NEI Nuclear Notes

I'm a Washington policy professional but also a Washington native, and so over the better part of four decades I've developed a distinct appreciation for how policy in this city is covered by the fourth estate. To cut to the chase: I'm pretty much underwhelmed/infuriated by a wide swath of the Washington press corps on pretty much a daily basis. But not today. For the better part of the past month I've worked closely and in most rewarding fashion with the producer-reporter tandem of David Fitzpatrick and Drew Griffin of CNN. Tonight of course that outlet is airing the magnificent documentary ' Pandora's Promise .' In support of the documentary CNN has devoted extraordinary resources this fall to informing the public about nuclear energy. In sprawling digital and broadcast news and commentary this week, CNN has covered nuclear's voices pro and con, academic and activist, political and wonkish. Nuclear power in the United States has known both triumph a...

Tom Kauffman The following is a guest post written by NEI's Tom Kauffman. Though Tom works in NEI's media relations shop, he also spent 23 years working at  Three Mile Island , seven of those as a licensed reactor operator. Former NRC Chairman Dale Klein  was justified in criticizing an anti-nuclear panel’s comparison  of the potential of an accident at nuclear energy facilities in New York and Massachusetts with the 2011 accident at Fukushima Daiichi . “Comparing the accident at Fukushima Daiichi to a hypothetical accident at Indian Point or Pilgrim is intellectually dishonest and resembles the classic fear mongering intended to create unnecessary anxiety," Klein said. "Comparing the US nuclear power plants to those that have not added new safety systems and procedures is simply wrong.” As the former Chairman points out, the U.S. and Japanese nuclear industries have very different approaches to nuclear safety. The differences developed over several decades ...

That anti-nuke panel discussion led by former NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko went off just about as expected today, with Jaczko asserting that local stakeholders should get together soon to arrange for the closure of the plant. You'll forgive us if we beg to differ. In the meantime, another former NRC Chairman, Dale Klein, issued the following statement through NY AREA concerning how many members of the panel attempted to compare a potential accident at Indian Point with the accident at Fukushima Daiichi: “Comparing the accident at Fukushima Daiichi to a hypothetical accident at Indian Point or Pilgrim is intellectually dishonest and resembles the classic fear mongering intended to create unnecessary anxiety. The additional safety systems and safety procedures added to the US nuclear power plants after the 9/11 attacks have greatly enhanced their ability to handle the loss of off-site power, loss of the emergency diesel generators, and the loss of back-up battery supplies. Just li...

Tom Kauffman The following is a guest post written by NEI's Tom Kauffman. Tom works in NEI's media relations shop and spent 23 years working at  Three Mile Island , seven of those as a licensed reactor operator. This week in New York and Boston, anti-nuclear activists have scheduled panel discussions designed to scare the public into pressuring politicians into shuttering local nuclear power plants. The members of the panel are: former NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko; Peter Bradford, former NRC commissioner; and  anti-nuke extremist Arnie Gundersen, an engineer who never lets science or facts get in his way. So what can you expect to hear from this trio? We figure it's more or less a combination of the three following assertions: 1) The nuclear accident in Japan can happen here. 2) All U.S. nuclear energy facilities are unsafe. 3) All U.S. reactors should be permanently shut down. On the other hand, there are some facts they are sure to ignore: Not one person ...

Marv Fertel The following statement can be attributed to Marv Fertel, NEI's President and CEO. The entire statement was provided to Matt Wald of the New York Times in response to comments made yesterday in Washington by former U.S. NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko: “U.S. nuclear energy facilities are operating safely. That was the case prior to Greg Jaczko’s tenure as Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman. It was the case during his tenure as NRC chairman, as acknowledged by the NRC’s special Fukushima response task force and evidenced by a multitude of safety and performance indicators. It is still the case today, particularly as every U.S. nuclear energy facility adds yet another layer of safety by implementing lessons learned from the Fukushima Daiichi accident. “The greatest safety improvement to protect against extreme events, regardless of their cause, comes from the FLEX response strategy that the industry began implementing last year. The heart of this effort is adding mo...

Welcome to the 99th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers, a get together that we at NEI Nuclear Notes have been honored to host from time to time since its inception. This week, we've got selections from seven of the best blogs the online nuclear energy community has to offer. If you would like to host a future edition of the carnival, please contact Brian Wang of Next Big Future to get on the rotation. And please, don't ask to host the 100th edition of the carnival, as that honor has already been parceled out to a well-deserving blogger. Nuclear Power Talk: What's Good for the Goose . Gail Marcus takes a hard look at Mark Cooper's claims about the economics of nuclear energy. The Nuclear Green Revolution: The Clinch River Reactor Failure, Lessons Unlearned . Did AEC make a mistake by pursuing the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor over other designs? Read and find out. Yes, Vermont Yankee: Green Jobs and Taxes . In this guest post, Guy Page of the Vermont Energy ...

It’s been a few weeks since I posted about Entergy responding to Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) on the strontium-90 (Sr-90) issue at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant . NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko has since weighed in, on the NRC’s behalf, with a letter he sent to the congressman. Of note, the chairman’s letter echoes what Entergy officials and the Vermont Department of Health (VTDH) have been saying all along: Because there are multiple potential sources of Sr-90, including nuclear weapons testing by multiple countries in the middle of the last century, it is very difficult to draw conclusions about the source of any particular Sr-90 contamination that is found in the environment unless there is additional supporting evidence. Because of this fact, Jaczko believes that Entergy’s Laurence Smith, manager of communications, is fair in one of his statements that “There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Vermont Yankee is the source for the strontium-90.” He writes: ...

