NEI Nuclear Notes

Matt Wald The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior director of policy analysis and strategic planning at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald . California researchers have sketched out an American energy system that they say can be powered almost entirely by wind, water and sunlight, by 2050 . It’s an interesting thought experiment, with some valid insights, but it’s a little like hopping from New York to California on one foot. Even if you could do it, would you really want to? The paper, summarized here , is not just a recipe for just powering the electric system, but for converting everything that uses oil or natural gas to run on electricity instead – including ships, cars and even airplanes. The airplanes would fly on hydrogen derived from water molecules split with electricity. Electrification is almost always a good idea, because it improves efficiency, cuts pollution, and can cut geopolitical risk. We are in the early stages (at least, we hope it’s th...

Ted Jones The following is a guest post by Ted Jones, Director of International Supplier Relations for NEI . It is widely known that the U.S. nuclear energy industry is deeply involved in the broad effort to renew the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank). Hundreds of U.S. nuclear exporters, supported by the Nuclear Energy Institute, have sounded alarm at the prospect of losing the Ex-Im Bank because they know it is vital to U.S. competitiveness in the global nuclear industry . I was therefore surprised to read an argument from a noted supporter of nuclear energy, my friend Jack Spencer of the Heritage Foundation , that our industry’s belief in the vital importance of the Ex-Im is mistaken. Heritage Foundation’s advocacy arm, Heritage Action, is one of the groups leading the opposition to the Ex-Im Bank. But I take Jack seriously on nuclear energy matters, so I’ll examine his responses to the nuclear energy industry’s arguments in favor of reauthorizing the...

The G7 leaders met Monday in Germany to discuss a number of issues, but the one of interest to us is climate change. Not in and of itself, but in terms of what pledges the leaders made to address the threat. The G7 also reaffirmed the goal of limiting global warming in the 21st century to 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels, first agreed at a 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen. "Urgent and concrete action is needed to address climate change," the G7 leaders said in a final statement after a two-day summit in Germany. And that’s not all . First, a deep cut in carbon emissions by 2050 and second, an eventual end to fossil fuel use by 2100. That’s startling. Saying things is easy, especially if you can slow walk it over 85 years. How to do it is the hard part. We can think of a very helpful way, but why not let the G7 have a go at it. Several environmental groups praised the G7 countries for declaring war on carbon, which, they say, will ...

Of course, our favorite fictional robot is the ED-209 from the original RoboCop (1987). It’s a slightly glitchy death machine that cannot be turned off reliably and has considerable difficulty managing stairs. It’s also one of the last great uses of stop motion animation before the arrival of CGI, but that’s another discussion. I was reminded of the ED-209 by this bit from a report from the DARPA Robotics Challenge: Before the games began, a DARPA representative said something pretty funny: He expected most or all of the robots to fall down at some point. And he was right. Which is only reinforced by the rules of contest: The rules are simple — each humanoid robot has one hour to score eight points for various tasks, which include driving a car, opening a door, pulling a lever and climbing some stairs. Climbing some stairs! The reverse of what foiled ED. Anyway, the DARPA challenge was motivated by the 2011 nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi. "Rob...

Australian Barry Brook, Chair of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Tasmania , has put together a letter with 75 other academics in his field to argue for more nuclear energy. The letter in turn points to a journal article co-authored by Brook called “Key Role for Nuclear Energy in Global Biodiversity Conservation,” published in Conservation Biology. Here is part of the abstract : We evaluated the land use, emissions, climate, and cost implications of 3 published but divergent storylines for future energy production, none of which was optimal for all environmental and economic indicators. Using multicriteria decision-making analysis, we ranked 7 major electricity-generation sources (coal, gas, nuclear, biomass, hydro, wind, and solar) based on costs and benefits and tested the sensitivity of the rankings to biases stemming from contrasting philosophical ideals. Irrespective of weightings, nuclear and wind energy had the highest benefit-to-cost ratio. Although...

Ann Bisconti The following is a guest post by Ann S. Bisconti, PhD, President, Bisconti Research, Inc. Davis Burroughs deserves credit for a sensible exploration of the gender differences in attitudes toward nuclear energy that his organization, Morning Consult , found in a national public opinion survey this spring. In that survey, 59 percent supported the use of nuclear energy and 29 percent opposed; 52 percent supported increasing the use of nuclear energy and 34 percent opposed. The gender differences in the Morning Consult survey are striking: Among men, 74 percent supported the use of nuclear energy and 20 percent opposed; Among women, 45 percent supported the use of nuclear energy and 36 percent opposed. It is tempting for commentators to dramatize this “gender divide” and convey a picture of strongly conflicting views , but Burroughs rejected drama for accuracy. He focused instead on the important fact that many people, especially women, took middle positions o...

An outage happens every two years or so and provides a lot of work at a nuclear energy facility. The main job is to replace fuel rods, but plants also use the opportunity to update plant components and perform other activities. You can read more about what happens during an outage here . It’s really a no news kind of situation – it’s the very definition of routine – so color us surprised when a lot of news outlets up in the Cape Cod area decided to cover the Pilgrim facility ending its outage. Slow news day? Maybe. Local news focus? Perhaps. The tone of the stories is “this happened,” with some relevant quotes from Pilgrim and/or Entergy. Here’s CapeCod.com : Entergy spokeswoman Lauren Burm said the plant is back up to full power. “Pilgrim has returned to operating at 100 percent power,” she said. “Control room operators reconnected Pilgrim to the grid after our 35-day planned refueling outage.” Routine. “We had nearly 2,000 employees including around 1,100 extra...