NEI Nuclear Notes

Sound the alarm bells—a new report by Environment America and U.S. PIRG wrongly claims that nuclear plants pose a threat to ground water supplies in the United States. The report, “ Too Close to Home: Nuclear Power and the Threat to Drinking Water ,” states: With 49 million Americans drawing their drinking water from areas within 50 miles of nuclear power plants—and with three-quarters of all U.S. nuclear power plants already leaking radioactivity into groundwater supplies—it is time for the U.S. to move toward cleaner, safer and cheaper alternatives for our energy needs. It comes as no surprise that four authors without environmental monitoring backgrounds are pushing their own agenda—to shut down all U.S. nuclear plants—and distorting the facts about the industry’s ground water protection initiatives to support their case. Let’s review the facts: First, the nuclear industry considers any unintended release of radioactive materials to be unacceptable. Period. This is why ...

Here at NEI, my colleagues and I have been batting around a press release from Environment America and U.S. PIRG claiming that nuclear power plants represent a threat ground water from leaks of tritium. The report is titled, “Too Close to Home: Nuclear Power and the Threat to Drinking Water.” From where we sit, the story seems a lot like one that the AP pushed out in June 2011 about the subject. The public needs to know that there has been no known adverse impact on public health or safety from a tritium release at commercial nuclear power plants. While we'll have more on that later, it's also important to point out that the four co-authors of this study lack any scientific credentials. Jennifer Kim of U.S. PIRG has a degree in history from the University of Michigan; According to her own MySpace page , Courtney Abrams of Environment America graduated with a degree in Psychology from Wake Forest; Her Environment America colleague Rob Kerth has a BA in history from Yale;...

Slashdot ran a story today called “Report Blames NRC For VT Yankee Leak,” and found that the link took us over to Beyond Nuclear. Well, that was that. While some anti-nuclear groups are worth engaging with, Beyond Nuclear is, how shall we say, not. Dishonest and amateurish in its approach, the group has never required much comment from us: our readers – any interested readers – could see through its stuff as though it were made of cheap plastic. But we did make a note to revisit Slashdot and see if at least some of its readership might be accepting this hooey. Nope. First, the quote, "Numerous incidents of unplanned releases of radioactivity have been reported to the NRC within the past few months." "These incidents of leaks, overflows and spills have resulted in contamination of areas outside of plant buildings. " is not actually in the article but rather it is in the link from the NRC in 1979 about responding to the leaks. The article then goes on the s...

Yes Vermont Yankee linked to some useful stats on VY from a presentation Dr. Robert Hargraves (her friend) gave at a Rotary Club in NH . In it, “Bob covered a quick history of Vermont Yankee, put the tritium issue in perspective, pointed out funding sources of the VY opponents , and demolished the simplistic arguments for replacing VY with renewables. All in less than twenty minutes!” As well, Yes VY included an engaging “ video clip of the Entergy briefing that explained how they found and fixed the leak of tritiated water.” After much of the hoopla has died down over the tritium issue with VY, NEI’s new polling data found that only 16 percent of US adults heard or read any information in the past year about “recent releases of a very weak radioactive material called tritium from some nuclear power plants” (p. 10). On the other end, 27 percent heard or read that the federal government awarded a loan guarantee for building new nuclear power plants (p. 10). Would have thought th...

This morning NEI’s VP Alex Flint debated Kevin Kamps (pdf) from Beyond Nuclear for about 45 minutes. Besides disagreeing with every issue Mr. Kamps raised, I have to say he was quite smooth with his responses and did an effective job at making his case. But as Mr. Flint pointed out at 42:50, many of Mr. Kamps’ claims were “irresponsible fear mongering.” Among the topics discussed were CBO’s debunked 50 percent default rate which is not based on past industry experience, Vermont Yankee’s tritium situation , and how loan guarantees reduce the cost of electricity to the consumer (pdf). Enjoy!

Besides last week being a busy week on budget proposals, loan guarantees, etc., there was quite a bit of discussion on the Vermont Yankee tritium issue. And Meredith Angwin at Yes Vermont Yankee has done an exquisite job of keeping up with all of the media reports and facts that are coming out . As she has found, there are very few times when clear communication is essential and this was one of them . As I look at the history here, I see many opportunities for miscommunication. Underground and buried ...what did these terms mean to the various players? Was Entergy asked about underground pipes, but answered about buried pipes? Did the nuclear engineer use the words buried , underground as if they were synonyms? Is John Wheeler correct about the use of underground and buried ? Or is Gundersen correct in his implication that this is semantic obfuscation of a clear situation? Were there honest communication errors? Maybe. We’ll eventually find out. Something that may ...

Last night, seven of us had the opportunity to chat amongst ourselves about President Obama’s State of the Union , the announcement of a blue-ribbon commission , the proposal to increase loan guarantees and Vermont Yankee’s tritium quagmire . Last week was quite an eventful week for the nuclear industry so for one of Rod Adams’s podcast shows , a number of us were asked by Rod if we could share our thoughts. The five other knowledgeable participants were: Kelly Taylor, a 24 year nuclear industry professional and frequent Atomic Show guest. Meredith Angwin, a physical chemist and small businessperson who has recently started publishing a blog titled Yes, Vermont Yankee . Charles Barton, who blogs at Nuclear Green and Energy from Thorium . Dan Yurman, who blogs at Idaho Samidat , writes for Fuel Cycle Weekly and is the blogger with the highest readership at The Energy Collective. Robert Margolis, a 24 year nuclear industry professional who has operated reactor...

If you’re not too busy during this second week of my favorite holiday month, there are a number of readings on nuclear energy I recommend (in no particular order). First is from Brian Wang who’s the main writer at Next Big Future . Brian, in a rebuttal to Michael Dittmar’s series at The Oil Drum claiming the “world’s uranium supply situation is unsustainable,” is making a small bet with Dittmar about who will be wrong in their nuclear generation and uranium forecasts out to 2020 . The two have been really duking it out in the comments section which has made for quite the entertaining read. The second piece comes from This Week in Nuclear’s John Wheeler who discussed the incident at the Kaiga nuclear plant in India where a worker contaminated his fellow employees’ drinking water with tritium . After all the facts were presented, John expressed his beef with the inaccurate reporting from the media of this incident: What REALLY caught my eye about this story was the irrespons...

Two days ago on DallasNews , Arjun Makhijani from the anti-nuclear group Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) gave his usual commentary that nuclear can't cut it but renewables can . Having failed miserably to deliver on the 1950s promise that nuclear electricity would be "too cheap to meter," the industry now says it will save us from climate change. Can't the antis come up with something better than to hold the industry to a claim made 50 years ago? Since the 1980s, it's been clear nuclear plants were not cheap. I'm sure if we dig hard enough we can find old claims made from all industries that never came to fruition. On to Comanche Peak: And then there is the problem of cooling water. The two proposed reactors would consume about 40 million gallons of water per day. Even assuming that the water is available, Texas is risking a less reliable power system, given that droughts are estimated to become more extreme in a warming world. I guess ...