ANS Nuclear Cafe

Transparency and Proactive Outreach in Good Nuclear Energy Communications

Posted on June 19, 2013 by ansnuclearcafe| 1 Comment

By Mimi Limbach

Yesterday, a panel of three terrific communicators shared their insights and best practices at the American Nuclear Society Annual Meeting in Atlanta. I was privileged to be the moderator for the Communicating for New Nuclear Facilities session. Their unanimous advice:

Be as transparent as you can about your organization’s plans and operations.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to critics.
Keep all of your stakeholders apprised of what you’re doing.
Continuously build community and policy maker support.

Nuclear Development Communications Director Todd Terrell discussed the extensive outreach that Southern Company conducts on a routine basis, along with the important role that the Employee Speakers’ Bureau plays in its outreach. In addition, he spoke about the degree to which the company works to be transparent, including holding periodic meetings with critics whose agendas include environmental, nuclear, and policy issues.

Westinghouse External Communications Director Vaughn Gilbert shared the company’s excellent new broadcast commercial, which soon will be shown in a variety of venues including Washington, D.C. He described the company’s decision to focus on stakeholders outside the nuclear energy industry, whose support will be important to the industry’s future success. As with Southern Company above, Westinghouse has reached out to critics as well.

Amy Lientz, director of Communications and Government Relations for the Idaho National Lab (INL), described the challenges the lab faces in modernizing critical aging facilities and building new ones in an era of tight budgets, sequestration, and continuing resolutions from Congress. The INL, too, works for transparent communications, while recognizing that some actions—for example, those involving individual personnel matters—must remain private. In addition, she recognized the unique challenges of timely communications from government entities.

ANS members engaged all three panelists in a lively discussion—and the audience learned that communications best practices apply to very different kinds of organizations.

Panelists (left to right): Todd Terrell, Vaughn Gilbert, Mimi Limbach, and Amy Lientz

______________________

Mimi Limbach is managing partner at Potomac Communications Group

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Posted in American Nuclear Society, Meetings

Supply Chain and Procurement Issues – ANS Annual Meeting 2013

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Will Davis| Leave a comment

Coolant pump, primary loop, Clinch River Breeder Reactor project, 1981

By Will Davis

Today’s session entitled “Supply Chain and Procurement Issues” was another great feature of the American Nuclear Society’s 2013 Annual Meeting. The panel was sponsored by the ANS Operations and Power Division, and featured five speakers describing their views of the most pressing issues in the area of parts procurement for existing and new build nuclear plants to an engaged and very interested audience.

Richard Rasmussen of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission opened by noting that the United States’ nuclear industry has some 400 domestic suppliers, but also has roughly 160 international suppliers spread among 17 countries. This can make it very challenging to monitor quality throughout the entire process of supply for parts. Rasmussen’s main point was that the responsibility for supply chain integrity and overall quality assurance rests with the licensee, and not with the vendor. The Nuclear Procurement Issues Committee (NUPIC) and/or ASME (industry auditors, standards organizations) are the next level of review for supply, followed by the contractors or vendors and finally their sub-contractors. He said: “You have a quality program, and it looks good on paper. But is it running? Is it reaching down all the way to the subcontractors making the parts?”

Rasmussen noted that NRC experience has shown that most supply chain problems are actually found at the design level, with contractors or sub-contractors “not understanding the ‘why’ of a certain design or design requirement.” He pointed out that it’s very important these days to have continued interaction with overseas (foreign) contractors, to ensure that nuance of language and culture are not affecting the understanding of quality requirements.

“Nuclear energy is becoming a smaller and smaller part of most companies’ business,” Rasmussen said, with fewer and fewer people in each organization having what he referred to as the “nuclear mindset.” Licensees must be sensitive to this in order to properly manage the supply chain top to bottom and be prepared to deal with issues all the way down to subcontractors and across oceans.

Counterfeit, Fraudulent, and Suspect Items (CFSI) are, according to Rasmussen, not a major issue in the United States in the supply chain—although recent events in South Korea concerning falsified quality assurance paperwork with parts and cables have once again pushed this issue into international focus. Rasmussen said that the process at licensees to cover this issue basically involves the process of “Prevent, Detect, Respond, and Communicate,” and briefly detailed each of these steps. Rasmussen also told the audience that counterfeit or fraudulent parts should not “just immediately be sent back to the vendor, but held on to and submitted to the NRC for analysis.” After this, the NRC would “take action through its own channels,” which Rasmussen directly stated could and would, if necessary, include law enforcement agencies. Rasmussen closed by noting that rulemaking by the NRC on this issue is a remote possibility at best, because there are so few real examples of this phenomenon in the U.S. nuclear industry—noting that the NRC was working at some level with the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) on ensuring that it stays this way.

Ed Terres of Chicago Bridge and Iron presented a fascinating and insightful set of standards, and questions, for the audience. Of particular interest was Terres’ brief discussion of what he termed as “supplier challenges,” briefly detailed as follows:

• Topical Programs to Shop Procedures—Is your quality program that looks good on paper being implemented and getting results on the shop floor where the parts are being made?

• Documentation Flow Discipline—Is the proper paperwork to manage and track quality issues actually getting where it’s supposed to be?

• Understanding Technical Requirements—Does the contractor or subcontractor fully understand the ‘why’ of specifications to ensure they’re strictly followed?

• Traceability—Is a full material history on parts being developed and is it following the parts to the licensee?

The other speakers found both an interested and engaged audience that asked many questions on a topic that, as previously mentioned, has been pushed into focus once again because of the situation with JS Cable and South Korean nuclear plants—and is very important as the United States builds four new nuclear plants. Supply chain issues, such as have been detailed above, will be critical if the U.S. nuclear industry continues to grow, and if the supply chain vibrantly revitalizes to support new build here and abroad.

____________________________

Will Davis is a consultant to, and writer for, the American Nuclear Society; an active ANS member, he will serve on the ANS Public Information Committee 2013-2016. In addition, he is a contributing author for Fuel Cycle Week, is on the Board of Directors of PopAtomic Studios, and writes his own popular blog Atomic Power Review. Davis is a former US Navy Reactor Operator, qualified on S8G and S5W plants. He’s also an avid typewriter collector in his spare time.

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Posted in American Nuclear Society, Meetings

ANS Annual Meeting – New Nuclear Build Risks

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Will Davis| 1 Comment

by Will Davis

All in attendance sat up a bit in their chairs at the session “Managing the Spectrum of Risks in the Complexities on New Build Nuclear—Call for a New Business Model to Meet the Challenges and Opportunities in the U.S. and International Nuclear Markets” held Monday afternoon at the ANS Annual Meeting. Rob Graber of Energypath Corporation stated from the podium that “90 percent of the new build nuclear plants under construction today are being built in nations that have state capitalism systems,” meaning nations like China where the government is heavily involved with programs and the line between private and public investment is blurred. This was just one of the sobering but necessary observations offered during this highly valuable session.

The first speaker of the session was Bill Linton of Linton Consulting, pointing out that using a “strategic view” analysis, stretching many years into the future, is essential in the decision making for or against new nuclear plants in the United States. He noted that while there are about 69 reactors under construction world-wide right now, with somewhere between 150 and 200 more planned, 28 of these plants under construction are in China, 11 are in Russia, and 7 are in India. “The nuclear industry really is global today,” he observed, pointing out that the nuclear fuel cycle is already a global chain business, as is the business of plant components. While other nations are building nuclear plants at high rates, the U.S. industry has experienced, at home, a slow growth rate—which led to a slow build rate, and slow development that has inevitably led to a decline in U.S. nuclear construction influence worldwide. In fact, Linton mentioned that a Nuclear Regulatory Commission employee had remarked to him at one time that the United States’ nuclear industry “is 40 years into a 60-year business,” implying that after the current generation of plants reaches their life expectancy, that’s essentially the end.

