NEI Nuclear Notes

This evening in Pleasantville, NY at the Jacob Burns Film Center , Robert Stone's new documentary, Pandora's Promise , will have its New York premiere. Following the screening, Stone will have a discussion with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. of Riverkeeper about the film. The discussion will be moderated by Andrew Revkin of the New York Times . NEI will be in attendance, and we'll be following the discussion live via our Twitter feed, @n_e_i . Please check in around 9:00 p.m. U.S. EDT for our live coverage. So Where Can You See Pandora's Promise ? The official opening will be in New York City on June 12 at  Sunshine Cinema  on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Two days later, on June 14, the film will open in an additional 15 cities nationwide ( Atlanta ,  Berkeley ,  Boston ,  Chicago ,  Denver ,  Houston ,  Irvine ,  Los Angeles ,  Minneapolis ,  Philadelphia ,  San Diego ,  San Francisco ,  Seattle ,  St. Lou...

Earlier today, NEI's Steve Kerekes spoke to the Washington Post concerning the announcement today by Southern California Edison that they intended to close the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station : “This is a situation that is unique to Southern California Edison and the replacement of steam generators at the San Onofre reactors,” said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the NEI, who added that the closures were “a blow to California’s energy diversity.”  He said that “this situation underscores the need for an efficient and effective regulatory process that results in timely decisions on the operation of these critical energy resources.” He said that independent firms had endorsed plans to restart San Onofre’s Unit 2 and that “it’s simply intolerable to delay decisions that impact millions of customers and the company’s obligation to provide electricity to those customers.” For additional links and coverage, please follow our Twitter feed .

NEI’s Top Industry Practice Awards recognize innovation in the nuclear energy industry. Presented at NEI’s annual conference, the awards honor accomplishments that help the industry improve safety, streamline processes and increase efficiency.  In a special series of articles this week, Nuclear Energy Overview highlights the challenges and successes of five winners. The winners of the TIP Training Award further enhanced their facility’s training by developing a way for reactor operators to hone their skills through advanced simulator training. The plant simulation department at American Electric Power ’s D.C. Cook facility in Michigan developed a 17-foot-by-7-foot rear-projection touchscreen that supports several different virtual simulations, including control room panels, safety-related field equipment and chemistry training. The system, which also includes computers for 30 students, is designed to mimic the responses of real equipment. “You flip a switch, you turn a kn...

More than a few folks have passed along a news clip to us from The Chattanoogan detailing another " study " by Joseph Mangano of the Radiation and Public Health Project and the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League (BREDL) claiming that they've discovered higher mortality rates in populations living near the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant . We don't believe this study is credible. Mangano and company are making these claims despite the fact that nuclear power plants only account for .1% of the radiation that a typical American is exposed to over the course of a year . Meanwhile, exposures from life saving medical procedures like CT scans and X-Rays account for about 50% . Putting that aside, a number of third party experts and journalists have regularly taken turns debunking Mangano's research. In 2011, Michael Moyer of Scientific American said the following about one Mangano study that claimed Americans were suffering from severe health effects in the wake ...

NEI’s Top Industry Practice Awards recognize innovation in the nuclear energy industry. Presented at NEI’s annual conference, the awards honor accomplishments that help the industry improve safety, streamline processes and increase efficiency. In a special series of articles this week, our publication Nuclear Energy Overview highlights the challenges and successes of five winners. This year’s Westinghouse Combustion Engineering Award went to a gargantuan project— NextEra Energy completed the largest extended power uprate project in history, adding more than 700 megawatts of additional generating capacity across four reactors in Florida and two in Wisconsin. With more than 30 million hours worked to complete the uprate, NextEra’s project called on a workforce of thousands, an economic boon to the communities that host the facilities. Terry Jones, vice president of nuclear power uprates, stressed the importance of instilling in the workers the nuclear energy industry’s safety cul...

NEI’s Top Industry Practice Awards recognize innovation in the nuclear energy industry. Presented at NEI’s annual conference, the awards honor accomplishments that help the industry improve safety, streamline processes and increase efficiency. In a special series of articles this week, our publication Nuclear Energy Overview highlights the challenges and successes of five winners. Rachel Doss’ team at Duke Energy’s Oconee nuclear energy facility in South Carolina earned the 2013 AREVA Vendor Award, but its project—developing and implementing guidelines for inspecting and evaluating pressurized water reactor internals—was many years in the making. Rather than scheduling reactor internal inspections over multiple refueling outages, Duke’s winning team performed one of the industry’s largest-ever reactor vessel inspections, examining more than 6,500 reactor components during one outage at the Oconee 1 reactor. Its scope required planning with vendors, performing numerous risk ass...

Writer Mark Gunther over at the Energy Collective talks about his hesitation to renew his Greenpeace membership: If Greenpeace manages to persuade the US or other governments to "eliminate nuclear power"- that's what the headline [of the renewal letter] says - the risk of catastrophic climate change will grow much worse. Climate activists [and]environmentalists who  support nuclear power include Stewart Brand (in his excellent book Whole Earth Discipline ), ex-DOE chief Steven Chu, contrarians Michael Shellenberger and Ted Norhaus (see Going Green? Then Go Nuclear ), the former British prime minister Tony Blair, economist Jeffrey Sachs and ex-NASA scientist James Hansen. You could throw in current DOE Secretary Ernest Moniz (“Moniz is an advocate for a low-carbon future and has, in a variety of forums, promoted the use of nuclear energy to get there.” – from the National Journal ) and President Barack Obama if you want. Gunther also brings up our old bête n...