Turkey: Nuclear-Natural Gas Quid Pro Quo?

No argument here:

One of the world’s fastest-growing economies, Turkey has significant energy needs. The majority Muslim nation’s energy demands will double by 2023, according to one projection.

Nuclear Energy perhaps? Turkey has contemplated it for some years, but lacked a partner to help cover the expense of building the facility- running nuclear energy plants is inexpensive, building one is expensive. Now it has a partner – and in an arrangement that seems close to unique:

The $20 billion venture will be wholly financed by a subsidiary of Rosatom, Russia’s state-controlled nuclear energy corporation.

The Russian firm has agreed to build, own and operate the plant for its entire productive life, with spent fuel sent to Russia for reprocessing. The deal represents an unprecedented level of cooperation between the former adversaries.

Various Turkish officials have a lot of questions about this, some of which involve national sovereignty, always a touchy subject. For example, Turkey doesn’t have a nuclear regulator at present and it’s uncertain whether the new plant will be regulated by the Russians or the Turks. Additionally, it isn’t clear which country will decommission the facility. To be honest, these items can be worked out in time – I suspect it is the Russian connection that gives them an air of urgency.

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Most interestingly, though, there is the strong implication that Russia isn’t doing this solely (if at all) out of the kindness of its heart:

Gas- and oil-producing giant Russia has enlisted Turkish support for its proposed South Stream pipeline to diversify its access points to European markets.

There’s no direct evidence of quid pro quo, though plenty of evidence of heavy negotiation that included both the nuclear facility and the natural gas line – almost every story I looked at yoke them together, which suggests, at the very least, that the two projects represent a single unit that will proceed in sync. In fact, Turkey and Russia signed 17 (mostly) energy-related agreements in one go, which in itself has aroused a good deal of concern in Turkey.

But most of that number [$100 billion in trade] comes from Turkish imports of Russian oil and gas, and some Turkish energy experts cautioned that the increase would do more good for Russia than for Turkey. The deal for the nuclear plant, scheduled to be built over seven years in the Mediterranean city of Mersin, raised further concerns among some Turks of relying too much on Russia.

This is from the NY Times and it too keeps the natural gas and nuclear projects closely linked. Still, even if there is more correlation than causation here, I wondered if there was more to the Turkish involvement in the natural gas line.

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Indeed, there is a kind of race going on between Russia and Europe to build a viable natural gas line to serve European markets, with Turkey involved in both of them.

The South Stream gas pipeline is intended to provide a direct connection between suppliers and consumers, thus avoiding transit risks and guaranteeing a continuous energy supply for Europe. Nabucco on the other hand, aims to bring Caspian gas supplies to Europe to reduce dependence on Russian gas imports taking a northern route from the Turkish-Bulgarian border to Austria.

The story doesn’t really explain what Nabucco is all about, but it does point out that diversifying the supply of natural gas is important – and it is. Let’s take that as a given.

Nabucco is a consortium formed by Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Austria. The European Union supports it and so does the United States – because much of the natural gas will come from Iraq. The pipeline itself stretches from Turkey to Austria, with feeder lines from Georgia and Iraq.

The South Stream line, meanwhile, will carry Russian natural gas through Bulgaria and Turkey and on to Italy. This already tortuous route is necessitated by bypassing Ukraine, which wants no part of the project (Russia accused Ukraine in 2006 of stealing natural gas flowing though the latter, a conflict that got bitter quickly; in 2009, Russia rather roughly shut down the natural gas supply to the west for reasons not fully explained, stranding some countries, such as Bulgaria, in the middle of a harsh winter. See here for more on that). Losing the Ukrainian option meant involving Turkey, even if it provides a less than ideal route.

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Check out the Nabucco and South Stream web sites for a more complete accounting of the pipelines. Note, too, that I have no brief on natural gas pipelines and their doings. In the parlance of American politicians, no winners and losers here. (Both pipelines serve a practical purpose and both serve natural gas-poor Europe. If Nabucco backstops Russian petulance, consider it a bonus.)

In the end, what’s really worth discussing is a 1200 megawatt Russian nuclear facility at Mersin. It’s ultimately up to the Turks to decide if that’s a good idea and so far, and with some dissent, the decision is – yes. It works for Turkey.

