Fox Gets It Right on Emissions – Or Close Enough

Media Matters for America and Fox News are not the best friends in the media landscape, with the former often calling out the latter for what it perceives as bias in its reporting. I have no particular brief on that subject.

But I do recognize that the energy business has done a fair amount to bring down carbon emissions through the increased use of natural gas, renewable energy and nuclear energy (through uprates) – and is quite conscious of it - so I found this report from Media Matters somewhat amusing:

But Fox is ignoring the confluence of factors and touting the decline as a triumph of the free market. A Fox Nation headline today declared: "Free Enterprise Makes the Air Cleaner." On Varney & Company, Fox Business contributor Charles Payne said: "The free market, cleaning up our air. Says a lot about the free market, doesn't it?"

Payne is essentially correct here. We might focus on “bringing down carbon emissions,” though “cleaning up our air” is fine for the purpose. Media Matters says:

The Energy Information Administration announced earlier this month that U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions in early 2012 were the lowest measured for a January-March period since 1992. The report attributed the decline to a combination of three factors: reduced household heating demand during an unusually warm winter, a decline in coal generation due to low natural gas prices, and low gasoline demand as a result of a slowed economy and the shift towards more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Media Matters is correct, too – but you’ll note that it has to include items such as the “decline in coal generation due to low natural gas prices,” which the industry didn’t have to do a thing about – but it did – because it liked that it could bring down carbon emissions (and increase profit, too – let’s not be too naïve here – but let’s not be too cynical, either – this is an unalloyed good outcome.)

I’d also note “fuel-efficient vehicles” as a government-industry mandate/goal, disrupting the purring about the free market, but still – close enough.

If government priorities aren’t all bad, neither are free market prerogatives. The balance between the two can lead to (sometimes heated) arguments, but not the premise. So Payne has a valid argument to make here in favor of the marketplace.

We might have given all the points to Fox News on this one. But:

[Reporter Tracy] Byrnes went on to ask her guest why carbon dioxide emissions -- which are not "poisonous" or "inflammable" -- are even a problem in the first place.

So, there you go.

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Plant Vogtle Crane One of Largest in the World

The 560-foot tall lift derrick at Plant Vogtle (Southern Company).

That is one mighty big crane. Here are all the details from Southern Company:

Testing has begun on a major component in the construction of two new nuclear units at Plant Vogtle 3 and 4 – a 560-foot tall heavy lift derrick, one of the biggest cranes in the world.

The derrick, which will be used to move large pieces at the site of the first new nuclear units built in the United States in 30 years, has the capacity to move the equivalent of five 747 jets across the distance of more than three-and-a-half football fields in a single lift.

In addition, major components will begin arriving to the site later this year and early 2013, the first of which will be the reactor vessel for Unit 3. The Unit 3 condensers have arrived from South Korea, where they were manufactured. Unit 3 is scheduled to go online in 2016, and Unit 4 will follow in 2017.

Also at the site, significant work has been done on turbine islands, cooling towers and nuclear islands. Over the next several months, progress will continue to be made in the nuclear island, turbine building and module assemblies.

"The project is progressing extremely well, especially when compared to other large-scale infrastructure projects worldwide," said Joseph A. "Buzz" Miller, Executive Vice President of Nuclear Development for Georgia Power and Southern Nuclear. "The Vogtle 3 and 4 project provides at least $2.2 billion more value to customers than the next best available technology, according to Georgia Public Service Commission staff."

For more photos and videos from the construction site, click here.

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Nuclear Today, Lignite Tomorrow: Germany’s Withering Choices

German Nuclear Plants (Wikipedia)

Color Bloomberg unimpressed:

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government says RWE AG’s new power plant that can supply 3.4 million homes aids her plan to exit nuclear energy and switch to cleaner forms of generation. It’s fired with coal.

And Herr Dieter Helm, energy policy professor? Also not impressed:

“Angela Merkel’s policy has created an incentive structure which has the effect of partially replacing nuclear with coal, the dirtiest fuel that’s responsible for much of the growth in the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions since 1990,” Dieter Helm, an energy policy professor at the University of Oxford, said by phone Aug. 17. Building new coal stations means “locking them in for the next 30 years” as a type of generation, Helm said.

The problem is that natural gas, inexpensive here, is expensive in Germany, so it isn’t as viable a fuel for large installations. As we’ve seen, Germany’s grid isn’t equipped (yet – let’s be optimistic) to handle the intermittency of solar and wind stably. What Merkel is doing actually makes some sense taken from one angle:

Merkel’s government wants utilities to build 10,000 megawatts of coal- and gas-fired generators this decade to replace older, dirtier generators and underpin a growing share for wind turbines and solar panels.

