A Good Thing in Minnesota

Xcel applied to add 164 megawatts to the plant’s 1,100-megawatt power generating capacity in 2008. The MPUC approved the request the next year.

Maybe not:

[T]he move was challenged by the city of Red Wing and Prairie Island Indian Community. They argued that the extra capacity wasn’t needed, alternatives like hydropower weren’t given adequate consideration and that the increased power capacity would harm the surrounding communities and environments.

The Indian community is right next to the plant. But are these items legitimate? – they seem oddly miscellaneous and contradictory. After all, if the area doesn’t need more electricity then no one needed to look at hydro, either.

Anyway – back to a good thing:

The court [the state court of appeals, to be exact] said those claims were unsupported and affirmed the state’s approval…

Xcel, Prairie Island’s parent, still needs NRC approval, but this part is done. Good.
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There are several stories today about growing American interest in participating in Armenia’s drive to build a new nuclear energy plant. Currently, the one operating plant, Metsamor, produces about 40 percent of Armenia’s electricity generation.

If you want a sense of how nuclear energy enhances energy security, Metsamor’s your go-to plant in the Caucasus. Closed in 1988 after an earthquake in the region, Armenia repaired and reopened the plant in 1993 when neighbors Turkey and Azerbaijan blockaded Armenia and created electricity shortages. With Metsamor up and running, no imports were needed and so it has been since.

However, the plan has been to close it again once a new plant is up and running – which Armenia has to do before it is considered for European Union membership. The problem has been to get the new plant up and running.

And that brings us to today. The major takeaway is that the Russians remain the major partner here:

The Russian and Armenian governments set up late last year a joint venture tasked with building the plant's reactor. Armenian officials said other plant facilities might well be built by or receive equipment from Western nuclear-energy firms. They said equipment suppliers will be chosen in international tenders.

And that’s where the Americans find an opening:

The State Department hopes to gauge US private interest in funding Armenia’s new nuclear power station in the place of rusting, Soviet-era Metsamor.

“ We are interested in having U.S. companies participate [in the nuclear project,] if possible," Daniel Rosenblum, the State Department's Coordinator of US Assistance to Europe and Eurasia, told a November 16 press conference, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.

That’s not the most ringing endorsement imaginable. But consider:

The U.S. will allocate $44 [million] to Armenia in 2011, out of which around $20-22 [million] will be directed for the development of enterprises and improvement of competitiveness, while $8 [million] will be allocated for reforms in the social field, specifically, healthcare, Yeritsyan said.

Nothing about nuclear energy, but a lot about American interest in Armenia. Consider further:

Armenia is interested in boosting its trade and economic relations with the United States, Armenian economy minister Nerses Yeritsyan said today at the opening of the 19th meeting of Armenian-American intergovernmental commission in Yerevan.

This is the conference that brought in the $44 million. So the atmosphere for trade in nuclear services is certainly clear and sunny.

The Prairie Island plant.

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

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