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NuScale Back in Action with Unexpected Support

The other day, we mentioned Babcock & Wilcox’s small reactor project and its indirect use in the Gubernatorial race in Indiana. Now, another vendor of small reactors, NuScale, has attracted some press attention from Reuters. It’s especially nice to see that NuScale has overcome its financial difficulties.

NuScale staff half-jokingly refer to the first half of 2011 as the "Great Pause," when NuScale could not pay its bills and dozens among its 100 employees at the time had to be let go. It now employs 260 people, and hopes to add another 70 by year-end.

And how did it do this, at least in part?

But NuScale is trumpeting the safety aspects of its new technology, and has found helpful supporters including U.S. engineering giant Fluor Corp, which bought a majority stake in the 5-year-old company last October.

Fluor is no stranger to the nuclear energy business. Start here for more on its activities. Fluor has been around for much of the nuclear age.

Like Indiana, Oregon, where NuScale is located, has no nuclear energy facilities. It closed its one plant, called Trojan, in 1992. But, as with Pence in the Hoosier state, NuScale has found some support from the Beavers.

Yet the NuScale design has managed to win over Oregon's national representatives, who tend to be against nuclear power. Senator Jeff Merkley, a self-described "proud progressive," surprised [NuScale Chief Executive Paul] Lorenzini by throwing his support behind SMRs.

The story talks a bit about other subjects – and is interesting in general – but the key point is that NuScale has found a path forward. There are a lot of hurdles yet to clear in the small reactor arena and some of the numerous competitors will probably fail as the marketplace develops. But let’s at least have the marketplace develop some more before/if the winnowing starts.

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If friends knew that I don’t like mushrooms, they might tease me by telling me they love them.

Then I would say, “Mushrooms wouldn’t exist without government help. No one would eat them.”

“But did you see the study that mushrooms are a great source of potassium?”

“More propaganda from the mushroom brigade,” says I. “Mushrooms are just dolled-up toadstools.”

And on and on.

So, in the middle of his story on NuScale, writer Braden Reddall felt the need to get the other side.

"SMRs are just the next chapter in a nuclear industry that can't stand up on its own," said Don Hancock, director for nuclear waste safety at the Southwest Research and Information Center. "So it always has to be funded by the government."

It can’t be fun having reporters calling on you to play the tarantula on the valentine all the time. I wonder if his friends tell him how much they’d like more nuclear energy facilities in the area.

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NEI Energy Markets Report (August 20-24, 2012)

Here's a summary of what went on in the energy markets last week:

Electricity peak prices fell $1-$16 last week across the country to all settle below $40/MWh. “Next-day power markets were mixed but generally lower across the U.S. to open the workweek Monday, Aug. 20, as traders eyeballed higher load forecasts in most areas but also weak natural gas prices and an overall healthier generation picture. … Other sources of generation were improving Monday. According to data from IIR Energy, just more than 19,300 MW of various generation was offline across the U.S. early Monday. By fuel type, 3,866 MW was coal-based, while about 8,150 MW was nuclear-based and 1,969 MW was natural gas-driven” (SNL Energy’s Power Daily – 8/21/12).

Electricity production was down 8.3 percent last week compared to the same week in 2011. For the first 34 weeks of 2012, electricity production is down 2.3 percent compared to the same period in 2011.

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For more of the report click here.

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Indiana: Introducing Nuclear Energy into the Race

Mike Pence (l) and John Gregg

Indiana has no nuclear energy facilities. It might never have them – well, never say never – and nothing, such as a ban, actually stops the state from having them. But any large infrastructure project needs a local advocate; one with authority in the state helps, too.

So – meet Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), who is currently running for governor of Indiana.

"When you look at much of the industrialized world today, the technology and the safety record of nuclear energy is one that I think Hoosiers ought to be willing to look at, in addition to developing all of our traditional sources of energy and our renewable sources of energy," Pence said.

The story explains that Indiana has flirted with nuclear facilities a couple of times, but has ended up instead as the rare Midwestern state without one. Illinois has 11, for example.
Pence isn’t hiding his enthusiasm for nuclear energy under a bushel. Many of the stories I looked at about this have it in their headlines and ledes. Pence isn’t the least shy in sharing his views.

