NEI Sponsors Creative Coalition Webcast

Just off the wire, taking place right now:

The Creative Coalition brings a distinguished delegation and their keynote program, Talking the Talk: The Creative Coalition’s 21st Century Debate Dialogues, to New Hampshire for the 2008 CNN Presidential Debates. The Dialogue event will be moderated by The Creative Coalition Advisory Board member Lawrence O’Donnell, Jr. and feature notable thought leaders, policy makers and actors.

The dialogue will include viewpoints from the left, right and center, featuring syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington, Republican pollster Dr. Frank Luntz and CNN’s Bill Schneider who all will engage in a lively discussion on issues surrounding the Presidential election and offer an in-depth look at the debates. This event and brunch will be held on Monday, June 4th, the day after Sunday’s Democratic Candidate debate.

As the nonprofit, nonpartisan public advocacy arm of the arts and entertainment industry, The Creative Coalition works to mobilize and educate the arts community on issues of national importance with special focus on those involving First Amendment rights, public education, and arts advocacy.

"This presidential election cycle is unique-- the race is wide open and it's the first time without an incumbent in more than 50 years," said Robin Bronk, The Creative Coalition's Executive Director. Talking the Talk kicks off a series of Creative Coalition dialogue events and other initiatives that will bring together the nation's most strategic political thought leaders to help dissect the issues in what will be the most important presidential race in years.

NEI is sponsoring this event. To view the Webcast, click here. Please note, in order to participate, you must install Second Life's virtual world software package. Give it a try!

Comments

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...

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog