NEI Nuclear Notes

I love The Simpsons .  The Simpsons cleverly, mercilessly, and democratically gore everyone's sacred cows.  None are off-limits, including the professionals who comprise the commercial nuclear power industry. What we are not. From the avaricious Montgomery Burns, owner of the Springfield Nuclear Plant, to the bumbling Homer Simpson, control room operator and safety inspector, the people of the nuclear enterprise are portrayed as incompetent and unconcerned about their responsibilities to serve and protect their fellow workers, the public and the environment.  As you can imagine, the truth is quite different. How different from that comedic portrayal are the real people of the nuclear power industry?  A recent briefing by our NEI colleagues, Sue Perkins-Grew and Rod McCullum, reminded us how different indeed. Sue Perkins-Grew in action on the ropes course at SNPM. Sue and Rod recently attended an elite leadership training course offere...

This is startling: Lenin and Mao referenced in a pro-nuclear energy op-ed written by Eric McFarland of the Dow Centre for Sustainable Engineering Innovation at the University of Queensland: The ghosts of Lenin and Mao might well be smirking. Communist and authoritarian nations are moving to take global leadership in, and profit from, the commercial use of nuclear power, a technology made possible by the market-driven economies of the West. New research and development could enable abundant, affordable, low-carbon energy as well as further beneficial products for industry and medicine. This is published in the Wall Street Journal, so the goal may well be to wake up the capitalists from the dolorous slumber. Governments are right, of course, to monitor and tightly control the application of nuclear energy, as they do chemical and biological weapons. But the well-intentioned systems, agencies, regulations, legislation, safeguards and bureaucratic mass that have been applied ...

Ted Jones The following is a guest post by Ted Jones, Director of International Supplier Relations for NEI. A spokesperson for Americans for Prosperity told The Hill last week that Congress should allow the U.S. Export-Import Bank to expire when its authorization ends in June. If a particular sector like the nuclear sector needs Ex-Im to survive, “the fact that your industry has grown dependent on taxpayer-backed loans doesn’t mean that it needs to continue forever,” Russell said. While that sounds like a principled free-market argument, a closer look at the realities of international trade demonstrates that it is a mistaken premise for ending the Ex-Im Bank. To the contrary, the conservative principles of fiscal responsibility and American leadership in global affairs should lead Tea Party groups to support Ex-Im. Ex-Im Bank serves a crucial role for nuclear exporters that the private sector cannot. U.S. nuclear exporters turn to Ex-Im precisely because financing alte...

We have to hand it to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Their recent poll tries as hard as it can, but it can’t quite hide the truth about Illinois energy and its relative cleanliness, the subject of the poll. It finds , quite reasonably, that people there are much in favor of clean energy, which NRDC is quite sure includes only renewables. Why should that be, I wondered – well, until I looked at the questions . This is one of them: Some people/other people say we should transition to more clean, renewable energy sources like wind and solar power in Illinois. Illinois residents already get most of their electricity with nuclear power; the last thing we need is more safety risks from building more nuclear plants. This is part of another question. We already have more nuclear energy than any other state, and it is too risky for our health and environment. Yet, even with statements like that to ponder, 33 percent of respondents favor expanding nuclear energy i...

Timed for Earth day, The Breakthrough Institute released what it’s calling the Ecomodernist Manifesto , a tract that deserves attention because of the quality of its creators and because it suggests a way forward – or perhaps I should say out of – the impasse between environmentalists and policy makers in crafting ways to protect the environment while maximizing the potential of people worldwide to prosper. It’s a blueprint to guide environmentalists away from seeing people as environmental destroyers – which, of course, turns off the folks they’re trying to appeal to – to partners. The folks who signed on to this include Pandora’s Promise director Robert Stone and two participants in his pro-nuclear energy documentary, Stewart Brand and Mark Lynas, the latter of whom earned considerable admiration from me for his openness and curiosity toward nuclear energy despite considerable suspicion about it. Of course, it also includes the co-founders the Breakthrough Institute, Michael Shel...

Artist's rendering of Turkey Point 6&7 Today and tomorrow, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a public meeting in Florida concerning adding two reactors to FP&L’s Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station . In this guest blog post, NEI’s Bill Skaff takes a quick look at how the nuclear energy industry is breaking new ground in using reclaimed water for reactor cooling. Carbon-free nuclear energy must continue to play a major role in climate change mitigation and adaptation. Moreover, the industry is responding in innovative ways. For instance, Florida Power & Light's (FP&L)  Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station   plans to use 80-90 million gallons of recycled municipal waste water each day for the cooling system of its two new nuclear units (6 and 7). This shouldn’t be a surprise since the nuclear energy industry has been and continues to be a pioneer in the large-scale use of reclaimed water for cooling. The Palo Verde nuclear plant in Ari...

Dan Lipman Dan Lipman is NEI’s Vice President for Suppliers and International Programs. Before joining NEI in 2012, he spent 31 years at Westinghouse Electric Corp. In 1985, China had only recently begun its transformation into an economic powerhouse, and had just begun construction of its first nuclear power plant. It was also the year that the United States and China agreed to cooperate in commercial nuclear energy technology . Thirty years later, China has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest economy and it is the world’s largest market for nuclear power plants, equipment and technology. Consider: 23 reactors are now in operation, another 26 are under construction , and even more are preparing to break ground. Consider further: China’s nuclear generating capacity, which is about 19 gigawatts today, is expected to increase three-fold to 58 gigawatts by 2020 and to some 150 gigawatts by 2030. In short, for any company that is a global player in nuclear energy t...