the th...

Cleantechnica has a post referencing a report (pdf) from the Worldwatch Institute that claims renewables (wind, solar and biomass) have surpassed nuclear energy. This is only true if we were to look at one metric: capacity additions (megawatts). A more important metric, however, is output (megawatt-hours). Here’s the Institute’s claim (page 4): In 2010, for the first time, worldwide cumulated installed capacity of wind turbines (193 gigawatts*), biomass and waste-to-energy plants (65 GW), and solar power (43 GW) reached 381 GW, outpacing the installed nuclear capacity of 375 GW prior to the Fukushima disaster. Good job for those technologies. They still have a long ways to go, however, to be able to match the same output as nuclear. Below is a chart showing the electric generation fuel shares worldwide from the International Energy Agency’s 2010 Key Stats report (pdf). Nuclear provided 13.5% of the world’s electricity in 2008 and renewables provided 2.8% (excluding hy...

Yesterday, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, General Electric’s Jeff Immelt and other big name CEOs who are members of the American Energy Innovation Council released a report that makes five important recommendations for US energy policy . Why did they do this? As business leaders, we feel that America’s current energy system is deficient in ways that cause serious harm to our economy, our national security, and our environment. To correct these deficiencies, we must make a serious commitment to modernizing our energy system with cleaner, more efficient technologies. Such a commitment should include both robust, public investments in innovative energy technologies as well as policy reforms to deploy these technologies on a large scale. By tapping America’s entrepreneurial spirit and longstanding leadership in technology innovation, we can set a course for a prosperous, sustainable economy—and take control of our energy future. Is nuclear included as an innovative energy technology?...

The two big posts everyone was raving about over the weekend come from Depleted Cranium’s Steve Packard and Brave New Climate’s Barry Brook. Steve clearly spent a great deal of man-hours providing a number of reasons Why You Can’t Build a Bomb From Spent Fuel . As well, Barry Brook always gets a heavy conversation going, this time by asking if climate sceptics and anti-nukes matter . There’s also been quite the discussion lately among many of the nuclear bloggers about natural gas. Depleted Cranium came out with another great piece that refreshes everyone's memories about gas prices by using a colorful graph . Rod Adams, as always, has something to say about gas – his latest on the gas industry’s advertisements and comparing tritium leaks to a methane leak were revealing. And Kirk Sorenson jabs at Climate Progress, the Sierra Club and a little bit at Greenpeace for their lack of acknowledgement of “a catastrophic explosion [two weeks ago] at a natural-gas-fired powerplant unde...

Since the President’s support for nuclear was made clear at the State of the Union, our nuclear critics have dramatically ramped up their opposition to nuclear, particularly on loan guarantees. Besides continuously repeating the debunked 50 percent default rate for nuclear , one detail often neglected by our critics is how much loan volume is proposed as well as currently available for various technologies. Below is a slide used by Jonathan Silver, Executive Director of the Loan Guarantee Program Office, in a briefing on his Office’s 2011 budget. Currently, efficiency and renewables have $52.3 billion in loan volume, advanced vehicles have $25B, nuclear has $20.5B, and the fossil and fossil/EERE mix have $12.0B. If the President’s budget proposal is passed as is, nuclear will have almost as much loan volume as efficiency and renewables. Maybe one of the reasons our nuclear critics neglect to mention this fact is because the proposed loan volume for nuclear makes it about equal ...

Mr. Elliott Negin, media director for the Union of Concerned Scientists, published the same jaded piece at Seeking Alpha and Greentech Media on how nuclear power is “Too Costly to Revive.” He begins by painting a somewhat rosy picture of the nuclear industry but then begins to dish it out by discussing the “industry’s Achilles’ heel” (cost of construction). The nuclear industry likes to point out that it has low production costs, which it does. What it doesn't mention, however, are its rapidly escalating capital costs, those associated with paying the cost of plant construction, including financing. Well, we like to tout the good cost numbers of nuclear and of course our critics like to point out the not-so-good numbers. So which is it? According to EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2010 released last month, nuclear’s estimated costs are definitely competitive with other technologies . If you look at the total levelized unsubsidized costs of the emission-free technologie...

Barry Brook published a great piece on the contradictory thinking of anti-nuclear environmentalists . It was posted a few days ago and is now up to almost 100 comments. He’s found 32 hypocrisies so far (with the help of others) and below is a taste of a few: 1. They claim renewables can replace fossil fuels, then can’t see the problem with leaning on fossil fuel gas to back them up when they fail to do so. 2. They claim nuclear can’t load follow, but ignore the fact that renewables can’t supply on-demand. (They also say nuclear can’t load follow, but forget that nuclear submarines… work). 3. They excuse gas for emitting 50% less CO2 than coal when producing electricity, but won’t accept nuclear, which emits 100% less CO2 than coal. 4. They claim we don’t need baseload power, then eagerly promote renewable baseload alternatives e.g., geothermal and solar with heat storage. … 20. If someone like me comes out supporting nuclear power, then I’m no longer worth lis...

Actually, there are only just three recent studies/reports I'd like to bring to your attention. The first comes from Ted Rockwell (pdf) at Learning About Energy . Colleagues: Attached is a list of purported facts about the use of nuclear energy for generating electricity, and purported facts about the principal, post-fossil alternatives: wind, solar and biofuels. There are no conclusions or recommendations here, just facts. Just real-world facts, no predictions or estimates or opinions. I don’t know of any other document that performs this function. In it, there are some interesting safety stats on wind (p. 8) that I was unaware of and Mr. Rockwell includes some commentary on Amory Lovins' way of life that makes for some good reading. Definitely will be a useful document. ... Next study to check out comes from the OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency . Earlier this week, NEA released a document on the perspective of nuclear energy and how it can address climate change (pdf). Scen...

More than a month ago, Mr. Craig Severance wrote about his lively debate on new nuclear costs with NEI’s Leslie Kass and in response, we posted this . The following week, Mr. Severance responded timely to us and now it’s our turn again. We’re on our second round of posts and the debate has gotten into the weeds. The statements on nuclear from Mr. Severance have become more glaring, in my opinion, so that simply letting just a few of the statements go would be a mistake. Besides the needless analogies and repeating literally half of his rebuttal with previous literature, there are some major interpretation issues Mr. Severance assumes in his latest rebuttal that need airing. (Disclaimer: you're about to read a really long post with no pictures and visuals, hope you enjoy and make it through it!) “Black Box” From Mr. Severance's latest post: The NEI fight-back response is welcome in that we are blowing open the "Black Box" of hidden assumptions about the costs of new ...