Of course, the potential solution to this is both rapid development and innovative financing and operating arrangements, which Linton said are vital to the future of nuclear energy everywhere. He pointed out that Russia can “do it all”—finance, build, own, and operate nuclear plants anywhere. And Russia will do so in Turkey. He put the potential program of any nuclear state into perspective when he said that “nuclear power is at least a 100-year commitment, start to finish, by any nation.” Clearly, this includes spent fuel storage or recycling or transfer out of country, since the currently accepted range of prospective plant life is 60 to possibly 80 years.

Graber, in his presentation on Maintaining the Nuclear Option in the United States, started off by pointing out that, for investors, a high level of uncertainty about the capability of any sort of large project to complete can trigger a “no go” decision—and since only in nations with state capitalism systems is there little consideration of these factors, only those nations might see a large buildout of new nuclear plants.

However, on the bright side for U.S. nuclear plants, Graber pointed out that natural gas prices have (according to his calculation) a 31-percent volatility in any year—meaning that giant swings in price can erase all the economies of natural gas at just about any time. The implication is that in merit-based load dispatching scenarios, nuclear becomes a better option when that happens. Graber also noted that natural gas plants (because of the price and supply volatility) actually have a higher chance of NOT being operated, once built, than do nuclear plants. Thus, in one way, they can be a riskier investment than nuclear plants. He showed that for nuclear plants, there are a number of construction option premiums in his “Option Based Construction Model” throughout the whole cycle of plant build and operation (including delaying the plant, scaling back the plant, accelerating construction of the plant, or abandoning the plant) that make nuclear plants somewhat more attractive than might first appear to investors; in other words, the option model of construction (in use for the Blue Castle nuclear plant project) provides advantages over other types of plant that go up faster but may never run.

Graber outlined the process advantages in state capitalist nations, in comparison to U.S. builds that seem almost like FOAK (First Of A Kind) in every plant. He charted the process for these other nations with the details that these countries plan and order large fleets, which leads to a rapid (and somewhat steep) learning curve but a great increase of knowledge at a high rate. This allows development of “low cost options” for plant design, and thus reduced expenses as construction quickly reaches NOAK (Nth Of A Kind) status with many plants planned/ordered/building/operating. (Past ANS President Dave Rossin rose at another point in the meeting, questioning the wisdom of using the phrase “low cost option” with nuclear, which he claimed in the past has led to “lousy designs”—one of the humorous points of the meeting for some.)

Amir Shahkarami, chief executive officer of Exelon Nuclear Partners and senior vice president of Exelon Generation, noted that during the heyday of nuclear plant construction, on average one new nuclear plant went on line about every 17 days, and that if the nuclear builds planned for the next several decades are realized, this rate will rise from the current low figure to once every 5 days by 2035.

Shahkarami predicted that “some of the larger nuclear fleets will merge,” and that owners of single units will “have a hard ride.” He said that more of these owners will sign operating and service contracts with large fleet operators, as happened with Fort Calhoun.

Other speakers gave points of view on the United Arab Emirates’ new regulatory body, construction challenges in China and in South Korea, and the new AP1000 builds; Sandy Rupprecht of Westinghouse noted that while there are eight AP1000 plants under construction right now (four in the United States and four in China), his company is expecting orders very soon for eight more in China, and has “about 20 more units under discussion.” The challenges of new nuclear financing and construction were fairly well laid out, and innovative financing arrangements (which may include such options as the vendor building, owning, and operating plants entirely for customers, or turning the plant over after a period of such operation, or other such concepts) were set up as perhaps the biggest key element that will continue the spread of nuclear plants outside of countries where the state heavily finances nuclear energy.

Perhaps a statement during the morning’s Opening Plenary summed it up best: Westinghouse’s Daniel Roderick said that his company “would certainly like to win the bid for every plant we can, but if we don’t, we still want to play in the game”— meaning that his company is left to manufacture such things as digital I&C equipment, as it’s doing for the South Korean–built plants in the UAE. Unless U.S. companies can provide innovative financing, as does ROSATOM in Russia, they may be left with a few large plant orders and some scraps.

•Illustrations: Top, prospective North Anna Unit 3 in artist’s rendering. Bottom, prospective Fermi Unit 3 in artist’s rendering.

•ANS Position Statement on the Need for Near Term Deployment of Nuclear Power Plants

___________________________

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Posted in American Nuclear Society, Meetings

Tagged Will Davis

From the ANS Annual Meeting President’s Reception (Photoblog)

Posted on June 18, 2013 by ansnuclearcafe| Leave a comment

The President’s Reception is an auspicious and delightful event that occurs on the eve of the Opening Plenary at the American Nuclear Society Annual Meeting. The reception provides an opportunity for meeting-goers to interact (mingle) with ANS elected leaders, catch up with long-time colleagues, and meet new ones. A few select photos from the 2013 ANS Annual Meeting President’s Reception:

Yes, this is literally a President’s Reception—meet and greet with (left to right) ANS President Michael Corradini, Meeting Program Chair Sedat Goluoglu, and Immediate Past President Eric Loewen. That’s Gil Brown shaking hands with the ANS officials.

Reunions with Immediate Past Presidents can be emotional.

Add incoming Vice-President Michaele Brady Raap and incoming President Donald Hoffman and we truly have a Presidential reception welcome.

And let the event begin!

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Posted in American Nuclear Society, Meetings

From the ANS Annual Meeting (Photoblog)

Posted on June 17, 2013 by pbowersox| Leave a comment

The Opening Plenary at the 2013 ANS Annual Meeting is now underway—and it’s amazing how much goes on before the “Opening”. Already on Saturday morning a Teachers Workshop was in progress, and Saturday evening the Global Leadership Reception was in full swing. A few select photos:

Candace Davison, senior reactor operator at Penn State University, begins at the beginning with the discovery of the mysterious “X-ray” (not her hand projected onto screen).

Radiation is all around us in our radioactive world. Easy to detect with a Geiger counter.

Almost unbelievable—one can see “trails” of individual alpha and beta particles using a simple cloud chamber.

Detecting radioactive particles.

Meanwhile, the setting for the ANS Annual Meeting, the beautiful Hyatt Regency Atlanta.

From the elevator.

Stay tuned for coverage of the 2013 ANS Annual Meeting now officially underway. And better yet, follow on twitter #ansmeeting

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Posted in American Nuclear Society, Education, K-12, Meetings

Carnival of Nuclear Energy 162

Posted on June 16, 2013 by Will Davis| Leave a comment

This 162nd edition of the Carnival of Nuclear Energy, presented at the ANS Nuclear Cafe, comes to you posted from the 2013 ANS Annual Meeting at the Hyatt Regency, Atlanta, Georgia. Everyone here is excited and energized about this year’s meeting, and we’re proud to host the Carnival in its midst!

Every week, the top pro-nuclear bloggers (and, increasingly, news and op-ed writers) submit their top picks of that week’s content. Following the Carnival will thus keep you on top of what these highly in-touch, articulate thinkers feel were the hot topics of the week. With that – let’s get to this week’s entries.

4 Factor Consulting / Margaret Harding

Scare Crow? Nope, this girl has a brain. A brief, serious and puzzling illness some time back exposed Margaret Harding to nuclear medicine; here is the story.

Yes Vermont Yankee / Meredith Angwin

San Onofre Reactions; the Accurate, the Mixed, and the Ugly. In this blog post, Meredith Angwin describes blogger and newspaper reactions to the closing (the accurate and the mixed) and a Huffington Post discussion of the closing (the mixed and the ugly). She embeds the 25 minute video of the Huffington Post debate.

Next Big Future / Brian Wang

Canada Approves the Cigar Lake Uranium Mine. Old nuclear plant shutdowns would not be notable if there was more new nuclear construction.

Pakistan to build 1100 MWe reactors. Construction will begin next year — probably the first eight to be completed by 2030.

Nuke Power Talk / Gail Marcus

There’s More to Him than His Hair! Gail Marcus takes a look on the light side this week at Nuke Power Talk, commenting on the to-do in the press about Ernie Moniz’s hair. She does note that we should be more focused on what is in his head than what is on it.

