“Nuclear is indispensable as part of the global energy mix today.”

Just because you’re new at this nuclear energy stuff doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion about it:

"Countries with nuclear reactors continue to operate their reactors - 434 nuclear power reactors are in operation today, 69 under construction and more are planned," said Mr Al Mazrouei. "This demonstrates, despite the challenges, that nuclear energy will continue to play a significant role in the global energy sector."

Mr. Al Mazrouei is UAE Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazrouei. I doubt nuclear energy was even on his radar 10 years ago, but the UAE recently poured concrete for the second of four planned reactors at Barakah.

And good for him. He was speaking at an IAEA summit in St. Petersburg (Russia, not Florida) and he wasn’t the only emirati there.

"The reality is nuclear is indispensable as part of the global energy mix today," Hamad Al Kaabi, the UAE permanent representative to the IAEA, told The National.

"It continues to be economical and environmentally sound … Fukushima might have slowed down the expansion pace in some countries but the general global outlook for nuclear energy has not changed "

The National is the UAE’s main newspaper and the point of April Yee’s story is to suggest that the wind behind nuclear energy’s sails is coming from developing countries not developed ones. I’m not sure I fully buy the premise or that UAE fits it as well as other countries might – the article also mentions Turkey, ditto – but maybe. It’s certainly true that the atom has broadened its scope and welcomed in some interesting new family members.

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I took a look at some of the other stories at the National, which has been right on top of Barakah and Enec.

Emiratis in the Western Region are being targeted for training and future employment in the country’s first nuclear power program.

The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (Enec) is focusing its recruitment efforts and scholarships programs on such citizens ahead of its 2017 opening.

I believe the western regions refers to sections of Abu Dhabi, where Barakah is sited, not the other emirates per se. UAE is a collection of seven emirates, more of a Canadian confederation than a United States; still, it’s sort of odd not to extend these opportunities across the whole country (if I’m right).

“We have 260 students in our scholarship programs, and by the end of 2013 we are hoping to have about 410 students recruited.”

Mr Al Qahtani said Enec was offering a range of exclusive scholarships and career opportunities to train the most talented science students and experienced professionals to become pioneers of the emerging nuclear energy sector.

Fahad Al Qahtani is the external communications director at Enec.

The National also has a story about Barakah’s impact on the town nearest it, Al Ruwais.

“To quote our chief executive, for every nuclear-plant employee we will need six workers in supporting services,” Mr Al Qahtani said.“These supporting services include schools, shops, restaurants and so on.”

This means the town, in the Western Region 240 kilometres west of Abu Dhabi city, will see rapid growth, with at least 17,000 people arriving: 2,000 plant workers with 3,000 family members, plus 12,000 support workers.

Exactly the kind of things that happen here, with perhaps some differences because of the widely spaced towns in a desert environment – there’s a lot of housing construction going on is Al Ruwais.

This nuclear energy thing is working out pretty well for UAE.

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Closer to home, the funniest line of the day, from The Motley Fool:

Few things are as controversial as nuclear energy.

Read the newspaper today or any day. Does nuclear energy really seem the most controversial thing? Really?

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Why Extension of the U.S.-ROK Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation Agreement is Critical to U.S. Interests

Ted Jones

The following is a guest post by Ted Jones, Director of International Supplier Relations for NEI.

This afternoon, the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing on H.R. 2449, to authorize the President to extend the current U.S.-South Korea nuclear cooperation agreement until March 2016.  U.S. and South Korea negotiators had hoped to conclude negotiations for a long-term successor to the 30-year agreement earlier this spring, but ran out of time. 

Temporary extension of the current agreement will avoid a disruption of U.S.-ROK nuclear energy cooperation while negotiation of the long-term renewal agreement is finalized.  Bilateral nuclear energy trade flows in both directions and increasingly to third countries.  For example, U.S. Export-Import Bank last year authorized financing for $2 billion in U.S. exports to a South Korean-led project in the U.A.E. 

Seamless continuation of U.S.-ROK nuclear cooperation is essential for the United States and South Korea to remain reliable nuclear energy partners and suppliers to the global nuclear energy market.  Disruptions in our partnerships would encourage countries developing nuclear energy to reduce their reliance on U.S. sources of nuclear components, technology and services. At stake are billions in U.S.exports and tens of thousands of jobs. 

Exports and jobs are not the only U.S. interests at issue in U.S. nuclear energy commerce.  As a group of former defense and national security leaders recently explained in a letter to the President, U.S. influence in global nuclear security, safety and nonproliferation requires U.S. engagement in global nuclear energy markets. 

