The Distraction of Coal at COP19

The Warsaw COP19 climate change negotiations experienced a bit of local competition that proved to be pretty interesting itself: the International Coal and Climate Summit, held at Poland’s Ministry of Economy.

Here’s the description:

International Coal & Climate Summit will bring together the leadership of the world’s largest coal producing companies, energy & heat producers, coal-consuming industry representatives, senior policy-makers, academics and NGO representatives to discuss the role of coal in the global economy, in the context of the climate change agenda. The industry’s most important event this year will be held at the Ministry of Economy of Poland during climate change negotiations.

The keynote address, delivered by Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary for United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, is notably stark and to the point:

Development banks have stopped funding unabated coal. Commercial financial institutions are analyzing the implications of unburnable carbon for their investment strategies. Pricing of GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions is on the rise, evidenced by trading markets coming online around the globe. And, international policy is moving us toward a global low-emission economy.

Her prescription for the industry, also quite stark:

Close all existing subcritical plants; Implement safe CCUS [carbon capture use and storage] on all new plants, even the most efficient; and Leave most existing reserves in the ground.

But this is why coal industry figures are there. This is what they want to hear. Whatever their individual views, they take what Figueres has to say quite seriously – and she clearly takes their capacity for change and technology wherewithal equally seriously.

These are not marginal or trivial changes, these are transformations that go to the core of the coal industry, and many will say it simply cannot be done. But the phrase “where there’s a will, there’s a way” is tantamount to human history because will precedes innovation, and innovation precedes transformation.

John F. Kennedy called for putting man on the moon in ten years at a point when no one knew how that would be done.

We must transform coal with the same determination, the same perseverance, the same will. We must be confident that if we set an ambitious course to low-emissions, science and technology will rapidly transform systems.

Above all, you must invest in this potential, because the coal industry has the most to gain by leveraging the existing capital, knowledge and capacity to transform itself.

This is one of the most striking speeches on energy industry challenges I’ve heard – and, correctly, it is guardedly but decidedly optimistic. Even if it’s not about nuclear energy, the whole thing is worth a read.

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The New York Times has good coverage of the speech. This bit stuck out in the coverage:

Environmentalists criticized the very existence of the coal summit. Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an American advocacy group, called the summit “a distraction.”

A distraction – or a key topic in the larger discussion? That’s clearly how Figueres views it. We should have more such distractions.

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The Future in Miniature with Georgia Power

Miniature not because Georgia Power is a small provider of electricity, but because the company’s view of its own future may provide some insight into larger energy trends. We should not assume this to be true, an easy trap to fall into; instead, let’s look at it as one data point in a thesis that could be proven or disproven by more data points.

The reason we can glimpse into the future is because the Georgia Public Service Commission requires Georgia Power to submit what it calls an integrated resource plan. This IRP provides a look at the electricity landscape over the next 20 years. Georgia Power prepares a new IRP every three years, so its outlook can change based on changes in the marketplace.

Although we often refer to the two new reactors at Georgia’s Plant Vogtle as a Southern Co. project, the facility is jointly owned by Georgia Power (45.7%), Oglethorpe Power Corporation (30%), Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (22.7%) and Dalton Utilities (1.6%). Georgia Power is a subsidiary of Southern Co. and, as you can see, owns the largest share of Plant Vogtle.

But nuclear later. First, coal (and oil): 

As part of today's filing, Georgia Power is requesting to decertify and retire 15 coal- and oil-fired generating units totaling 2,061 megawatts (MW): Units 3 and 4 at Plant Branch in Putnam County; units 1-5 at Plant Yates in Coweta County; units 1 and 2 at Plant McManus in Glynn County; and units 1-4 at Plant Kraft in Chatham County; and Boulevard units 2 and 3, also in Chatham County. In addition, the company is requesting to decertify and sell Plant Bowen Unit 6, which has a rating of 32 MW, bringing the total of retired capacity to 2,093 MW.

I don’t think the company links these closures explicitly to the two new reactors at Vogtle, but consider:

As recently as a year ago, Georgia Power and its parent, Atlanta-based Southern Co., complained about new environmental regulations to reduce toxic emissions from power plants, saying those rules could force the utility to close several coal plants and threaten peak capacity. Company officials said that is no longer a concern because long-term demand is not as high as they once predicted.

