NEI Nuclear Notes

Forbes provides a pretty good primer on why the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan for limiting carbon emissions can make a nuclear advocate a little grumbly – maybe a lot : The Clean Power Plan calls for a near 20% reduction in U.S. carbon emissions from 2012 baseline levels by 2030. But here’s how the Clean Power Plan works—or doesn’t work, in the case of nuclear power. The draft rule sets forth an emissions rate baseline of CO2 emitted per megawatt-hour of fossil fuel generation … The draft rule allows for a 100% credit for all existing wind, solar, and geothermal sources, but only a 6% credit for nuclear. There’s no room at the inn for the other 94% of nuclear. Remember, these are proposals, so they will change. Still, the issue of relative valuation in the proposed rule is at the root of discussions about properly valuing nuclear energy. Natural gas is currently priced very low due to its ubiquity. The problem is that natural gas only works as a replacement for coal ...

Transatomic Power Logo We generally don't pay much attention to news from the venture capital community here at NEI Nuclear Notes, but for one day we're happy to make an exception for this announcement from Transatomic Power : Transatomic Power, developers of a breakthrough in nuclear reactor design, announced today that FF Science, an investment vehicle of Founders Fund, has invested $2 million to assist the company with its seed stage development. The funds will be used for bench-top laboratory testing and refinement of the company’s designs and computer models. "We believe there are massive opportunities for innovation across all parts of the energy sector, ranging from technologies to improve production and transmission to new methods of baseload generation, like the Transatomic Power reactor. Transatomic has the potential to make nuclear energy clean, safe, and affordable, providing a low-cost source of carbon-free power and consuming the waste of older react...

The Atlantic has an article called Is Nuclear Energy Ever Coming Back?. Aside from the fact that five new reactors are opening before the turn of the decade, the question seems a bit moot, but writer Celeste Lecompe does an exceptionally good job looking at subject wholly – I mean, with the Union of Concerned Scientists and NEI in the mix. We may take some pleasure in how much like sourpusses UCS seems, but it’s a fair look at different views. And Lecompte give due to new developments, such as small reactors and Transatomic’s revived interest in molten salt. A taste: In the meantime, TerraPower, the Bill Gates-backed startup, has opted to focus its attention abroad. “There are plenty of countries or regions that really are looking to nuclear as one of the ways to solve their energy needs without putting more carbon into the environment,” said Kevin Weaver, TerraPower’s director for technology integration. TerraPower is exploring opportunities to deploy its reactor design in R...

The argument advanced by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) – that taking down baseload energy plants has the capacity to destabilize the grid – a couple posts down should not lead anyone to imagine that the tired old arguments are anywhere near dead – or old or tired, for that matter. Lyons says a major problem is that the market presently has no mechanism to sensibly recognize the value of carbon-free power generation, particularly nuclear power. “When well-run, clean [nuclear] energy sources are forced out of the marketplace due to a combination of reduced demand, low natural gas prices and market structure,” Lyons was quoted as saying by the Greenwire energy-news service, “our markets are providing the wrong signals.” Lyons here is Peter Lyons, the Department of Energy’s assistant secretary for nuclear energy. He was also an NRC commissioner in his time. So he may be an interested party but also an extremely knowledgeable one. Lyons said that the DOE studied a scenario...

Writer Steven Stromberg, writing in the Washington Post Partisan blog, offers this : Some environmentalists cheer the closing of nuclear plants, even though it makes the anti-carbon effort tougher, and they argue that the country should put all of the planet’s eggs into the renewables basket. The pro-nuclear crowd predicts that a new wave of innovative technologies will make constructing new nuclear plants much more attractive, technically and economically. The country — and particularly environmentalists — should hope the pro-nuclear side is right; a renaissance in nuclear technology could offer the country a source of reliable, carbon-free electricity with safer designs than those of decades ago, all of which would be particularly helpful if renewables never burst out of their niche end of the market. The “pro-nuclear crowd'” (I think I prefer mob or cohort) actually includes a fair number of environmentalists . This is a pretty good post, though putting an ener...

Bottom of containment vessel for new reactor at Plant Vogtle The following guest post was written by NEI's Mitch Singer. Jeff McMahon bases his argument against nuclear cost recovery “Editors Rebel Against Ratepayer Financing For Nuclear Plants,” on the sole premise that because natural gas is inexpensive at this point in time it will remain so for decades. Therefore, energy companies should rely solely on one source of electricity generation. Ignoring the old adage of not putting your eggs in one basket is as relevant in generation choices as it is in financial investments. Energy companies evaluate a variety of factors to determine their generating mix and plan not in years, but rather decades ahead. Public utility commissioners do the same. They conduct an extensive analysis of the state’s demand growth commonly known as a “determination of needs” that looks at all methods of generation to see which ones are most suitable. Commissioners are also obligated to make ...

Author Peter Kelly-Detwiler published a post for Forbes yesterday making an illogical comparison of sunk costs from nuclear plants to Mark Sanchez (the New York Jets QB). Despite providing a definition of sunk costs, the author doesn’t seem to understand what sunk costs really are. The article references several examples of new nuclear projects going over budget, but going over budget doesn’t mean the costs are sunk. According to the article, sunk costs are “unrecoverable past expenditures.” Nowhere in the piece does the author give an example of a nuclear plant that hasn’t been able to recover its past expenditures.When nuclear plants were built in the ‘70s and ‘80s in the US, state public utility commissions (PUCs) determined whether all or some of the costs of power plants could be recovered from ratepayers based on whether the costs were spent “prudently” or not. In some cases, the PUCs found that some costs were not prudent and therefore were not recoverable from ratepayers. Ye...

Over at Forbes’ blog, Sara Mansur has dug into the numbers to see what it would take if nuclear were phased out in Japan: If nuclear power were to be completely taken out of Japan’s power supply, the country’s carbon emissions would rise by at least 414 million tons over current emissions [assuming nuclear is replaced by coal and gas]. Carbon emissions would increase by at least 10% and as much as 17% across the entire economy, while power-sector emissions would soar by 29% to 49%, depending on the mix of replacement power. What about renewables instead? the 203 gigawatts (GW) of installed solar capacity required to replace Japan’s current nuclear fleet would cover roughly 1.3 million acres, according to a land area calculator created by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the United States. That’s the equivalent of roughly 52% of Japan’s total land area. Using an estimate of $5 per watt of installed solar PV capacity, installing this 203 GW of solar...