“We have next generation nuclear power technology under development right here in Indiana,” Pence said. “Known as small modular reactors, this technology is less expensive and easier to deploy than older generations of nuclear power.”

I couldn’t find Pence explaining this in more detail, but he is likely referring to Babcock & Wilcox, which has a fabrication plant in Mount Vernon and will make its mPower small reactor there.

The Babcock & Wilcox Co. manufactures naval nuclear reactors for submarines and aircraft carriers. For security purposes, U.S. military technology will not be transferred to the mPower reactor project; however, the factories already exist and the additional investments for the initial stages of market adoption are minimal. Another advantage is that the reactor is small enough for the reactor vessel head and bottom to be forged in North America. The B&W Nuclear Operations Group’s Barberton, Ohio, and Mount Vernon, Ind., locations specialize in the design and manufacture of large, heavy components. These two locations are ASME N-Stamp accredited, making them two of only a few North American suppliers of large, heavy-walled nuclear components and vessels.

You can learn a lot more about this at the link.

A little more about B&W’s plan:

When you hear the words "green energy" what typically comes to mind is solar and wind power. However, one of the greenest forms of energy is nuclear. And we have an opportunity in Southwest Indiana to be a major player in the next stage of nuclear energy development.
Babcock & Wilcox recently showcased its newly acquired vertical milling machine that will be used for manufacturing nuclear components. The excitement is due to B&W's future launch of the mPower reactor, a small modular reactor that will be used in conjunction with Generation mPower LLC to design the world's first commercially viable Generation III++ power plant.

Back to Pence:

“In addition to developing all of our traditional sources of energy and our renewable sources of energy, we ought to look at adding nuclear energy to our portfolio if it’s economically feasible and keeps our energy costs low.”

Which it would indeed do.
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John Gregg is the Democratic candidate for Indiana Governor. He served in the Indiana House for 16 years, as Speaker of the house for four of them. He left politics in 2002, did a stint as radio talk show host and won a battle against prostate cancer before reentering politics via this race.

Daniel Altman, spokesman for the Gregg campaign, pointed to disasters such as Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima as reminders that nuclear energy can have serious negative consequences.
“John has been talking with Hoosiers for months about how to keep energy costs down for Indiana, while also creating good-paying energy jobs in the state,” he said. “As someone who has worked for two different coal companies, John knows that we have enormous potential not just for coal, but methane, natural gas, biomass and wind energy, and he will work to further develop these industries.”

Well, he’s an energy veteran, which is always a big plus in our book, but clearly not nuclear-friendly. That’s all right: he and Pence provide a clear cut choice in this regard, and that always makes for a good campaign and election season.

Of course, this is a race for Indianans to decide and I have no brief on the candidates. No one is (or should be) a single issue voter – even nuclear energy advocates -  and Pence and Gregg will happily share their thoughts on any number of topics of interest to Indianans. Some of them may even matter more than nuclear energy to a large group of voters.

Still – about Pence’s full-out support: good for him – and for introducing nuclear energy into the campaign, however it goes. That’s a decided value in itself.

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Japanese Business to Nuclear Energy: Stay

Reuters has released a poll gauging the attitude of Japanese businesses toward nuclear energy. Based on a number of stories I’ve read, I expected the numbers to be extremely dismal.

And while not exactly warming, they’re not nearly as awful as anticipated, either.

About one in five big Japanese firms wants to see the share of nuclear power in the electricity supply reduced to zero by 2030, a Reuters poll showed, amid a growing anti-nuclear clamor after last year’s Fukushima atomic disaster.

But underlining concerns about a rise in energy costs without nuclear power, the rest of the respondents supported a continued role for nuclear energy, with the biggest group opting for a share of 15%.

A little more specifically:

In the Reuters poll, 19% of big firms sought to cut nuclear power’s role to zero, but 39% called for 15% by 2030, as a majority of companies brace for slower economic growth as reliance on nuclear energy declines.

One-quarter said they wanted to see a 20-25% share and the remainder called for even greater percentages, according to the poll of 400 big firms, taken alongside the monthly Reuters Tankan business sentiment survey. A total of 268 responded during the Aug 6-21 survey period.

