NEI Nuclear Notes

The following statement comes from NEI's Media Relations Department: The U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works held a hearing today on the federal government’s program to dispose of used nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants and high-level radioactive waste from U.S. defense programs at a geologic repository planned for Yucca Mountain, Nev. The Nuclear Energy Institute’s chief nuclear officer, Marvin Fertel, made the following comments about the program. “As the Department of Energy moves steadily closer to the submission of a license application for the planned Yucca Mountain repository to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, today’s hearing was an opportune time to note that there is some 20 years of solid science undergirding this program. Over the past two decades, billions of dollars have been spent on analyses of the repository site by many of our nation’s leading scientific experts. This analysis will continue during construction and operation o...

Here's a summary of what went on in the energy markets last week: Electricity peak prices at the listed hubs below decreased about $4-15/MWh except for Palo Verde and SP 15. Cooler temperatures played a role in falling prices at the Eastern and ERCOT hubs. Four out of seven nuclear reactors in the Western region were down for most of the week which contributed to moderate price increases at the SP 15 and Palo Verde hubs (Platts, see pages 1 and 3). Gas prices at the Henry Hub fell from $6.92/MMBtu to $6.55/MMBtu. Moderate weather is considered the cause for declining gas prices for the week (EIA). Gas futures also fell $0.33 to $7.01/MMBtu for November (see pages 1, 2 and 3). NOx allowance prices fell $100 to $770/ton last week (see pages 1 and 3). Estimated nuclear plant availability slipped from 83 to 82 percent last week with two reactors beginning and three reactors finishing refueling outages. Palo Verde 1 was offline to repair an auxiliary feedwater pump (see pages 2 and 4). ...

This week on the Nightly Business Report on PBS, the program is taking a look at the future of nuclear energy with reports each evening as well as some blog posts . Stop by and take a look.

Details via the AP . Expect some video later today.

Kyle Woodlock, the grad student at Georgia Tech who kicked off his YouTube career with a rebuttal to Harvey Wasserman and his "No Nukes" compatriots , has just published a new video where he makes a fair comparison between nuclear energy and renewables : I'm anxious to see the next video.

Visit Futurismic .

Ruth Sponsler has a review of Gwyneth Cravens' new book, The Power to Save the World . Be sure to give it a look. I'm sure many of you will recall that we first pointed out Cravens and her book in a post back in September , before also finding news of a presentation before Stewart Brand's Long Now Foundation .