And:

Once a dominant fuel for electricity generation, coal’s use will continue to diminish as Georgia Power closes more than a dozen coal and oil-fired units.

And that’s because they do not expect to open any new coal-fired units to replace the closed units.

How about natural gas?

Also, Georgia Power will request converting units 6 and 7 at Plant Yates from coal to natural gas, and will switch from burning Central Appalachian coal to burning Powder River Basin coal at Plant McIntosh Unit 1, pending a successful test burn and further study.

So two more units will halve their carbon emissions. I have no idea of the implications of changing coal type at McIntosh – I’ll leave that to black rock mavens to explain – though I reckon it is meant to improve the facility’s emissions profile.

So no new coal units, a switch of two units to natural gas – and nuclear energy? Well, the story about the filing mentions it only in passing, so let’s tell that part of the story ourselves: the two new reactors will pack about 2234 megawatts capacity. Hmm – coal out, about 2061 megawatts, nuclear in, about 2234. Seems pretty quid pro quo to me, at least as a correlation.

The switchover to natural gas, the build out of nuclear energy, the development of renewable energy sources – Georgia Power expects to field 1500 megawatts of capacity by 2016 – suggests a rapidly changing, environmentally aware and nuclear-friendly energy portfolio. Just to put a cherry on it, let’s add this to our data points:

The continuing expansion of renewable energy technologies, advances in energy efficiency, and the rapid shift from coal to natural gas for generating electricity combined to bring down U.S. carbon dioxide emissions last year to their lowest levels since 1994, according to a report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. 

And it’s only going to get better when the new reactors in Georgia (and South Carolina) go online later this decade. Still, it’s all good – in miniature or life size.

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Energy Plants: An Open and Closed Case

Oregon's Boardman Coal Plant

Our friends over at Coal Power have done a real service, taking a look at energy generation plants set to close over the next few decades. While the U.S. grapples with issues of infrastructure, notably roads and bridges, energy infrastructure is mostly the business of utilities.

Anyway, since this is originating from Coal Power, let’s hear that part first:

Coal-fired generation units across the U.S. are an average age of 37 years old, while the average retirement age since 1999 is 48 years. Coal units are not the only fuel type approaching typical retirement age, with natural gas steam turbine (NGST) units possessing the second-oldest weighted average age.

That’s surprisingly more like nuclear plants than one might expect, though it looks like a fair number of coal plants are being kept operational. Utilities are jittery about proposed Environmental Protection Agency rules that may cause some coal facilities to retire early. I think this could even be called the point of the article.

A variety of factors could impact fossil fuel unit retirements. Although the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) was vacated by a federal appeals court in August, many coal-fired units have already installed costly emission controls due to the EPA’s looming Mercury and Air Toxic Standards (MATS), which will come into effect in 2015.

Here’s the takeaway on nuclear energy, which I found a bit contentious:

Nuclear units across the United States are nearing the end of 40-year operating licenses, with an average unit age of 32 years. Licensees are able to apply for a renewal of up to 20 years, subject to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) approval. Although the NRC has readily extended licenses for units, a bill introduced in the House of Representatives in September 2012 looks to curb how nuclear owners apply for renewals. The Nuclear Reactor Safety First Act would limit the advance time period in which a licensee could apply for a renewal to within 10 years of the license expiration date.

The bill referenced here, sponsored by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), died in committee. The description is basically the entire text of the bill, an addendum to the Atomic Energy Act. I’m not sure why Coal Power felt the need to refer to it here – maybe writer Neil Powell just wanted to fill out his nuclear coverage or make the nuclear profile a litter dimmer to fit his thesis.

In any event, NEI keeps track of license extensions: currently 73 reactors have been granted 20 year extensions – 13 have applications in at the NRC – and 17 expect to apply. That’s the fleet – presumably, Markey’s bill would apply only to that final 17. (And to be honest, I’m not sure how the bill would trip up the extension process, if at all.)

So, let’s say nuclear energy is pretty well covered – there’s a few new reactors in progress this decade and likely a few more next decade and onward. In Powell’s favor, he does point out that newer forms of generation are still making baby plants.