South Korea demonstrates the benefits to nuclear security and nonproliferation of U.S. nuclear cooperation.  The current U.S.-ROKSection 123 agreement provides the United States with consent rights over South Korea’s reprocessing of U.S.-origin fuel. When the long-term successor agreement is concluded, this consent right will be extended to used fuel from non-U.S. reactors, and to South Korea’s enrichment and storage of plutonium or highly-enriched uranium. These consent rights, plus 8 other nonproliferation assurances and guarantees, are required in every standard Section 123 agreement.

The U.S.-South Korea Section 123 agreement is the basis for a robust U.S. partnership in nuclear energy cooperation. By approving the clean extension this agreement, and the conclusion of nuclear cooperation agreements with other countries, Congress will enable the United States to compete in the growing global marketplace and create tens of thousands of jobs, while maintaining its beneficial influence over global nonproliferation policy and international nuclear safety.

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Insistence on the “Gold Standard” in Nuclear Trade Will Harm U.S. Nonproliferation Goals

Tom Kauffman

The following is a guest post written by NEI's Tom Kauffman. Though Tom now works in NEI's media relations shop, he spent 23 years working at Three Mile Island, seven of those as a licensed reactor operator. 

The authors of the recent Weekly Standard opinion piece “Hucksterism vs. Nonproliferation, Irreconcilable U.S. Nuclear Policies,” (subscription required) insist that the U.S. government condition all of its peaceful nuclear cooperation agreements with other nations on their renunciation of the technologies used for the enrichment of uranium or reprocessing of used fuel. Proponents of this restriction, known as the “Gold Standard,” claim it will raise a higher standard against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It would in fact have the opposite effect.

Because enrichment and reprocessing technologies can potentially be used to produce a nuclear weapon, it is important to restrain their spread. But proliferation of these technologies through legal nuclear energy trade isn’t an urgent problem. Most incidents of nuclear proliferation have occurred through dedicated military programs. Since the international Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) was established in 1974, there have been no legal transfers of enrichment or reprocessing technologies to a country that did not already possess them.

There is a place for restrictions on legal transfers of enrichment and reprocessing, but they must be undertaken multilaterally in order to work. The United States is no longer the world’s dominant supplier of enrichment and reprocessing technologies. Today, countries including Russia, France, South Korea, Canada, China, India and others, supply the majority of nuclear energy technology, equipment and services to an expanding global marketplace. The 46-nation NSG recently adopted tighter restrictions on transfers of enrichment and reprocessing technologies

To restrain nuclear trade partners from producing their own nuclear fuel, the United States is working to increase the reliability of the global fuel supply through fuel banks, and has encouraged its partners to rely on international markets. Where a partner country – such as the United Arab Emirates – has been willing to forswear enrichment and reprocessing within a nuclear cooperation agreement, the United States has properly included that commitment within the bilateral agreement. But U.S. insistence on the “Gold Standard” in all nuclear cooperation agreements is self-defeating for U.S. nonproliferation interests.

Experience has shown that very few nations are willing to accept the “Gold Standard.”  Since the United States opened negotiations for nuclear cooperation agreements with Vietnam and Jordan in 2010, both nations have made it clear they have no interest in forswearing enrichment and reprocessing technologies. As parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), they have agreed to forswear the right to acquire nuclear weapons in exchange for cooperation in peaceful nuclear energy. They strongly oppose, as a matter of principle, additional demands that they foreswear the right to make nuclear fuel, which they properly regard as a sovereign right that is protected by the NPT. Because other nuclear supply countries do not make the “Gold Standard” demand, Vietnam and Jordan do not need a U.S. cooperation agreement. Both countries have moved forward in partnership with other countries.

By preventing the conclusion of nuclear cooperation agreements, U.S. insistence on the “Gold Standard” has dealt a setback to nonproliferation standards and U.S. influence.  No other nuclear supplier matches the standards of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act and Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978, which include nonproliferation assurances and guarantees not required by other supplier countries. By withholding nuclear cooperation from countries such as Vietnam and Jordan that are developing nuclear energy for the first time, the United States will cede influence over their nuclear energy policies to other supplier countries that care less about nuclear proliferation than the United States.

Insisting on the “Gold Standard” harms other U.S. national interests as well.  As several former defense and national security officials explained in an April letter to the President , U.S. nuclear cooperation advances global nuclear power safety and reliability, U.S. leadership in nuclear energy technology, job creation through export growth, and maintenance of the U.S. manufacturing base for nuclear energy technology and services.

There is no doubt that the use of nuclear energy to generate electricity will continue to grow in the worldwide marketplace for the foreseeable future. Only by engaging in this market can the United States ensure that the expansion of nuclear energy is consistent with the highest standards for nuclear security and nonproliferation. Insistence on the Gold Standard in all nuclear cooperation agreements would have the opposite effect. It would isolate the United States from global nuclear energy development, lowering global standards for nuclear nonproliferation.

