NEI Energy Markets Report (September 3-7, 2012)

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

Electricity peak prices were mixed last week across the country. ERCOT-Houston and PJM West hubs saw the most action, rising $20 and $12 to average around $55/MWh, respectively. Prices at the Western, Northeastern and Southeastern hubs remained soft, moving less than $5/MWh in either direction. “Power prices across the United States moved mostly higher Tuesday, Sept. 4, with the largest gains recorded in parts of the East and Midwest after markets were closed Monday for Labor Day. … PJM West jumped more than $10 on the day with trades in the mid- to upper $50s, driven in part by a higher demand forecast as the PJM grid operator expects demand in the Western region reaching 69,700 MW on Wednesday. … As the Gulf Coast recovers from Hurricane Isaac's landfall last week, hotter weather and higher demand helped push ERCOT power prices higher Tuesday” (SNL Energy’s Power Daily – 9/5/12).

Average nuclear plant availability remained at 90 percent last week. After brief outages, Palisades, Three Mile Island 1, Turkey Point 3, Watts Bar 1, and Waterford 3 returned to service. Dresden 2 closed for five days to “perform maintenance work on water tubes in the unit's condenser.” Limerick 1 closed for four days for inspections, repair and testing of its low-pressure turbine blades. (Platts)

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For more of the report click here.

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No Need to Fret About UT-Austin's TRIGA Reactor, No Matter What Drudge Might Point To

A Mark II TRIGA reactor at KSU.

A lot of folks around the country are dealing with jangled nerves after the campuses at UT-Austin and North Dakota State were evacuated in the wake of vague threats of terrorist attack. Thankfully, the threats appear to have been a hoax.

When news breaks, the number one guy on the Web who wants to influence where the clicks go is Matt Drudge, chief cook and bottle washer at the Drudge Report. If you pop over to Drudge right now, you'll see all the screaming headlines, with just one in particular catching my eye:

Nuke Reactor Evacuated in Austin...
The first thing to keep in mind is that the reactor in Austin is on campus at UT, and it's a TRIGA Mark II Research Reactor that was constructed by General Atomics. The reactor was designed to be, in the words of Frederic de Hoffman, "safe even in the hands of a young student." The TRIGA Mark II generally operates between just 0.1 to 16 MWTh. By way of comparison, the average commercial nuclear reactor clocks in at about 1,000 MWe.

Some of our readers might recall how ABC News attempted to generate a cloud of FUD over the potential for terrorists to penetrate the security around research reactors, reasoning that the nuclear fuel could be removed to construct a dirty bomb, even though there isn't anywhere near enough fuel in the reactor to make that happen.

In other words, there's nothing to see here, though I'm sure Mr. Drudge's advertisers are happy that you stopped by.

UPDATE: I just got a short note from NEI Nuclear Notes reader, Art Wharton:

UT had its first TRIGA Mark I reactor in the basement of Taylor Hall(commissioned in the 60's), on main campus. It was decommissioned when the TRIGA Mark II reactor was built up on the JJ Pickle Research Campus ~ 10-15 miles north of main campus. Critical in 1992, it is the newest of all University reactors in the USA, including digital controls and a nice flat-screen display of the rod positions, proudly displaying a Longhorn logo background.

Hook 'em horns.

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Fusion-Fission Fandango in Texas

It’s like the doublemint twins at the University of Texas at Austin.

The researchers — Mike Kotschenreuther, Prashant Valanju and Swadesh Mahajan of the College of Natural Sciences — have patented the concept for a novel fusion-fission hybrid nuclear reactor that would use nuclear fusion and fission together to incinerate nuclear waste. Fusion produces energy by fusing atomic nuclei, and fission produces energy by splitting atomic nuclei.

How does it work?

The researchers’ patent covers a tokamak device, which uses magnetic fields to produce fusion reactions. The patented tokamak is surrounded by an area that would house a nuclear waste fuel source and waste by-products of the nuclear fuel cycle. The device is driven by a transformational technology called the Super X Divertor.

The Super X Divertor is a crucial technology that has the capacity to safely divert the enormous amounts of heat out of the reactor core to keep the reactor producing energy.

I guess this means – well, I’m not sure what it means. It sounds as though the fuel rods would need to find their way to the tokamak via the Super X Divertor or perhaps the system would use something other than a fuel rod. Or I’m all wet. Let’s look for more detail.