Several generation technologies largely developed over the past 10 to 15 years are not at significant risk of potential retirement over the decade. Those include natural gas combined-cycle (CCGT), wind, and solar technologies.

Though still nascent, small nuclear reactors have a lot of potential to flesh out the energy fleet, though the main growth may be in the 2020s. Powell does not mention these, but they are still new and not in service yet. The idea, though, is that the industry is not standing still.

So, electricity generation is not in any great danger of disappearing. It may seem as though the sky is preparing to fall to our coal friends, though I wouldn’t underestimate their ingenuity in keeping the sky aloft.

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Nuclear Takes Charge in Ontario–But Whither Coal?

This is good news worth attending to:

Nuclear generator Bruce Power's Unit 2 sent power to Ontario's electricity grid for the first time in 17 years yesterday, part of Bruce Power's revitalization program and an important step to eliminating the use of coal-fired electricity in 2014.

In Ontario, not all of Canada.

Over the past 10 years, Ontario has decreased its coal reliance by 90 percent, and Bruce Power has increased its nuclear output by 55 percent. Bruce is positioned to generate a quarter of the province's electricity -- enough to power cities the size of Ottawa and London, Ontario combined -- now that Units 1 and 2 are back and its full capacity of 8 units is being realized.

It may not be as obvious to us as it is to Canadians what Bruce Power is trying to do here. So let’s let Bruce Power tell you:

With the return to service of Units 1 and 2, Bruce Power will remain a key player in both reducing and staying off coal, which is one of the largest greenhouse gas reduction initiatives in North America.

Nuclear energy allows this outcome.

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The above excerpts mention coal about as many times as nuclear energy. I don’t have a brief on coal, really, and certainly not about Canada’s use of it, but surely, divergent views can converge on the fact that coal mining, processing and transportation is a considerable portion of the work force in some states in the U.S.

And coal lately has had a rough ride of it. This chart from the National Mining Association shows that the number of workers engaged in coal mining was almost 82,000 in 2011 – that’s a big number but only about half the 155,000 number in 1985 – and the 2010 number represents something of a comeback. The low was 62,000 in 2003, well less than half the 1985 number.

Although it is nuclear energy that is displacing coal in Ontario, that is not true in the United States. Indeed, if coal is under pressure in this country, it is from natural gas.

Coal won’t win back much of the share of electricity generation that it has lost to natural gas in the U.S., Moody’s Investors Service said.

“Coal will regain a bit of market share as natural gas prices recover somewhat, but most coal-to-gas substitution to date will be permanent,” Anna Zubets-Anderson, a Moody’s vice president and senior analyst, wrote in the report. Production from shale has boosted gas inventories and coal has faced more scrutiny from environmental regulators.

This is true. The low cost of natural gas has put some pressure on all baseload energy, including nuclear energy, and since it carries half the carbon emissions of coal, it is more attractive as a coal replacement - if a primary goal is plentiful base load energy with fewer carbon emissions. Nuclear energy would be even better, as Ontario is finding out – it produces no carbon emissions at all – but there you are. (Nuclear uprates, which allow facilities to produce more electricity through equipment upgrades, also has a role here.)

So – it’s natural gas that is applying pressure to the coal industry.

But maybe not. A rather odd op-ed column by the Washington Post’s Charles Lane links the fate of coal to the encouragement of renewable energy sources – and considers this bad because the higher cost of electricity thus generated has an impact on poorer Americans.

I found the column puzzling on its face because it takes a complex set of policy goals, simplifies them until they warp into an unrecognizable shape, then adds an ideological dimension that turns Democrats who support renewable energy into hypocrites. It’s an entertaining show, granted, but deeply weird:

Green energy is not cost-competitive with traditional energy and won’t be for years. So it can’t work without either taxpayer subsidies, much of which accrue to “entrepreneurs” such as [former Vice President Al] Gore, or higher prices for fossil energy — the brunt of which is borne by people of modest means.