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Move Along, Nothing to See Here: The President’s Uncontroversial Comments About Nuclear Energy

Favorite reactor to President Obama’s climate change speech has to be this headline from Power Engineering:

Reaction to Obama climate speech varies by interest group

Who’da thunk it? The article does supply a roundup of “interest group” reactions. Here’s NEI President and CEO Marv Fertel for nuclear energy:

[A]tomic power is critical to any domestic climate plan. "There is no debating this fact: Nuclear energy produces nearly two-thirds of America's carbon-free electricity,” Fertel said.

So no debating – since it’s true – and it’s also true that nuclear energy will claim a large share of the carbon-free electricity pie for a long time to come.

In all, the President’s shout-out to nuclear energy was not controversial, perhaps surprisingly so. Fertel is stating a simple truth that is generally accepted. Even the staunchest anti-nuclear advocate must be fairly sanguine by now about Obama’s view of the atom and can only sigh at the injustice of it all.

If there will be controversy arising from the speech, it is more likely to stem from the disposition of the Keystone XL pipeline (about which we have no brief) and perhaps the blunt force use of the Environmental Protection Agency to bring about change. The Washington Post put it like this:

Though these rules will presumably apply to many different kinds power stations, the EPA will probably aim its new restrictions at the very dirtiest — those that burn coal, spewing a toxic mixture of gases and particles into the atmosphere in the process. There are a variety of reasons to phase out widespread coal burning, having to do with public health and environmental protection.

This is pretty over-the-top – all that’s lacking is the coal industry chasing Little Nell out onto the thin ice – and it’s all too familiar to a nuclear industry that’s been in the crosshairs itself. But let the American Coal Council make that case.

But I saw nothing in the mainstream press suggesting that Obama’s support for nuclear energy was anything to even note. Even pro-nuclear sites like Nuclear Street were left with very little to say about it:

In a speech announcing the plan, the president made an early reference to Generation III reactors under construction at the Vogtle and V.C. Summer nuclear plants: "Thanks to the ingenuity of our businesses, we're starting to produce much more of our own energy.  We're building the first nuclear power plants in more than three decades in Georgia and South Carolina."

So there it is: nuclear was in the speech and is recognized as a means to achieve the president’s goals. Any controversy has nothing whatever to do with nuclear energy. It is what it is.

And it’s about time, isn’t it?

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Carbon-Free Nuclear Energy Must Play Strong Role to Achieve U.S. Climate Goals, NEI Says

Marv Fertel

Following is a statement regarding President Obama’s plan to address climate change and control carbon emissions by the Nuclear Energy Institute’s president and chief executive officer, Marvin Fertel:

“The strength of America’s electric system is diversity of technologies and fuel types. When it comes to reducing the U.S. electric sector’s greenhouse gas emissions, efforts can succeed only if carbon-free nuclear energy plays a larger role in the nation’s electricity mix. That’s not simply the opinion of our industry. It is the determination made by several independent organizations that analyzed the leading climate change bills pending in Congress some five years ago when prospects for enacting legislative measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions appeared to have momentum. These include the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Information Administration, which found that between 69 and 187 new nuclear energy facilities would be needed to meet the bills’ carbon reduction objectives in the electricity sector.

“There is no debating this fact: Nuclear energy produces nearly two-thirds of America’s carbon-free electricity. As a nation, we cannot reach our energy and climate goals without the reliable, carbon-free electricity that nuclear power plants generate to power our homes, businesses and infrastructure.

“President Obama recognized this during the presidential campaign when he said, ‘It is unlikely we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power as an option.’ Likewise, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz supports the expansion of nuclear energy to meet national energy and environmental imperatives.

“Nuclear energy must continue to be a major part of the nation’s energy portfolio if we wish to effectively reduce carbon emissions to protect the environment, and to expand our supply of reliable, affordable electricity. We look forward to working with the administration to help achieve these extremely important goals.”

For more on the President's speech, please follow our Twitter feed.

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Excerpts from President Obama’s Climate Action Plan Regarding Nuclear Energy

President Obama

Like plenty of folks in Washington today, we'll be paying close attention to President Obama's speech on climate change. The President will be giving the speech today at 1:30 p.m. U.S. EDT at Georgetown University. You can watch the speech via a live stream from WhiteHouse.gov.

Copies of the climate plan were leaked to the media overnight. Brad Plumer of Wonk Blog has already done an initial analysis. Here at NEI, we've already taken a look at the plan and excerpted all of the sections below that contain references to nuclear energy.

With abundant clean energy solutions available, and building on the leadership of states and local governments, we can make continued progress in reducing power plant pollution to improve public health and the environment while supplying the reliable, affordable power needed for economic growth. By doing so, we will continue to drive American leadership in clean energy technologies, such as efficient natural gas, nuclear, renewables, and clean coal
technology.