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This illustration (also above – click for larger) suggests a two part process – a fission/fission-fusion fandango - with light water reactors operating as they normally do, and the used fuel then further processed in the fission-fusion reactor.

This second reactor can also produce energy and presumably can be rated much as fission reactors are now done, so the result will be more electricity and perhaps a good deal of process heat, which theoretically has impressive industrial applications. Perhaps the use of the Super X Divertor, which diverts the heat so as to avoid it melting the containment, gives that use added plausibility.

This article provides a few more details. I admit I’m still lost on some elements of it; for example, what would seed the fusion reaction? ITER is using deuterium (heavy water) and tritium – but I’m not sure about this project. (The reason to care is to understand better the cost implications). But there are a lot of good details here.

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Anyway, the professors have gotten some attention for their work:

Several groups are considering implementing the Super X Divertor on their machines, including the MAST tokamak in the United Kingdom, and the DIIID (General Atomics) and NSTX (Princeton University) in the U.S. Next steps will include performing extended simulations, transforming the concept into an engineering project, and seeking funding for building a prototype.

Which keeps it firmly in the university/lab sphere, for now. In describing fusion projects, I sometimes think of them as  “Today’s Technology Tomorrow,” because fusion always seems two years away from a major breakthrough. It always has, as long as I’ve followed the subject.

But one can’t help but be impressed by the amounts of ingenuity and enthusiasm being poured into fusion projects. Maybe that’s  motivated by a potentially enormous payoff for the team who can make a project practical – that is, scalable and affordable – but maybe also, even largely, for love of ingenuity and enthusiasm. Those qualities have carried the world a long ways. 

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A Nuclear Energy Binge to Combat Climate Change

Professor Peter Wadhams off ice

This suggests an academic freak-out:

Geo-engineering techniques such as whitening clouds by adding fine sprays of water vapor, or adding aerosols to the upper atmosphere have been ridiculed in some quarters but welcomed elsewhere. Wadhams proposes the use of thorium-fuelled reactors, being tested in India, which are said to be safer because they do not result in a proliferation of weapons-grade plutonium, experts say. Also, under certain circumstances, the waste from thorium reactors is less dangerous and remains radioactive for hundreds rather than thousands of years.

Wadhams is Peter Wadhams, a professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University. What he’s talking about are the desperate measures he envisions as necessary to mitigate climate change.

The thorium-powered nuclear future represents what he calls a nuclear energy “binge” – the resort to thorium seems to me a bit of a hedge, but he’s only proposing not disposing. He’d probably be content enough with uranium if it came down to that.

His point isn’t about nuclear energy, but about arctic ice and the fact that it’s melting away. Even worse, underneath it - well, in Greenland, anyway - is a lot of methane.

"What we are now seeing is a fast collapse of the sea ice that means we could see a complete loss during the summer by 2015 - rather than the 20 to 30 years talked about by the UK Meteorological Office. This would speed up ocean warming and Greenland ice cap melt and increase global ocean levels considerably as well as warming the seabed and releasing more methane."

It seems unlikely that that the largest nuclear facility building project in the history of atomic energy (or the largest effort to seed clouds) would make a difference by 2015 (though it could, of course, make a big difference over time.) Which makes Professor Wadham’s call seem like a freak-out, a bit frantic, but even if that were true, he’d has plenty of reason for it.
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Wadhams has been talking about the snow melt for awhile (I mean, beyond the fact that it’s his specialty.) I poked around the Cambridge archives and found this from 2010.

However, comparing the sea ice extent that had been predicted by the IPCC models for recent years with what was actually observed shows that the models, as they stand, underestimate the rate at which the ice is disappearing. Wadhams believes that this is due to feedback loops which come into play as more ice melts in the summer, but which have not yet been properly accounted for in the models.

So he’s been saying this for a couple of years at least and hopping ahead of other experts – I think the Guardian has picked up on it now because of the recent dire warnings about the methane lurking under the ice. Already, a fair amount of seepage has been recorded.

Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this ancient gas [ancient because the methane’s been there since antiquity] could have a significant impact on climate change.
Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas after CO2 and levels are rising after a few years of stability.

But If read the stories correctly, it’s tough to pin down how much methane is there, though a fair amount of inquiry is devoted to figuring it out. But here’s the thing: if the ice melts away by 2015, then there isn’t much time before the methane escapes its icy prison (though I think it lies under the ground, not the ice, so it won’t all go in a single burp.)