Atomic Insights / Rod Adams

UCS Guilty of Harming Humans by Reinforcing Fear Mongering. Fighting back against UCS’s (Union of Concerned Scientists) negatively-slanted review of Pandora’s Promise and its unjustified attack on Gwyneth Cravens and Robert Stone.

ANS Nuclear Cafe – submitted by Paul Bowersox

“Environmental Impact Evaluations – Seeing the Bigger (Nuclear vs.
Fossil) Picture“ With the announcement last week of the closing of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, and ongoing additional NRC environmental impact
evaluations of long-term storage of spent fuel – Jim Hopf notes that
nuclear risks are being evaluated in isolation, while overall impacts of
the alternatives are not being considered.

Atomic Power Review / Will Davis

San Onofre Officially Shut Down. For the record, here is the press release from SCE documenting the official notification to NRC that SONGS was permanently shut down. The previous post on the blog is the original announcement that SCE / SDE&G had decided to retire the plant, but had not notified NRC yet.

That’s it for this week’s Carnival. As you can see at right, the American Nuclear Society’s 2013 Annual Meeting is underway, with folks at the registration desk signing in and various meetings already well underway. We hope to see you here this week!

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Posted in American Nuclear Society, Carnival of nuclear bloggers, Meetings, News

Nuclear Matinee: Pandora’s Promise Opens Today

Posted on June 14, 2013 by ansnuclearcafe| Leave a comment

How often do you get the chance to go see an acclaimed nuclear energy documentary at your local theater? We’re talking real movie theater popcorn here, folks, not that microwave kind.

Pandora’s Promise premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and has been generating controversy and conversation across the mainstream media and internet ever since. Now, the film moves to the cineplex.

Pandora’s Promise makes the environmental case for nuclear energy, as told by stalwarts in the environmental movement who are now converts to nuclear. These former opponents now see nuclear energy as humanity’s best hope to ameliorate growing planetary ills of poverty and pollution. Why did these people change their mind?

Well, now is the chance to find out for yourself. The American Nuclear Society has no position on the film and played no part in its production. However, nuclear professionals and other interested parties will surely be interested in seeing this film and forming their own opinions.

For a theater near you, click on cities and theaters at Pandora’s Promise website or visit an excellent compendium of reviews, interviews, and information on the film at NEI Nuclear Notes.

If you are attending the ANS Annual Meeting in Atlanta, consider joining an informal get-together to see the film on Tuesday evening June 18 departing the conference hotel at 8pm. RSVP with Paul at pbowersox@ans.org

Lenka Kollar reviews a screening of the film for ANS Nuclear Cafe

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Posted in Environmental Benefits of Nuclear, Nuclear Matinee

Tagged pandora's promise

Focus on Communications Workshop at ANS Annual Meeting

Posted on June 13, 2013 by ansnuclearcafe| Leave a comment

Wednesday, June 19, 2013
4:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
Location: Learning Center

Changing the Nuclear Conversation: What it Takes to Develop Effective Messages for the Public and Policy Makers

Developing effective messages means understanding your audience and then finding ways to communicate with them in ways that they can hear, relate to and support. In this always-popular workshop, ANS Washington Rep Craig Piercy and PCG Managing Partner Mimi Limbach will provide an update on changes in the Washington DC scene – a key audience – along with recent research on public perceptions of nuclear energy.

As workshop participants enjoy refreshments, Mimi and Craig will discuss a proven approach to developing messages that work, and engage participants in developing messages that will help positively reshape the conversation about nuclear energy. If you want to learn and share tips and techniques for communicating about important nuclear issues, in an interactive, interesting and fun session – this workshop is for you.

Sponsored by ANS’s Center for Nuclear Science and Technology Information

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Posted in American Nuclear Society, Meetings

Tagged craig piercy, focus on communications, mimi limbach

A Dangerous Precedent or a Slippery Slope?

Posted on June 12, 2013 by ansnuclearcafe| 2 Comments

By Howard Shaffer

The governor of Vermont last year established the “Energy Generation Siting Policy Commission” after citizens protested a proposed wind farm (meanwhile, the legislature proposed a wind farm moratorium bill). The main purpose of the governor’s initiative was to evaluate how much local input should be required in energy siting decisions.

Many Vermont citizens have been taught by nuclear opponents to raise “Not In My Backyard!” cries against nuclear-related issues—and now, this tactic has extended far beyond nuclear. Will Vermont allow every small locality to block projects needed for the state, regional, and national good?

“Wind at the backs” of wind power developers

Vermont’s policy is to encourage the development of alternative energy sources, which include wind, solar, biomass, and small hydro. The policy also supports energy conservation and efficiency, through an energy efficiency utility. And there are federal tax breaks and incentives for these projects. In addition, the state provides a “feed-in tariff” where power is bought by the distribution utility at a higher price than that from other sources.

All energy projects are now required to go through an identical permitting process. The Vermont Public Service Board (PSB) issues Certificates of Public Good (CPG) for energy and other projects. The PSB also conducts an investigation of project applications, including quasi-judicial public hearings, to determine if projects meet the legal criteria for a CPG. Participants in the hearing process must formally apply, and must be represented by legal counsel.

click to enlarge

Industrial wind turbines

Vermont residents living near wind power projects have opposed their construction. The latest designs of large wind turbines, dubbed “Industrial Wind Turbines” by opponents, are over 400 feet tall to the top of the blades. Objections are often raised about environmental impacts. In addition, destroying the view is an objection.

The impact of land clearing, roads, and ridge line facilities is another major objection.

Local citizens have formed groups to lobby their elected officials against these “wind farms.”

An objection raised against all projects is that legal counsel is required to formally participate before the PSB. This creates a hurdle for local citizens due to its expense.

The Energy Generation Siting Policy Commission

From the Commission’s charter:

“On October 2, 2012, Governor Peter Shumlin created the Governor’s Energy Generation Siting Policy Commission. The charge of the Commission is to survey best practices for siting approval of electric generation projects (all facilities except for net- and group-net-metered facilities) and for public participation and representation in the siting process and to report to the Governor and to the Vermont Legislature on their findings by April 30, 2013. The Commission will also look at alternative dispute resolution processes for project siting, permit coordination opportunities, how cumulative project impact is considered, and whether generic siting guidelines should be developed.”

The Commission’s report states that it is in the context of goals already set by law:

By 2022: 127.5 MW of new in-state renewable electric generation contracts provided through the Standard Offer program of SPEED (30 V.S.A. § 8005a(c))
By 2025: 25 percent of all energy from in-state renewables (10 V.S.A. § 579(a))
By 2028: 50-percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions; 75 percent by 2050 (10 V.S.A. § 578(a))
By 2032: 75-percent renewables in electric sales (30 V.S.A. § 8005(d) (4) (A)

Also, the state’s 2011 Comprehensive Energy Plan requires:

By 2050: 90 percent of all energy from renewables

Recommendations

The report’s recommendations are introduced as follows:

“The Commission believes that Vermont can address potentially competing interests and advance clean energy projects efficiently while also protecting the state’s natural resources. An effective and efficient siting process is essential to achieve this. With this in mind, the Commission is particularly focused on recommendations related to the following aspects of the siting process:

The role of—and opportunities for—public participation and representation.
Process uniformity, transparency, and efficiency.
Adequate protection from negative environmental, cultural, and health impacts.
Ensuring that the best rather than easiest sites are selected by maintaining a process that rewards appropriately sited projects, thus making the process easier and more predictable for all parties.
Encouraging projects that are community-led with the aim of increasing project acceptance and reducing costly contestation of projects for all parties.
Avoiding unintended consequences, including keeping the budgetary and retail rate consequences of the recommendations to a minimum.”