The problem is: natural gas and especially coal will replace the nuclear energy capacity while wind and solar will contribute additional electricity generation above that, so the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions is up. But some of the same forces that made nuclear energy toxic in Germany are understandably no more happy with this plan. Or shall we say: unimpressed?

Building new coal generators in Germany isn’t easy. A group of local utilities last month scrapped plans to spend 3.2 billion euros to construct the nation’s biggest hard-coal plant in Schleswig-Holstein after resistance from environment groups and the state government led by the Social Democratic Party and Green Party.

Can it be said that Germany’s options are withering away?

“It’s very alarming that leading German politicians praise a plant run on lignite,” Gerald Neubauer, a Greenpeace campaigner in Germany focusing on energy issues, said by phone on Aug. 16. “Burning lignite spews more carbon dioxide than using most other energy sources, and mining it inflicts major damage on the environment.”

I almost feel like saying: This is what Germany wanted and this is what it got. But this transition is just depressing, however you look at it, a casebook study of bad policymaking.
Great story for Bloomberg by Stefan Nicola and Tino Andresen. Do read the whole thing.

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The Most Polite Strikers Ever and Nuclear Energy in Canada

The CANDU's fuel assembly

Way up north, a group of nuclear engineers are striking against contractors of Canada’s Candu Energy. They haven’t had a new contract since January 2011 and, presumably, want to negotiate a new one.

Striking nuclear engineers from SNC-Lavalin Group Inc's Candu Energy subsidiary escalated their dispute with the company on Wednesday, setting up picket lines at Ontario reactors for the first time and delaying shift changes at the plants.

Uh-oh. Does this close the plants?

The reactors' operators, Bruce Power and Ontario Power Generation, both said the pickets do not threaten safe operations at their facilities.
"They delayed staff coming in but there was no impact on operations," said Ontario Power Generation (OPG) spokesman Ted Gruetzner.

Canadians being as they are, the whole thing seems very polite.

"We decided to do this to try to get our customers to send a message to our employer that it's time to do something about this," said Michael Ivanco, a senior scientist and vice president of the union.

And:

Following the morning picket, Bruce Power announced that it has struck a deal with the strikers that will ensure no further picketing at the Bruce plant.

None of the stories I’ve seen have said anything about how contract negotiations are going or even if such negotiations are happening. So we can’t assume anything – well, except that strikes and pickets can happen at Canadian nuclear energy facilities without shutting down the plants.
Everyone is operating within the spirit and letter of the law – I looked for, and couldn’t find, editorials from local newspapers weighing in, and news stories about this haven’t escapes the business pages - so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens next.
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It’s an old joke that Canadians are the tidy cousins to the anarchists to their south, but consider: nuclear energy in Canada contributes to a fairly responsible mix of energy types:

Canada generated 603 billion kWh in 2009, of which about 15% was from nuclear generation, compared with 60% from hydro, 15% from coal and 6% from gas. Annual electricity use is about 14,000 kWh per person, one of the highest levels in the world.

Well, I guess energy efficiency could be better, but I wonder how much of that kilowatt usage has to do with avoiding deep freezes. Still, if Canada scales back on coal in favor of nuclear energy (it is building an 18th reactor currently) or natural gas or renewable energy beyond hydro, it will be near perfect on the environmental front. Still, energy security is enhanced by using coal, as Canada mines nearly all of it domestically.
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Canada uses a home-grown technology for its nuclear reactors, called CANDU. These reactors use unenriched uranium – which saves money by bypassing enrichment – which is possible because the nuclear reaction is moderated by heavy water (deuterium oxide) – an additional expense. CANDU stands for Canada deuterium uranium. (Look here for a much fuller explanation of how the CANDU reactor works. It’s really fascinating.)
Canada chose this method in part because it didn’t have access to enrichment facilities when it began its nuclear energy effort in the 50s, but it has stuck with it and built a global business on it. The CANDU site lists several international buyers, including China and India, the latter creating its own CANDU-like design to create a native industry.
Within Canada, all but one of the operating reactors are in Ontario, with the exception being Gentilly in Quebec. Consequently, 56 percent of electricity in Ontario is generated by nuclear energy with hydro second at 22 percent.
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How popular is nuclear energy in Canada? Although this poll from Innovative Research Group released this year covers the whole country, it’s probably fairest to focus on Ontario. For example, the whole country is against building new facilities by 63-33 percent, not great. But in Ontario, 48 percent support the proposition (and Saskatchewan is in the 40s, too, maybe because of talk of using nuclear energy to extract oil from the tar sands.)
But the majority (or plurality) of Canadians think nuclear energy is dirty, expensive and overseen by vipers – “63% distrust big nuclear energy business” - except, when the provinces are broken out, in Ontario. Is knowing nuclear energy to like it better? It would seem so – plus, I wager, more effort was made in Ontario to explain its benefits.
There’s likely some overhang from the Fukushima Daiichi accident impacting these numbers, but they do suggest that Canadian nuclear interests need to offer some facts and figures to the public west of Ontario. It’s not that it needs to be a love feast – you can’t be loved by everyone everywhere - but it just isn’t true, for example, that nuclear energy is more expensive that solar power, as most Canadians believe. Just getting the facts straight would do a world of good.

