Author Archives: radams

Tape review of Vermont Yankee power struggle debate

Posted on May 2, 2012 by radams| 2 Comments

By Rod Adams

One of my college roommates served for a while as the manager of our football team; we would talk about the “tape review” sessions that were used by the team to evaluate past performance and to prepare for future opponents. Nuclear organizations, for their part, often have highly developed “lessons learned” programs and they practice the use of technical methods that have been successfully employed by other organizations.

In that spirit, I would like to offer a “tape review” of the recent radio debate “Vermont Yankee: Power Struggle” that Meredith Angwin wrote about so beautifully for ANS Nuclear Cafe under the title of Be Here Now and The Debate.

My intent is not criticism—Richard Schmidt and Meredith both did a great job and already scored a win for the pronuclear team. My goal is to contribute to continuous improvement, help our team get ready for the next time, and build confidence for anyone else who gets an opportunity to publicly engage on the topic of nuclear energy.

The “here and now” philosophy that Meredith wrote about is important. People need to recognize and deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it would be. We should challenge our opponents to base their decisions on what IS, not what is dreamed about. Balance is also important, naturally, since if everyone always thinks of only here and now, the future for our children will be pretty grim.

The predictable

We can make reasonable attempts to predict and influence the future so that it is closer to what we want. We can, for example, predict exactly when the sun will set every day. We can also predict its elevation angle based on time of day, day of year, and elevation. With those predictable numbers, we can chart the maximum power available to collect at any given time—while factors like clouds, snow, and shade from neighboring trees reduce the amount available.

During a debate, a good prop for that statement is an old celestial navigation book with a sun table in it. You can pick one up on the web or at a used book store. A few ancient implements that were used to measure the sun’s travel—perhaps a sextant or a sundial—might also help to illustrate just how much understanding mankind has had about the sun’s behavior and how long we have collectively owned that understanding.

Predictable nuclear

Unlike the scheduled operation of a coal, oil, gas, or nuclear plant, we usually have no real way to predict when and where the wind will blow or for how long. While we know how much it costs to run power cables from one point to another, we do not know specifically whose backyard will host those cables, along with the necessary towers and clear cut corridors, if we want to use someone else’s wind to back up our own.

In contrast, we can predict, based on demonstrated history, that completed nuclear plants can run for at least 50 years (the USS Enterprise recently celebrated its 50th birthday), and probably for 60-80 years. We know how much nuclear fuel has cost in the past and can do a pretty fair job of predicting the cost in the future. We also know that used nuclear fuel still contains 95 percent of its initial energy, and we know how to capture at least some of that energy through recycling. We have no way of knowing what natural gas prices will be in two years.

Walden Pond

During the debate, Richard did a good job in declaring that coal is the alternative in the world in which he lives and works; and in his next opportunity in a public forum, he should use his own experience with a solar energy system to concisely explain why solar can NEVER replace either coal or nuclear NO MATTER WHAT engineering improvements are made. It is perhaps even better to stress that point about solar than the true statement concerning coal and the way things work now. Alternatively, another possible response would be to allow an opponent like Michael Daley to attempt to win supporters (for pronuclear!) by describing—in detail—exactly what it means to live in a “100 watt house”.

Aside: I have visited Michael’s 100 Watt home website. I wonder if Michael and his wife actually live in the 100 watt cabin, or if it is just a writing retreat. His website describes it thusly: “Michael writes his books in a five foot by five foot tower room on a solar-powered laptop computer. He lives in Westminster, Vermont with his wife, award-winning children’s author Jessie Haas.” However, the solar cabin is in Putney, about five miles away from Westminster. End aside.

The Walden Pond–style of simple living might appeal to some, but most Americans would immediately see that day-to-day living in a space that is 12 feet by 16 feet is not quite their idea of the American dream. That is especially true if living there means constantly monitoring the charge level on the battery system and the fuel state of a noisy generator. In a debate environment, there is nothing wrong with letting the opposition try to sell their vision—especially if it is one that is not all that attractive.

Economics

Another topic in the debate where Richard and Meredith could turn the opposition’s assumed strengths into a negative for the audience is in the economic area. Michael Daley stated on several occasions that his reason for opposing Vermont Yankee was that Entergy would not agree to give Vermont a discounted rate on electricity. The details there are important; Entergy had been selling power to Vermont for 4 cents per kilowatt hour and wanted to start selling at a market determined rate. It was willing to sign a long-term contract for 6 cents per kilowatt hour.

Compared to the 20 cents per kilowatt-hour that Vermont power companies pay for unreliable wind and solar electricity, 6 cents per kilowatt hour is a huge discount. Armed with numbers and hard copy charts (if prepared carefully in advance), nuclear power supporters should always be willing to talk about economic comparisons with renewable energy advocates.

I’ll now turn the microphone over to others who might have had a chance to listen to the debate. What else should we learn from this engagement? What other facts should we be ready to introduce, what appeals to emotion should we use in addition to appeals to reason, and how should we respond when challenged that “we do not know” what might happen in the future—if in reality the topic under discussion is rather predictable for those who have already done the study and calculation?

__________________________

: Adams

Rod Adams is a nuclear advocate with extensive small nuclear plant operating experience. Adams is a former engineer officer, USS Von Steuben. He is the host and producer of The Atomic Show Podcast. Adams has been an ANS member since 2005. He writes about nuclear technology at his own blog, Atomic Insights.

