NEI Nuclear Notes

This morning, both Reuters and Business Week wrote lengthy features concerning the publication of a report by U.K.-based Oxford Research claiming that nuclear energy can't serve as a solution when it comes to climate change. From Business Week : Now, some scientists and other experts are beginning to raise a different question about nuclear power: Is it really as clean as supporters contend? A report, released on Mar. 26 by a British nongovernmental organization called the Oxford Research Group, disputes the popular perception that nuclear is a clean energy source. It argues that while nuclear plants may not generate carbon dioxide while they operate, the other steps necessary to produce nuclear power, including the mining of uranium and the storing of waste, result in substantial amounts of carbon dioxide pollution. "As this report shows, hopes for the climate-protecting potential of nuclear energy are entirely misplaced," says Jürgen Trittin, a former minister of the ...

Last Sunday, Palm Beach Post wrote an article about students from Florida Atlantic University protesting FPL's nuclear plant expansions. What struck me about the article was this claim made by the anti-nuclear energy group - Nuclear Information and Resource Service: A nuclear power plant takes so much water and energy to build, it has to run for 15 years to offset its carbon footprint, according to the nonprofit group, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. Mary Olson, director of the organization's southeast office, was a summit keynote speaker. Fifteen years? I don't think so. This claim appears to be apart of the whole lifecycle emissions claim we’ve dealt with from Storm van Leeuwen and Smith . The two have claimed that nuclear’s lifecycle emissions are comparable to a gas plant based on the energy requirements at each stage of a nuclear plant’s cycle. In SLS' study, they mis-calculate the energy payback time for a nuclear plant at 10-15 years . What...

During the course of this week I plan to tackle each chapter of Dr. Caldicott’s book and battle the claims made against the nuclear industry. I can probably predict who’s going to win round one, as it is an issue we have beaten to death on this blog and others. But let’s see what I come up with before we declare a winner. Chapter 1 – The Energetic Costs of Nuclear Power The first sentence of Chapter 1 starts with: The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) , the propaganda wing and trade group for the American nuclear industry, spends millions of dollars annually to engineer public opinion. Don’t we feel special? I guess we should take it as a compliment that we’re mentioned right off the bat because that means we’ve been doing our job of getting nuclear industry messages out to the public. But according to the author, our clean-air messages are “fallacious and misleading.” If you can guess what the topic of the first chapter is, you’re probably right -- the lifecycle emissions of nuclear pow...

After reading so many "studies" done by anti-nuke groups, I'm beginning to see some familiar patterns. Take for instance the NIRS/WISE study titled " Nuclear Power: No solution to climate change ". While the NIRS/wise study is superior to the one I looked at recently from the New Economics Foundation , there are still a number of flaws that would embarrass the typical college freshman. Emissions: It is true that the actual fission process whereby electricity is generated does not release greenhouse gases. However, in various stages of the nuclear process (e.g. mining, uranium enrichment, building and decommissioning of power plants, processing and storing radioactive waste) huge amounts of energy are needed, much more than for less complex forms of electricity production. Most of this energy comes in the form of fossil fuels, and therefore nuclear power indirectly generates a relatively high amount of greenhouse gas emissions. If you think you've read about...

Nuclear power plants do not emit criteria pollutants such as SO 2 and NO x or greenhouse gases during operations. This is a well known fact, but it hasn't stopped some anti-nuclear groups from making misleading statements regarding nuclear power. One of the most common claims heard is that nuclear power emits greenhouse gases during its entire life-cycle. This is true, just as it is true of renewable generation. Nuclear energy life-cycle emissions include emissions associated with the construction of the plant, mining and processing of the fuel, routine operation of the plant, the disposal of used fuel and other waste by-products, and the decommissioning of the plant. In an article from news.com.au , Dr Mark Diesendorf, a lecturer at the University of NSW Institute of Environmental Studies, argues "NUCLEAR power generates more damaging greenhouse gas emissions than gas-fired power"” due to "the processes involved in creating nuclear energy." As I read the art...

Last month Leslie Berliant of Celsias asked Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen if nuclear power is “free of greenhouse gas emissions.” For those who are unfamiliar with van Leeuwen, he and his colleague Philip Smith have been falsely claiming nuclear power’s lifecycle emissions will be higher than a fossil-fueled power station within several decades as high-quality uranium ore grades diminish. As I was reading the Celsias piece, the sentence below stopped me in my tracks: Today the world nuclear capacity is around 370 GW, providing 2.1% of the world energy supply (see Part A - PDF). 2.1%? It's common knowledge around here that the actual share is about 6 percent, so I checked the reference. What I found was stunning. In the debate about lifecycle emissions, the conclusions of both the antis and the pros depended mostly upon the assumptions of the analyses. But the error above wasn’t a matter of assumption, it was due to a complete lack of understanding of how certain energy statisti...

Over in the U.K. earlier this week, the Oxford Research Group published another anti-nuclear report, this one titled Too Hot To Handle? The Future Of Civil Nuclear Power . The report primarily focuses on nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear terrorism, including a two page blip on how nuclear power cannot contribute to reducing climate change. If the name "Oxford Research Group" sounds familiar to our readers, the reason is that we dissected another of their reports earlier this year , dismissing it as just more recycled nonsense. Well, surprise, surprise, this report offers even more of the same. What's disappointing is that a number of folks in the press couldn't be bothered to look at this report with a critical eye -- and I'm talking about the Guardian over in the U.K. So while part of me is tired of this game, we'll do it all over again for the benefit of those who haven't been paying attention. Nuclear industry critics have claimed multiple ti...

I’m sure many of the readers of NEI Nuclear Notes already know what I’m going to discuss just by reading the title of this post. For those who don’t know, I plan to take time this week to bore in and give my thoughts on Helen Caldicott’s new book, “Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer.” This is great timing because she will be in D.C. this week for part of her book tour . To start off her book, she acknowledged many of the usual anti-nuclear suspects. Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith are two whom we have discussed many times on this blog with regards to their lifecycle emissions analysis. David Lochbaum was cited many times throughout the book, as he has been critical of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the nuclear industry. Amory Lovins was all over this book with his solutions of using energy efficiency, renewables and decentralization. And of course, we can’t forget one of our favorite anti-nuclear critics who occasionally stirs up debate on this blog, Paul Gunter, ...

Keep passing along the same bad research over and over again -- say about uranium reserves -- and eventually somebody is going to figure it out . Thanks to Energy from Thorium for the pointer. Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy , Environment , Energy , Politics , Technology , Electricity , Nuclear Power , Uranium , Storm van Leeuwen , Phillip Smith

Thanks to my friends at We Support Lee , I tripped over the blog A Musing Environment . In particular, I'd like to point you to a pair of posts there that deal with topics our readers are familiar with, namely, the anti-nuke myths concerning total lifecycle emissions and the uranium supply . For those who missed it, we dealt with the issue of lifecycle emissions yesterday . Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy , Environment , Energy , Politics , Technology , Electricity , Nuclear Power , Climate Change , Global Warming , GHG , Uranium , Storm van Leeuwen , Phillip Smith

Hats off to a group of professors at the University of Melbourne who have created a wiki on nuclear power in Australia . My favorite section: A detailed deconstruction on the work of Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith on energy costs and uranium mining -- one of our favorite topics . For more details, click here . Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy , Environment Energy , Politics , Technology , Economics , Australia , Electricity , Wiki