Unlocking Long-Term Investment in Clean Energy Innovation: The Fiscal Year 2014 Budget continues the President’s commitment to keeping the United States at the forefront of clean energy research, development, and deployment by increasing funding for clean energy technology across all agencies by 30 percent, to approximately $7.9 billion. This includes investment in a range of energy technologies, from advanced biofuels and emerging nuclear technologies – including small modular reactors – to clean coal. To continue America’s leadership in clean energy innovation, the Administration will also take the following steps:

Expanding Clean Energy Use and Cut Energy Waste: Roughly 84 percent of current carbon dioxide emissions are energy-related and about 65 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to energy supply and energy use. The Obama Administration has promoted the expansion of renewable, clean, and efficient energy sources and technologies worldwide through:

• Financing and regulatory support for renewable and clean energy projects
• Actions to promote fuel switching from oil and coal to natural gas or renewables
• Support for the safe and secure use of nuclear power
• Cooperation on clean coal technologies
• Programs to improve and disseminate energy efficient technologies

Looking ahead, we will target these and other resources towards greater penetration of renewables in the global energy mix on both a small and large scale, including through our participation in the Sustainable Energy for All Initiative and accelerating the commercialization of renewable mini-grids. These efforts include:

• Nuclear Power. The United States will continue to promote the safe and secure use of nuclear power worldwide through a variety of bilateral and multilateral engagements. For example, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission advises international partners on safety and regulatory best practices, and the Department of Energy works with international partners on research and development, nuclear waste and storage, training, regulations, quality control, and comprehensive fuel leasing options. Going forward, we will expand these efforts to promote nuclear energy generation consistent with maximizing safety and nonproliferation goals.

Also, recall that the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in March called on the White House to support the development of new reactor technologies and to lead the development of a nuclear fuel management program. Specifically, PCAST recommended:

Nuclear power requires special attention, as the Federal Government’s role is different than for all other technologies. Nuclear power currently supplies 19 percent of U.S. electricity. Achieving low-carbon goals without a substantial contribution from nuclear power is possible, but extremely difficult. Nuclear power involves large capital investments recovered over long time periods. Even if current market conditions driven primarily by low natural gas prices persist for a decade or more, it is important to eliminate obstacles now that would impede renewed commitments to nuclear energy as energy economics shift over time. Today, a critical issue is progress in nuclear-waste management, and we recommend implementation of the recommendations put forward by the Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) on America’s Nuclear Future. Indeed, nuclear waste disposal needs to be addressed independent of whether nuclear power deployment continues. The recent DOE strategy document generally endorses the BRC and proposes a timeline for some key steps towards a functioning waste management system. Implementation is key.

That's it for now. Look for more all day long as we follow the coverage via our Twitter feed.

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Nuclear Numbers Up in France

A poll over at Ouest France shows that support for nuclear energy has risen over the last two years, to the point that the percentage of people who do not support it has become strikingly small – at least among those with an opinion. Since there is no English version of the site, let’s look at the numbers as reported by World Nuclear News:

Of the 2004 respondents, 36% declared themselves to support the use of nuclear energy in France, up from 33% in November 2011 and 32% in July 2011. Meanwhile, the proportion expressing opposition to the use of nuclear energy had fallen to 14%, down 3% from the November 2011 figures and 6% from July 2011.

That leaves out half the population. What about them?

About a third of the population polled (34%) described themselves as "hesitant", or undecided, towards nuclear energy. Ifop [the polling firm] notes that for the first time since Fukushima, the pro-nuclear percentage of the population outnumbers the undecided. Meanwhile 16% of respondents said they had no opinion at all on the subject.

Hesitant and undecided are not the same thing, so I’ll assume these are two different groups squashed together. These folks are reachable – if Electricite de France is working for their support, it’s working. From an American perspective, meanwhile, the high number of hesitants can seem a case of French intransigence. But that’s a cliché,right?

59% of those polled agreed that France should maintain its current nuclear share in order to ensure its energy independence, up from 54% in a study carried out in March 2013.

The high on this metric was 67 percent in 2008, so the number here is getting better from what I assume is its low after the Japan accident. And it shows that the French fully understand that their country is rather resource poor – the reason it invested so heavily in nuclear energy back in the 70s.

Why care? Well, in a way, we need not. France could do with a little energy diversity – putting all its eggs in the nuclear coop has caused some issues in charging electric cars, at least it might theoretically  – and French President Francois Hollande wants to reduce the share of nuclear energy from about 80 percent to 50 percent. The poll numbers suggests this might be a harder sell than when Hollande ran for office last year, so, consequently, there will be a good deal of interest in his administration’s new energy policy when it is issued this fall.

This policy seems to be at the root of the poll and some of the news stories emerging in the French press now. Nuclear energy wasn’t precisely on the ropes last year when Hollande won the presidency and it’s even less so now. It’ll be interesting to see the reaction if the policy is markedly nuclear–unfriendly.

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