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Posted in Entergy, nuclear opponents, View from Vermont, wind power

NAS study of cancer risks near U.S. nuclear facilities

Posted on April 4, 2012 by radams| 6 Comments

By Rod Adams

The National Academy of Science (NAS) has released phase one of a study titled Analysis of Cancer Risks in Populations Near Nuclear Facilities. The release officially opened a 60-day public comment period in which stakeholders can provide their inputs to help guide the next phases of the study. The project email address that should be used for submitting comments is crs@nas.edu.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission tasked the National Academy of Science to perform the study. The expenditure was considered to be a prudent investment because the existing study on the risk of developing cancer based on proximity to nuclear facilities in the United States is more than 20 years old. In the intervening years, there have been a number of attempts internationally to determine if there is a link between radiation released from nuclear energy facilities and cancer risks; the results of those studies have been inconclusive.

In cases like the announcement of a discovery of a cluster of childhood leukemia cases near the Sellafield facility in Great Britain, the news of results that seemed to indicate a problem received a great deal of publicity. News of the cluster’s discovery was broken during a television program that aired in November 1983. The careful science required to more fully understand the cause of the higher than expected rate of childhood leukemia took decades.

It is likely that few of the people who formed opinions about the radiation-related risk of cancer from the television story or the numerous repetitions of that story have heard anything about the study titled Childhood leukaemia, nuclear sites, and population mixing, which was accepted for publication in the British Journal of Cancer in October 2010. That study showed that there was a strong correlation between population influx in a formerly isolated rural area and the risk of childhood leukemia. That relationship has been found in populations near expansive facilities that had nothing to do with nuclear energy or radiation.

The effort to find out if there is a risk associated with living near a nuclear energy facility is full of scientific obstacles. Many of the challenges that are inherent in the task are detailed in the summary that the NAS released as part of the phase one scoping effort. The listed challenges include the difficulty in finding accurate data that relates cancer incidence to physical addresses, lack of any records related to population mobility in areas of interest, some uncertainty about radiation release data, and the expectation that any increases in cancer related to the measured levels of radiation will be so low as to be statistically hidden in the noise of normal variations.

Of course, scientists who have been tasked with finding ways to perform a study can almost always recommend several methods that might provide useful information—if provided with enough resources. This effort is no exception to that rule; the summary provides no fewer than four potential study designs, each with its own set of limitations and strengths. Not surprisingly, the summary also includes a recommended course of action that would involve a substantial effort in data gathering, modeling, and analysis—assuming that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission decides to proceed with the study.

The final recommendation in the summary is the development of processes for involving and communicating with stakeholders “to achieve effective collaboration with local people and officials and increase social trust and confidence.”

Dr. Arjun Makhijani, a man with a long history of opposition to the use of nuclear energy, strongly supports the effort and expects the NAS to find evidence of risk, especially to children. He intends to provide a substantial input during the comment period. I expect that other professional antinuclear activists will provide their comments and demand to be a part of the stakeholder engagement process.

A number of experts in the field of radiation biology are also preparing to provide comments. Here is an example comment from an e-mail list inhabited by people who have studied radiation health effects for decades:

If the U.S. NRC and these radiation protection folks would only look at the (20-year-old) cell biology evidence instead of their LNT [linear no-threshold] ideology and epidemiology, they would realize that they are trying to measure a cancer risk (radiation-induced DNA damage rate) that is six million (6,000,000) times lower than the spontaneous risk of cancer (i.e., natural DNA damage rate).

The numbers in that comment relate to the fact that the dose rate from licensed nuclear facilities in the United States is less than 1 mSv/year to the most exposed person. There is zero probability that a population exposed to such a dose will exhibit any increase in expected cancer risks. It is always possible, however, to expend a large sum of money and time performing studies and involving a number of stakeholders, many of whom tend not to reveal their actual stake in the matter.

The American Nuclear Society includes experts in the field of radiation biology who should take the time to read the phase one scoping summary, learn more about the proposed study methods, and provide informed comments. The most reasonable decision would be that there are any number of higher priority ways to spend the money and the scientific resources that would be needed to perform the proposed phase two study; it is unlikely to provide any new or useful information.

A more likely decision will be to perform the study, but perhaps a sufficient number of informed comments will prevent initial assumptions about risks from producing yet another study that seems to support the notion that radiation risk is always some number greater than zero—no matter how low the dose.

_________________

Adams

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Posted in American Nuclear Society, News, Radiation

Can we repeat facts about Fukushima often enough to overcome fears?

Posted on March 7, 2012 by radams| 15 Comments

by Rod Adams

We are within one week of the one year anniversary of the Great North East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. That powerful punch from nature slowly destroyed four out of six of the nuclear units at Fukushima Daiichi while the world watched with rapt attention.

However, as many nuclear experts predicted at the time of the accident, the defense-in-depth strategy worked well. The end results have been far better than were predicted using some of the fantasy-inspired “worst case scenarios” propagated by antinuclear activists and by researchers working several decades ago – before much data had been gathered and digested.

The painstakingly-gathered empirical data from this unfortunate theory-to-practice exercise have validated the recently released State of the Art Reactor Consequences Analysis, which computed a one in a billion chance that an accident at typical licensed nuclear reactors would harm anyone in the general public.

The total quantity of long-lived radioactive isotopes released from all three of the melted cores was approximately 11 kilograms. None of the material stored in the spent fuel pools was released. There has not been, and never will be, any injuries more serious than a mild sunburn to two workers, from the radiation released into the environment from the melted nuclear fuel inside the plant pressure vessels and containment structures.

Despite the lack of any negative radiation health effects, there are people who relish in stimulating as much fear, uncertainty, doubt and stress about radiation and nuclear energy as they possibly can. They are working overtime to obscure any good news and to label the people who share truthful information as nuclear industry PR hacks, apologists, or even worse.