I don’t get the quotes around entrepreneurs or grasp the idea that electricity to “people of modest means” could not continue to be subsidized, as is often the case now. The idea is not to punish those folks – if anything, it is the “entrepreneur” class that will help out with the subsidization, along with utilities and government. Lane seems to believe Gore will be personally breaking into shacks and stealing fuses if the United States dares to do anything with “uncompetitive” renewable energy.  But what about nuclear energy – and natural gas? 

Obviously, creative destruction is part of what makes capitalism go. There’s no inherent reason to protect coal mines any more than buggy-whip makers. The biggest threat to coal country comes from vast new supplies of natural gas, not from wind and solar.

The point remains: Government, with its inevitable susceptibility to lobbying and favoritism, should not be picking winners and losers, whether through green subsidies or tax breaks for oil and gas.

In other words, the argument doesn’t work – because natural gas is currently less expensive than coal – but we’ll stick with it anyway.

Additionlly, all energy generators receive government subsidies, depending on how tight you define subsidy – see page xiii of this Energy Information Agency document to compare the figures.

Nuclear energy has been rather unfairly dinged by some commentators for receiving outsized government subsidies, but really, coal and nuclear energy both depend far less on government subsidy than renewable energy types and natural gas – coal and nuclear are mature and well-understood.

See here for more on subsidies – this is a Management Information Services study. The MISI report shows that the main beneficiaries of more than $800 billion of federal energy incentives over the past six decades have been the oil and natural gas industries, and that nuclear energy and renewable technologies each have received about 9 percent of the total incentives provided by the federal government since 1950. (Of course, both came into their own after 1950, nuclear only a little after, but the study accounts for this.)

Another peculiar argument:

Fact is, subsidies for green energy do not so much create jobs as shift them around.

That’s true if we assume that jobs are only generated by subsidies. But that’s not true: nuclear energy and renewable energy do not soak up subsidies like sponges and create genuine additional jobs. So does natural gas. Coal picked up 20,000 additional miners since 2003.

To put it another way: electricity production is not going anywhere. In the absence of a price on carbon emissions – through a carbon tax or cap-or-trade or another mechanism – there’s no particular pressure on the price of electricity besides the usual ones (well, some particular pressures: state and federal regulation can certainly have an impact.)

I think the purpose of Lane’s column is largely an attempt to show that liberals support renewable energy that he supposes mostly benefits wealthy people (because they afford things like solar panels) instead of their traditional working class and union allies, thus opening up charges of hypocrisy. It seems an altogether pointless exercise that dismisses the benefits of renewable energy and elides nuclear energy right out of the picture.

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Just to keep up the bona fides, Lane mentions nuclear energy in passing:

For a sense of where this [favoring renewable energy over “traditional” energy sources] may lead, look at Germany, whose crash program to replace nuclear power with wind and solar is boosting electricity rates. Der Spiegel reports that 200,000 long-term unemployed lost power in 2011 because they couldn’t pay their electric bills.

I wrote about this the other day, so I won’t ride that hobby horse again, except to say that this is a false analogy. America is not like Germany, which is practically unique in its haywire energy policy. And I’d counter that the long-term unemployed are going to have trouble with their electric bills and all their other bills as well. That’s the nature of long term unemployment.

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By the Numbers: The Benefits of New Hampshire’s Seabrook Nuclear Station

Today, the Seabrook Public Library is showing a film that highlights the start of the anti-nuclear power community. The film is about a long-ago protest in 1977 in which activists opposed to nuclear energy tried to occupy the Seabrook plant site during construction. Seabrook finally got built, and in the 22 years since it began producing electricity, it has amassed an impressive record of economic and environmental benefits.

Reliable Electricity

According to the Energy Information Administration, the Seabrook nuclear power reactor (1,247 MW) is the largest in New England and provided 42 percent of New Hampshire's 2011 electricity generation. Since it began commercial operation in 1990, the unit has produced a total of 189,684,433,000 kilowatt-hours, or more than enough electricity to power New York or Illinois for a year.

According to NextEra, its owner, Seabrook generates enough power to supply the annual needs of 1.4 million families and businesses.

Environmental Benefits

If Seabrook wasn’t in operation, the electricity for those 1.4 million families and businesses would likely be generated from fossil fuel plants. In 2011, based on data from EIA and EPA, Seabrook’s clean nuclear electricity avoided the emission of 6,200 tons of sulfur dioxide, 1,400 tons of nitrogen oxide, and 4.0 million metric tons of carbon dioxide that would have otherwise come from fossil fuel plants.