Recommendations are grouped in categories:

Increase emphasis on planning
Simplify tier system
Increase opportunity for public participation
Improve the siting process for increased transparency, efficiency, and predictability
Ensure adequate environmental, health, and other protection
Cross cutting recommendations

A key to understanding the whole report is the final policy recommendation:

“27. Although many of the following points have been covered in the body of this report, the Commission recommends that the PSB pay particular attention to these issues in the near term as they relate to siting electric generation within its current jurisdiction: a) the public need for procedural advice throughout the application process (Case Manager); b) an improved PSB website including an online case management system; c) consideration of economic efficiency and least environmental damage, with particular attention to climate change; d) health issues; e) cumulative impacts, which may include aesthetic, grid, economic and health effects; f) potential effects on neighboring property values; g) consideration of view shed in accommodating participation of communities; h) setbacks; i) principal concerns raised at public hearings for the project; and j) a more efficient process for smaller, community sponsored projects.”

The legislature

In January, a bill calling for a three year moratorium on wind power projects was introduced in Vermont’s Senate. The bill went through the usual committee reviews, in both houses. However, after this process the bill was then changed into an Act of the legislature that requires up to six joint meetings of the Senate and House Committees on Natural Resources and Energy, during a time that the legislature is not in session. This was not surprising, since the chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources and Energy is an ardent supporter of alternative energies. The committees are to review the Siting Commission’s report.

A slippery slope?

A major recommendation of the Siting Commission concerns including more local input in the project approval process. Based on what has happened, and continues to happen, concerning the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, dealing with local objections is a major hurdle. Right now, the objections of Vermont Yankee nuclear power plants opponents are heard by the PSB. Vermont Yankee’s opponents have formed groups, raised money, retained counsel, and formally participate in the approval process, at the state and federal level. The opponents want the plant shut down, no matter what.

The obvious problem, which has gone unspoken, is that when there are two sides that desire conflicting results in a controversial issue, both sides can’t be satisfied. Most elected officials don’t like to tell constituents “No,” particularly when an emotional issue is involved. In this era of one-issue politics, elected officials, considering their re-election possibilities, are wary of any group that will oppose them based solely on their stand on one issue alone.

The Commission’s report contains many good recommendations. It admits that the current process was set up when generating projects were large and infrequent. Now that projects are smaller and numerous, the process has to be streamlined. In particular, a tiered system is recommended, so that projects are subjected to a review process matched to their size and potential impact.

The danger in the process, as I see it, is coming up with a solution that will allow small local groups to have a veto over projects—energy, communications, or others—that are needed by the county, region, state, nation, or world. This could create a situation where nothing gets done. For example, in Windham County, home of Vermont Yankee, some do not want nuclear power—and they also do not want wind power.

My grandmother used to say, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” The Commission’s report could be viewed as trying to have everything, and saying nothing about hard choices.

__________________________

Shaffer

Howard Shaffer has been an ANS member for 35 years. He has contributed to ASME and ANS Standards committees, ANS committees, national meeting staffs, and his local section, and was the 2001 ANS Congressional Fellow. He is a current member of the ANS Public Information Committee and consults in nuclear public outreach. He is coordinator for the Vermont Grassroots Project. Shaffer holds a BSEE from Duke University and an MSNE from MIT. He is a regular contributor to the ANS Nuclear Cafe.

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Posted in View from Vermont, wind power

Tagged Energy Generating Siting Policy Commission, Howard Shaffer, Shaffer, Vermont Yankee

Environmental Impact Evaluations – Seeing the Bigger (Nuclear vs. Fossil) Picture

Posted on June 11, 2013 by pbowersox| 6 Comments

By Jim Hopf

As I discussed last fall, a federal appeals court ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to perform more thorough evaluations in support of its new Waste Confidence Rule, particularly with respect to the potential impacts of long-term storage of spent fuel at plant sites. While those evaluations are being performed, the NRC has suspended all new plant licensing and plant license renewals.

As discussed in that post, most experts believe that this issue will be resolved, in a timely manner, through additional analysis. Permanent cessation of licensing activity (until a repository is sited or built), or substantial new requirements (such as moving all fuel over 5 years old to dry storage) were considered unlikely. The NRC predicted that it could finish the required evaluations in ~2 years.

Reactions to NRC’s Waste Confidence Evaluations

Predictably, anti-nuclear “environmental” groups are claiming that the evaluations that the NRC are doing are insufficient. They say that the evaluations should consider waste being stored on site for centuries, consider risks of terrorist attacks, and risks from severe earthquakes like that which struck Fukushima. They also advocate moving all >5 year spent fuel to dry storage. Finally, they say that 2 years is nowhere near long enough for the evaluations, and that all licensing activity should remain suspended for as long as it takes for “adequate” review to be performed.

And now, the attorneys general from four New England states are joining in, filing a petition for the NRC to do a “more thorough” review of the risks/impacts of long term on-site fuel storage. They are asking the NRC to reject the conclusions and recommendations of its technical staff, because they did not “adequately address the risks of spent fuel storage.” The AGs also state that the NRC’s evaluation did not give enough consideration to two options; requiring that all >5 year cooled fuel be placed into dry storage, and not allowing further production of spent fuel until a repository is constructed. (Yes, you heard that right, the AGs from four states are actually asking the NRC to consider shutting down the nuclear power industry.)

What are they after?

One hopes that all the AGs are asking for is for the NRC to do more homework to provide a stronger case. That would allow them to tell the public that they forced the NRC to do a “better job” and look out for their safety. Or perhaps, they’re hoping for the 5-year dry cask storage requirement, allowing them to point to a tangible “improvement” that they can take credit for (or perhaps to just extract a pound of flesh from the industry). One really hopes that they don’t really want the industry to shut down.

In my view, is it’s not that those risks (of long term storage) have not been evaluated. It’s that the people in question don’t like the answer. In other words, they will never be satisfied until the “evaluation” gives them the answer they want, which is that the risks are unacceptable, or that the industry must take some extensive, expensive, and burdensome actions.

Negligible risks/impacts

dry cask 190x141 As someone who works in the area of dry fuel storage, I can tell you that the answer is pretty obvious. The risks of spent fuel storage are utterly negligible, compared to other risks that society routinely faces in general, and in particular, compared to the risks associated with alternative (fossil) power generation options. No credible scenario for a significant release from dry storage casks exists. Even terrorist attacks would have a minimal public health consequence.

Spent fuel pool risks are also quite low, and neither the 5-year cask requirement nor a repository would do much to reduce those (small) risks, since almost all the heat in spent fuel pools is from the fuel younger than 5 years. The theory of spent fuel pool cladding melt or fire (in the extremely unlikely, hypothetical event of pool drainage) is quite dubious in the first place, and it is being addressed at the few plants where it is thought to be a potential concern. Also of note is the fact that the spent fuel pools did NOT release any significant amount of radioactivity at Fukushima.

The fact is that nuclear waste is generated in a miniscule volume and, unlike the wastes from fossil plants and other industries, it has always been safely and fully contained, has never been released into the environment, and has never caused any harm. Further evaluation needed? In my view, the health/environmental impact evaluation for long-term onsite storage of used fuel could be adequately given in one sentence:

“The public health risks and environmental impacts of long term onsite storage of used nuclear fuel are clearly orders of magnitude less than those of the fossil fueled power generation that would otherwise be used in place of nuclear generation.”

It’s clear that shutting the industry down until a repository is built will result in fossil fuels being used for most of the replacement power. Even if new plant licensing and plant life extensions are suspended, for a long time, the result will eventually be some reduction in nuclear generation, and will result in some increase in fossil generation.

San Onofre

Meanwhile, in Southern California, the San Onofre plant has been shut down for years due to tube failure problems with its steam generators (as discussed on this site here and here). The NRC has required that the plant remain shut until all the issues are thoroughly investigated; a process that has been taking a very long time. The NRC has been under a lot of political pressure to take its time and do a “thorough” investigation.

Steam generator replacement has been discussed. The utility also proposed running one unit at 70-percent power, based on evaluations showing that it would not result in significant tube vibration and degradation. The NRC has decided to allow public hearings on that (70-percent power) restart request, and having it require a license amendment is even being discussed. In order to meet peak power demand while San Onofre remains shut, two ~50 year old, highly polluting fossil plants in Huntington Beach were taken out of out of retirement and fired up.

