NEI Nuclear Notes

The past two weeks have seen record temperatures grip the nation as a " heat dome " has descended over most of the continental U.S. While it isn't news that summer is hot, it is when the temperatures are 15-20 degrees higher than average for this time of year. But life must go on and the electricity must flow. Without the sort of reliable baseload power that nuclear energy provides , our electric grid would be in a tight spot, as grid operators would be forced to juggle intermittent source of energy (like wind and solar) with others that could be vulnerable to supply constraints (like natural gas). In California, the independent system operator recently asked consumers to conserve electricity in the face of high temperatures during a period where the supply of natural gas is constrained due to the Aliso Canyon methane leak . Put it all together and you could be looking at grid reliability being compromised, prices skyrocketing and electric utilities being forced t...

Michael Purdie The following is a guest post by NEI's Michael Purdie. Major cities in Texas were subject to numerous 100 degree-plus days this month . Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin all had record setting electricity demand. If you have ever been to these cities during one of these days, it’s hot and there is very little breeze to cool you down. The most extreme day for the grid was August 13, when power prices peaked above $1,000/MWh. When this occurs, the grid operator (in this case, ERCOT ) takes action. ERCOT called for conservation measures because electricity reserves were below 2,500 MWs during the peak. Why did this occur? Simple. The wind generating units in Texas produced less than 20% of what they’re capable of providing. By operating at less than a 20% capacity factor, wind units provided 633 MWs of power less than what ERCOT predicted during the daily peak demand. The chart below depicts the planned and actual wind generation during hours of...

Not too long ago, we reviewed a report that looked at nuclear energy (and other energy sources) as biodiversity agents. This had to do, in part, with the amount of land a facility needs to function. Nuclear energy and fossil fuel plants use relatively little, wind farms and solar arrays quite a lot of land . Based on an objective and transparent analysis of our sustainable energy choices, we have come to the evidence-based conclusion that nuclear energy is a good option for biodiversity conservation (and society in general) and that other alternatives to fossil fuels should be subjected to the same cost–benefit analyses (in terms of biodiversity and climate outcomes, as well as sociopolitical imperatives) before accepting or dismissing them. Writer Barry Brook, who collected 75 scientists to endorse his paper, is interested in land use as it impacts flora and fauna. Biodiversity concerns do not get as much play as they might – and, when they do, it annoys many when land is withdraw...

Matt Wald The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior director of policy analysis and strategic planning at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald . California researchers have sketched out an American energy system that they say can be powered almost entirely by wind, water and sunlight, by 2050 . It’s an interesting thought experiment, with some valid insights, but it’s a little like hopping from New York to California on one foot. Even if you could do it, would you really want to? The paper, summarized here , is not just a recipe for just powering the electric system, but for converting everything that uses oil or natural gas to run on electricity instead – including ships, cars and even airplanes. The airplanes would fly on hydrogen derived from water molecules split with electricity. Electrification is almost always a good idea, because it improves efficiency, cuts pollution, and can cut geopolitical risk. We are in the early stages (at least, we hope it’s th...

Matthew L. Wald In an October 7, 2014 article , New York Times reporter Matthew Wald aptly describes the market forces, technological changes, and policy choices challenging electricity providers today. He artfully distinguishes two aspects of electric generation that are important to understand the value of diverse sources of electricity. One is the energy contributed by a generator, the other is the power it provides. Wind and solar contribute energy (i.e., electric current flowing when the wind blows or sun shines). Nuclear, coal, and gas-fired generators contribute both energy and dependable power (i.e., current flowing when and in the quantities needed by the grid). Mr. Wald's article nicely complements two recent posts on this blog by our NEI colleague Mark Flanagan on October 1 and September 29 . It is also gratifying to note that Mr. Wald refers to nuclear power as "zero-carbon", a frequent subject of this  blog . For a more quantita...

