Nuclear Fusion and Imploding Porcupines

When the sun makes energy through nuclear fusion, it has the benefit of not having to pay real cash for the energy expended to make more energy. Here on Earth, the effort to make fusion energy affordable and practical has been a lot tougher, though the payout is potentially so great – and the benefits manifest - that much effort has gone into it.

Every now and then we get a peek into the fusion world, which is almost always almost ready to almost produce a plausible reactor. And this will happen – I’m sure of it – someday.

To create fusion reactions, the NIF [National Ignition Facility] scientists fire lasers into a hohlraum, or a hollow cylinder made of gold. The laser pulses, lasting billionths of a second, hit a tiny sphere that is full of deuterium (hydrogen with an extra neutron) and tritium (hydrogen with two extra neutrons).

As the laser beams hit the hohlraum, the gold emits X-rays that are so powerful they vaporize the metal surface of the sphere. That vaporization puts immense pressure on the deuterium and tritium, and induces fusion, smashing the hydrogen atoms into helium, plus one neutron.

This is very basically what the sun does, minus the hohlraum and gold, but featuring hydrogen and helium. But this part isn’t where the economics begin to work. This is:

The problem is that even tiny imperfections in the surface of the sphere will mean the pressure on the deuterium and tritium isn't perfectly even all the way around. Result? "It implodes like a porcupine," Edwards told LiveScience. This uneven "reverse explosion" results in energy waste so that more energy is put into the system than comes out of it.

Well, that’s an unfortunate metaphor. Do porcupines implode? We hope the National Ignition Facility’s John Edwards didn’t find a way to do that in a previous job.

This is the kind of sentence we’re used to in fusion stories:

Right now, the amount of energy coming out of the NIF setup is about 80 percent of what is put in.

That’s like the sun, too, though the sun doesn’t need to worry about break-even. Jesse Emspak’s story goes further to express the perpetual doubt about fusion, but, like so many others, including myself, he hopes for the best:

Still, Edwards is optimistic. "Our goal is to demonstrate that ignition is feasible," he said. "We've made a huge amount of progress, and we're close to achieving what our calculations say should be happening in a regime slightly less demanding than full-up ignition implosions."

“Close to achieving.” Let’s look forward to the day when that phrase and fusion are not logically linked. The whole story’s worth a read.

Here’s the Web site for NIF – it’s part of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. On its homepage, it points out that Star Trek: Into Darkness was filmed there, so there’s that. Here’s its page on fusion if you’d like to learn more.

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What Alec Baldwin Doesn't Want You to Know About Joe Mangano

Now that we're in the first few days of the period of extended operations for Indian Point Unit 2, local anti-nuclear activists are doing their best to turn up the heat. After a smattering of events last week, they've decided to haul out one of the big guns in the form of actor and periodic anti-nuclear activist Alec Baldwin.

On Friday night, Baldwin, who is scheduled to begin hosting a Friday night talk show on MSNBC later this month, will take part in a panel discussion about Indian Point at Rockland Community College -- an event that will double as a fundraiser for the Radiation and Public Health Project, an organization run by Joseph Mangano.

Readers of NEI Nuclear Notes will probably recognize that name. Mangano continually attempts to draw a straight line between nuclear power plant emissions and negative health impacts. Mangano makes these claims despite the fact that nuclear power plants only account for .1% of the radiation that a typical American is exposed to over the course of a year. Meanwhile, exposures from life saving medical procedures like CT scans and X-Rays account for about 50%.

We first wrote about Mangano and the junk science he peddles all the way back in 2005. Just in case Baldwin isn't familiar with Mangano's spotty track record when it comes to the truth, here's a refresher -- Mangano's allegations of health effects associated with emissions from nuclear power plants have been reviewed in detail and repeatedly discredited by at least 8 state and 2 county public health departments, as well as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as follows:

• State of Connecticut; State of Florida; State of Illinois; State of New Jersey; State of New York; State of Pennsylvania; State of Minnesota; State of Michigan; Westchester County, NY and Suffolk County, NY.

NEI is not aware of any federal, state, or local government public health departments that have reviewed Mr. Mangano's allegations and found them to be credible. The good news is that not every journalist gives Mangano's claims a free pass. Here's Michael Moyer of Scientific American on another Mangano study:

[A] check reveals that the authors’ statistical claims are critically flawed—if not deliberate mistruths.

[...]

Only by explicitly excluding data from January and February were Sherman and Mangano able to froth up their specious statistical scaremongering.

