NEI Nuclear Notes

This morning on NPR, Morning Edition ran a feature on France's nuclear reactor fleet and how about a third of those reactors had to cut power during the European heat wave of 2003 . While I'm not going to quibble with the basic premise of the piece, there are a number of facts that NPR left out that taken together, fail to show the entire picture. The situation described in France and occurring right now at Browns Ferry here in the U.S. is not unique to nuclear reactors, it's something that can affect any power plant that uses the steam cycle -- and that's about 80% of our current generating capacity. For example, three coal plants in Canada had to go off line recently for just the same reason. We also need to keep in mind that this is not an operating problem, rather, utilities are simply acting as responsible stewards of the environment. As our CEO Skip Bowman put it in a note to us here at NEI this morning: Commercial reactors typically operate under licenses/agr...