NEI Nuclear Notes

At the Washington Post, editorial board writer Stephen Stromberg surveys the energy scene in Taiwan: Taiwan imports about 98 percent of its energy supplies , mostly the fossil fuels that keep its fluorescent streetscapes flashing and its many factories humming. The Taiwanese are against virtually every form of carbon dioxide-free energy for various reasons. A fourth reactor on the islands faced such massive protest it has never been turned on. But Stromberg is having none of it, coming to the point of his piece: Because climate change is a global problem, the choices of Germany and Japan — both of which have shut down perfectly serviceable reactors in recent years — and Taiwan as well affect the rest of us. Their greenhouse-gas emissions mix into the atmosphere just like everyone else’s. And the big danger is that these nations will encourage the international stigmatization against nuclear power, when tough-mindedness, not self-indulgence, is necessary. The global norm s...

You’ve probably heard enough from us about last year’s polar vortex (brutal) and the nuclear performance during it (great), so we’ll keep this brief – or at least let others do do the talking. Here’s TVA : The Tennessee Valley Authority broke an all-time February power demand record Thursday morning with an estimated 32,109 megawatts at 7 a.m. EST, when the average temperature across the region hovered at 7 degrees. In its 82-year history, this is TVA’s highest ever demand for the month of February. The previous record was 31,045 megawatts set on Feb. 5, 2009, when the Valley-wide temperature was 15 degrees. TVA’s all-time power demand record is 33,482 megawatts on Aug. 16, 2007. All of TVA’s reactors operated at 100 percent over the last couple of days. The current situation doesn’t have the same quality of the polar vortex – that was fast and cruel while what the country has experienced over the last couple of weeks has been weather writ large – not slow ...

Terrific article at Bloomberg that takes a first try at crafting a minute by minute account of what happened at Fukushima Daiichi on March 11. Full of interesting details I did not know, including this bit about the number of workers at the plant that day: The Fukushima Dai-Ichi station had 6,415 people on site that day. More than 5,500, like Matsumoto and Imamura, were subcontractors who reported to their clusters of offices in the plant for a head count. It’s a big plant, but that’s a gigantic number. Then, this, following the earthquake: After the head counts, thousands of subcontractors left to check if families were safe… Before the tsunami struck. Almost 1,500 town residents were killed or are listed as missing, out of a national toll exceeding 26,000. After the tsunami. I doubt Tepco knows for sure how many of its contractors were caught by the tsunami and the story doesn’t hazard a guess. Let’s hope all made it away safely. It’s a long, detailed s...

Today sees the vote in the House on the Clean Energy and Security Act, aka Waxman-Markey aka the climate change bill, likely to be a very near thing on a very tight vote margin. As you might imagine, this is last ditch time for those who want the bill and those who don’t. Greenpeace says no : Since the Waxman-Markey bill left the Energy and Commerce committee, yet another fleet of industry lobbyists has weakened the bill even more, and further widened the gap between what Waxman-Markey does and what science demands. As a result, Greenpeace opposes this bill in its current form. Which sounds to us like Greenpeace’s lobbyists need a good talking-to. Heritage’s Ben Lieberman says no : Inflicting economic pain is what this is all about. That is how the ever-tightening emissions targets will be met. Well, it probably isn’t about inflicting pain. The goal would seem to be to avoid inflicting pain. The New York Times is going for yes : The bill...

From Reuters : French industrial power and transport systems group Alstom (ALSO.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) on Tuesday said it would invest over $200 million to build a new manufacturing facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee, United States. The site will manufacture steam turbines, gas turbines, generators and related equipment for use in U.S. power generation facilities and create 350 jobs at a time that the dollar/euro exchange rate makes it more attractive for European groups to produce in North America. Alstom will be manufacturing those components for UniStar .

Details from Tennessee Journalist . Patrick Moore is on the agenda.