The sittee would be Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who held a webcast with a number of nuclear-oriented bloggers. It was moderated by blog roll favorite Dan Yurman from Idaho Samizdat and ran for about 90 minutes. Questions were submitted in advance and at the meeting and although Jaczko sidestepped some uncomfortable ones, at least somewhat, he largely aimed to be direct in his answers. For example, Jaczko was asked to explain the 50-mile evacuation zone he recommended for Americans in Japan after Fukushima when American evacuation plans only call for a 10-mile evacuation zone. Jaczko said (this is a bit paraphrased): We had a lot of internal discussions about what we were seeing [in Japan] – based on that, we did some analysis, took some best judgments and ran some simple codes to show that there was a potential for [radiological] release up to 50 miles. If this had happened in the United States, we would have recommended enhanced evacuations. ...

Like a lot of folks, we were listening in to NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko during his conference call with pro-nuclear bloggers earlier today. Our own Mark Flanagan will have his own account later this week, but for now, here's a story from Matt Wald of the New York Times . Also, kudos to Dan Yurman, the brains behind Idaho Samizdat , for moderating the call. Bravo zulu, my friend.

NEI hosted its annual Nuclear Energy Assembly in Washington DC Tuesday and Wednesday with a solid lineup of speakers and plenty of opportunities for attendees to catch up with colleagues and industry pals. Let’s consider the latter analog social media and leave it at that. The speakers represented a topflight assemblage of industry, government and regulatory figures. Happily, none tried “the future is bright for nuclear energy” approach you might reasonably expect at an industry meeting. Everyone looked at the year and years ahead through clear eyes. Here’s a bit of what they had to say: NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko expressed the continued confidence of his agency in the safety of U.S. nuclear energy facilities. “The commission remains confident in the programs of the NRC and in the safety of the nation’s nuclear power plants,” he said, noting that in 2010 “there were no statistically significant adverse trends in industry performance.” Still, Jaczko warned the gathere...

On March 17, Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) asked for a thorough review and posed a number of questions to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on US nuclear power plants. Chairman Jaczko responded on April 8 (the pdf was posted on 4/15). Below are a few highlights from the letter: 1. Please identify all U.S. nuclear facilities subject to significant seismic activity and/or tsunamis. Although we often think of the US as having "active" and non-active" earthquake zones, earthquakes can actually happen almost anywhere. Seismologists typically separate the US into low, moderate and high seismicity zones. The NRC requires that every nuclear plant be designed for site-specific ground motions that may be expected at their locations. In addition, the NRC has specified a minimum ground motion level to which all nuclear plants must be designed. The designation of the general type of seismic zone that may apply at any specific site is ...

CNN’s Alan Chernoff goes into a nuclear plant – New York’s Indian Point, in this case – and nothing falls over on him and he doesn’t topple into the used fuel pool (which he takes a look at). In fact, he finds a spotless, well run industrial structure. Oh, and extremely secure. Useful type of story for reporters to be doing – folks are probably pretty curious about the inside of a plant right about now. --- At a House hearing, NRC Commissioner Gragory Jaczko loosely identified three nuclear plants the commission believes need further oversight: Three U.S. nuclear power plants need increased oversight from federal regulators because of safety problems or unplanned shutdowns, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Thursday, although officials said all are operating safely. NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said the three plants — in South Carolina (H.B Robinson), Kansas (Wolf Creek) and Nebraska (Fort Calhoun)— "are the plants we are most concerned about" among the ...

NRC Commissioner Gregory Jaczko told Congress today that: that the commission believed that all the water in the spent fuel pool at the No. 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station had boiled dry, leaving fuel rods stored there exposed and bleeding radiation. Tokyo Electric Power Co. disagrees: On Thursday morning [Japan is 13 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time], a spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power, the Daiichi plant operator, and a spokesman for Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency, denied Mr. Jaczko’s account, saying the situation at reactor No. 4 had not changed and that water remained in the spent fuel storage pool. But both officials said the situation was changing and that the reactor had not been inspected in recent hours. "We can’t get inside to check, but we’ve been carefully watching the building’s environs, and there has not been any particular problem," said Hajime Motojuku, the spokesman for Tokyo Electric. A little more: ...

Last Wednesday, CSIS hosted Scaling Down Reactors: A Different Model for Nuclear Energy , and has made available the speaker bios and presentations along with audio of the event. Their brief overview of this new & growing field: Several companies and research teams are now pioneering smaller reactor designs that could present a unique set of characteristics and benefits desirable to domestic utilities as well as other nations interested in nuclear energy. Ranging in size and technology, smaller reactors could offer different capital cost structures, the possibility of modular designs, and new operational and safety characteristics. Internationally, these reactors may also introduce important considerations for grid compatibility and nonproliferation efforts. Then, NRC hel d a workshop Thursday and Friday, Small- and Medium-Sized Reactors , at which Chairman Greg Jaczko spoke . The presenters’ slides are here , except for DOE’s presentation . NEI was represented by Paul Genoa, wh...

Along with a bunch of other personnel announcements, Gregory Jaczko, who has been an NRC commissioner, now assumes the post of Chairman, replacing Dale Klein. Here’s the news from the NYT: A former adviser to Senator Harry Reid is President Obama’s choice to lead the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, giving opponents of a nuclear waste repository in Mr. Reid’s home state of Nevada another well-placed ally. The new chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, has served on the five-member commission since January 2005. He will now serve as the commission’s official spokesman and as its chief executive, overseeing day-to-day operations as well as long-range planning. Despite the comment on Yucca Mountain, we think its role in the near term was set before now. Jaczko has plenty to do; we doubt Yucca Mountain will dominate his agenda. You can read the NRC’s mini-bio here . Here’s NEI’s congratulations : “The Nuclear Energy Institute congratulates Commissioner Jaczko on his ascension to the...