Sunday night is a crowded spot on the television calendar (Mad Men & Game of Thrones), which means that in my house, the re-boot of Cosmos hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson goes straight to my DVR. When I first heard that the show was being resurrected by Fox's Seth MacFarlane , I immediately began looking forward to the premiere. I'm more than old enough to remember watching the original PBS series hosted by Carl Sagan . It was a huge hit, challenging the Big 3 networks in the ratings on the night it premiered in September 1980. For a kid who had grown up fascinated by space exploration, it was a real treat. Let's get back to 2014. I've been plowing through each episode a couple of days after it originally aired and was really enjoying it (I've been a fan of the cosmic calendar from the start). Then I watched Episode 9, "The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth." That night, Dr. Tyson touched upon the topic of climate change* (emphasis mine) : We just c...

This caused  a mathematical synapse to fire: Wind energy reduced power sector emissions by more than 5 percent last year, saving the same amount of CO2 as taking 20 million cars off the road, according to a new report. Well, if you don’t mind your car sputtering to a stop when the wind stops blowing. Okay, that’s not really fair. It’s a question of how many carbon emissions were displaced by wind power and that was 126.8 million tons or the equivalent of about 20 million cars. That’s fair – but consider : Nuclear energy facilities avoided nearly 590 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2013 across the U.S. This is nearly as much carbon dioxide as is released from 113 million cars, which is more than all U.S. passenger cars. The U.S. produces more than five billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. That 113 million car figure seems right enough, but is that (or less, actually) really the number of passengers vehicles in the car crazy U.S? Seems too f...

The quote of the day that's getting passed around this morning at NEI comes from Suzzanne Shelton of the Shelton Group. She was in attendance last week at Fortune's Brainstorm Green 2014 , and shared her top five takeaways from the conference on her blog before the start of the long holiday weekend. Not surprisingly, this aside involved Mike Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute and his ongoing struggle to get other environmentalists to understand that constraining carbon emissions and keeping the lights on is going to mean relying on a diverse set of energy sources that includes nuclear energy: The solar industry doesn't need the Sierra Club. There was a very interesting point/counterpoint discussion between Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, and Michael Shellenberger , president of the Breakthrough Institute. It appears the two men are/were friends, and Shellenberger was practically doing an on-stage intervention with Brune, begging him ...

There’s no particular reason for us to rag on wind energy, our gusty cousin, but in case you thought throwing up a few windmills was easy : Birds, sharks and unexploded bombs from World War II are being blamed for holding up offshore wind farms, raising doubts about the costs of the technology. and: The U.K. market is crucial to the industry because it’s the biggest source of new projects and accounts for more than half the global installed capacity. Prime Minister David Cameron ’s government has set incentives for offshore wind through 2019, hoping to stimulate clean-energy jobs. Those ambitions are being chipped away as developers better understand the costs of the projects. Utilities have canceled as much as 5,760 megawatts of planned capacity since Nov. 26, when RWE AG dropped its 1,200 megawatt Atlantic Array. And: EON, a German utility, along with Dong Energy A/S and Masdar Abu Dhabi Future Energy Co. yesterday abandoned plans to expand the 630-megaw...

From Twitterer Emily Gosden of the British newspaper The Telegraph : Decc [Department of Energy and Climate Change] deleted this graphic comparing nukes/wind/solar "because of sensitivities". Says "not inaccurate". Hmm. This is a post about it by Telegraph news blogger Will Heaven: It turns out that the Renewable Energy Association called it "unhelpful" in a press release , pleading that "as Ed Davey stressed… it is not an either/or choice". And here’s the infographic: It basically shows the land mass taken to generate a similar amount of energy. Well, it really isn’t helpful to the renewable folks, is it?. Wind farms and solar arrays can eat up a lot of space. Context really matters: if land mass is the key issue, nuclear energy wins. Nuclear energy wins on capacity, too, the potential generated output. Nuclear energy the realizes most of its capacity, wind and solar do not. This infographic doesn’t reflect that. Imagi...

