The Smart Money Is on Nuclear

This week's announcement that Vermont Yankee would be shut down in 2014 was sad news to bear for our industry. Here at NEI, we covered the negative impact on the local economy that this closing will have, and our CEO Marv Fertel's comments expressed how disappointing it is when a well-run and highly productive nuclear plant gets shuttered because of skewed markets.

Caroline Cochran 

It was easy to feel discouraged by this, especially knowing all of the hard work put forth by the talented employees and tireless supporters of Vermont Yankee. That's why it was both inspiring and uplifting to read the following message to industry communicators from Caroline Cochran, a nuclear engineer, blogger and advocate.

I wish we were fighting a battle of facts, but clearly that's not what this is. This is a battle of hearts and guts and cool and public opinion. That’s why what you all are doing is so important. Organizations like PopAtomic Studios and The Breakthrough Institute are great because they make nuclear energy accessible and fun, and help people understand that it’s critical for our environment.

I've seen it over and over again talking to person after person in all types of settings. I work in marketing now and speak with thousands of people monthly -- the change is coming. Young people are pro-nuclear. They think it’s cool. They also think it’s important for our future. Many visionaries and big names are pro-nuclear too: Bill Gates and Richard Branson, and Elon Musk is really coming around.

I was just at the largest annual inbound marketing conference, and everyone I talked to there loved the idea of nuclear. These aren’t engineers, these are young techies and social media types. The types that love TechCrunch and Wired and blogs. I was also just in D.C. meeting with the heads of several agencies and offices. There is momentum coming from there as well.  The New York Times and the old guard will have a change of heart…eventually!

Don’t lose heart guys. The smart money is on nuclear. The people that really care about our future care about nuclear.

On behalf of nukes everywhere, I want to say thank you, Caroline. This is exactly what we needed to hear. We are heartened by your message and will continue to spread the word that nuclear energy is crucial for powering our future.

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Local Towns Counting the Cost of the Vermont Yankee Shutdown

Entergy's Vermont Yankee

Here at NEI, we're used to producing economic benefits reports to quantify exactly what sort of impact the operation of a nuclear plant has on a local economy.

But from time to time, it's important to hear from the folks who live closest to the plants to really understand how important they can be. Here's an excerpt from a story that ran earlier this week on VT Digger that reinforces the point:

“Rep. Mike Hebert, R-Vernon, said the closing will have an irreparable impact on local towns. ‘It’s going to be devastating to our communities because of the volunteers,’ he said. ‘Our local rescue is predominantly Yankee employees, the volunteer fire department is predominantly Yankee employees, just about every charitable organization in the county has received something from Yankee. … It will be a brain drain,’ he added. ‘It’s not just the economic impact.’

The economic impact will be significant. Since 2007, the Windham Regional Commission, which is the county planning commission, has been preparing for the one of the area’s largest economic engines to turn off. ‘There’s a significant impact to having those very highly paid jobs,’ Hebert said. “Those are the people that buy your cars and eat in your restaurants.’ Entergy workers make roughly $90,000 a year, and the company contributes nearly $100 million to the state’s economy through wages, charitable donations and payments in local and state fees and taxes. Once Vermont Yankee closes these sources of income will begin to dry up.’”

For more on what folks living closest to nuclear power plants have to say, take a look at our latest plant neighbor survey.

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The Ink on the Rubber Pad Redux

Nuclear Notes friend Meredith Angwin kindly pointed us to a pdf of Robert Alvarez’s written testimony to the Vermont Senate committee considering a bill to tax the used nuclear fuel being held at Vermont Yankee. The fuller post about the Vermont hearing and who Robert Alvarez is is two below this one.

I figured Alvarez was simply reinforcing what the committee wanted to do, and with no other witnesses, no opposition to his statements. Little did I know. The written testimony is just – awful – almost willfully useless as a fact set. Because, in this instance, facts don’t matter.

The document is on Ms. Angwin’s site, so by all means, send some clicks her way. It’s the bottom link.

Thanks to her for this. It’s an important “o” to put an umlaut over – it exposes the hearing as little more than a show trial for Vermont Yankee. If the state wants to tax used fuel, then pass a tax bill including it – that’s its right. But trying to fix a bogus motivation to the effort is very discouraging – crudely undemocratic on its face.