While participating in discussion threads associated with recent reports published in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Time magazine and Scientific American, I have seen nuclear supporters accused of killing babies, being mere industry shills, and of being completely insensitive to the continued suffering of the Japanese people.

Unlike people who have been trained in nuclear sciences and engineering, facts do not matter as much to antinuclear activists as repeatedly telling the tale they want people to hear. Greenpeace has released a report titled Lessons from Fukushima featuring a chapter by Arnie Gundersen that claims that the nuclear industry is a prime example of regulatory capture, despite being one of the most tightly regulated industries in the US, Europe and Japan.

Karl Grossman, a man who has been making a living on the antinuclear lecture and book circuit since the Three Mile Island accident, continues to claim that Fukushima will be worse than Chernobyl. He also claims that Chernobyl has already killed nearly a million people, instead of the less than 100 reported by the UN Scientific Committee on the Effect of Atomic Radiation report as having died in the 25 years since the accident.

Like Helen Caldicott, Grossman continues to spout the belief that Yablokov’s thoroughly discredited book titled Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment is the definitive work on the 1986 accident. In the imaginary world where Caldicott and Grossman spend their time, the thousands of other researchers who studied the accident and came to completely different conclusions were either misinformed, bought by the powerful nuclear industry, or just plain lying.

The antinuclear opposition also spreads fear by describing effects using unfamiliar, frightening units. Instead of saying that a total of 11 kilograms of material (out of approximately 60,000 kilograms of fuel per unit) escaped from the reactor pressure vessels, people who discourage the beneficial use of nuclear energy say that the plants “spewed” 36,000 terabecquerels of radioactivity. (A terabecquerel of Cs-137 has a mass of 3.2 grams.)

If that number does not scare people thoroughly enough, some nuclear opponents compare the cesium emissions from Fukushima to the cesium emissions from the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The Hiroshima bomb produced its explosive power fissioning about 1 kilogram of U-235. The 6.3% fission yield for Cs-137 means that Little Boy, the Hiroshima bomb, produced a little less than 30 grams of Cs-137. (89 terabecquerels at 3.2 gms/terabecquerel).

In the eyes of people who hate nuclear energy, that means that the melted Fukushima reactors did not release a mass of radioactive cesium that is about half the weight of the backpack I routinely carry when I spend a weekend on the Appalachian Trail. Instead, those reactors released 400 times as much radioactive cesium as was released by The Bomb!

That is a great piece of propaganda. It sounds really bad while using very few words. Contradicting the scary statement with logical reasoning requires too detailed of an explanation to be useful to a newspaper or television show.

There is, however, reason to be hopeful that the end result of the Fukushima accident on nuclear energy will be less damaging to the ultimate success of the technology than the end result of the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents.

Unlike the period following the Three Mile Island accident, the public conversation has broadened considerably. Discourse is no longer dominated by broadcast television networks or major printed newspapers. It is not dominated by the people who have been able to spend years working their way to the front of journalist contact lists by always being ready with pithy, if often false, quotes.

Instead, people who understand nuclear technology are supporting each other, using a wider variety of media access points and are participating in active public outreach campaigns.

On March 8 at 10AM EST, the American Nuclear Society, a professional society with 11,000 members, will be holding a news conference at the National Press Club to announce the release of its long awaited report on the lessons learned from the accident.

I am looking forward to reading that report and then cooperating with other nuclear professionals to ensure that its factual material is repeated as often as the tripe that emanates from the mouths and keyboards of Caldicott, Grossman, Wasserman, Gunter, Lovins, and so many other professional opponents of nuclear energy.

Like many of my colleagues, I feel a sense of personal responsibility to do something to alleviate the suffering of the victims who have a far greater probability of negative health effects from irrational radiation fears than they do from radiation itself. Spending some of my spare time to ease their fears, reduce their stress and enable their safe return to their ancestral homes is an investment worth making.

There has been one result from the accident that I never would have predicted. A year ago, I could not imagine that two countries (Germany and Japan) that were famous for their technological skills and rational decision making would have decided to shut down undamaged reactors in favor of spending a growing share of their national income to make the fossil fuel industry increasingly richer. If anyone can think of ways to influence the decision process in those two key countries, I am listening.

Adams

Rod Adams is a pro-nuclear advocate with extensive small nuclear plant operating experience. Adams is a former engineer officer, USS Von Steuben. He is the host and producer of The Atomic Show Podcast. Adams has been an ANS member since 2005. He writes about nuclear technology at his own blog, Atomic Insights.

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Posted in accident, American Nuclear Society, Earthquake, Fukushima, lessons learned, Natural disasters, nuclear opponents, Publications, Radiation

Not so strange bedfellows – Sierra Club accepts natural gas money

Posted on February 7, 2012 by radams| 14 Comments

By Rod Adams

On February 2, 2012, Time Magazine’s Ecocentric blog published a post titled Exclusive: How the Sierra Club Took Millions From the Natural Gas Industry—and Why They Stopped that has rocked the environmental community and the established energy industry. The story included the shocking news that the Sierra Club had accepted donations from Chesapeake Energy or its executives totaling nearly $26 million during the period from 2007-2010.

Some longtime members of the Sierra Club have expressed feelings of betrayal; Chesapeake Energy is one of the largest domestic natural gas producers in the United States with most of its production based on using the increasingly controversial technique of hydraulic fracturing (fracking). A number of concerned environmentalists and local chapters of the Sierra Club worked hard for several years to convince Carl Pope, Michael Brune, and the rest of the Club’s national leadership to take a principled stand against fracking.