The share numbers here represent a rather modest reduction, as nuclear energy supplied about 27 percent of Japan’s electricity before the accident at Fukushima Daiichi. This means well more than half the respondents want the share reduced by less than half to barely reduced at all.

Of course, one would really need a series of surveys on this topic to grasp whether these numbers are growing. It’s bald intuition – and the experience of other industrial accidents such as the BP oil spill – to suggest that as time goes by, the impact of an accident becomes less. That’s been true of the Japanese accident in polls taken both here and in Great Britain. It’ll be interesting to see if this follows through in Japan as well.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has said he would like to reduce nuclear energy’s share but is awaiting a medium-term energy plan before describing specifics. One can’t blame Noda for treading carefully.

To cope with increased electricity costs amid a prolonged shutdown of reactors, 69% said they would cut expenditure and 36% would seek cheaper power suppliers, according to the poll, which allowed respondents multiple choices.

Underlining conditions of prolonged deflation, 26% said they would pass the cost on to their customers, while 13% would shift operations out of Japan, according to the poll.

Noda has to balance the wants of a sizable constituency – a government poll shows about 47 percent want to zero out nuclear energy – with their need to retain employment and, from the government’s perspective, contribute to the economy. Carbon emission targets weigh in, too.

So the numbers are not great but not so horrible that they make closing the nuclear facilities a key to political survivability – at least, I don’t think that’s what they would show here.

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In this light, an editorial in the Yomiuri Shimbon (a national newspaper) is less surprising.

Securing the safety of nuclear power plants is of course important. However, factors such as economic efficiency and a stable energy supply are also important in deciding the nation's energy policy. As a country poor in natural resources, Japan needs to have various sources of electricity, including nuclear power plants, to ensure a stable power supply.

Thus the government should promote a realistic energy policy of utilizing nuclear power plants from a mid- and long-term standpoint.

Which probably would not have been written a year ago. The paper also tackles public polling.

It is important for politicians to listen to the voices of the people. However, there is a risk that politicians may slip into populism, depending on how much they rely on public opinion.

A member of an expert panel tasked with analyzing the results of the surveys said, "We don't need politics if opinion polls decide everything."

The results of the surveys should be used as one element in discussing the nation's nuclear policy. The government should avoid having the results directly influence its energy policy.

This is a tougher needle to thread. The editorial goes on to say that people don’t realize that closing the nuclear facilities would hurt the economy and raise unemployment. This is true only in a speculative sense – a lot would depend on the length of time the facilities stay open – but politicians don’t have to be “populist” necessarily to accede to the public will even if it will harm them economically. See Germany for exhibit A.

Regardless, all these elements may suggest a consensus forming around nuclear energy continuing with a lesser share. But if this is the consensus, it’s at best a fragile one. We’ll know more after the energy plan is released.

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Uranium of the Sea – and How to Get It – and Why

This is interesting, but it doesn’t seem quite enough:

Japan developed an adsorbent that attaches the uranium-loving chemical group amidoxime to a plastic polymer. ORNL examined the binding process between the plastic and chemical groups and used that knowledge to enhance the uranium-grabbing characteristic of the amidoxime groups on the adsorbent material's surface.

PNNL tested the adsorbent's performance at its Marine Sciences Laboratory in Sequim, Wash., DOE's only marine research facility. Using filtered seawater from nearby Sequim Bay, PNNL established a laboratory testing process to measure the effectiveness of both Japan's and ORNL's adsorbent materials. Initial tests showed ORNL's adsorbent can soak up more than two times the uranium than the material from Japan.

Why would anyone want to do this? With the Japanese, it makes sense because the country is so light on natural resources. But elsewhere?

The article – really an abstract – says that there are about 4.5 billion tons of uranium floating loose in the ocean – about 3 parts per billion – so the effort to find those fissionable needles in the aqueous haystack could pay off for whoever figures out how to collect them economically and then scales up the process to collect a lot of them efficiently. 