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Vermont Yankee and the Ink on the Rubber Stamp

There’s been a little swath of stories lately about a hearing in Vermont about the used fuel held at the Vermont Yankee facility. Here’s a sample from one of them:

The testimony of Robert Alvarez, a senior scholar at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, comes as some lawmakers are urging that Vermont consider a new tax on the highly radioactive nuclear waste being stored at the Vermont Yankee plant in Vernon. Alvarez said Minnesota levies such a tax.  

Minnesota does indeed do this and commits the funds to renewable energy projects. You can read the details of this program here. If a consolidated storage site opens in 2021, as has been bruited, and Xcel moves its used fuel there, the state will have to find another way to, um, let’s say gather funds for this effort. Granted, that’s a lot of ifs, and I guess they would all go for Vermont as well.

But what about Robert Alvarez? Here’s more of him at the hearing.

The pool “contains about nine times more cesium-137 (a radioactive isotope) than was released from the more than 600 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests around the world,” said Alvarez, who acknowledged under questioning from Rep. Mike Hebert, R-Vernon, that his current employer takes an anti-nuclear stance. Alvarez added that the Vermont Yankee pool “contains more than the entire inventory of spent fuel in the four damaged reactors at the Fukushima site” in Japan.

Here’s the thing: none of this used fuel has done any harm at all, here or in Japan. The fuel here is very well handled (and I assume in Japan, too). Unlike, say, fertilizer facilities, used fuel is not only regulated but very closely regulated. Unless there’s a proximate cause, worrying about it will only cause undue anxiety and hearings in the Vermont legislature. That raises the suspicion that Alvarez is throwing around figures without context, which is like pointing at steam and yelling Fire.

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Alvarez works at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank in Washington. Rep. Vernon is correct that IPS doesn’t care much for nuclear energy. Alvarez’s thinking about it is largely informed by his government work with nuclear weaponry.

And very good work it was, too.

Prior to joining the DOE, Mr. Alvarez served for five years as a Senior Investigator for the U. S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, chaired by Senator John Glenn, and as one of the Senate’s primary staff experts on the U.S. nuclear weapons program. While serving for Senator Glenn, Bob worked to help establish the environmental cleanup program in the Department of Energy, strengthened the Clean Air Act, uncovered several serious nuclear safety and health problems, improved medical radiation regulations, and created a transition program for communities and workers affected by the closure of nuclear weapons facilities.

That’s substantial, though focused largely on defense. Still, some of his statements about domestic nuclear energy have a decided anti-nuclear zeal to them:

The United States remains a major pillar of nuclear support here and around the world. About 70 percent of the Energy Department's $26.3-billion budget covers nuclear activities — and that's not including $18.5 billion in loan guarantees for new reactors that are slated for construction in South Carolina and Georgia. Japan's failing nuclear industry is supposed to build them.

Toshiba will probably be surprised to hear it’s failing, and Southern Co. and SCANA are proceeding apace without loan guarantees (Southern Co. is negotiating with DOE on its provisional guarantee, but has already hit some construction milestones at Plant Vogtle). And of course, Alvarez is conflating defense and domestic nuclear activities to get his 70 percent figure. But it certainly sounds like he means the domestic industry alone, doesn’t it? I guess you could call this red meat for the faithful, raw and without context.

But the point here isn’t really to set up Alvarez as a gull – I’m sure he’s sincere in his views – but to show that Vermont isn’t playing subtle games to get where it wants to go. This is when legislative hearings essentially become ink on the rubber stamp, creating the illusion of sounding out an issue without actually doing so.

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I have to give the Vermont press credit – they really didn’t settle on Alvarez’s view as definitive. Enter Howard Shaffer.

"He's [Alvarez] from an industry who makes his living saying the sky is  falling. without saying what the odds are," said nuclear engineer Howard Shaffer, of Enfield, N.H.

Rep. Mike Hebert, a Vernon Republican who sits on the committee, said Alvarez "represents an anti-nuclear group who will give the most negative position you'd expect them to do."

To be fair, it looks like Shaffer may have buttonholed the reporters. He’s given some space in a few stories. Good for him. And Rep. Hebert, too.

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Radio Debate on Vermont Yankee Set for Tuesday Morning

Some folks in Vermont shared the following about a radio debate on the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant that will take place on Tuesday morning.

WHEN: Tuesday, April 24, 8-10 AM

WHAT: Vermont Yankee Power Struggle: Radio Panel, Northhampton, MA

WHERE: WHMP Radio with frequencies at AM1400/1240/1600 and FM96.9, broadcasting from Sylvester's Restaurant in Northhampton, MA.

