NEI Nuclear Notes

We regularly return to the issue of water use and nuclear power plants because anti-nuclear activists can't help but manipulate or obscure the facts when it comes to explaining how much water is used to cool an operating reactor. The latest example comes from the Huffington Post where Kyle Rabin of the Grace Communications Foundation writes that thermoelectric power plants account for 45% of water withdrawals in the U.S. Which is where NEI's Bill Skaff comes into the picture. Here's his comment that you can find in the string below the article (emphasis mine): The discussion of electricity generation water use contains some misleading statements that mask the truth. Power plant water use consists of consumption, when water is evaporated and thus lost, and withdrawal, where water is removed from a water body but can be returned, totally or partially . The “outdated cooling technology” mentioned is a once-through cooling system, which cools by the coldness of the with...

Earlier this week, a pair of studies were published claiming that the world would soon face a critical shortage of drinking water, perhaps as soon as 2040 due to water consumed by power plants. I've come to view studies like these with a certain degree of skepticism given that they're often published by groups with an axe to grind. This week was no different, as I couldn't help but notice that one of the studies was being proffered by Benjamin Sovacool, a long-time anti-nuclear activist , as well as the Vermont Law School , folks that we've tangled with before. With that in mind, I reached out to NEI's Bill Skaff, our resident expert on nuclear energy and water use. Here's what he had to say. We know of no reputable climate change modeling that finds any potential U.S. drinking water scarcity to be the result of power plant operations. In fact, electricity makes possible the purification and pumping necessary to produce potable water. Moreover, electric...

Uh-oh. Here’s a benefit of nuclear energy that falls under the heading of unintended consequences : The shutdown of Xcel Energy’s Monticello Nuclear Power Plant on Friday is hurting fish and wildlife along the Mississippi River. The flow of warm water from the plant stopped after the unplanned shutdown, and by Saturday the water temperature downstream had dropped from 75 degrees to just 35 degrees, said Joe Stewig, Department of Natural Resources area fisheries manager. Wait, what? The plant output raised the temperature of the water 40 degrees? That in itself would be deadly to all kinds of flora and fauna – it would seem – but … I asked NEI’s William Skaff, director of policy management, about this – NEI did some work on water policy awhile ago but did not address this particular aspect. Bill said that it’s unlikely the plant’s water discharge could cause a 40 degree difference, but that Monticello may well be permitted to discharge warmer water – if not that m...

The following post was submitted by William Skaff, NEI's Director of Policy Development. The MIT study, “ Water-CO2 Trade-Offs in Electricity Generation Planning ,” that was recently published in Nature Climate Change Letters indicates that power sector water use increases as carbon emissions are reduced. The measure employed for water use is withdrawal. A closer look at the study indicates that this approach is seriously flawed and could lead to erroneous conclusions about nuclear power plants and cooling water. Climate change eliminates water from watersheds. It does not take water out and then put it back again. Therefore, the appropriate measurement of power plant water use in this context is consumption. This study is seriously flawed because its modeling employs withdrawal, when once-through cooling systems return 99 percent of the water withdrawn, 1  and the power sector as a whole returns 98 percent of water withdrawn, to the source water body. 2 For example, accor...

Earlier today, CNN aired a report by reporter Sandra Endo concerning how high temperatures are impacting the operations of American nuclear energy facilities. In initially reporting the story, CNN failed to contact any party that owns or operates any of the nations 104 nuclear reactors. After we contacted CNN, NEI's Steve Kerekes was interviewed for an updated version of the story, one that we've been led to believe will air sometime between 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. U.S. EDT today. The following response to the initial CNN report was written by NEI's Thaddeus Swanek: CNN has aired a report in which it failed to provide context on the water needs of power plants that draw cooling water from lakes, rivers and the ocean. Though all thermal power plants—coal, natural gas and nuclear—use water for cooling purposes, CNN focused solely on nuclear energy facilities. It also did not mention the electric sector's positive track record for maintaining power production du...