What they saw instead was their national leadership promoting new technologies for producing natural gas alongside people like Aubrey McClendon, Chesapeake Energy’s chief executive officer, and T. Boone Pickens. The Club’s official policy on fracking was that it could be done responsibly and safely and that with plenty of regulation it could be a bridge to a renewable energy future.

Finally, as the industry matures, a series of best management practices will emerge, some already identified, some evolving with time. These best management practices should, to the maximum extent possible, be swiftly incorporated into regulatory requirements as they are developed. The Club opposes any unconventional or conventional drilling projects that do not comply with best management practices, even in regions where state or federal law may permit lower standards of environmental management.

The Club will use these standards as a yardstick for any regulatory reform efforts it undertakes or supports, and to judge which new drilling projects, if any, cause unacceptable environmental damage and warrant opposition.

Chapters are encouraged to press for effective regulatory frameworks to control the impacts of deep shale gas and may oppose specific projects that are inappropriately sited or that fail to comply with best management practices.

Board of Directors, December 21, 2009

Now, perhaps the disillusioned members will see the real politik reason why they did not get the support they expected from their globe-trotting leaders.

Michael Brune, who took over as the Sierra Club’s executive director in early 2010, published a blog post titled Sierra Club and Natural Gas that describes his decision to stop taking donations that are tightly linked to the natural gas industry.

By the time I assumed leadership of the Club in March 2010, our view of natural gas had changed—so I made sure our policy did, too. We created a strong natural gas campaign comprised of staff and volunteer leaders. Some chapters sought to establish tough safeguards at the state and federal level to protect their air and water; others sought to suspend fracking completely until those standards were in place. By mid-August 2010, with gas industry practices and our policies increasingly in conflict, I recommended to the Board, and it agreed, to end the funding relationship between the Club and the gas industry, and all fossil fuel companies or executives.

Unfortunately for Brune, words and videos published on the Internet do not disappear and can be recalled with a few simple searches. Before his action to stop taking natural gas industry funding in August 2010, Brune appeared on Jim Cramer’s Mad Money with some words that were welcome to the people who believe that natural gas is a terrific fuel for electrical power plants. That was not an isolated event; Brune made the following statement in November 2010:

Concerns about natural gas extraction have been on the rise not just in Dimock, but in places across the country, from West Virginia to Texas to Wyoming. And yet even given these important issues, natural gas still has a relatively lighter footprint than coal or oil. Gas is not a clean fuel, but it can be cleaner.

(Emphasis added.)

It would be difficult for Brune to prove that those positive words were not influenced by the generous contributions that Chesapeake Energy was providing to the Sierra Club.

This story, however, should not be seen as an isolated incident, but as part of a continuing effort within the energy industry to use whatever means are available to obtain a favorable position in one of the world’s largest, most profitable, and competitive commodity businesses. Here is a quote from an email written by Jim Gibson, a member of Chesapeake’s communications group:

Over the years, Chesapeake has been proud to support a number of organizations that share our interest in clean air and agree that America’s abundant supplies of clean natural gas represent the most affordable, available and scalable fuel to power a more prosperous and environmentally responsible future for our country.

Read that carefully. Here is my paraphrase: Chesapeake has supported a number of organizations that agree that natural gas is the best fuel to power our country’s future. Their funding efforts have not just been limited to the Sierra Club and have not just been limited to efforts to fight coal. Some free market focused observers find nothing inherently disturbing about efforts to obtain competitive advantage through arguably sneaky means:

Hey… this ain’t bean bag.

See… I could at least respect that. NG competes with coal, and you do what you need to do in order to gain an edge in a very competitive market. But jumping in bed with the Sierra Club? That leads to big problems, mostly because our recent success in natural gas exploration relies largely on fracking and other developing technologies.

Here is the important part of this story for nuclear energy advocates to understand. Our technology competes with both natural gas and coal for market share in the lucrative energy business.

The Sierra Club has a well known aversion to nuclear energy and has not been shy about doing all it can to halt the growth of nuclear energy and to speed the early termination of as many operating nuclear power plants as possible. The acknowledged financial relationship between the Sierra Club and the natural gas industry may be a partial explanation for the reason why an organization that has placed fighting climate change near the top of its priority list is such an ardent opponent to the most reliable form of virtually emission-free power in favor of a fuel that is only “low carbon” in comparison to coal.

We all might benefit from an improved understanding of the world if more journalists pull this thread to determine if there are other questionable financial relationships between groups with ardent stances against nuclear energy and industries that stand to benefit from reduced competition with nuclear energy developments.

Final note: I wrote about Chesapeake’s financial support for anti-coal efforts for Atomic Insights in December 2010.

_____________________________

Adams

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Posted in Environmental Benefits of Nuclear, nuclear opponents

Greetings from a proud member of “the nuclear party”

Posted on January 9, 2012 by radams| Comments Off

By Rod Adams

Back in the playground—about half a century ago—I learned that it can be fun and frustrating to the bullies if you cheerfully accept the tags that they apply to you. Back then, I was called a four-eyed nerd; for some odd reason I had schoolmates who thought it was a bad thing to be the one who got straight A’s and seemed to enjoy learning. The teasing did not bother me; it motivated me to read more good books and to strive to do even better in class.

While reading a recent Matt Wald post on the New York Times Green Blog, I realized that a certain group of bullies who have been fighting nuclear energy development for decades were employing similar name-calling tactics as those playground bullies.

