NEI Nuclear Notes

We mentioned the letter by four leading climate change scientists, James Hansen, Kerry Emanuel, Tom Wigley, and Ken Caldeira, on Monday [the post right below this one] and predicted it would get some pickup in the mainstream press. Prediction fulfilled: next up, this week’s lottery numbers. The stories have included some other interesting information that bolster the notion that nuclear energy can make a decided difference in mitigating climate change. Here’s the Detroit News : Stephen Ansolabehere, a Harvard professor who studies energy issues, said nuclear power is “very divisive” within the environmental movement. But he added that the letter could help educate the public about the difficult choices that climate change presents. One major environmental advocacy organization, the Natural Resources Defense Council, warned that “nuclear power is no panacea for our climate woes.” Even the nuclear energy industry doesn’t call nuclear energy a climate woe panacea. I’m pr...

Four of the world’s top climate scientists issued an open letter urging environmental groups and politicians worldwide to support nuclear energy as a primary way to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions known to contribute to global warming. James Hansen of Columbia University’s Earth Institute and formerly at NASA, Ken Caldeira , senior scientist in the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology , Kerry Emanuel , professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tom Wigley, a climate scientist at Australia’s University of Adelaide, wrote that renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy cannot by themselves stem the threat of global warming. The letter agrees that: Renewables like wind and solar and biomass will certainly play roles in a future energy economy, but those energy sources cannot scale up fast enough to deliver cheap and reliable power at the scale the global economy requires. While the authors say that ...

Interesting words from the OECD: Luis Echavarri, director general of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's Nuclear Energy Agency, told the World Energy Congress that a survey by the intergovernmental organization of industrialized nations found that 25 of its 34 member nations planned to build more nuclear power plants. That is despite some nations, including Germany, Italy and Switzerland, having decided to phase out nuclear power after a powerful earthquake and tsunami triggered equipment failure and a prolonged release of radioactive material at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in March 2011. I’d be less interested if this were a nuclear energy meeting – you expect this kind of thing at that kind of thing – but the World Energy Congress does not have a pro- or anti-agenda – well, sort of, as we’ll see. Still, the speakers are nuclear-specific. It’s how they’re being specific that’s interesting: Danny Roderick, chief executive of US-bas...

Just in case you thought Canadians were different from Americans: Ontarians favor nuclear power by a margin of more than two to one, a new public opinion survey suggests. The Forum Research poll found that 54 per cent are comfortable with atomic energy compared to 23 per cent who oppose it, while 23 per cent had no opinion. That’s 77 percent in favor or non-committal. I should add that this is the province that has nuclear energy facilities –  I’ve read that the other provinces are less in favor of nuclear energy. I haven’t really seen it borne out by polls, though support does run under Ontario. This poll , from Abacus Data in 2011, shows all Canadians supporting nuclear energy (or non-committal) at 56 percent, which is not terrible. Now, this survey was done soon after the accident at Fukushima Daiichi, so some of its findings may have faded with time. It asks explicitly whether views on nuclear energy have worsened as a result of the accident. Forty-nine perc...

The following post was submitted by William Skaff, NEI's Director of Policy Development. The MIT study, “ Water-CO2 Trade-Offs in Electricity Generation Planning ,” that was recently published in Nature Climate Change Letters indicates that power sector water use increases as carbon emissions are reduced. The measure employed for water use is withdrawal. A closer look at the study indicates that this approach is seriously flawed and could lead to erroneous conclusions about nuclear power plants and cooling water. Climate change eliminates water from watersheds. It does not take water out and then put it back again. Therefore, the appropriate measurement of power plant water use in this context is consumption. This study is seriously flawed because its modeling employs withdrawal, when once-through cooling systems return 99 percent of the water withdrawn, 1  and the power sector as a whole returns 98 percent of water withdrawn, to the source water body. 2 For example, accor...

From Twitterer Emily Gosden of the British newspaper The Telegraph : Decc [Department of Energy and Climate Change] deleted this graphic comparing nukes/wind/solar "because of sensitivities". Says "not inaccurate". Hmm. This is a post about it by Telegraph news blogger Will Heaven: It turns out that the Renewable Energy Association called it "unhelpful" in a press release , pleading that "as Ed Davey stressed… it is not an either/or choice". And here’s the infographic: It basically shows the land mass taken to generate a similar amount of energy. Well, it really isn’t helpful to the renewable folks, is it?. Wind farms and solar arrays can eat up a lot of space. Context really matters: if land mass is the key issue, nuclear energy wins. Nuclear energy wins on capacity, too, the potential generated output. Nuclear energy the realizes most of its capacity, wind and solar do not. This infographic doesn’t reflect that. Imagi...

We're getting every closer to the debut of Pandora's Promise on CNN. To recap, the pro-nuclear documentary will air on the cable network in less than two weeks from tonight at 9:00 p.m. U.S. EST. To help promote the event, we've created a Thunderclap . What's a Thunderclap ? Simply put, it's a great new way to promote campaigns or events via social media. We're looking to recruit 100 people who will sign up to promote the CNN premiere of Pandora's Promise on Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr (or any combination of the three). Just click the button on the widget below, and you can get in on the action. Here's hoping you can join us on November 7th.