But even if someone accomplishes this and to scale, why do it – to what end? There are enough known uranium deposits for another century at least. A hundred years may not seem very long, but let’s say, in that time, thorium comes into its own or recycling used nuclear fuel becomes widespread – or fusion scales acceptably – or mining scouts discover new uranium deposits - then the lifespan for the currently known uranium deposits begins to multiply. So a hundred years may not be a long time, but it’s still enough time for a lot to happen – and just with the technologies and methods we already know much less those we don’t know yet.

In the meantime, perhaps we could learn more about this effort. If it hadn’t already passed, we could attend the – wait for it – Extracting Uranium from Seawater conference, hosted by the American Chemical Society. Having missed that, we can at least look at the conference coverage.

In introducing the conference, World Nuclear News explains why seawater extraction hasn’t caught on commercially yet:

Although these trials proved the principle of uranium extraction from seawater, the cost was prohibitively high - perhaps around $260 per pound. This compares badly to today's most economic mines on land, which produce uranium at around $20 per pound, while resources at higher costs up to about $115 per pound have already been identified that would last more than a century.

This almost gets at motivation, but I think it’s fair to say that, aside from scientific curiosity, the reason to explore this is that uranium will always have a market despite alternatives. At least, that’s the bet being made and probably a good enough one to take a slight risk to win. (I haven’t mentioned, but should, that uranium is useful for nuclear medicine and other purposes outside the energy business. Providing a steady source of uranium also guarantees energy security for whichever countries implement seawater extraction, avoiding artificial or real shortages on the vendor end – and avoiding bad actors among the vendors.)

Just as a scientific endeavor, the conference shows that a good deal of ingenuity is bearing down hard on the cost issue, with scalability perhaps a little further down the priority list:

Conducting research for the US Department of Energy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory has worked with Florida firm Hills Inc. to develop new adsorbent materials. Mats made from so-called 'HiCap' fibers, featuring high surface-areas, are irradiated and then reacted with chemical compounds that have an affinity for uranium. After an exposure period and extraction of uranium the mats require acid washing and conditioning with potassium hydroxide before re-use.

That sounds like – a lot of work. You clearly can’t just throw these mats in the washing machine. But the results make the complex procedure worth the effort.

Oak Ridge said the fibres delivered five-times higher adsorption capacity, faster uptake and higher selectivity than the previous best.

Even better than this outcome? This gets the cost of the uranium to about $135/lb. Still too much, but in the right direction.

Here’s an idea that would prove an economic boon to your local Red Lobster:

Another project presented at the ACS meeting concerned the use of fibers based on chitin - a long chain biopolymer that can be obtained from shrimp shells.

The BBC has a little more on this:

Chitin is a long-chain molecule that is the principal component in crustaceans' shells, but its toughness and its ability to be "electrospun" into fibers that can be made into mats make it an ideal sustainable and biodegradable choice for uranium harvesting.

The stories don’t provide enough other details to gauge this as anything other than an interesting idea – though I’d probably advise the University of Alabama, which is hosting the project, to downplay the whole shrimp shell angle – it suggests a ferocious Old Bay budget. The sustainable, biodegradable angle is far more of the moment.

Altogether? It’s an interesting ongoing inquiry into maximizing a commodity and it does appear to be making progress toward that goal – the efficient production of plentiful, inexpensive uranium.

But that’s rather highfalutin. Instead, let’s celebrate the human capacity to identify and solve problems. That’ll carry us a pretty long way.

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NEI Energy Markets Report (August 13–17, 2012)

Here's a summary of what went on in the energy markets last week:

Electricity peak prices fell from $3 to $11 last week across the country in continuing mild weather to settle in a range of $31-52/MWh. Gas at the Henry Hub fell 13 cents to average $2.79/MMBtu for the week, and the rig count continued its decline by another eleven rigs to 484. …

Crude oil rose $1 last week, to average $94/barrel at Cushing, Oklahoma. “The U.S. average retail price of regular gasoline increased two cents this week to $3.74 per gallon, 16 cents per gallon higher than last year at this time. …”

Average nuclear plant availability fell to 89 percent last week. One unit returned to service, and seven shut down. Turkey Point 3 returned to service after a six month refueling and maintenance outage to uprate the unit 15 percent. …

For more of the report click here.

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