In any event, the goal ultimately might be to account for the methane in calculating its impact, not to keep it where it is. Professor Wadhams’ geo-engineering ideas might intend to produce snow in the Arctic, but it seems very unlikely to happen. So, frankly, does a nuclear energy binge, however much that might benefit the planet in the long run and might occur, hopefully without all the implications of a binge, anyway.

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NEI Energy Markets Report (August 27-31, 2012)

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

Electricity peak prices made marginal gains last week across the country. The largest movers were the Western hubs which increased $4-$6 to average $40/MWh in the region. The Eastern hubs barely budged and the Texas hub rose $4 to average $36/MWh. “Power prices across the U.S. moved in mixed directions Tuesday, Aug. 28, finding support from hot weather in California, across the Southwest and Texas but taking on a more bearish bias elsewhere across the country in line with weak spot gas prices. … In addition, generation remains healthy. While several units are slated to shut through September and October, a fairly minimal 22,790 MW is offline nationwide in the meantime, according to IIR Energy. The nuclear generation sector, which could see as many as 30 reactors shut for refueling by the end of the year, represents the largest market share of outages, with 8,337 MW offline. In addition, about 5,568 MW of the total is coal-fired and more than 4,000 MW is gas-fired, IIR said” (SNL Energy’s Power Daily – 8/29/12).

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Uranium spot prices fell to $48/lb U₃O₈ last week. “Although a significant portion of the lowest-priced supply has been cleared from the market, demand remains thin and highly price sensitive at month’s end. Some potential buyers have yet to enter the spot market in spite of the recent drop in the price. In the case of many utilities, there is little room or budget available for inventory or discretionary purchases, and those interested in taking advantage of the price drop must procure management approvals before proceeding. In addition, several market participants still expect that prices could fall even further and, therefore, are delaying purchases in hopes of securing material at even lower prices” (TradeTech’s Nuclear Market Review – 8/31/12).

For more of the report click here.

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A Daft Car, Pope Benedict XVI and Nuclear Energy Present and Urgent

The Renault Kangoo Z.E. Ridiculous? You decide

No comment (it speaks for itself):

Pope Benedict XVI is now a bit greener.
The 85-year-old pontiff was presented with his first electric car Wednesday, a customized white Renault Kangoo for jaunts around the gardens of the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo.

The story mentions other green initiatives taken at the Vatican City-State.

Benedict has been dubbed the "green pope" for his environmental concerns, which have been a hallmark of his papacy. He has written of the need to protect God's creation in his encyclicals, and raised the issue on his foreign trips and in his annual peace messages.
Under his watch, the Vatican has installed photovoltaic cells on its main auditorium and joined a reforestation project to offset its carbon dioxide emissions.

The Vatican City-State is 800 or so people strong and sits on 110 acres in the middle of Rome. How much influence could it have?
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I like electric cars because they reduce carbon emissions and because nuclear energy is a plausible source for powering them. But it wouldn’t be fair if I ignored Pope Benedict’s view of nuclear energy. Here’s what he said in 2007 marking the 50th anniversary of the International Atomic Energy Agency:

The Holy See, fully approving the goals of this Organization [IAEA], is a member of it since its founding and continues to support its activity. The epochal changes that have occurred in the last 50 years demonstrate how, in the difficult crossroads in which humanity finds itself, the commitment to encourage non-proliferation of nuclear arms, to promote a progressive and agreed upon nuclear disarmament and to support the use of peaceful and safe nuclear technology for authentic development, respecting the environment and ever mindful of the most disadvantaged populations, is always more present and urgent.

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I’d never hear of the Kangoo before. Over at Top Gear is this opinion:

The ridiculous-looking Renault Kangoo is actually an inspired choice for families on a budget. It’s huge inside, can cope with all the clobber a couple of kids bring with them and really is cheap.

And:

It looks daft, isn't luxurious, has zero status and yet does its job brilliantly.

And this is a positive review. I think Top Gear may have hit on the reason Renault called it Kangoo. The review seems to be of a gas-powered Kangoo (the electric one is called Kangoo Z.E.), but let’s assume the electric and gas versions are equally daft.

I couldn’t find the origin of the name Kangoo -  a toddler’s attempt at kangaroo, maybe? In French, it’s kangourou. Kangou would probably not be easily grasped outside France. Here's Renault's page for the car. Try not to laugh.

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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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