Here is a quote from Wald’s post:

Of the four other members, two are Republicans and two are Democrats, but Mr. Bradford said the letter was not in fact bipartisan. “In Washington, you’ve got a situation where the ‘nuclear party’ transcends the Republican and Democratic party,’’ he said. “You’ve got four members of the nuclear party writing a letter about the chairman, who’s never been a member of the nuclear party.’’

Those four members have backgrounds in nuclear engineering, the nuclear Navy and related fields; Dr. Jaczko has a Ph.D in particle physics and came to the commission after a career on Capitol Hill, including a stint as an aide to Harry Reid of Nevada, the leader of the Senate’s Democratic majority.

Matt might have also pointed out that Dr. Jaczko’s career on Capitol Hill included a 2.5 year stint with Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), who can lay claim to being the leading member of the antinuclear party.

I actually enjoyed the subtle way that Wald phrased that exchange and showed that by Bradford’s categorization, “the nuclear party” consists of people who have actually studied nuclear energy, worked with nuclear energy, and understand the technology. Quite frankly, I like being tagged with that appellation. Anybody who wants to can call me a member of the nuclear party, which makes its energy system choices based on knowledge and facts.

In the playground, I did not mind being called a nerd by people who were older and bigger, often because they had been held back a year or two in school. Even then, I was pretty certain that I would lead a more prosperous and interesting life than they would. In this case, I have no problem being teased by people who do not have a clue about the value of clean, energy dense, reliable, and affordable nuclear energy as a tool to address many of our most pressing problems.

Bradford, in his NRC days

Peter Bradford, for example, is a lawyer who once served as a Jimmy Carter appointee on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He was a part of the group that failed miserably to provide useful guidance to the American public during the Three Mile Island accident. One of his partners on the phone call press conference that was the basis for Wald’s blog post was Mark Cooper, a man with a PhD in sociology earned by writing a book about a political transformation in Egypt.

Cooper was also the author of a discredited 2009 economic analysis of the future cost of nuclear energy that formed the sole basis for the nuclear cost portion of the infamous NC Warn commissioned paper titled Solar and Nuclear Costs — The Historic Crossover: Solar Energy is Now the Better Buy.

I wrote about that paper—and the way that some mainstream media outlets published the lie that solar energy was somehow cheaper than nuclear energy—in an Atomic Insights post titled Gullible Reporting By New York Times On the Cost of Solar Electricity Versus Nuclear Electricity. That post was the most visited work I produced in 2010. I was joined in the effort to point out the flaws and to obtain an editorial correction by David Bradish at NEI Nuclear Notes and by Dan Yurman at Idaho Samizdat.

Remembering that skirmish brings up another good point about what I learned about responding to bullies back in the playground. Even though I did well in class and wore glasses, I had developed an extensive network of friends at school, in the scouts, at church, and on my swim team who also liked to learn, and enjoyed many activities together. Later in life, I taught my children that there were effective ways to respond to bullies and cliques; one of the best ways was to develop a strong network of supporting friends.

That is an area where the nuclear party needs some improvement and a corrective action program.

Along those lines, I will close with some good news areas and opportunities in 2012 where we can all start pulling for each other and work to overcome the completely incorrect perception that there is something wrong about being a strong supporter of nuclear technology development. We are LONG past the initial sin of developing and using a nuclear weapon; we have atoned by developing an amazing improvement over the useful but rapidly depleting fossil fuels that have powered our society for about 150 years.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued the final design certification for the Westinghouse AP1000.
The National Academy of Sciences has issued a study of the effects of uranium mining in Virginia that identifies a number of achievable actions that need to be completed.
The state of Virginia released a study of the potential economic impacts of mining the 119 million pound uranium deposit at Coles Hill near Chatham, Va. It indicated that the endeavor could bring 500 jobs and more than $100 million per year to an economically depressed area of southside Virginia with another 500 jobs spread around the state.
The Plant Vogtle project to build two Westinghouse AP1000 units about 20 miles south of Augusta, Ga., is within days of obtaining the first ever COL issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Southern Company has indicated that there will be another 1700 workers added to the payroll soon after that decision has been finalized.
As Dan Yurman pointed out in his recent post titled Nuclear energy R&D budgets spared major cuts, the omnibus appropriations bill that was signed by President Obama restored all of the cuts to nuclear energy programs that had been taken during the Senate mark up.
The Department of Energy’s nuclear energy budget included about $100 million in total for assisting with the development of small modular reactors.
The DOE nuclear energy budget also included more than the Administration requested for the NGNP program, which happens to be a nuclear program with strong partners who are not traditionally involved in nuclear energy.
Chuck Till and Yoon Chang have just published a book titled Plentiful Energy: The Story of the Integral Fast Reactor: The complex history of a simple reactor technology, with emphasis on its scientific bases for non-specialists. That subtitle is a mouthful, but the main title is the point—our technology enables a plentiful energy resource.

Happy Nuke Year, fellow nuclear party members. Let’s put some of those playground lessons to work, be proud of our knowledge, build friendships, and support each other against the antinuclear bullies who do not have a clue about the power that the industrialized world needs in order to keep improving human prosperity.

______________

Adams

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Posted in Economic benefits of nuclear, integral fast reactor, nuclear opponents

Small Modular Reactors Competing Head to Head With Natural Gas

Posted on December 6, 2011 by radams| 4 Comments

By Rod Adams

On Thursday, December 1, 2011, the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute at Chicago (EPIC) released a study titled Small Modular Reactors – Key to Future Nuclear Power Generation in the U. S..