Former Vice President Al Gore has never been the biggest advocate of nuclear energy: In 2009, he said he saw it playing "a somewhat larger role" in the energy mix because of climate change and efforts to cut carbon emissions. "I'm not a reflexive opponent of nuclear. I used to be enthusiastic about it, but I'm now skeptical about it," he told the Guardian at the time. But at least three years ago, not it biggest detractor, either. I think it’s fair to say that he is currently indifferent to it. "It will play a role, but probably a limited role. I think the waste issue can probably be solved, and Fukushima notwithstanding, the safety of operation issue can probably be solved. But the cost is absurdly high and still rising," he wrote during a question and answer session on Reddit to promote his 24-hour Climate Reality webcast on the links between fossil fuels and extreme weather. That happened Wednesday into Thursday. If the webcast...

It should come as no surprise that environmentalists oppose the use of nuclear energy in the same way they oppose coal or the fracking technology that is unlocking huge new reserves of natural gas. Currently nuclear energy provides about twenty percent of the electricity used in the U.S. Their attack on coal—led by the Obama administration—has driven its use down from just over fifty percent a few years ago to about 47% today. Not to mention the rise of natural gas. But you’ve got to take your triumphs as they come. --- In Germany : [Holger] Arntzen is now project manager of Wind Comm, a nonprofit that supports wind farm development. For him, the key to stopping the backlash against the power lines is to do more to inform Germans that the nuclear phase out comes with a price and changes in lifestyle. "To show what is possible, and how I, as a citizen, can influence the load on the grid, like putting on my dishwasher only when the sun shines, because we have a l...

You may recall that in November, President Clinton made the following statement about the relative costs of nuclear, solar and wind in an appearance on The Daily Show : "Solar energy and wind energy ... would already be competitive with coal if you had to pay the extraneous costs of coal -- the health care costs and other things. And ... wind within two years and solar within five will be competitive in price with coal. They're both cheaper than nuclear right now." In response, Lou Jacobson, a reporter with Politifact, took a closer look at Clinton's claim, and rated it half-true : Clinton was correct about wind energy being "cheaper than nuclear right now," at least the onshore kind. But for now, nuclear beats the cheapest form of solar energy on price. So we rate his statement Half True. That claim didn't sit well with NEI's David Bradish, who pulled apart the numbers and suggested that Politifact change its rating from "half true" to ...

A mini-debate over at Business Week’s appropriately named Debate Room blog highlights something we often see when pro-nuclear energy meets anti-nuclear energy. See if you can spot it. First, NEI’s Vice President of Communications Scott Peterson: Nuclear plants alone won’t improve our air quality but coupled with renewable energy sources, they are a sustainable energy resource that will produce electricity for 60 years or more. As the auto industry develops electric vehicles, using carbon-free nuclear energy to charge them is a win-win for our environment and national security. One nuclear energy facility could charge more than 1.8 million electric cars each night and power mass transit, homes, and businesses during the day. And Greenpeace’s Nuclear Policy Analyst Jim Riccio: Our best bet for reducing pollution from coal plants is energy efficiency and renewable energy. These solutions can be deployed more quickly and affordably than wasting billions on a new nuclear rea...

With Germany aiming to shut down its nuclear energy plants by 2022, it needs replacement energy and quickly. Prime Minister Angela Merkel has put forward a 6-point plan to accomplish this. From Der Speigel : Expanding renewable energy. Investing in more wind, solar, and biomass energies will try to raise the renewable-energy share of Germany's total energy use -- from a baseline of 17 percent in 2010. Expanding grids and storage. Building a much larger storage and delivery network for electricity -- particularly wind energy, which can be generated in the north but must be carried to the south -- will be a main focus. Efficiency. The government hopes improve the heating efficiency of German buildings -- and reduce consumption -- by 20 percent over the next decade. "Flexible power." The government wants to build more "flexible" power plants that can pick up slack from wind or solar energy when the weather fails to generate enough electricity duri...