WHO: The Energy Education Project is sending Meredith Angwin (Yes Vermont Yankee) and Richard Schmidt to defend nuclear energy and provide factual information about Vermont Yankee. Two people will speak in opposition to Vermont Yankee and nuclear power: long-time activist Michael Daley and Jeff Napolitano, an anti-nuclear civil disobedience trainer with the American Friends Service Committee

WHAT YOU CAN DO:Listen, call in, attend in person! It will not stream on the web but will be podcast later.

Call-in number is 413-586-7140. Questions can also be posted in advance on the station's Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/WHMP/64219786132

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Meredith Angwin's blog post on this: http://yesvy.blogspot.com/2012/04/vermont-yankee-power-struggle-radio.html

From what we understand, Cavan Stone of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) will be providing live Twitter coverage of the program on the ANS Twitter Feed.

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99th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers

Welcome to the 99th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers, a get together that we at NEI Nuclear Notes have been honored to host from time to time since its inception. This week, we've got selections from seven of the best blogs the online nuclear energy community has to offer. If you would like to host a future edition of the carnival, please contact Brian Wang of Next Big Future to get on the rotation. And please, don't ask to host the 100th edition of the carnival, as that honor has already been parceled out to a well-deserving blogger.

Nuclear Power Talk: What's Good for the Goose. Gail Marcus takes a hard look at Mark Cooper's claims about the economics of nuclear energy.

The Nuclear Green Revolution: The Clinch River Reactor Failure, Lessons Unlearned. Did AEC make a mistake by pursuing the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor over other designs? Read and find out.

Yes, Vermont Yankee: Green Jobs and Taxes. In this guest post, Guy Page of the Vermont Energy Partnership talks about how the plant provides green jobs and how the state's plan to levy punitive taxes on the plant threatens them. In a second post, Meredith Angwin explains why Vermont Yankee Isn't Fukushima.

ANS Nuclear Cafe: NAS Study of Cancer Risks Near Nuclear Facilities. The National Academy of Sciences (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. Kudankulam Hot Start Within Reach. The provincial government of Tamil Nadu, India’s southern-most state, has dropped its opposition to hot start of twin 1,000-MW VVER reactors at Kudankulam and withdrawn support from local anti-nuclear protests. The long-running controversy over the start of NPCIL’s Russian-built twin 1,000-MW VVER reactors at Kudankulam *may* be coming to an end.

Idaho Samizdat: NRC Sets Conditions for San Onofre Restart. Our man Dan Yurman takes a look at the situation at San Onofre concerning the current situation with the plant's two steam generators. For more on this issue from NEI Nuclear Notes, click here. It would also be worth your time to view a video message from Southern California Edison. Later on Friday, Dan took another look at the SONGS situation in the wake of NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko's visit to the plant on Friday afternoon.

Atomic Power Review: Catching Up on Developments. Leslie Corrice's new book is out; also, APR addresses the new competitive situation in the SMR market with some small / portable reactor background (and the usual obscure illustrations) as well as links to descriptions of the present products for comparison.

Next Big Future: Brian Wang was awfully busy this week ... GE Continues Pushing Prism Reactor ... iRobot Warrior, Packbot To Be Used in Nuclear Plants in the U.S. ... South Korea Makes Big Overseas Nuclear Energy Push ... Transatomic Power's Waste-Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor.

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94th Carnival of Nuclear Energy – Old Battles, New Technologies and One Scandal

Last week was another busy week in social media. Today we’re hosting the 94th carnival and highlighting 21 posts from 14 blogs.

To start, Gail Marcus at Nuke Power Talk discusses her concerns about the zeroing of funds for nuclear engineering education programs in the 2013 budget request. It’s been an annual battle to maintain the nuclear education programs at the NRC and DOE and this year was no different. From Gail:

It seems to me that in general, it is penny-wise and pound-foolish for a nation to skimp on education. I know the budget is tight and I know there are many other important programs, but we really can't stop looking ahead.

The case for nuclear engineering education is particularly important. The current workforce of nuclear engineers is rapidly retiring. … One hopes that some of the supporters of nuclear energy on the Hill will notice this cut and restore the funding. I would encourage those who share my concern to contact your members of Congress and ask for their help in restoring funding for educational programs.

Hear, hear!

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Meredith Angwin at Yes Vermont Yankee wrote a guest post at the ANS Nuclear Cafe describing the controversies around VY. She notes that “putting Vermont Yankee issues in context is like facing a huge mountain range. There is always another set of hills beyond this one.”

Also at her own blog, she announced the March 17 community rally in support of the plant.