Although I could have saved some money and vacation time by just watching the web cast or the archived video, it is hard to pass up a chance to ask questions from people who have spent so much time researching a topic with so much national impact. I must also admit a selfish motive for taking a day of vacation to make the trip to D.C.—widespread acceptance of the analysis may have an impact on my personal career.

John Hamre, the president and chief executive officer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, gave the introductory speech and focused on the possibility that smaller reactors, partially built in factory settings, might help to overcome two barriers to new nuclear plant construction.

Instead of requiring a per-unit capital outlay on the order of $10 billion, which is a large portion of the total market capitalization of even the largest U.S. electrical power utility companies, they could cost 1/10th that amount. Instead of requiring a 7–10 year planning and construction time delay, they might allow a more manageable 3–4 year planning and construction period once the designs are complete, the licenses have been obtained, and the factories start producing modules.

The researchers and the study sponsor made a conscious decision to design the study to be technology agnostic. The goal was not to determine the advantages or disadvantages of one particular design, but to determine if the economy of unit volume (mass manufacturing) could provide sufficient competitive advantages to overcome the economy of very large sizes.

The authors also made the decision not to compete smaller reactors against large ones, but to compete each type of reactor against natural gas. During several exchanges with the audience during and after the talk, the study authors emphasized that they thought that smaller reactors complimented large ones and opened additional markets that would not otherwise be accessible to nuclear energy solutions.

In both the 2004 Chicago Study and the current work, the future behavior of natural gas prices is the dominant factor when assessing the relative competitiveness of nuclear energy for baseload power. In the absence of carbon pricing and increasingly stringent air and water quality and waste management regulation, natural gas-fired generation is cheaper than all other source of generation at the moment.

(Key to Future, p. 10)

The researchers made an excellent case for the importance of developing a strong order book, of investing in design refinements that make it easier to manufacture plants in series, and of finding early adopters that can potentially accept the higher prices that will be necessary before the producers have a chance to drive down costs by moving down the learning curves.

One thing that the study did not do very well was to explore unconventional (for the nuclear industry) financing that might be available for companies that are producing disruptive technology. Inventors of capable small reactors have the potential to gain access to reasonably well-protected markets where there are large barriers to entry for later movers who wait until the first movers have proven their systems.

Instead of discussing venture capital, early acquisition by large companies that are already in the energy business or initial public offerings—models that are widely used in the capital intensive high technology industry—the researchers focused on ways that the federal government could assist in stimulating industry development.

Some ideas that are explored in the study are long term power purchase agreements, government funding for the detailed design and engineering (DD&E) phase, and public-private partnerships for the lead plants.

During the Q&A session, it became apparent that the researcher best able to answer some of the questions that most interested the audience had not been able to attend the report rollout. Dr. Geoff Rothwell’s name came up both with regard to the modeling of natural gas price behavior and with regard to the modeling of the plant operations and maintenance staff.

Dr. Ed Lyman from the Union of Concerned Scientists asked whether the study analysis took into account the spacing or protections that might be required in order to locate multiple modules on the same site, citing the lessons he learned from the events at Fukushima. The answer was that it was not part of the study, but would be a part of the detailed technology and safety evaluations that would be the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s responsibility.

A visitor from South Korea noted that his country had already started the process of evaluating a license application for a small modular reactor and had determined that the economics for a pure electrical power generator were not favorable without taking advantage of the waste heat production for either desalination or industrial process heat. (Video minute 45:50)

That is an area where smaller reactors have a significant advantage over larger ones—they can theoretically be located close enough to a heat customer so that the heat does not have to be transported over long distances. The study authors responded that although they had talked about those heat applications and the potential for using waste heat, they had not pursued that path for this version of the study.

The researchers are not yet finished; in addition to process heat applications, they identified many areas of additional work that needed further refinement. The report is a good start, however, and worth studying if you have an interest in the factors that need to be addressed and carefully managed in order to enable smaller reactors to achieve their full market potential.

[Note: Although I work for B&W on the mPower^TM reactor team, all opinions expressed here are my own. I do not speak for my employer.]

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Adams

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Posted in Economic benefits of nuclear, Education, Small modular reactors, South Korea

We must cooperate to overcome fear of radiation and nuclear energy

Posted on October 4, 2011 by radams| 11 Comments

By Rod Adams

On Friday, September 30, the Japanese government cancelled evacuation advisories for areas located more than 20 km (12 miles) from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. The evacuation advisories initially affected 59,000 people, but 30,000 had already returned because radiation measurements showed them that there was no longer any reason to stay away from their homes. That indicates that irrational fear has begun to fade away.

Part of the basis for the government’s decision was the report issued by Tepco late last week that the temperature in all three of the affected reactors was less than 100 degrees Celcius, an important milestone for achieving a stable, cold shutdown condition.

Sadly, the Japanese government is not being given sufficient credit for taking a careful, methodical approach to recovering from an unprecedented condition. Instead of seeing the progress as good news that offers an opportunity for tens of thousands of displaced people to start living normal lives again, some reporters are taking the approach of trying to stir up controversy or implant doubts in their readers’ minds.

Two of the world’s premier financial news sources, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, published stories on October 2, 2011, that, instead of focusing on the steady progress of recovery efforts, breathlessly reported that “trace amounts of plutonium” were found in the soil in certain locations in Japan that happen to be located within a few tens of miles of the destroyed reactors at Fukushima Daiichi.

In the Wall Street Journal report, you have to read to the thirteenth paragraph in a fifteen paragraph article to find the following statement:

Plutonium had previously been detected in Japan after atmospheric nuclear tests, sometimes at higher levels than were found from the June-July samples, a science ministry official said.