Earlier this week, the journal Nature Climate Change published a study concerning how warmer weather and reduced river flows might impact electricity generation at nuclear and coal-fired power plants. Here's how Reuters reported the findings: In a study published on Monday, a team of European and U.S. scientists focused on projections of rising temperatures and lower river levels in summer and how these impacts would affect power plants dependent on river water for cooling. The authors predict that coal and nuclear power generating capacity between 2031 and 2060 will decrease by between 4 and 16 percent in the United States and a 6 to 19 percent decline in Europe due to lack of cooling water. The nuclear energy industry isn't unfamiliar with the topic. Here at NEI Nuclear Notes, we first dealt with the issue during the Summer of 2006 when a heat wave struck Europe and forced a number of nuclear plants to reduce power. Back then, our points were pretty clear: the indu...

Yesterday afternoon, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a study that suggested that thermoelectric power plants were contributing to stress on the nation's supply of fresh water . For readers of NEI Nuclear Notes, this issue isn't exactly new. Back in 2006, we needed to push out some clarifying information (click here and here ) in the wake of the drought that struck Europe. Back then, the angle reporters would take targeted nuclear energy in isolation (speaking of reporters, see this from NEI's Steve Kerekes ), despite the fact that any steam cycle power plant has to deal with the same issues. At the time we pointed out that data from the U.S. Geological Service showed that the largest use of freshwater in the country was not electric power generation, but rather crop irrigation. NEI's Bill Skaff wrote the following response to the UCS study. Responsible environmental management must begin with a recognition of the water-energy nexus—large-scale electricity ...

Here are some interesting facts on the potential of nuclear desalination plants : Assuming that the same efficiency as the BN350 [reactor] setup were achieved in a conventional regenerative steam distillation plant, such a two-reactor [8-9 GW thermal APWR and EPR] driven desalination plant could therefore deliver about one million cubic meters of water per day (over one quarter of a billion US gallons), as well as more than half a gigawatt of electricity - more than enough for all plant operations as well as activities like pumping water, operating equipment and other internal activities. To put this another way, since one acre-foot is equal to 1234 cubic meters, such a desalination plant could produce 810 acre-feet of water per day or about 283,500 acre-feet per year. What that equates to: Slightly less than half the water consumed by the entire city of Los Angeles. Facts like these make me believe that we won't have serious water consumption problems in the future. If we run out...

Arizona's Fox News must have read my previous post . ;-) Here's a link to the video clip of the news channel discussing how the Palo Verde nuclear plant in Arizona uses waste-water to cool their reactors .

About every summer, nuclear energy opponents like to dust off their talking points by rehashing the claims that nuclear plants can't survive in the summer. This is due to the fact that droughts can possibly affect a plant's ability to cool themselves during operation. NEI then dusts off our prepared talking points in response and then the debate usually takes off in all directions . A key rebuttal piece to the opponents that often gets lost or forgotten in the debate is the fact that the largest nuclear plant in the U.S., Palo Verde , is in the middle of the desert and uses wastewater to cool itself. So it was great to read a post by Kate Galbraith at NYT's Green Inc highlighting this plant's features. “This is a desert here. We don’t have any choice,” said Jim McDonald, a spokesman for Arizona Public Service, which operates the Palo Verde plant and owns the largest share of it. He believes it is the only nuclear plant in the country to reuse treated wastewater — whic...

NEI recently updated its fact sheet on water consumption at nuclear plants . Below are some highlights ( the picture to the right is the cooling tower at the Shearon Harris nuclear plant in North Carolina) : Electric power generation is among the smallest users of water, accounting for about 3 percent of freshwater consumption in the United States, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). This is the same percentage used by industries and the same used to raise livestock. The largest consumption of water is for irrigation, at 80 percent, followed by residential use at 7 percent, the USGS said. Residential consumption of freshwater is nearly double the consumption of freshwater for electric power generation. According to the latest USGS figures, the residential sector consumes more than 6.6 billion gallons of freshwater per day, compared with the power sector, which consumes 3.8 billion gallons per day. A typical nuclear plant supplies power for 740,000 homes and consumes the eq...

Over the past few weeks, we've seen a lot of stories concerning water consumption and nuclear power plants , which means plenty of anti-nukes are trying to take advantage by spreading plenty of FUD about the issue. To get the real deal on what's going on, check out this fact sheet NEI recently published on the topic : According to the U.S. Geological Survey, thermoelectric power generation accounts for only 3.3 percent of freshwater consumption in this country, the same percentage as industrial use and raising livestock. Residential use accounts for 7.1 percent of water consumption, while commercial use and mining are the least at 1.2 percent each. The largest consumption of water is for irrigation, at 80.6 percent. Keep those numbers in mind.