NEI Nuclear Notes

Thanks to Dan and Rod , we have four new blogs added to our blogroll. First is Yes Vermont Yankee whose writer, Meredith Angwin, has put herself through the angst and some joys of going to anti-nuclear shindigs. Her latest experience at an anti-nuclear potluck was a bit inspiring in the fact that the two sides were able to get along quite well. Next is Nuke Power Talk which is written by Gail Marcus and what caught mine and Dan’s eyes about her writing was her piece, New Year Reflections . In it, she offers six resolutions for the nuclear industry (highlighted below) along with compelling explanations at her piece : 1. We should not count our chickens before they hatch. 2. We should not rest on our laurels. 3. We should not make promises we can't keep. 4. We should provide the public with simple, but reasoned--and accurate--arguments. 5. We should not fight ourselves. 6. We should face our own faults, and do something about them. Third is Patrick...

Make no bones about it : "Let there be no doubt. Let there be no mistake. Let there be no mischaracterization: I'm a strong advocate for the development of more nuclear energy in Arizona," [Gov. Jan] Brewer told the conference of elected officials and business leaders at the Arizona Biltmore Resort and Spa. " Nuclear power is at the cornerstone of our clean-energy future." That's about as definitive as it gets. And why is Gov. Brewer convinced nuclear is the way to go? But Brewer stressed its value as a consistent energy source with stable costs and no greenhouse-gas emissions. There are about 3,000 employees at Palo Verde. Her enthusiasm was duly noted. "She was passionate about it. She was almost strident. I said, 'Wow,' " said Martin Shultz, vice president of intergovernmental affairs for Pinnacle West Capital Corp., parent of Arizona Public Service, which operates Palo Verde. Now, let's point out that Brewer also supp...

A little while ago, we noted a effort by a West Virginia artist to put force behind the work and lives of coal miners through photography, a very worthy project. Less directly aesthetic in nature but interesting in its own way is the I Am Vermont Yankee project, which aims to show nuclear workers in a similar light. This is the kind of thing that really brings home the fact that nuclear energy has benefits well beyond the economic - clean, inexpensive electricity and well paid jobs among them. In so far as work is central to a person's self-image, then showing those self-images - as this site does via a series of videos - demonstrates that the nuclear industry is as vibrant a point of pride for its workers as coal mining. We can't argue with it. A PR pitch? Sure, to an extent, maybe. But we like it better then the singing plant workers we've seen in various TV ads - we reall like its simplicity and unadorned quality. Props to Vermont Yankee. (And you can leave mess...

The Victorville (Calif.) Daily News writes something we basically agree with : Monday the Wall Street Journal reported that a Korean-led consortium has won a landmark contract, valued at about $20.4 billion, to build four nuclear reactors in the United Arab Emirates. U.A.E., remember, is awash in oil, yet has opted to build the reactors. Why? U.A.E.’s leaders are not fools. It’s cheaper (and ultimately safer if one considers that nuclear reactors do not emit any of those pollutants enviros consider unsafe to human health and the planet, such as CO2) to build the plants so the oil saved can be sold elsewhere. But the editorial this appears in is not really about nuclear energy. Instead, it dings Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for wanting to make national monuments out of about one million acres of Mojave desert so as to block development of wind farms and solar arrays. We looked around to see what this was about : The area of concern to Feinstein is between the Mojave Na...

Reuters has put up an interesting “Fact Box” detailing which countries in the middle East and African want to knock together a few nuclear energy plants. It includes countries we’ve discussed here but a fair number we haven’t, including Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Libya, Namibia, Niger, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and UAE. Some of these are in very early stages of planning and the list is not free of red flags ready to spring up. But it’s a great overview and it’s interesting to see countries with significant supplies of uranium pursue nuclear energy. That’s energy security writ large, something uranium-rich, nuclear-free Australia should consider. ---- There have been a few news stories about the Japanese reluctance to work with India on the latter’s nuclear efforts, but we admit we steered around it because we didn’t quite get the gist of it – India has plenty of partners without worrying about Japan. But apparently, it’s important to the two countries...

Some bits and bytes from the radiant world around us: Hoh Kui-seek provides an almost poetic overview of the nuclear half-century before settling on his point: the rise of his native South Korea as a supplier of nuclear technology: This is the valuable fruit of Korea’s 50-year effort to develop nuclear energy technology, including the sacrifices of the local residents who spent their careers working in nuclear power plants, the sweat of scientists and the dream of former presidents. I send a big round of applause to the people who worked hard to nurture Korea’s nuclear energy development. We do, too. (He’s talking about the sale of a plant to UAE.) Not a substantial piece, but it has an individual quality we really liked. --- At Good.is, Cyrus Wadia wonders where the heck solar energy is and comes up with free reasons for its lag: (1) the cost is still too high for most geographic regions (2) issues of scale (3) the sun sets every day These are all leg...

We know it’s getting to be top ten time of the year (and decade), but we’ve never really enjoyed these summary wrap-ups. After all, time like the tide is rather fluid and what seemed most important in the short term of a year fades before much more time has passed. Even the top ten movies or albums seem vagrant, the results of a passing fancy. So, speaking for ourselves, we’ll probably bypass the mania for top ten and move right on to passing you along to someone else’s top ten list. It both confirms and spoils our potted formulation. It is Greentechmedia’s Top Ten High Concepts of 2009 . We actually like it because it focuses on items that may not come to fruition at all, but simply demonstrate the good work that goes on in industry and university labs all the time. The great thing about such projects is that they can be quite valuable even when not workable – the lessons learned can be quite instructive. Take, for example, number 3: Osmotic Pressure Gradients: In OPGs, f...