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Steve Aplin at Canadian Energy Issues commented on the different risk perceptions between nuclear materials and chemicals. Fear of the 'Dirty Bomb' recently led to a campaign to phase out the use of cesium-137 in hospital irradiators. Those machines sterilize blood prior to transfusion and prevent transfusion-associated diseases. Steve pointed out that there have not been similar campaigns to phase out other useful chemicals, like chlorine, ammonium nitrate and gasoline, which are much easier to obtain and put to evil purposes than cesium. Many people fear nuclear materials but forget that chemicals, fuel and fertilizers can cause much greater damage.

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Atomic Power Review has a two-part contribution this week concerning the Palisades nuclear station and reactor pressure vessel embrittlement. In the two posts, Will Davis addressed media claims of vessel embrittlement. Part 1 was a background on Palisades with a link to a past APR article on the topic and part 2 provided great detail on embrittlement from a number of print sources and A. David Rossin (former President of ANS).

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Filling in for Charles Barton at Nuclear Green, NNadir shares his thoughts on the first nuclear reactors in the world that naturally fissioned a few billion years ago. Although there is a lot of squabbling about burying nuclear waste, nature proves it can be contained. From NNadir:

Over two billion years, most of the fission products in porous sandstone at Oklo didn't even migrate as far as Tom Brady can throw an errant football in a "Hail Mary" pass at the end of a Superbowl as a last ditch attempt to avoid a losing effort.

His post is humorous and dense but definitely worth the read on Oklo.

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Steve Skutnik from the Neutron Economy describes how small modular reactors can help displace Iowa's coal-heavy energy portfolio. SMRs can provide an economical, "right-sized" solution for smaller, rural electrical grids like Iowa’s. Of course, not everyone is convinced of the benefits. Skutnik also blasted some of the specious arguments against the technology.

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Over at Energy From Thorium, Kirk Sorensen is working hard to push for thorium all around the world. Kirk was in London last year to help launch the Weinberg Foundation which promotes thorium. On Thursday, Kirk highlighted the Foundation’s press release on the formation of an “All-Party Parliamentary Group” in London with members of both the House of Commons and House of Lords to consider the potential of thorium as an energy source. Well done.

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Rod Adams at Atomic Insights discusses how and why we should combine domestic coal with nuclear energy to make oil.

My pitch to the coal industry would be to use cheap, clean nuclear heat to convert H2O and their carbon rich fuel into a refined hydrocarbon that could compete with petroleum products.

No, it’s not a new concept. Technologies exist to achieve this, check out Rod’s post on how.

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How close did Japan really get to a widespread nuclear disaster? At Brave New Climate, Barry Brook highlights a post at Slate.com by two authors at the Breakthrough Institute who put Fukushima into a proper context. Barry adds:

Much of the post-accident speculation was constrained only by people’s imagination (which can be pretty wide ranging), and utterly failed to resolve the fact that RISK is probability X impact. Instead, anti-nuclear types typically choose a huge, speculative impact, and then try to attach a large probability (often near certainty) to it. For truly catastrophic outcomes, both numbers are very small, and multiplied, vanishingly so.

Can’t add to that.

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We have two posts to mention from the ANS Nuclear Café. Wesley Deason launched his series on the uses of nuclear fission to enable human space exploration beyond earth’s orbit:

Nuclear reactors, due to their ability to produce large amounts of energy at any location, will be the required energy source for future human space travel outside of earth’s orbit.

Make sure to follow the Café for more of his series.

Also at the Café, Dan Yurman reveals a dispute over the start of two new nuclear plants in India. To the right, months of protests have delayed the Kudankulam nuclear project in southern India. Some people (including India’s sitting prime minister) allege that American NGOs are funding the protests. If true, it sounds like a scandalous story.

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Dan Yurman at his own blog, Idaho Samizdat, also reported several positive news items for the week including the good news that North Korea is suspending its nuclear weapons program and opening more dialogue with the U.S. Of course, some aren’t holding their breath.

Dan also reported that Iran is having a tough time with its uranium enrichment program, how the U.K. is consuming its surplus plutonium, and how South Africa is taking another shot at bids for new reactors in the country.

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Brian Wang at Nextbigfuture looked at detailed levelized cost comparisons of nuclear, solar and coal. Brian notes that two-thirds of the cost of coal energy is determined by future commodity prices while nuclear and solar costs are dominated by construction costs and financing.