In terms of the potential consequences of steam generator tube failure, it seems (based on what I’ve read) that the notion of steam generator tube failures causing a meltdown (i.e., core damage) is a real stretch. The only real potential is that the sudden failure of a large number of tubes could cause a significant fraction of the primary coolant loop water (and the radioactivity therein) to be released into the environment. (Note that even nuclear opponent Arnie Gunderson did not say that steam generator tube failures could cause a “meltdown” in this article.)

While one can only guess what the political/public reaction to such a release would be, its actual health consequences would be negligible to non-existent, particularly in comparison to the ongoing impacts of fossil generation. In reality, what is most likely to happen if things didn’t work out and the tubes started to fail is that some tubes would fail, the plant operators would notice the increase in secondary side activity, and they would safely shut the plant down.

Not only have old, dirty fossil fueled plants been fired up while the whole San Onofre saga played out, but the utility has just announced that it will close both of the reactors due to this issue. This will result in ~2000 MW of additional fossil fueled generation for several decades.

Blinders – Not looking at big picture

The common theme for these two stories is that nuclear risks are being evaluated in isolation. Overall impacts, such as the effects of reduced nuclear on the overall power generation system, are not being considered. Nuclear operations are held to a standard of perfection, or some arbitrary standard that regulators and other politically powerful stakeholders view as being adequate. That, as opposed to being compared to other risks accepted by society or, more importantly, the risks related to the alternative (primarily fossil) generation that would be used in place of nuclear.

Again, what are these people seeking from another several years of waste storage evaluations, when it is obvious, by cursory inspection, that the risks of waste storage are negligible compared to those of fossil generation alternatives? Perhaps they hope that the evaluations will uncover practical steps that could reduce the risks even further. At least the dry storage proposal is ostensibly that kind of step, although whether it is worth the cost and effort is highly debatable.

New England is home to many gross-polluting coal plants (many of which make the “Dirty Dozen” list of top polluters). If those states’ AGs really cared about their public’s health risks, they’d focus their efforts on getting those plants cleaned up or closed. They wouldn’t be wasting any time or effort on negligible risks associated with used nuclear fuel.

Why is the mindset that San Onofre cannot be reopened until everything is completely analyzed, understood, and resolved, and until the chance of steam generator failure is all but eliminated? And if all the hoops result in the plant’s closure, so be it. Where was the environmental impact evaluation that compared the risk of running San Onofre to the health risks of operating two 50-year old fossil plants that are located in a relatively high population density area? Given the limited health consequences of any credible steam generator failure scenario, it seems clear what such an evaluation would show.

It is likely that the operation of the Huntington Beach fossil plants has already had a larger public health impact than what would occur even in the event of a worst-case steam generator failure scenario (i.e., release of primary coolant loop activity). And finally, how about the consequences of the plant being closed? Have they compared the risks of steam generator failure (low probability times limited consequence) to several decades worth of fossil fueled power generation? How about global warming impact?

Less nuclear = More fossil

smokestacks 150x100 One thing that people need to be clear on is that using less nuclear power primarily results in increased use of fossil fuels. That’s certainly what’s happening in Japan. (They’re turning to coal to replace nuclear, since imported oil and gas are costing too much.) In Germany, where a huge effort is being made on renewables, coal generation is being significantly increased to offset the loss of nuclear. Even if Germany did succeed in building enough renewable generation to offset the lost nuclear generation, they’d still effectively be choosing fossil fuels over nuclear, since they could have used the renewables to replace fossil instead.

Reducing nuclear use will not cause renewable generation to increase. Construction of renewable capacity is primarily driven by government mandate and/or large subsidy. The final fraction of renewable generation will likely be close to the maximum practical amount based on intermittentcy limitations.

The only real question is whether the net effect of reduced nuclear would primarily be an increase of gas or coal use. If one assumes future environmental regulations that will limit the use of coal, then arguing that nuclear will be replaced by gas may be reasonable (especially in California). On the other hand, unless coal is limited by policy, one could argue that, in the end, reduced nuclear would mean more coal since the supply of gas will reach its limit at some point. Use of gas to replace nuclear would drive up the price of gas, which would result in more existing coal plants remaining open or operating more hours per year. This is already happening in the United States, now that gas prices have risen somewhat from historic lows. This would result in a net effect of nuclear being replaced by coal.

When pressed, nuclear opponents usually cede that fossil fuels are worse than nuclear (since the facts are actually pretty clear on that point). And yet, it’s generally the case that nuclear plants are closed when anything is out of sorts, and are required to address all the issues before they are allowed to restart. In the interim, fossil fuels are always used in its place, regardless of their much larger health and environmental risks.

You don’t hear people say, although the situation with San Onofre isn’t ideal, that we must keep it operating while the issues are resolved, since firing up old fossil fueled generators would have an unacceptable impact. A no-compromise philosophy is taken for nuclear risks (when anything is not just right), whereas reducing the known, ongoing health risks and climate impacts of fossil generation seems to be treated more like an aspirational goal. Something that we really should do, and will get around to some day (kind of like a New Year’s losing weight resolution). When anything happens, fossil fuels are always the backstop, or default. Although fossil fuels’ impacts are known to be vastly larger, they simply aren’t taken that seriously by our society; definitely not in comparison to our response to any issues with nuclear.

In any event, any REAL environmental impact evaluation would fully consider such issues. It would evaluate the impact of any reduction in nuclear generation, due to waste issues, etc., on the overall power sector. It would objectively compare all the risks of nuclear generation (including those of on-site used fuel storage, or imperfect steam generators, etc.) to the risks and impacts of the generation sources that are likely to be used in its place. If such evaluations were performed, and were objective, nuclear would have nothing to fear.

___________________________

Hopf

Jim Hopf is a senior nuclear engineer with more than 20 years of experience in shielding and criticality analysis and design for spent fuel dry storage and transportation systems. He has been involved in nuclear advocacy for 10+ years, and is a member of the ANS Public Information Committee. He is a regular contributor to the ANS Nuclear Cafe.

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Posted in Environmental Benefits of Nuclear, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, spent fuel

Tagged Jim Hopf, San Onofre

Carnival of Nuclear Energy 160

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Will Davis| Leave a comment

The 160th Carnival of Nuclear Energy is up at Meredith Angwin’s “Yes Vermont Yankee” blog. You can click here to access this latest edition in a long-running tradition (over three years now!) that showcases the best pro-nuclear blogs each week.

This week’s contributions are, as might be expected, headlined by news about the announcement at the end of the week that San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station will be retired (and eventually decommissioned.) There are however a number of other things, more favorable to nuclear energy, in the news too including plant uprates, internships for nuclear engineers, and information on the new film ‘Pandora’s Promise.’

Each week, a new edition of the Carnival is hosted at one of the top English-language nuclear blogs. This rotating feature of nuclear “posts of the week” represents the dedication of those who are working toward a future of energy abundance through nuclear science and technology.

Past editions of the carnival have been hosted at Yes Vermont Yankee, Atomic Power Review, ANS Nuclear Cafe, NEI Nuclear Notes, Next Big Future, Atomic Insights, Hiroshima Syndrome, Things Worse Than Nuclear Power, and EntrepreNuke.

This is a great collaborative effort that deserves your support. If you have a pro-nuclear energy blog and would like to host an edition of the carnival, please contact Brain Wang at Next Big Future to get on the rotation.

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Posted in Carnival of nuclear bloggers, News

SONGS to retire, decommission

Posted on June 7, 2013 by Will Davis| 10 Comments

By Will Davis

This morning, Edison International, parent company of Southern California Edison, made an announcement that it had decided to permanently retire the two-unit San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California. Later in the morning, it held a teleconference to expand upon the details provided in the press release.

Edison President Ted Craver made it very clear during the teleconference, when asked about recovery for the project costs and the decision making process that led to this morning’s announcement, that the “definitive” event was the May 13 ruling by the ASLB (Atomic Safety and Licensing Board) that made it clear to the owners that the restart process would be a “long, uncertain” process that was not likely to result in any sort of final go/no-go restart decision potentially for over a year.