Internet search engine giant Google announced Tuesday that it is investing in a mammoth project to build an underwater "superhighway for clean energy" that would be able to funnel power from offshore wind farms to 1.9 million homes without overtaxing the already congested mid-Atlantic power grid. Why? While the project is outside of Google's normal focus , officials said, "We believe in investing in projects that make good business sense and further the development of renewable energy." Well, that makes enough sense as not to matter. If Google wants to do this, and its shareholders don’t raise objections, why not? It certainly has a good profile. Some of what I’ve read raises questions, though not really about the utility of the project. There’s this: Consumers who would receive electricity through the grid would help fund the project, Mitchell added, although he said at this point, "It's hard to say what will be the impact on t...

If Germany keeps its nuclear plants alive for 15 years past the current 2022 deadline – and taxes them to help support a move to renewable energy – that’s good news for renewable energy, isn’t it? “It’s probably detrimental for offshore [wind],” Hodges said. “Keeping that much nuclear power online means electricity prices will be stable and maybe even with some downside potential. That suggests less investment” in wind energy. Well, boo-hoo. Electricity that is lower cost and free of carbon emissions? Surely, it is to die of shame. Hodges is Charlie Hodges, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. It gets better. “The decision is step backward to the energy technology of yesterday,” said Hermann Albers, president of the German Wind Energy Association. “The government is squandering the potential for wind energy.” I always dislike this argument because it assumes that the new is shiny and bright while “the energy technology of yesterday” is gray and dingy. But let’s...

Lawrence Livermore Laboratories toted up energy use last year (for 2008) and found a marked drop. This year’s version (for 2009) reveals a further drop: The United States used significantly less coal and petroleum in 2009 than in 2008, and significantly more wind power. There also was a decline in natural gas use and increases in solar, hydro and geothermal power according to the most recent energy flow charts released by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. You’d be perfectly within your rights to say, It’s the economy, stupid, and that was the main takeaway from the Labs report last year. Not this time: “Energy use tends to follow the level of economic activity, and that level declined last year. At the same time, higher efficiency appliances and vehicles reduced energy use even further,” said A.J. Simon, an LLNL energy systems analyst who develops the energy flow charts using data provided by the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration. “As a r...

The Western Governors Association surprised a lot of people last year when it issued strong support for nuclear energy among its energy provisions. You can read Nuclear Notes’ coverage of that here . As I wrote then, the interest isn’t that it was nuclear-friendly, it’s that it focused so intensely on energy issues. This year, they’ve gone further, sending a letter to some key Congressional chairmen: The Western Governors' Association urged Congress to increase federal loan guarantee authority for new nuclear development by $36 billion, the amount included in President Obama's 2011 budget request. Doing so would enable the financing of six to nine additional new reactors beyond those previously authorized, the governors said. And why do they want this? Writing on behalf of their colleagues, Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter, WGA's chairman, and Washington Gov. Christine O. Gregoire, WGA vice chairman, said this increased loan guarantee volume "wi...

This isn’t a cozying up to wind post, but rather a how not to use numbers to make an argument post. We were listening to a Senate hearing this morning and Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) mentioned that wind turbines kill a lot of birds. He said this as a kind of aside about the problems of  electricity generators other than nuclear. We have no idea why this idea has popped to the fore, but we’ve heard a lot of it lately. Here’s George Will on ABC’s This Week: "By the way, wind farms kill a lot more birds daily than are probably going to be killed in this oil spill." Well, yes and no – windmills don’t cause ecological disasters and those tend to be devastating to the future of a species, bird and otherwise. Will had expanded on this comment in his Newsweek column a few weeks ago: Wind power involves gargantuan "energy sprawl." To produce 20 percent of America's power by wind, which the Obama administration dreamily proposes, would require ...