Welcome to the Nuclear Club, Poland!

It’s always particularly interesting when a country that has never used nuclear energy – when it could have – decides to start an industry. UAE is a recent example of this. Poland is another:

Donald Tusk, the prime minister, and his cabinet finally adopted the Polish nuclear power program on January 28th, giving the green light to construction of the country's first nuclear-power plant.

I somehow bypassed Poland while touring around eastern Europe in the mid-80s, but I would say that based on my experience of Hungary and East Germany’s wretched air quality, it is not a big surprise why Poland might turn this way.

Currently, hard coal and lignite are used to produce roughly 88% of the electrical grid. Dependence on Russian gas imports, and pressure from Brussels to reduce carbon emissions by 2020 beyond the 20% level previously already agreed, have pushed the government to look for alternatives.

That’ll do it, all right. The Economist put this story in its Ex-Communist blog and I’d say 30 years is a long enough time for Poland to consider its options before moving off lignite. As it is, the first facility, which France (that is, EDF and AREVA) seems to have an inside track on building, is expected to run at 3000 megawatts, enough to take over 17 percent of Poland’s electricity generation. And it’s just a start. Poland was building a nuclear facility when the Communist government collapsed and that’s one of the potential sites for the new one.

I read a story from a Polish news source that says the country wants to follow up quickly with a second facility – which I guess would get nuclear energy up to 34 percent of the country’s generation – and the Polish electricity authority is certainly not holding back on enthusiasm:

Nuclear power turns to be one of the most sought after/prospective sources of energy, which apart from being CO2 emission free, guarantees independence from the typical ways of obtaining energy sources.

Not sure what that means - awkward translation effort - but I suppose it refers to trying to get Russia to keep the natural gas spigot on – and the benefits of no longer having to do that. What about renewable energy? Well:

Energy prices have soared in Poland, with the hike partially caused by high subsidies having to be paid out to develop the so-called 'renewable sector', including wind and solar power.

Poland signed up to the pledge to bring renewables up to 20 percent of its energy mix by 2020, though now the EC has indicated that in the period, 2021 to 2030, national governments will be allowed to decide how achieve cuts in carbon emissions.

I’m not sure from reading the stories why nuclear energy is more attractive than these subsidies, but it probably has to do with what you get: baseload energy for a reasonably low levelized price. By that I mean that the cost of building the plant may be high, but the cost of running it is quite low. And that can bring down the cost of electricity a lot. And it’s 24/7, not just when the wind decides to blow. But that’s a guess – the stories I’ve read haven’t really explained the economics of the decision.

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

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