According to Craver and SCE President Ron Litzinger, the plan had been (as was well known) to operate Unit 2 at 70-percent power for a five-month test period, after which (hopefully) it would have been allowed to operate either at that power or, as was revealed newly at today’s telecon, potentially later an even higher power rating should safety have been proven. It was also revealed today that this restart plan, and in fact the plan all the way forward to the end of the site’s license in 2022, included never operating Unit 3 again. SCE had been figuring the costs of the whole project and factoring in the costs of buying replacement power, and decided that even though earlier the restart of Unit 2 was the “best cost option” if safety were assured, by the end of this year it certainly would not have been the “best cost option.” The ASLB decision and the crippling delay in decision making made it clear that restart couldn’t happen before that calculated end-of-year breakpoint at which restart was no longer economically viable.

In terms of paying for the decommissioning, SCE officials stated today that the San Onofre decommissioning fund contains about $2.7 billion after tax, and that this constitutes about 90 percent of the required funding for the decommissioning—meaning that the monies required to defuel, and demolish, the plant are mostly on hand. What isn’t clear is how much of the other costs the rate payers and shareholders will be on the hook for.

Craver and Litzinger described three basic related cost groups for San Onofre; namely, replacement power costs, O&M or Operating and Maintenance Costs, and the investment in San Onofre itself will have to be balanced by four recovery processes that include monies from rate payers, any awarded monies from Mitsubishi (which mostly designed and then built the steam generators,) NEIL or Nuclear Electric Insurance, Ltd. insurance monies, and finally money from the shareholders. According to Litzinger, the total allocated cost for the steam generator replacement program was $665 million; costs incurred to date on the project total $602 million. The SCE officials stated that the total value of the plant as an asset is roughly $2.1 billion and that SCE had “reduced its outlook by twenty cents in earnings per share.” The total amounts that may be recovered either through California Public Utilities Commission—approved rate increases, or through litigated action with Mitsubishi—are not known at this time, meaning that the entire cost recovery picture at this moment is still quite vague.

The SCE officials were asked during the teleconference if they’d actually considered replacement of the still-new but flawed Mitsubishi steam generators; the answer was essentially “yes,” but that the costs of such an operation could not be recovered in the nine years the plant has left on its license. In a very interesting twist, twice Craver said that it was not at all certain, “given the recent events” surrounding San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (and other events such as Fukushima Daiichi’s accident, and continued seismic concerns on the US West Coast), that it could bet on receiving a license extension to operate the two plants beyond 2022 (saying that an extension was “not automatic, not guaranteed and not quick”), which is what would have been required to pay off yet another set of steam generators. The amount of money that such a further replacement would cost had been calculated but according to Craver “hasn’t been released to the public as of yet.”

It’s essential to the area that replacement power be found for San Onofre. Litzinger observed that the “best case” replacement generating capacity would be in the L.A. basin, and would combine natural gas fired combined-cycle base load plants with natural gas peakers and some new transmission line. Should extra generating capacity not be possible in the basin, a good deal of transmission line would have to be built. The observation was made that SCE was already scheduling to experience some loss of generating capacity in the area as fossil plants were phased out, and that with those and San Onofre, SCE generated about 1/3 of the energy it delivered and bought 2/3 of it. Now, SCE will only potentially generate about 1/8 of the energy it delivers and will have to buy 7/8 of it from other producers.

Details about the decommissioning are, quite expectedly, not set yet. Craver said that the process would be a “multi-decade” one. Details were not yet available as to whether SONGS would be placed in a SAFSTOR condition or immediately move to DECON. SCE officials did say this morning that Unit 3 was already defueled, and that Unit 2 would be defueled in a “matter of weeks.” At time of writing, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had still not officially been notified of the decision to retire the plant.

In the end, it appears that the convoluted process that was seemingly being invented as it went to review the safety of the steam generators after the effect of fluid elastic instability became known (and there was a primary to secondary leak in Unit 3) is what killed the plant—from SCE’s standpoint. SCE made it clear that restart and operation of Unit 2 was for some time a carefully calculated “best cost option,” which would have allowed the plant to begin generating at least 70 percent of the capacity of one of the two units to get revenue coming back in. The continued dragging out of the process to ensure safety of that unit was propped up today as the prime reason for the change in direction to retire and decommission the plant.

Some might quickly respond that it was technical problems that killed the plant. Perhaps in the bigger picture, this is correct; but in the earlier days of nuclear energy, quite a large number of technical problems were encountered in nuclear plants and overcome after testing periods. SCE has quite consistently said in all venues that it believes that the instability in the steam generator tube bundles would be avoided completely at a lower power rating—a statement that we’ll never be able to prove or disprove operationally now that Unit 2 will never restart. In the interest of public safety and transparency, and in light of the Fukushima Daiichi accident, it may be that the concept of testing the plant without wholesale repair or replacement of faulty parts was just too much for a now-suspicious populace to support.

Further links:

NRC Blog Post on San Onofre today

NEI on the San Onofre shutdown

ANS Nuclear Cafe (March 15) – San Onofre debate now more public and more technical

ANS Nuclear Cafe (November 1, 2012) – San Onofre reactors face divergent paths to restart

Atomic Power Review – Meredith Angwin guest post on Steam Generator design and testing, relative to San Onofre

Background: Steam Generator Design (Atomic Power Review)

SCE commentary on MHI steam generator evaluation (Atomic Power Review)

_________________________

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Southern California Edison Announces Plans to Retire San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station

Posted on June 7, 2013 by pbowersox| 6 Comments

Company Will Continue Its Work with State Agencies on Electric Grid Reliability

A conference call with Q&A was held by management at 12PM EST Friday for media outlets only – replay will be available at 1-888-568-0503 (USA) and 1-203-369-3476 (International), passcode 5241.

ROSEMEAD, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Southern California Edison (SCE) has decided to permanently retire Units 2 and 3 of its San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).

“SONGS has served this region for over 40 years,” said Ted Craver, Chairman and CEO of Edison International, parent company of SCE, “but we have concluded that the continuing uncertainty about when or if SONGS might return to service was not good for our customers, our investors, or the need to plan for our region’s long-term electricity needs.”

Both SONGS units have been shut down safely since January 2012. Unit 2 was taken out of service January 9, 2012, for a planned routine outage. Unit 3 was safely taken offline January 31, 2012, after station operators detected a small leak in a tube inside a steam generator manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI). Two steam generators manufactured by MHI were installed in Unit 2 in 2009 and two more were installed in Unit 3 in 2010, one of which developed the leak.

In connection with the decision, SCE estimates that it will record a charge in the second quarter of between $450 million and $650 million before taxes ($300 million – $425 million after tax), in accordance with accounting requirements.

After months of analysis and tests, SCE submitted a restart plan to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in October 2012. SCE proposed to safely restart Unit 2 at a reduced power level (70 %) for an initial period of approximately five months. That plan was based on work done by engineering groups from three independent firms with expertise in steam generator design and manufacturing.

The NRC has been reviewing SCE’s plans for restart of Unit 2 for the last eight months, during which several public meetings have been held. A recent ruling by an adjudicatory arm of the NRC, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, creates further uncertainty regarding when a final decision might be made on restarting Unit 2. Additional administrative processes and appeals could result in delay of more than a year. During this period, the costs of maintaining SONGS in a state of readiness to restart and the costs to replace the power SONGS previously provided would continue. Moreover, it is uneconomic for SCE and its customers to bear the long-term repair costs for returning SONGS to full power operation without restart of Unit 2. SCE has concluded that efforts are better focused on planning for the replacement generation and transmission resources which will be required for grid reliability.

“Looking ahead,” said Ron Litzinger, SCE’s President, “we think that our decision to retire the units will eliminate uncertainty and facilitate orderly planning for California’s energy future.”

Litzinger noted that the company has worked with the California Independent System Operator, the California Energy Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission in planning for Southern California’s energy needs and will continue to do so.

“The company is already well into a summer reliability program and has completed numerous transmission upgrades in addition to those completed last year,” Litzinger said. “Thanks to consumer conservation, energy efficiency programs and a moderate summer, the region was able to get through last summer without electricity shortages. We hope for the same positive result again this year,” Litzinger added, “although generation outages, soaring temperatures or wildfires impacting transmission lines would test the system.”