There is no similar statement in the Financial Times report.

Before ever getting to a statement indicating that it is not unusual to find plutonium in the soil in Japan and that even higher levels have been detected, readers are treated to ill-informed paragraphs like the following that seem to be calculated to cause fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Still, the latest discovery is a potentially disturbing turn, as it shows that people relatively far from the plant could be exposed to more dangerous elements than had been previously disclosed.

While neither plutonium nor strontium emit powerful gamma rays like cesium and iodine, both deposit in the body—strontium in the bones, plutonium in the bones and lungs—and can cause cancer of leukemia once inhaled or ingested.

Both isotopes also have long half lives: it takes about 29 years for some forms of strontium to reduce by half, while plutonium isotopes have half-lives ranging from 88 years to over 24,000 years.

That makes them highly toxic in the body as they continue to emit alpha rays, and immensely difficult to get rid of in the environment.

It is true that it is immensely difficult to get rid of trace quantities of plutonium once they are widely dispersed. That is why it is possible to occasionally find tiny quantities of plutonium remaining from the open atmosphere weapons testing in the soil almost anywhere in the world if you look hard enough.

It is not true that quantities measuring between 0.55 and 4.0 becquerels per square meter in a few random locations are anything to worry about. It is emphatically not true that measuring such minuscule quantities is evidence that there was more damage to the Fukushima Daiichi reactors than has been reported. Long half lives do not indicate that isotopes are highly toxic—in fact, long half lives indicate that specific activity is quite low and results in fewer interactions with living tissue per unit time.

The science that allows measurement and identification of isotopes at concentrations in the single digits of becquerels is impressive, but it is akin to seeing the scary creatures that can be found in random samples of household dust under an extremely powerful microscope.

When I read articles like those published in premier press sources like the New York Times, the Wall St. Journal, and the Financial Times, I realize just how hard we must work to spread knowledge that can lead to understanding about radiation and radioactive materials.

As evidence of the scale of our information dissemination challenge, there was a flurry of excitement on the Social Media e-mail list yesterday (October 3, 2011) when one of the contributors pointed to John Boice’s rational testimony on the subject of nuclear energy risk management to a congressional committee.

Dr. Boice is a radiation epidemiologist who has spent his career studying human populations exposed to radiation. His testimony is fact-filled, easy to read, and sharply focused. Several contributors to the e-mail list, all of whom are actively working to share nuclear knowledge, were impressed and made favorable comments highly recommending that the work be more widely shared. I decided after reading the testimonials and the testimony to make it a subject of my monthly post for ANS Nuclear Cafe.

I was somewhat dismayed to realize that the testimony was given on May 13, 2011, nearly five months ago. I am left wondering why it took us so long to find and promote it.

It is not too late to start. Steve Aplin at Canadian Energy Issues has made a contribution to the necessary sharing effort with his post titled Wondering why still no radiation casualties at Fukushima? A prominent radiation epidemiologist explains.

If you have a blog, are active on Twitter, have circle of friends on Google Plus, or share news with friends and family on Facebook, please help us spread Dr. Boice’s rational words to overcome the efforts of those who want us to remain confused and afraid instead of informed and confident.

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Adams

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Posted in Fukushima, nuclear opponents, Radiation

Center for Advanced Engineering Research opens with nuclear flavor

Posted on September 6, 2011 by radams| 1 Comment

By Rod Adams

On August 25, 2011, I had the privilege of attending the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Center for Advanced Engineering Research (CAER) located in Bedford County, Va., near Lynchburg. The crowd at the event included representatives of local, state, and federal governments, as well as a number of area business people, academics, and boosters.

The excitement in the audience was palpable and optimism ran rampant. This event, important on a local scale, is worth reporting to readers at ANS Nuclear Cafe because several speakers described how excited they were to have helped to build a flexible, high-tech research center that would advance the development of new nuclear energy projects in the United States.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, our local Congressman, was especially encouraging as he stressed the nuclear industry’s importance to the region, the state, and the nation. Considering all of the less positive news that is being widely repeated about the industry’s prospects in the wake of the Fukushima misinformation campaign, the Congressman’s words helped to reinforce my own upbeat attitude about nuclear energy’s future.

The CAER has two primary anchoring technologies—nuclear energy and mobile communications. At either end of the building, there are two towers; one of the towers is an enclosed triangle hosting B&W’s Integrated System Test (IST) heat loop simulator for the B&W mPower^TM reactor, the other tower is an open tower with a spiral staircase that provides a place to install test antennas and measuring devices useful for communications research.

The IST is an important tool that will provide supporting data for use in validating heat transfer and fluid flow models for the B&W mPower reactor. That data and those safety performance models will be an integral part of the licensing activities for the system.

As I toured the CAER facility, I noticed the large, open cable hangers that will make it easier to reconfigure the building’s communication networks. That capability will come in handy for both Areva and B&W; those anchor tenants are planning to use the facility to support development of advanced nuclear facility control rooms as well as other system testing. I suspect that other CAER tenants, many of which will come from the region’s mobile communications industry, will also appreciate the flexible, high-capacity data networks that the facility will support.

The room that is scheduled to host Areva’s reconfigurable digital control room has a large, glass-walled observation area that will be useful both for visitors and for researchers who are evaluating the ease with which operators interact with their displays and control systems.

