NEI Nuclear Notes

The electoral college will soon confirm a surprise election result, Donald Trump. However, in the electricity world, there are fewer surprises – physics and economics will continue to apply, and Republicans and Democrats are going to find a lot to like about nuclear energy over the next four years. In a Trump administration, the carbon conversation is going to be less prominent. But the nuclear value proposition is still there. We bring steady jobs to rural areas, including in the Rust Belt, which put Donald Trump in office . Nuclear plants keep the surrounding communities vibrant. We hold down electricity costs for the whole economy . We provide energy diversity , reducing the risk of disruption. We are a critical part of America’s industrial infrastructure, and the importance of infrastructure is something that President-Elect Trump has stressed . One of our infrastructure challenges is natural gas pipelines, which have gotten more congested as extremely low gas prices h...

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 . Taking action to slow climate change was a contentious idea before the election, and if the voting on November 8 created a consensus on any issue, it wasn’t this one. President-elect Trump has called for withdrawing from the COP-21 agreement made a year ago in Paris, but as COP-22 got underway Marrakesh, Morocco, more than 300 American companies sent a letter to Mr. Trump affirming their “deep commitment” to adhering to the climate accord. But there is more common ground here than meets the eye. There are reasons why the march toward cleaner energy will continue, advancing some of the goals in Mr. Trump’s campaign platform , including energy independence, an electric system that helps a strong economy, creation or maintenance of good jobs, a sound national infrastructure, and improvement of America’s export potential. ...

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 . Saving the reactors is good for consumers and good for the environment. Independent analyses show that the modest payments needed to keep nuclear reactors in the state’s supply mix will mean sharply lower electricity prices, and are the cheapest way to hold down carbon emissions. The Brattle Group, a consulting firm that specializes in energy, found that electricity in New York would cost $1.7 billion a year extra if the reactors closed. The reason is that the reactors’ output would be replaced by more expensive power. This is inherent in the method that New York uses to set prices: a computer totals up all the available resources, ranked by price, and the level of demand. The computer, which belongs to the New York State Independent System Operator, determines which generators are needed to satisfy demand, a...

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. On Halloween, millions of American kids carried little orange UNICEF boxes from door to door, collecting coins to help provide poor children with food and medicine. But children in the developing world need more. A UNICEF report issued Oct. 31 shows that in addition to the money, the clean air in the boxes would have helped, too. Bad air now rivals malaria and unsafe water as a cause of premature deaths. UNICEF is shedding a light on air quality in the developing world.* The problem cries out for nuclear energy. The authors of the report estimate that 300 million children live in areas with outdoor air pollution at least six times higher than United Nations standards. That research is based on satellite imagery of outdoor air; millions more live in households where the indoor air is heavy with smoke from cookstoves...

Matt L. Wald At 4:00 p.m. US EDT, Matt Wald, senior director of policy analysis and strategic planning at NEI, will deliver a speech in  Kennewick, Washington at Energy Northwest’s  2016 Public Power Forum.  The speech will be streamed live on the company's Facebook page . We're sharing an excerpt below. As always, please follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald. The energy business is sometimes prone to the silver bullet syndrome, the belief that there’s a single solution in hand if only we’d embrace it. Back when Spencer Abraham was secretary of energy, in the beginning of the Bush administration, he called it the “flavor of the month” club. He said that at various times, methanol, low temperature fuel cells, high temperature fuel cells, superconductors, thin film pv, ethanol from non-food sources, etc, etc, were going to save us. Today we’ve got new silver bullets, new flavors of the month. Well, I’d like to be unfashionable here. (Actually my wife assures me tha...

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 . When hurricanes approach, experts tell people to stock up on drinking water and on food that doesn’t require refrigeration, top off their car gas tanks and batten down the hatches. Nuclear reactors also make preparations, with a more formal procedure. With Hurricane Matthew approaching Florida's coast, those procedures are already well advanced. Plant operators make sure their fuel tanks are topped off too. In this case, it’s diesel fuel, for the emergency generators that would start up and provide electricity for on-site needs if the high-voltage grid went down. The diesels are tested at regular intervals, in foul weather or fair, to assure a reliable back-up supply of electricity. Plant workers secure anything that could blow away. The plants are prepared to house and feed a full complement of workers, who wou...

Blake Bolt and Sharimar Colon are excited about nuclear energy. Each works at Southern Nuclear Co. and sees firsthand how their ingenuity powers the nation’s largest supply of clean energy. For Powered by Our People , they shared their stories of advocacy, innovation in the workplace and efforts to promote efficiency. Their passion for nuclear energy casts a bright future for the industry. Blake Bolt has worked in the nuclear industry for six years and is currently the work week manager at Hatch Nuclear Plant in Georgia. He takes pride in an industry he might one day pass on to his children. What is your job and why do you enjoy doing it? As a Work Week Manager at Plant Hatch, my primary responsibility is to ensure nuclear safety and manage the risk associated with work by planning, scheduling, preparing and executing work to maximize the availability and reliability of station equipment and systems. I love my job because it enables me to work directly with every department ...