Sen. Graham Goes to Oconee

The Anderson (S.C.)Independent Mail has the news:

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham [R-S.C.] stood in the welcome center of Duke Energy’s Oconee Nuclear Station and said he had learned something new about his hometown nuclear plant.

“I didn’t know how easy it is to shut down,” Graham said. “There’s one button they can press and it drops the fuel rods. With one button, they can shut down the reactor within a second.”

There’s the clean energy angle:

At stake, Graham said, is a clean energy source for future generations of Americans. Wind and solar power, he said, can’t replace the coal-fired plants that dominate the energy production landscape today, but nuclear can.

And the economic angle:

Graham also underlined the station’s role in the local economy, as it has a $90 million payroll and has paid $27 million in property taxes to Oconee County. About 1,500 people work regularly at the plant, said Richard Freudenberger, the plant’s regulatory support manager. Another 2,000 or so are on site now working with Duke on upgrades and refueling the station’s first unit.

The State covers the visit, too, and adds what we might call the Japan angle:

Nestled in the mountains five hours from the ocean, the Duke power plant couldn’t be affected by a tsunami, he noted. The reactors also are of a different design that ensures they could continue to operate safely in the event of a disaster, he said. He conceded that a broken dam at Lake Jocassee could affect the plant, but said Duke Energy is working on a plan to address such a disaster.

And of course the personal angle:

“This nuclear plant, I live five miles away’’ from, said Graham, R-S.C. “I’ve lived in this area all of my life. A lot of the people I have grown up with and went to high school with work here. I have faith in the American nuclear power industry.’’

Sen. Graham is really going out of his way to make the case for nuclear energy. Polls show that support for nuclear energy has lessened though not considerably, but Sen. Graham is still going at least an inch or two out on a limb.

Good for him. He’s a consequential figure and his support is appreciated.

Sen. Graham at Oconee. I believe he is second from left, but don’t quote me.

Comments

How Nanomaterials Can Make Nuclear Reactors Safer and More Efficient

The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior communications advisor at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald.

From the batteries in our cell phones to the clothes on our backs, "nanomaterials" that are designed molecule by molecule are working their way into our economy and our lives. Now there’s some promising work on new materials for nuclear reactors.

Reactors are a tough environment. The sub atomic particles that sustain the chain reaction, neutrons, are great for splitting additional uranium atoms, but not all of them hit a uranium atom; some of them end up in various metal components of the reactor. The metal is usually a crystalline structure, meaning it is as orderly as a ladder or a sheet of graph paper, but the neutrons rearrange the atoms, leaving some infinitesimal voids in the structure and some areas of extra density. The components literally grow, getting longer and thicker. The phenomenon is well understood and designers compensate for it with a …

Why America Needs the MOX Facility

If Isaiah had been a nuclear engineer, he’d have loved this project. And the Trump Administration should too, despite the proposal to eliminate it in the FY 2018 budget.

The project is a massive factory near Aiken, S.C., that will take plutonium from the government’s arsenal and turn it into fuel for civilian power reactors. The plutonium, made by the United States during the Cold War in a competition with the Soviet Union, is now surplus, and the United States and the Russian Federation jointly agreed to reduce their stocks, to reduce the chance of its use in weapons. Over two thousand construction workers, technicians and engineers are at work to enable the transformation.

Carrying Isaiah’s “swords into plowshares” vision into the nuclear field did not originate with plutonium. In 1993, the United States and Russia began a 20-year program to take weapons-grade uranium out of the Russian inventory, dilute it to levels appropriate for civilian power plants, and then use it to produce…

Nuclear Is a Long-Term Investment for Ohio that Will Pay Big

With 50 different state legislative calendars, more than half of them adjourn by June, and those still in session throughout the year usually take a recess in the summer. So springtime is prime time for state legislative activity. In the next few weeks, legislatures are hosting hearings and calling for votes on bills that have been battered back and forth in the capital halls.

On Tuesday, The Ohio Public Utilities Committee hosted its third round of hearings on the Zero Emissions Nuclear Resources Program, House Bill 178, and NEI’s Maria Korsnick testified before a jam-packed room of legislators.

Washingtonians parachuting into state debates can be a tricky platform, but in this case, Maria’s remarks provided national perspective that put the Ohio conundrum into context. At the heart of this debate is the impact nuclear plants have on local jobs and the local economy, and that nuclear assets should be viewed as “long-term investments” for the state. Of course, clean air and electrons …

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog