NEI Nuclear Notes

You have to love Fox News. Even in a fairly straightforward story about small reactors, it  amps up the controversy, even when there is none : A boon to the economy? Or a boondoggle? That's the debate raging over a new nuclear technology that -- depending on your perspective -- is either a game-changer in electrical generation, or a failure-in-the-making that will fleece taxpayers for a half-billion dollars. If there is any kind of debate, these really are not the terms of it – small reactors are neither a game changer nor a potential fleecing. They are a promising application of a technology – and they interest the federal government – and that’s it. Some of the players are new, some are veterans, but none have been shown as potential swindlers – I suppose investors can always be swindled, but the government has no reason to believe it. Nor does Fox. This bit gets to the nub of the story in an interesting way, although I don’t think the interviewee is answering the ...

The new NEI website has arrived! Over the course of 22 months, we created a robust site specifically with our members and stakeholders in mind. The result is a site that is faster and better organized so you can find the best intel on the nuclear energy industry in a click of a mouse. The first thing you’ll notice about the new site is that the industry’s story is told in a more visually compelling way. We use multimedia throughout the site – including photos , infographics and videos – to illustrate the policy issues that matter most to the industry. What else will you find? Brand-new sections like Why Nuclear Energy? and the Knowledge Center , which position nuclear energy as a necessary part of the electricity portfolio to meet the growing demand for power. Plus, the site features an all-inclusive News and Media section, a Google Earth  map of all nuclear plants in the United States and an intelligent Advanced Search function. Take a few moments now to explore NEI’s...

Georgia Power created this time lapse footage of Vogtle 3 and 4 construction (perhaps in ancient Rome based on the title treatment). Very nice. But just for fun - and because this video reminded me of it - here is a 1901 film informally called Building Up and Demolishing the Star Theater. The demolishing is in time lapse forward motion and the building up is the same in reverse motion. it was produced and directed by F.S. Armitage for the American Biograph Co., later home to D.W. Griffith, and became part of the National Film Registry in 2002. As far as anyone has determined, it is the first film made entirely of stop motion footage. That makes Georgia Power's film the scion of an exceptionally long legacy.

What can be happening in editorials these days? Is nuclear energy going pear shaped under the weight of – economics? natural gas? gastric distress? No, none of these. Actually, the views of different news outlets and their op-ed writers is not so bad. Take this from NJ dot com , a website shared by several state papers (the op-ed comes from the Times of Trenton): There is good reason to give nuclear power a fresh look. It can replace fossil-fuel-burning power plants for generating electricity 24/7, avoiding air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions that could contribute to global warming. This is nothing new to readers here, but we certainly purr when we hear it in the mainstream press anyway. Now, this is interesting, an argument that really does tend to dwell among the nuclear friendly only: There is a humanitarian imperative to using nuclear power. More than 2 billion people still lack access to electricity for basic needs such as clean water, cooking, sanitat...

“The central government’s policy on nuclear power generation will return to the pre-disaster one,” said Tatsuya Murakami, mayor of Tokai village in Ibaraki Prefecture, on July 21. “By postponing a solution to the problems resulting from the nuclear accident, the government will do what it wants to do. “It is disappointing that Japan will not be able to change itself despite the serious accident it caused,” he said. I know, it sounds like sour grapes. But Murakami has a grievance and maybe he’s letting off some steam. It’s really not true that the Japanese government has postponed solutions.  Last month, Japan Atomic Power began installing filter-attached vent equipment and erecting sea walls to meet the Nuclear Regulation Authority’s new safety rules on nuclear power generation that took effect on July 8. The reason Murakami is so unhappy is that the Liberal Democratic Party (the conservatives) took over the upper chamber in Japan’s diet, giving Prime Minis...

Let’s take a step back, shudder, and look at a dire report from Mark Cooper of the Institute for Energy and the Environment at the Vermont Law School. Cooper releases reports like this occasionally, although why he continues to be interested in nuclear energy is difficult to pin down. He’s not trying to dispute the “lies” propagated by the industry nor try to show that nuclear energy does something other than it claims to do. He just sees the business crumbling into dust every couple of years – I guess that can qualify as an academic pursuit, even if it’s not exactly productive. You can read the earlier articles linked above to see how Cooper’s ivory tower musings have not been as rigorous as they might be. In the current instance, he wants to grab the San Onofre/Kewaunee “nuclear is unviable” wave to assert that “more than three dozen U.S. reactors in 23 states are at greatest risk of early retirement, including nine reactors that exhibit the largest number of risk factors.” T...

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (2010 data), a nuclear technician can earn an average of $68,090 per year or $32.73 per hour with an Associate’s degree and no experience — none, as in nada, zilch, zip — in the industry. Power plant operators, distributors and dispatchers controlling systems that generate and distribute electric power can earn as much as $65,360 with a high school diploma, while nuclear engineers are paid $99,920 with a Bachelor’s degree. The key word in that paragraph is nada, as the story in Politic365 is about the potential for ambitious young Latinos to join the nuclear energy industry. Now, you may ask, anyone can get into the industry without consideration of ethnic background, right? That’s certainly true. For those that rankle at minority communities being targeted for potential careers and jobs, it’s really more an issue of communicating the existence and potential of those jobs than picking people off the street and installing th...