NEI Nuclear Notes

2012 may fade away and 2013 arrive with undo chipperness, but It’s all a continuum. Last year’s narratives will continue into the new year, a few cameo players from 2012 will gain additional prominence in 2013 – I’m thinking small reactors here – and, to paraphrase the tagline of an old horror comic, always expect the unexpected. So let’s not fill up a top ten list – that might be the expected thing to do on December 31; instead, let’s see if we can find some recent quotes that summarize (some of) the themes of the last year even if that is not exactly their purpose. Take this , for example, from the Wall Street Journal: But phasing out nuclear power, which helps meet nearly 75% of France's electricity needs and about 27% across the EU, could deprive the continent of a key source of energy and jobs, making it more dependent on fossil-fuel imports. Higher fuel bills could also hurt European economies, economists warned. And closing nuclear reactors—which emit little to no gr...

From the end of a column in the Guardian by Neil Hirst of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change : All in all, there is no simple answer to this question. If you believe strongly enough that we should phase out nuclear then with sufficiently strong political commitment around the world, this could be done consistently with tackling climate change. However, as a practical matter, we are far from being on course to limit carbon emissions to levels consistent with a 2C target. Ruling out one of the major low-carbon technology options currently available is bound to add to the difficulty and the risk of what is already looking like a very tough challenge. Balancing the problems of nuclear power against its contribution to climate mitigation (and other energy policy objectives) is an inescapable dilemma. Hirst knows as well as we do that finding “sufficiently strong political commitment around the world” to shutter nuclear energy is as likely as finding sufficiently strong polit...

I like the way the Sundance Film Festival tries to square a bunch of circles in selling its showings (beginning January 18) of Robert Stone’s Pandora’s Promise, his pro-nuclear energy documentary: The atomic bomb, the specter of a global nuclear holocaust, and disasters like Fukushima have made nuclear energy synonymous with the darkest nightmares of the modern world. But what if everyone has nuclear power wrong? What if people knew that there are reactors that are self-sustaining and fully controllable and ones that require no waste disposal? What if nuclear power is the only energy source that has the ability to stop climate change? Need we note that domestic nuclear energy, the subject of the film, has nothing whatever to with the atomic bomb or “the specter of a global nuclear holocaust?” I hope not. If you allow that, “Darkest nightmares of the modern world” might seem a bit hyperbolic, yes? But fine: if it inspires people to wander in and see the film, fine. They may g...

They have elections : More than 20 months after a catastrophic nuclear disaster that triggered massive protests against atomic energy and fueled public opinion polls backing the phase-out of reactors, a pro-nuclear party won Japan’s parliamentary election. The result left anti-nuclear proponents in shock Monday, struggling to understand how the Liberal Democratic Party not only won, but won in a landslide. Japan has a parliamentary system. This election was for the lower chamber, like ours called the House of Representatives, and elected by direct vote. The upper chamber, the House of Councilors, has a rather complicated system for election (part proportional based on party, part direct based on candidate). The House of Representatives will select a new Prime Minister later this month. In any event, you might wonder if this means that the accident at Fukushima Daiichi has receded as an issue. Probably not – the Japanese national paper the Asahi Shimbun, polled the attitud...

A letter from Martha Gordon of Monmouth Oregon to the Statesman-Journal of Salem (Ore.), re-rendered as a poem: As one survivor of the Dust Bowl who experienced the failure of one mistaken idea, I am vitally afraid of earth-shaking experiments. Our experience with nukes, you would think, would rival that of a child learning about fire by getting burned. Our wind power, while not so fruitful in this water-lush year, is a “money in the bank” recourse for the dry years predicted to come. How can we justify more nukes on our beautiful Columbia? I was struck by Ms. Gordon’s (who must be well into her eighties if she remembers the dust bowl) artful arrangement of words in making her lyrical and somewhat mysterious statement about the vagaries of energy. So it’s not pro-nuclear – or is it?  Or is that even the point? Wind, nuclear, natural gas – she alludes to their power generating potential and, like the first person confronted ...

The WIPP facility Sometimes, it just takes a little push. For example, The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future (whew! – let’s call it the BRC) made a number of recommendations on how to proceed with used nuclear fuel without Yucca Mountain. One recommendation still promoted the use of one or more permanent repositories just like Yucca Mountain, but the interest here – and the push - is on a second, related suggestion: interim storage sites. However many of these there would be, they would be many fewer than the nuclear facilities now holding used nuclear fuel – if the idea is to decrease the number of sites with used fuel, then this is an especially plausible idea. Even better, the BRC said that communities could suggest themselves as hosts for these interim sites. The federal government could then negotiate terms with the communities, assuming there are viable locations to put the sites. This idea arose from a visit the BRC members took to the Department of En...

Michael Waldron, who is director of nuclear communications at Florida Power & Light , takes an unusually pugnacious tone in this op-ed in the Miami Sun-Sentinel. He is defending the concept of cost recovery, a process by which a company can levy a small surcharge on ratepayers to improve or build reactors. In this case, FPL is using this to upgrade their reactors at Turkey Point and do some early work on two more potential reactors there: Over the past several years, Florida's nuclear cost recovery statute has allowed FPL to upgrade our existing nuclear plants and add over 500 new megawatts of clean, cost-effective power-generation to our fleet.  To put this in perspective, this is about the same amount of electricity generated by a medium-sized nuclear power plant without having to build one. Waldron says that FPL is saving a lot of money for its customers – for itself, too, of course, but that also benefits customers: For example, the 400 new megawatts we have alread...