In connection with the retirement of Units 2 and 3, San Onofre anticipates reducing staff over the next year from approximately 1,500 to approximately 400 employees, subject to applicable regulatory approvals. The majority of such reductions are expected to occur in 2013.

“This situation is very unfortunate,” said Pete Dietrich, SCE’s Chief Nuclear Officer, noting that “this is an extraordinary team of men and women. We will treat them fairly.” SCE will work to ensure a fair process for this transition, and will work with the Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA) and the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers (IBEW) on transition plans for the employees they represent.

SCE also recognizes its continuing safety responsibilities as it moves toward decommissioning of the units. SCE’s top priority will be to ensure a safe, orderly, and compliant retirement of these units. Full retirement of the units prior to decommissioning will take some years in accordance with customary practices. Actual decommissioning will take many years until completion. Such activities will remain subject to the continued oversight of the NRC.

SCE intends to pursue recovery of damages from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the supplier of the replacement steam generators, as well as recovery of amounts under applicable insurance policies.

For updates, please visit www.SONGScommunity.com, or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/SCE_SONGS and on www.facebook.com/SCE.

San Onofre is jointly owned by SCE (78.21 percent), San Diego Gas & Electric (20 percent) and the city of Riverside (1.79 percent).

About Southern California Edison

An Edison International (NYSE: EIX ) company, Southern California Edison is one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, serving a population of nearly 14 million via 4.9 million customer accounts in a 50,000-square-mile service area within Central, Coastal and Southern California.

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Posted in News, San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station

Nuclear Matinee: I’m A Nuke – Tim the Sea-Roving Nuclear Engineer

Posted on June 7, 2013 by pbowersox| Leave a comment

Meet Tim Lucas, Ph.D., a nuclear engineer who is piloting his sailboat around the world, spreading the news of nuclear technology – and many other rather amazing activities. Why is circumnavigating the globe a perfect job for a nuclear engineer? Watch and find out!

Tim’s tales of travel are captured here as part of the I’m A Nuke video campaign that kicked off at the ANS Student Conference at MIT in April this year. Meet more fascinating nuclear engineers at the I’m A Nuke campaign on youtube.

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Posted in Nuclear Matinee

Tagged i'm a nuke

Frequently Asked Questions About Nuclear Power

Posted on June 6, 2013 by pbowersox| 3 Comments

By Jessica Lovering

The Breakthrough Institute recently compiled some of the tough questions it is frequently asked about nuclear power by fellow environmentalists. The answers (originally published at BTI’s Energy and Climate) illustrate that if we’re serious about climate change and alleviating global poverty, we need nuclear power on a large scale.

Do we really need nuclear in order to deal with global warming?

Preventing dangerous warming of the planet due to human emissions of greenhouse gases will require that we cut our emissions by 80 percent over the next 40 years at the same time that global energy demand is expected to double or triple. Doing so will require that we produce vast amounts of zero carbon energy. At present, the only way we know how to do that is with nuclear energy.

Isn’t the real problem that we simply consume too much energy?

Most people on the planet actually need to consume more energy, not less. Energy consumption is highly correlated with better health outcomes, longer life spans, and higher living standards.¹ High-energy societies have liberated billions of us from lives of hard agricultural labor. More than a billion people around the world still do not have access to electricity at all. Ensuring that there is abundant energy to power the planet over the coming century promises to unleash the creative potential of billions more. But the basic math of global development and global warming is unforgiving. If we are going to meet the needs of a growing global population while keeping global warming in check, we will need technologies that can produce enormous amounts of energy without emitting carbon.

Isn’t that why we need to control population growth?

Providing universal access to abundant, cheap clean energy is one of the best population growth strategies we have. Consuming more energy allows people to live wealthier, healthier, and longer lives, which translates into lower population growth.² As people become wealthier and more economically secure, they have fewer children. This is why leading advocates for human development and environmental sustainability, like Bill Gates³ and Jeffrey Sachs,⁴ strongly support the development and deployment of nuclear energy.

Even if we produce energy with minimal pollution, won’t more energy use incur a greater, more devastating environmental impact?

Cheap clean energy allows us to reduce our impact on the environment. With it, we can grow more food on less land and leave more wilderness for nature.⁵ We can reprocess wastewater and desalinate seawater, rather than depleting aquifers and draining majestic rivers. We can also recycle fiber and pulp rather than cutting down ancient forests. A world with abundant clean energy allows us to protect natural resources and leave more of our ecological inheritance undisturbed.

Can’t we become more energy efficient instead of using more energy?

We are vastly more energy efficient than we were just a few decades ago, much less a few centuries ago. Yet, even as we’ve become more efficient, we’ve also continued to use more energy. That’s because energy efficiency makes energy cheaper, and the result is that we find more ways to use it. Just a few years ago, nobody had heard of the cloud, and two decades ago nobody had heard of the Internet. Today, more of us than ever are able fly around the world. We fill our homes with 50-inch televisions and all manner of networked devices. We transform billboards and skyscrapers into gigantic LED video screens. Efficiency is good and we should strive for more, but it won’t eliminate the need to develop enormous quantities of cheap and zero carbon energy to meet the demands of the growing global economy.^6,7

Can’t we solve global warming with renewables?

We’ve made a lot of progress with renewables, but they are still costly, intermittent, and difficult to scale.⁸ Without utility scale energy storage technologies, which remain unviable, you simply can’t run a modern society on wind and solar alone. Some places, like Germany and Denmark, have achieved higher levels of wind and solar, but they have done so through heavy, historically unprecedented deployment subsidies^9,10 that can’t be sustained.¹¹ Furthermore, these societies remain overwhelmingly dependent upon fossil energy: Germany got 70 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels in 2012¹² versus 5 percent from solar and 7 percent from wind.

But aren’t solar and wind growing rapidly?

It’s easy to achieve high rates of growth when you start from a tiny amount of installed wind and solar. But the fact remains that solar generated just 0.18 percent of electricity in the United States, and wind 3.5 percent, in 2012.¹³ This was after more than $50 billion in renewable electricity subsidies over the past three decades. Even Germany, which since 2000 has committed over $130 billion to solar photovoltaics (PV) in the form of above-market-price 20-year feed-in tariff contracts,¹⁴ only gets 5 percent of its annual electricity from solar.¹⁵

But isn’t nuclear energy also too expensive?

Installed nuclear generation in the United States is among the cheapest sources of electricity we have—cheaper even than coal.¹⁶ France, which generates over 80 percent of its electricity with nuclear energy, has some of the cheapest electricity prices in Western Europe.¹⁷ Nuclear plants cost a lot of money to build up front, but they operate for 60 to 80 years, producing massive amounts of energy with virtually no fuel costs. Over the long term, this makes them a bargain.¹⁸

The Olkiluoto-3 nuclear power plant in Finland—the poster child of expensive nuclear—is $6.5 billion over budget and six years behind schedule. Even still, recent analysis shows that this beleaguered plant will produce electricity at almost one-fourth the cost of Germany’s solar program. These are good technologies to compare, as the Finnish plant is a first-of-a-kind design—an Areva EPR—which is significantly safer, more reliable, and more efficient than existing nuclear power plants. Successive builds, such as the second EPR under construction in France, are expected to be cheaper. But even this extreme case isn’t unreasonably expensive when compared to another innovative carbon-free electricity source like solar PV.

In order to meet our climate goals, nuclear will need to get cheaper. A new generation of advanced nuclear designs is presently under development. They will be simpler, safer, and can be constructed modularly and shipped to the site. All of these features give them potential to be significantly cheaper. Nevertheless, these powerful and complicated machines will require federal help to develop and commercialize.

So if nuclear plants are so cheap, why aren’t we building them anymore?