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Examining the Data in the INL Cave

Thanks to the folks at the ANS Nuclear Cafe for pointing to this video from Idaho National Laboratory's Center for Advanced Energy Research. It's all about the CAVE: a "computer assisted virtual environment" that enables researchers "to literally walk into their data and examine it."

Very cool stuff. Leave your comments here, or over at Reddit.

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Nuclear Energy and Those Who Are Reasonable

It should come as no surprise that environmentalists oppose the use of nuclear energy in the same way they oppose coal or the fracking technology that is unlocking huge new reserves of natural gas. Currently nuclear energy provides about twenty percent of the electricity used in the U.S. Their attack on coal—led by the Obama administration—has driven its use down from just over fifty percent a few years ago to about 47% today.

Not to mention the rise of natural gas. But you’ve got to take your triumphs as they come.

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In Germany:

[Holger] Arntzen is now project manager of Wind Comm, a nonprofit that supports wind farm development. For him, the key to stopping the backlash against the power lines is to do more to inform Germans that the nuclear phase out comes with a price and changes in lifestyle.

"To show what is possible, and how I, as a citizen, can influence the load on the grid, like putting on my dishwasher only when the sun shines, because we have a lot of photovoltaics. Or waiting on my dishwasher if we have no wind," he says. "People must accept that the post-nuclear phase has a direct impact on how I live, how they live."

Here’s hoping Arntzen, the wind and his dishwasher stay synced or he’ll be eating off the floor in no time.

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From Andy Lemke at Forbes, providing a primer on issues around nuclear energy.

At the time of this writing, nuclear energy has support from both Democrats and Republicans in the United States. While it isn’t a  partisan issue, it is generally divided by those well informed on the topic and those who are uninformed. Between those who trust the  scientists / engineers and those who do not. Between those who are reasonable vs. general skeptics.

A pro-nuclear energy writer trying really hard to be even handed. (still good and he’s right - nuclear energy lost its partisan flavor some time ago.) 

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Why We Need to Keep a Level Head About the Nuclear Butterflies from Fukushima

Over the last few days, we've seen thousands of stories around the Web concerning a study that concluded that radiation released into the atmosphere from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power had caused mutations in the local population of butterflies. At the same time, another piece of research noted that there hasn't been any observable effect thus far on people.

When I read the story, I do what I always do, and shot off a note to Ralph Andersen, NEI's chief health physicist. Here's what he had to say about the study:

Please note that there are species of plants, insects and animals that are particularly sensitive to changes in environmental conditions, including radiation. The pale grass butterfly is among the most sensitive, which is why it was selected for study following the accident at Fukushima Daiichi.

This article provides a rational perspective on what has been found, what it may mean, and what it doesn’t necessarily mean.

Similar findings in some species of biota were detected around Chernobyl in the first few years after the accident there, but impacts on the overall environment and ecology were relatively small and the area today is considered by scientists to be verdant and robust in regard to plant and animal life.

Fukushima Daiichi represents a major accident with significant radiological releases and there are and will be discernible consequences for some years to come. Our emphasis here is on taking actions to prevent such an event in the US and globally.

In regard to understanding the consequences there, we remain open-minded and objective, gaining (and sharing) a fact-based perspective on what it is and what it isn’t.

Good advice, and just the sort of guidance we ought to be paying attention to when we read headlines in the media. In the meantime, some nuclear bloggers have taken a closer look and have shared some similar thoughts. Please visit Atomic Insights and Nuclear Diner for more. Also, be sure to check in with the conversation on Reddit.

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