More Bloggers For Nuclear Energy

Add Half Sigma to our growing list of supporters:

Nearly all new electric plants use natural gas because clean burning natural gas is the only thing that can get approved to be built. But the problem is that the U.S. and Canada have only a finite supply of natural gas that is quickly being used up. The price of natural gas is now at all time highs.

Uranium, on the other hand, is very plentiful, and there’s enough uranium to supply our energy needs for hundreds of years. Even coal (our primary source of electricity) isn’t as plentiful as uranium. Furthermore, uranium is mined in politically stable and friendly countries like Canada and Australia so there’s no fear of the supply being suddenly cut off by an Islamic revolution.

And over at Seeing the Forest, Dave Johnson is pondering some weighty issues as well:

I think we have to do whatever we can to stop putting carbon into the air. Replacing the emissions from cars and coal-or-oil-burning power plants with the fear that used fuel rods might somehow escape their containers 10,000 years from now seems like a fair trade-off. We can spend that time finding out where to put the fuel rods instead of putting carbon and pollutants into the air. And a lot of people would literally breathe a whole lot easier if we stopped dumping car and power plant exhaust into the air as well. And there's that whole war and terrorism problem that comes form the need for oil and the things people do to get it...

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Environment, Energy, Politics, Technology, Economics

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Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin...

Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap...

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

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