On September 22, 2011, starting at 5:30 pm, the local American Nuclear Society (ANS) chapter will hold a meeting at the facility. CAER Director Bob Bailey will give a talk about the facility, its history, and its future looking mission. He will also open up the facility for tours to show off the capabilities and potential of the facility. I expect that the visit will inspire even more good ideas for ways to build on the momentum that the center’s successful development has started. I hope to see some of you there.

It is terrific to have another facility that can support the continuing educational and professional development of the area’s nuclear-focused workforce. All major industries need hubs of activity where positive feedback among people with similar interests encourages additional thoughts, ideas, and products. Lynchburg seems poised to expand its role as one of the hubs of nuclear technology within the United States.

Disclosure: I plan to be spending a significant portion of my professional life at the CAER in my full-time role as a member of the B&W mPower reactor development team. All of the opinions expressed here are my own and are not those of my employer.

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Adams

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Posted in American Nuclear Society, Areva, knowledge transfer, Local Sections, News, reactor designs

Unwarranted fear of radiation can paralyze and prevent beneficial activity

Posted on August 2, 2011 by radams| 5 Comments

by Rod Adams

During the past few days, I have been blessed with the opportunity to eavesdrop on an intriguing e-mail exchange involving Ted Rockwell, one of my technical heroes. Rockwell is a man whose involvement in nuclear technology dates back to the Manhattan Project, where he served as a member of a “Tiger Team” of young engineers who were assigned the task of making process improvements at Y-12.

Rockwell

He developed an interest in protecting people from harmful radiation and became such an expert in arranging simple materials in layers that he was chosen to edit the Atomic Energy Commission’s Reactor Shield Design Manual, which is still considered to be the basic reference for this important engineering discipline.

Rockwell is a plain speaking man with a self assigned task to do everything he can to help people recognize that radiation is something to understand, not something to blindly fear. Rockwell’s philosophy as a confident, linear-thinking, rational problem-solver can be expressed by a quote that he used to see hanging on the wall in Adm. Rickover’s office.

Our doubts are traitors
and make us lose the good we oft might win
by fearing to attempt

Aside: Among his career accomplishments, Rockwell served as Rickover’s technical director during the period when Naval Reactors created the first atomic engine for the USS Nautilus and led the engineering effort to build the first commercial atomic power plant in the United States at Shippingport, Pa. He is the author of The Rickover Effect: How One Man Made a Difference and Creating the New World: Stories and Images from the Dawn of the Atomic Age End Aside.

That quote about doubts and fears is not meant to inspire a “damn the torpedoes” casualness toward real dangers, but instead to inspire a knowledge-based confidence that allows action in the face of a small amount of uncertainty.

Rockwell is convinced—as am I—that the world is at risk of turning its back on an important tool because of unwarranted fear of radiation. He does not place all of the blame on the professional opposition to nuclear energy; he reserves some of his sharpest words for radiation protection professionals who have convinced the world to put radiation, even at levels that do no harm, at the top of the list of items that require expensive action.

In the below quote from the correspondence that I mentioned, Ted is referring to the forced evacuation orders that drew circles around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station and moved people out with little regard to the other physical conditions that resulted from the earthquake and tsunami. Those orders remain in effect today and are compounding the very real and expensive damage done by the sustained population relocation, not by the events at the power plant.

My suggestion is, that by insisting that the most important issue is to prevent even harmless doses of radiation, and by also insisting that evacuation is the most “conservative” way to respond to radioactivity, they subjected people to some pretty unhealthy conditions. Why should the radiation protection people have unquestioned priority over everyone else?

I believe that the data show we all live in a sub-optimal radiation field. Certainly 100 mSv (10 Rem), and probably 1000 mSv (100 Rem) does us more good than harm. And even a little radiation damage is probably less harmful than being forced to wander aimlessly through the devastated, polluted landscape. The floodwaters washed over pig farms, electroplating facilities, solar panels, pesticide factories, and other hazards more dangerous to human health than small quantities of radioactivity. We should face up to that situation. Like a lot of people in Chernobyl, I would prefer to be in my own home, even if everyone is telling me that that will kill me.

My plea is that we treat radiation as just another hazard, and not as some supernatural bogeyman.

Helping the public to overcome its irrational fear of radiation will require sustained effort, especially in the face of dedicated opposition that refuses to allow people to be reassured by our developing knowledge. On July 29, 2011, Matt Wald broke a story about a multi-year project to use state-of-the-art probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) models to reevaluate the potential consequences of worst case accidents at a nuclear power station. His article is titled N.R.C. Lowers Estimate of How Many Would Die in Meltdown.

One of the scenarios considered during the project was virtually identical to the initiating event at Fukushima—an earthquake-induced station blackout with no mitigating restoration of power before core damage and hydrogen explosions. The realism of the model assumptions can be validated by comparing them to the actual events—the analysts should be rightfully proud of their effort. The modeled timeline and the actual timeline are startlingly similar.

Here are words from the conclusion of the main report; they should reassure the public that the defense-in-depth approach to reactor engineering protects them from harm.

Individual early fatality risk is essentially zero

Individual latent cancer risk from the selected specific, important scenarios is thousands of times lower than the NRC Safety Goal and millions of times lower than all other cancer risks, even assuming the Linear No-threshold Theory dose response model.

(Emphasis added.)

Not surprisingly, the professional opposition to nuclear energy is working hard to spin the study results their own way. Ed Lyman, the often-quoted worrier from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), provided his organization’s response in a July 29, 2011, post titled NRC Study Shows the Serious Consequences of a Fukushima- Type Accident in the US. There is little doubt that UCS will publicize its pessimistic interpretation, but it should not be allowed to stand without some direct commentary by people with more understanding and confidence in the good news of the analysis.