Many nuclear plants are being built, they’re just not being built in the United States. China, India, and other developing countries, which need to keep up with massive growth in energy demand as they develop, are building nuclear plants as fast as they can. The high up-front costs of building nuclear plants and the uncertainty about how fast energy demand would grow in rich countries populated with high-energy consumers resulted in the United States and other developed countries turning away from nuclear. However, President Obama recently approved loan guarantees for two new reactors in Georgia and South Carolina and development funding for new reactor designs that are smaller and cheaper to build.

Doesn’t cheap natural gas make nuclear uncompetitive?

Cheap gas is making coal, nuclear, renewables, and virtually all other energy technologies less competitive. But that didn’t happen by accident. The shale gas revolution, which dramatically lowered the price of gas in the United States, was made possible thanks to three decades of public investment in better drilling technologies. This is why investing in next generation nuclear technologies right now is so important—so that we have a new generation of cheap nuclear technologies that can replace fossil energy in the coming decades.

Isn’t nuclear power too risky to qualify for insurance, so the government has to cover liability insurance through the Price-Anderson Act?

Nuclear is among many activities and circumstances for which we have established liability limits. Others include plane crashes, oil spills, product liability, and medical malpractice. The largest renewable energy project, hydroelectric dams, has limited liability too. Societies frequently cap or socialize liabilities for events when costs are difficult to predict, quantify, or bound, and where responsibility is difficult to apportion. These are highly uncertain, infrequent, and high consequence events. Even so, nuclear operators still have to buy an enormous amount of liability insurance. That risk is pooled, with current pooled insurance for the US nuclear industry amounting to $12.6 billion.¹⁹

Even if nuclear is as cheap as you say, isn’t the risk of meltdown simply too great?

Meltdowns are very serious industrial accidents. They are extremely expensive to clean up and may result in radiation exposure that can create serious health risks. But those risks need to be put in context. Compared to virtually all other forms of energy production and generation, nuclear energy is remarkably safe. The most comprehensive peer-reviewed studies done by independent scientists evaluate air pollution, worker safety, and all of the other risks in energy production and find that nuclear is safer than coal, oil, natural gas, and even solar.^20,21

In the 60 years that we have been operating nuclear plants, there have been three serious accidents globally. Three Mile Island resulted in no deaths and no observable health problems. According to comprehensive reports from the United Nations and the World Health Organization, Chernobyl resulted in 27 confirmed deaths of workers and firefighters who were exposed to high doses of radiation during the accident²² and will cause an estimated 4,000 premature deaths from cancer over the lifetimes of those exposed to significant levels of radiation in the wider region. There has, however, been no observable increase in cancer deaths thus far in the affected regions.

No one was killed during the Fukushima accident due to radiation exposure, and the UN’s Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation expects that the long-term effect on the surrounding public to be extremely low,^23,24 with estimates ranging from as high as 180 to as low as zero additional cancers in a country where 353,000 people died of cancer in 2010. In other words, additional cancer deaths will be so few as to be impossible to distinguish from the more than 30 percent of the population that dies of cancer.²⁵

More than 500 people die every year from accidents in the coal, oil, and gas industries in Europe alone.²⁶ Globally, more than 170,000 people die annually from respiratory ailments associated with burning coal.^27,28 We think of solar energy as the cleanest and safest of all energy technologies, but manufacturing solar panels is actually an extremely toxic process, releasing all sorts of pollutants harmful to human health.²⁹ Moreover, installing solar panels involves two of the riskiest occupations: roofing and electrical work. Calculations drawing on roofing mortality data and solar installation data suggest that there are approximately 2 deaths per terawatt-hour in the solar PV industry just from roofing falls.^30,31 By contrast, nuclear power results in 0.05 deaths per terawatt-hour due to all causes, including meltdowns.³²

Did Fukushima kill hopes of a nuclear renaissance?

China, India, the United States, and several Middle Eastern countries paused their new nuclear programs for a safety review after Fukushima, but all have gone forward with planned nuclear plant construction. Even Japan, which shut down all of its 54 nuclear power plants immediately after the earthquake, has begun to restart its reactors.

Germany did accelerate its nuclear phaseout after Fukushima, but this had been under way since 2000. Not a single country cancelled a new nuclear power plant in response to Fukushima. Several countries, like the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Jordan, are currently moving forward with plans to build their first commercial nuclear power plants.

How can we go forward with nuclear as long as we have waste that lasts up to 100,000 years?

Whereas today’s light water reactors, which were developed in the 1950s, use only a small amount of the energy in their fuel, a range of advanced reactor designs can burn waste as fuel. Many of them are at least a decade or two away from commercialization. But by 2050 and likely before, these reactors will be using what we now call waste as fuel.³³

Given how much energy that human societies are going to need in the coming century, and the reality that fossil fuels are finite, we will almost certainly be reprocessing and reusing waste as fuel. Until that time, all countries will store it. While the proposed US waste facility at Yucca Mountain has been controversial, the dispute is the exception, not the rule. Most nations have moved forward with uncontroversial waste storage facilities.

Didn’t we try advanced nuclear designs and they failed?

The United States developed a number of alternative designs in the 1960s. Following the Navy’s lead, the commercial sector settled on light water reactors and there was little demand for newer and better designs. Today, it has become clear that some of the alternative designs are much more resistant to meltdowns and are modular (thus cheaper to build). Big advances in materials science, nuclear engineering, and modularization will make it feasible to commercialize these new designs soon. China and India are pushing the hardest and the fastest for them, with large teams of engineers developing thorium, metal-fueled, and salt-cooled reactors.

Is it true there are nuclear reactors that can’t melt down?

Many new reactor designs feature fuels that stop reacting when temperatures rise too high, fuel cladding that cannot melt, and coolants that can cool the reactor with no human or mechanical intervention even if there is a total loss of power. These features make meltdown and serious accidents virtually impossible.³⁴

What about the risk that terrorists will attack a nuclear plant?

Nuclear plants are not good targets for terrorists. The plants have high security, extensive perimeters, and are built to withstand the impact of a plane crash or large explosion. Were terrorists somehow able to infiltrate a plant and escape undetected with fuel or waste—a highly improbable scenario—they would still need costly, difficult to obtain equipment and highly sophisticated technical knowledge to turn the material into a weapon. It has taken decades and billions of dollars for nations like India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran to build a single bomb. The prospect of non-state actors marshaling the technical and financial resources to do the same is highly unlikely.

Doesn’t the spread of nuclear energy increase the risk of nuclear proliferation?

There is no relationship between the global expansion of nuclear energy and nuclear proliferation.³⁵ No nation has ever developed a weapon by first developing nuclear energy. To the degree that there has been a progression from one to the other, it has always been the opposite, with nations first developing weapons and then energy.

Some nations claimed to be developing nuclear energy capabilities when they were in fact attempting to develop a weapon,³⁶ but these claims were transparently false to virtually all observers. By international law, nuclear energy facilities must be open to international inspections. The International Atomic Energy Agency has an extensive monitoring and inspection network, and it is not difficult to distinguish a weapons program from an energy program.

Further reading.

Jessica Lovering, Alex Trembath, and Max Luke, “Cost of German Solar Four Times Finnish Nuclear,” The Breakthrough, May 14, 2013

Ashutosh Jogalekar, “Nuclear Saved 1.8 Million Lives,” The Breakthrough, April 11, 2013

_______________________________.

Lovering

Jessica Lovering is a policy analyst in the Energy and Climate program at the Breakthrough Institute, a public policy think tank in California. She focuses on nuclear power and its role in decarbonizing the global energy supply to mitigate climate change and increase energy access in the developing world. She also researches federal policies to support development and deployment of advanced nuclear power technologies.

___________

References

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http://www.green-blog.org/2008/06/14/pollutants-from-coal-based-electricity-generation-kill-170000-people-annually. Also in the book: Gideon Maxwell Poyla. Body Count: Global Avoidable Mortality Since Nineteen-Fifty. (2007)

29. Krewitt, W., Friedrich, R., & Trukenmuller, A. (2002). Comparison of health and environmental impacts from electricity generation systems. International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management, 3(1). Retrieved from http://inderscience.metapress.com/index/F8HVF3XRA86FD3AK.pdf

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