Around Burke County and in Waynesboro

A little early for editorials on the Plant Vogtle loan guarantees. We took a look at Plant Vogtle’s local newspaper, The Waynesboro True Citizen, to see if it had weighed in and found this story:

Burke County residents celebrated the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. by giving back to the community. … Rather than taking the day [MLK Day] off, members of Citizens of Georgia Power – Plant Vogtle Chapter, along with their spouses and children, participated in “A Day of Service” by teaming up with the Magnolia Acres Community Empowerment Committee to beautify the grounds in the neighborhood. … “This project wasn’t just about us coming out to do landscaping,” Citizens of Georgia Power member Katrina Bivins said. “We chose this because it gives us an opportunity to mentor these kids while doing the work.”

This is very typical small town newspaper stuff – I wrote a fair amount of it for a different Georgia paper years ago - still, it’s a reminder that Vogtle is a major employer in the area. But it’s more than just a supplier (and supporter) of generous employees.

SECLUDED COUNTRY LIVING- At its finest. Three bedroom, two bath brick home on 5.45 acres. Additional acreage available. Hot tub, large workshop, storage galore. Convenient to Vogtle and new Starbucks plant. $219,000.

Along with Starbucks, Vogtle brings a good deal of economic activity to Burke County - people have to live somewhere. And as you can see, the living is less expensive where Vogtle is – which is true of many nuclear facilities. It’s a property tax bonanza for a town the size of Waynesboro (pop. 5567), and for surrounding Burke County (pop. 23,000 and change), too. Plus, you get a hot tub.

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How about we watch the anti-nuclear crowd suffer a little:

Katherine Fuchs, a critic of federal loan guarantees and the nuclear subsidies campaigner for environmental group Friends of the Earth, said the loan obligates taxpayers to invest in nuclear energy in the event of a default.

“Taxpayers cannot afford to waste money on false solutions like Vogtle,” she said. “Instead, we need to be investing in real solutions like wind, solar and energy efficiency.”

I like that term “false solution” – it has the ring of Soviet self-criticism. “Nuclear energy does most of what we want it to do, but in the name of correct energy thinking, it is a false solution.” Loaded yet meaningless. More:

Critics of the loan guarantees have seized on the program's delays as evidence that it is misguided. Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist in the global security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, noted that the cost of nuclear energy has climbed over the years to as much as $9 billion per reactor, according to UCS, while the cost of natural gas, solar and wind power is dropping. "Put simply, nuclear power has been priced out of the market," said Lyman in a statement.

Which is why Georgia Power is considering more nuclear reactors, right?

“Given our experience and our commitment to safe, reliable, clean and affordable energy, it should not be a surprise to anybody in the future to see Georgia Power start a process to preserve an option for another set of plants,” [Steve Kuczynski, the company’s chairman, president and CEO] said. “We feel nuclear has a strong role in meeting that objective. Beginning initial groundwork would allow us to preserve that option.”

Schadenfreude aside, pfft!

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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