That volume of carbon dioxide is equivalent to the CO2 emissions from 774,000 cars each year. For perspective, there are only 619,000 cars in New Hampshire.

If a coal plant had been built instead of Seabrook, it would have emitted nearly 190 million metric tons of CO2 over 22 years - more than the CO2 emissions from the entire state of New York in 2009. If a natural gas plant had been built instead of Seabrook, it would have emitted nearly 94 million metric tons of CO2 over 22 years - nearly equal to all of Arizona’s CO2 emissions for the whole of 2009. (For background, one metric ton of CO2 is emitted for every megawatt-hour (MWh) generated by a coal plant. Similarly, one-half of a metric ton of CO2 is emitted for every MWh generated by a gas plant.)

Natural Resources Saved

Besides avoiding emissions, operation of the Seabrook nuclear station also avoids massive quantities of coal, natural gas and land resources that would otherwise be consumed in replacing Seabrook’s electricity output.

The amount of coal saved since 1990 is about 95 million short tons, or nearly the amount of coal consumed in a year by Texas - the largest state consumer of coal.

Had Seabrook been a natural gas plant, 1.5 trillion cubic feet of gas would have been consumed since 1990 which is more gas consumed in a year than each of the three largest state consumers of gas: Louisiana, Florida and New York.

(Based on EIA figures, about half a short ton of coal is consumed to generate one MWh and about eight cubic feet of gas is consumed to generate one kWh.)

Besides the amount of coal and gas avoided by Seabrook, it’s useful to point out how much land would be required if the unit were replaced by wind turbines or solar panels. In order to produce the same amount of electricity in a year as Seabrook does, you need about 290 square miles of wind turbines or about 80 square miles of solar panels. The Seabrook station, on New Hampshire’s coast, covers 1.5 square miles.

(The source of the renewable land info is found here and the calculations above account for solar and wind’s low capacity factors.)

Although it doesn’t burn coal or gas, Seabrook does use nuclear fuel. Since it began operation 22 years ago, Seabrook has used 550 metric tons of nuclear fuel. This quantity is small enough to store on Seabrook’s site and even small enough to fit on a Best Buy parking lot, including the fuel assemblies and protective covers.

Economic and Community Benefits

According to NextEra’s website, Seabrook provides many economic benefits to its employees and the community. During normal operations, the station employs 1,100 people. During the refueling and maintenance outages that take place every 18 months, the number of employees doubles to 2,100.

Further, each year, the plant pays $100 million in employee salaries which then trickle down through the economy, and another $20 million in property taxes that goes to the local communities to pay for schools, roads and other public services.

Many More Years of Service

Seabrook is one of the younger nuclear stations in operation and has another 18 years before its current 40-year license expires. The unit has applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to operate for 60 years and there is much discussion and research going on in the industry to determine how nuclear plants can operate for 80 years. Seabrook could be around for quite a few more generations -- helping to avoid emissions and save resources while providing substantial economic benefits and reliable electricity to its community, New Hampshire and New England. As the nuclear critics will celebrate their efforts, in reality, it’s a great thing for the community, and the country, that the station was actually completed and put into service.

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Revisiting Nuclear Energy and Cooling Water

Earlier this week, the journal Nature Climate Change published a study concerning how warmer weather and reduced river flows might impact electricity generation at nuclear and coal-fired power plants. Here's how Reuters reported the findings:

In a study published on Monday, a team of European and U.S. scientists focused on projections of rising temperatures and lower river levels in summer and how these impacts would affect power plants dependent on river water for cooling.

The authors predict that coal and nuclear power generating capacity between 2031 and 2060 will decrease by between 4 and 16 percent in the United States and a 6 to 19 percent decline in Europe due to lack of cooling water.

The nuclear energy industry isn't unfamiliar with the topic. Here at NEI Nuclear Notes, we first dealt with the issue during the Summer of 2006 when a heat wave struck Europe and forced a number of nuclear plants to reduce power.

