Dropping the Ball

Don’t make the wrong assumption. This is great:

The Citi Bike Pedal Power Station will be located on the Southeast corner of 7th Avenue and 42nd Street. It will be open to New Yorkers and visitors on Saturday, December 28th and Sunday December 29th from 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM and on Monday, December 30th from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM. Citi Bike brand ambassadors will be on-site taking photos of participating riders. Participants will receive a free Citi Bike day pass and they will be sent a digital photo of them helping power the Ball that they can save and share via social media.

The six bikes at the Citi Bike Pedal Power Station will be connected to 12-volt deep cycle batteries. Each bike is expected to generate an average of 75 watts per hour. The Times Square New Year's Eve Ball is lit by more than 30,000 LEDs. Throughout the three-day event, a power meter at the Citi Bike Pedal Power Station will show how much energy has been generated.

A lot of this press release is a super hard sell for Citi Bike, so note that. And actually, the New Years Eve ball will not be powered by kinetic energy. What Citi hopes to do instead is return to the grid the amount of electricity necessary to light up and drop the ball. This is in the first paragraph, so nothing untoward here, and it’s a fine goal, even in the name of sales.

The electricity to light the ball will be coming from sources other than kinetic energy – including the Indian Point nuclear facility. Granted, some coal and natural gas will be there, too, doing the electricity thing, but kinetic energy generated by bicycles sounds pretty cool, much cooler in fact. I couldn’t figure out from the coverage here and elsewhere how Citi determined how much electricity the ball will use so as to generate the same amount from their bikes, but really, who cares? The reality is more banal but of the moment – and will create a dazzling illumination – but this is the future.

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Welcome to Charlotte for NEA 2012

Greetings from Charlotte, North Carolina, where I've decamped to attend the 2012 Nuclear Energy Assembly at The Westin Charlotte Hotel. Though the conference won't officially begin until tomorrow, participants have already started to arrive in town ahead of tomorrow's opening session.

Working with my colleague, John Keeley, I'll be doing my level best to give you some insight into what's happening here via NEI Nuclear Notes as well as our Twitter feeds (@N_E_I and @NEI_Media) and our Facebook page. We've also set up a dedicated page on our website, NEI.org. When you follow us on Twitter, please be on the lookout for our hashtag, #NEA2012.

That'll be especially important on Wednesday morning when we'll be covering a panel discussion chaired by NEI's Chief Nuclear Officer Tony Pietrangelo on lessons learned from Fukushima. If you'd like to ask a question of the panelists, send us an email at questions@nei.org or simply tweet them with the #NEA2012 hashtag.

So who's here? I've cut and pasted parts of our official media advisory into the space below to give you a better idea. So please stick around, we'll have plenty of great content to share over the next 72 hours.

Nuclear Energy Industry Leaders Will Hold Major Conference in Charlotte, N.C., May 21-23

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Hundreds of nuclear energy industry executives will convene May 21-23 in Charlotte, N.C., for business meetings and policy discussions associated with the Nuclear Energy Institute's major annual conference, the Nuclear Energy Assembly.

The conference takes place with five new reactors under construction in the Southeast, license extension applications for 15 operating reactors under review by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and 65 reactors being built worldwide. It also comes with Congress taking early steps to advance used nuclear fuel management recommendations from the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, and with the industry implementing a "flexible and diverse" strategy to enhance the readiness of U.S. facilities to safely respond to extreme events based on key lessons learned from the Fukushima Daiichi accident.

NEA will be held at The Westin Charlotte, 601 S. College St. Several leading U.S. government officials will speak during the conference:

• U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-NC)
• NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko 
• North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue
• Commodity Futures Trading Commissioner Scott O'Malia 

Other non-industry speakers include:

• Anthony Foxx, mayor of Charlotte
• Former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform
• Sir Ken Robinson
• Philip Jones, vice president, National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners
• Dr. Susan Winsor, president, Aiken Technical College in South Carolina
• Mark Mills, founder, Digital Power Group 
• William Borchardt, NRC executive director for operations
• David Lochbaum, director, Union of Concerned Scientists

Industry leaders who will participate include:

• William Johnson, chairman, president and chief executive officer, Progress Energy and chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute
• Marvin Fertel, president and CEO, Nuclear Energy Institute
• Charles Pardee, chief operating officer, Exelon Generation Co.
• Dennis Koehl, senior vice president and chief nuclear officer, Excel Energy
• Caroline Reda, president and CEO, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy
• Stephen Kuczynski, chairman, president and CEO, Southern Nuclear Operating Co.
• Stephen Byrne, COO and president, generation and transmission, South Carolina Electric & Gas Co.
• Clarence Ray Jr., CEO, Shaw Power Group
• Bob Willard, president and CEO, Institute of Nuclear Power Operations
• Steven Lau, first deputy general manager, Daya Bay Nuclear Power in China
• Anthony Pietrangelo, senior vice president and CNO, Nuclear Energy Institute

Nuclear energy provides 20 percent of American electricity supplies, and 70 percent of the electricity generated by low-carbon sources. U.S. nuclear facilities produced nearly 800 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2011, with an industry-average production cost of about two cents per kilowatt-hour.

For news coverage visit our dedicated NEA Web page. During the Fukushima Daiichi panel discussion Wednesday morning, Pietrangelo and his fellow panelists will take questions submitted via email and Twitter. Interested parties can submit their questions to questions@nei.org, or simply publish their questions on Twitter with the conference's official hashtag, #NEA2012.

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NEI Gears Up for Nuclear Energy Assembly 2012

NEI will be hosting its annual nuclear industry conference and supplier expo, Nuclear Energy Assembly (NEA), May 21-23 in Charlotte, N.C.
This year the conference focuses on “Setting the Agenda” and boasts an interesting lineup of speakers who will be discussing topics from workforce development to new plants to industry actions post-Fukushima. The coveted Top Industry Practice (TIP) awards, which recognize innovation to improve safety, efficiency, and plant performance, will also be awarded during this time.
As a sneak preview, I just sat down for two minutes with NEI’s Lisa Steward, senior director of member relations and corporate services, and asked her what we can expect to see next week. Here’s what she had to say:

In addition to the conference agenda, more than 30 utilities, suppliers and other industry organizations will be exhibiting at NEA, with booths including information on the latest work being performed in the nuclear energy industry and showcasing some of the award-winning TIP projects.
For those of you who cannot attend this year’s NEA, we will be posting all of the latest news, videos, photos and more on NEI’s website. You can also join the conversation on Twitter by using hashtag #NEA2012 or on NEI’s Facebook page. (bumped)

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