Brian also highlights a World Nuclear News story on GE’s laser uranium enrichment plant. The NRC just issued its final technical Safety Evaluation Report (SER) and Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the proposed enrichment plant.

The GLE plant would use a laser-based process to enrich uranium up to 8% uranium-235 by weight (although nuclear power reactors normally require 3%-5% enriched uranium), with an initial planned maximum target production of six million separative work units (SWU) per year. … Laser enrichment could be 2 to 20 times more efficient than other enrichment processes.

Sweet.

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And here at NEI Nuclear Notes, various contributors generated a lot of action – covering PBS’ documentary of Fukushima, Senator Bingaman’s proposed Clean Energy Standard, tornadoes in the South, and NEI’s next social media call on the industry’s FLEX strategy.

Be sure to stop by everyone’s pages for these great articles and new reporting. Stay tuned for other carnivals at Yes Vermont Yankee, ANS Café, Next Big Future and Atomic Power Review!

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How Safe is Vermont Yankee? Ask the NRC, Not CNN.

Another colleague of mine here at NEI forwarded me a copy of the 4Q2011 Performance Summary at Vermont Yankee conducted by the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Open it up and what will you find? Nothing but the color green.

For more details, click here. Bottom line, this plant is operating safely and efficiently.

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Some Facts on Vermont Yankee That Didn't Make the CNN Report

My colleague Tom Kaufmann shared a couple of data points with me that didn't make it into the excerpt of the CNN report by Amber Lyon that we watched today -- facts that demonstrate just how important the plant is to the state, its environment and economy.

• VY makes 73.3% of the electricity generated in Vermont and accounts for 79% of the state’s emission-free energy.

• VY’s three-year average capacity factor is 92.2% - above the industry average.

• VY avoided the emission of 2.7 million metric tons of CO2 last year.

• VY’s output could charge over 800,000 all-electric automobiles in one night / 2.4 million in a day. There are less than 300,000 cars registered in the state of Vermont.

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A Preview of CNN's Report on Vermont Yankee

For a number of weeks, we've been waiting for CNN to air an extended piece concerning the fight to keep Entergy's Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant operating -- a battle that's been thoroughly chronicled at the excellent blog, Yes Vermont Yankee. CNN has just posted a 4:40 teaser on their Web site, and if this snippet is any indication, we're in for more of the sort of alarmist reporting that's helped send the former cable news giant's ratings spinning into oblivion.

Case in point, this on-screen graphic that CNN's Amber Lyon calls the "damage area," around Vermont Yankee.


In the nuclear industry, this is actually known as the emergency planning zone or EPZ, drawn in a 10-mile radius around every nuclear power plant in America. As NEI notes in one of its fact sheets on emergency planning:

Within the 10-mile EPZ, the main immediate protective actions for the public include instructions for sheltering in place or evacuation. The slow pace at which an event may unfold—over several hours or days—provides time for orderly sheltering or evacuation, if necessary.

The nuclear industry prepares for any eventuality at its plants even though the risk of an actual accident causing any fatalities is incredibly small. Just a few weeks ago, the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission released its State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence Analyses or SOARCA. Its conclusions are encouraging:

The study found there was "essentially zero risk" to the public of early fatalities due to radiation exposure following a severe accident. The long-term risk of dying from cancer due to radiation exposure after an accident was less than one in a billion and less than the U.S. average risk of dying from other causes of cancer, which is about two in one thousand.

Later, Lyon quoted anti-nuclear campaigner Arnie Gundersen as saying that many American nuclear plants are just one "earthquake, hurricane or flood away from disaster," backed with video of the terrible floods that plagued the state in the wake of Hurricane Irene. But what Lyon failed to mention is that even when Vermont Yankee's hometown of Brattleboro was inundated by those floods, the plant remained safe (thanks again to the precautions taken in design and construction of the plant) and continued to provide electricity to consumers as they recovered from the storm.

When it comes to extreme weather events, 2011 was something of a real-life stress test for American nuclear power facilities, with plants all over the country successfully enduring earthquakes, a hurricane, massive flooding in the Midwest and a spate of violent twisters in the Southeast. We chronicled all of this in an interactive graphic we posted on our SafetyFirst microsite back in January:


All of this information, and more, could really help provide some balance to the CNN report, which is scheduled to run at 8:00 p.m. EST on both Saturday and Sunday night. Unfortunately, for some reason, CNN never bothered calling us here at the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's policy arm, to ask for an interview. We've since reached out to CNN's Amber Lyon letting her know that we're available. We'll update our readers if and when we get any response.

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