Back then, our points were pretty clear: the industry was well aware of the situation and that there were a number of adaptations that could be implemented in order to mitigate it. When we revisited the issue in response to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists back in November 2011, I turned to one of our policy experts, Bill Skaff, to handle the question. I spoke with Bill again this week about the latest study, and he passed along the following note to me:

Environmentally conscious regulators and companies are already taking into account flow, discharge temperature, and intake temperature projections when locating and permitting new power plants and other industrial facilities. The Nature study’s time parameters remind us that gradual change allows time for adaptation. Additionally, there are engineering solutions being implemented today that can mitigate climate change impact. For instance, Browns Ferry is building small cooling towers to pre-cool discharge water.

Sustainable development will require electricity for quality of life and a mix of energy sources to generate that electricity—renewable, nuclear, and fossil. We must balance all environmental, social, and economic factors and make trade-offs when considering what energy source or cooling system to deploy at each of our diverse ecosystems around the country.

Wind and solar energy use very little water, but their electricity output is variable and intermittent. An electricity grid can only balance a limited amount of these electricity shortfalls, limiting how much renewable energy can be accommodated by a grid before it becomes unstable and black outs occur. Moreover, the variable, intermittent output of these renewables is usually balanced by fossil plants, which emit carbon dioxide and air pollutants.

The electricity grid requires steady, reliable baseload electricity—the output of nuclear and fossil plants. Nuclear power plant water use is comparable to coal plants. Natural gas uses less water, but produces half as much carbon dioxide as a coal plant as well as nitrogen oxides, which contribute to ground level ozone formation, a cause of respiratory ailments. By contrast, nuclear power plants produce no greenhouse gases or air pollutants during operations.
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EPRI, Water & Sustainability, Vol. 3 U.S. Water Consumption for Power Production, 2002, p. viii. National Energy Technology Laboratory (G. J. Stiegel, J. R. Longanbach, M. D. Rutkowski, M. G. Klett, N. J. Kuehn, R. L. Schoff, V. Vaysman, J. S. White), Power Plant Water Usage and Loss Study, August 2005, revised May 2007, p. xiii.

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Moving the Needle with Coal and the EPA

The Environmental Protection Agency has released a proposed rule that indicates, absent more progress (effective, scalable, reasonably economical progress) on carbon capture and sequestration, the days of coal are, perhaps, numbered:

The proposed rule — years in the making and approved by the White House after months of review — will require any new power plant to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity produced. The average U.S. natural gas plant, which emits 800 to 850 pounds of CO₂ per megawatt, meets that standard; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.

And nuclear energy? No carbon emissions at all. Natural gas will be the chief beneficiary here – you could say that the rule was crafted with that in mind - at least as long as gas prices stay low and fracking doesn’t shake up the landscape. Renewable energy sources should benefit, too.

All these point the way forward, with the coal industry now under pressure to get CCS working as it will need to work to keep coal relevant. I know, I know – but never say never – coal remains plentiful and works as advertised, so abandoning it without trying to make it plausible under this new scenario seems economically foolish.

There are about 20 coal plants now pursuing permits; two of them are federally subsidized and would meet the new standard with advanced pollution controls.

But:

The proposal does not cover existing plants, although utility companies have announced that they plan to shut down more than 300 boilers, representing more than 42 gigawatts of electricity generation — nearly 13 percent of the nation’s coal-fired electricity — rather than upgrade them with pollution-control technology.

The story makes clear that natural gas is as responsible for this as regulation, but it’s just as clear that the electricity sector is moving the needle on carbon emissions in the absence of cap-and-trade. (They also built a fair number of coal plants in the interim – that is, between 2009 – after cap-and-trade failed in Congress – and last year – in anticipation of this rule. This is a countervailing force that one may now consider, er, vailed.)

At this point, though, it’s just a proposed rule. More to come.

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Here is Slate’s Matt Yglesias on this move:

The face of new fossil fuel based electricity will be gas (which is considerably cleaner than coal), and the alternative to gas in the event that the gas boom ends will be renewables.

He’s got quite the blind spot there, doesn’t he?

There are a surprising lot of nice shots of nuclear facilities, but surprisingly few of coal plants. They’re both big industrial structures, after all. I don’t know why that should be.

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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.

…

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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