This is not to say that the radiation from Fukushima is not dangerous, nor that we shouldn’t closely monitor its potential to spread (we should). But picking only the data that suits your analysis isn’t science—it’s politics. Beware those who would confuse the latter with the former.

Reporting on Mangano's claims has come under intense scrutiny by Reporting on Health, a project of the USC-Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism. A former editor there, Barbara Ostrov, warned journalists to "proceed with caution," when reporting Mangano's claims, as they normally appear in obscure medical journals. Earlier this year, the site's William Heisel warned reporters to "resist the siren song of the fear monger," and "demand details," from activists like Mangano.

If you happen to attend the session, we too ask that you "demand details," from Baldwin when it comes to any outlandish claims Mangano and his confederates make about Indian Point and its impact on the environment. If Baldwin's track record is any indication, he doesn't like being asked hard questions.

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Why the Electric Sector Needs Flexibility to Comply With 316(b), Not Just Cooling Towers

The following post was submitted by William Skaff, NEI's Director of Policy Development.

The Sierra Club and Riverkeeper report, Treading Water, claims that the 316(b) rule governing cooling water intake structures of existing facilities should impose a national standard that requires the installation of cooling towers everywhere, preventing state environmental agencies from determining the best technology available at their sites for minimizing environmental impact.

As the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory reports, “[C]ooling tower technologies consume at least twice as much water as once-through cooling technologies” [emphasis added]. ¹ That is, cooling towers consume twice as much of aquatic life habitat as once through cooling systems. Given that climate change modeling indicates freshwater constraints, why would we want a nation of cooling towers? How can doubling water consumption possibly protect fish in a water-constrained future?

All cooling systems, including cooling towers, have advantages and disadvantages. Thus, the best approach is site-specific—adopting the cooling system that best preserves a given local ecology. There is a total of 3,153 species of fish in the fresh and salt waters of the United States. ² Every water body has a different mix and population of these species, and each species differs in susceptibility to impingement and entrainment, to potential impingement and entrainment mortality, and in behavioral responses to various technologies developed to prevent these occurrences. Thus, the most effective deployment of cooling system impingement and entrainment mitigation technologies will be according to site-specific analysis.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Most facilities potentially regulated under the proposed Existing Facilities rule have intake technologies already in place.” ³ In fact, EPA did not select closed-cycle cooling as the “technology basis” for impingement mitigation for existing units because “modified traveling screens with a fish return system and closed-cycle cooling are comparable in impingement mortality performance.” ⁴ Moreover, once-through cooling systems are not outdated: the United Kingdom’s Environment Agency recommends that new nuclear plants be built on coastal sites with once-through cooling precisely because of their environmental attributes in view of climate change. ⁵ In fact, site-specific research conducted at power plant sites across the country submitted to state authorities as a requirement of their NPDES permit indicates that once-through cooling systems have no adverse environmental impact to aquatic life at the population level.

In conclusion, the more environmentally responsible approach to the 316(b) rule at existing facilities is to provide flexibility in choice of fish protection technology according to the ecology of the specific site, considering environmental, social, and economic factors. And who would know these sites the best but the state environmental agency?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
¹ National Renewable Energy Laboratory (Jordan Macknick, et al.), A Review of Operational Water Consumption and Withdrawal Factors for Electricity Generating Technologies, NREL/TP-6A20-50900, March 2011, p. 6.
² FishBase at www.fishbase.org (accessed June 27, 2011).
³ Technical Development Document for the Proposed Section 316(b) Phase II Existing Facilities Rule, EPA-821-R-11-001, March 28, 2011, p. 4-14.
⁴ 76 Fed. Reg. at 22,205.
⁵ United Kingdom, Environment Agency, Cooling Water Options for the New Generation of Nuclear Power Stations in the UK, June 2010, pp, 181, 185.

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How Bangladesh Is Moving Forward

One benefit of nuclear energy that does not get much play is the way its deployment can lead to rapid industrialization in developing nations – maybe a better way to put this is, it can help bring about an industrial revolution. Even better, for those parts of the world that take advantage of this, it allows for rapid industrialization without adding to carbon emission issues.

Consider this BBC profile of Bangladesh:

Poverty is deep and widespread; almost half of the population live on less than one dollar a day. However, Bangladesh has reduced population growth and improved health and education.

Because you’ve got to start with your people. Then, you’ve got to find ways for them to maximize their gains.

The country is trying to diversify its economy, with industrial development a priority. Overseas investors have pumped money into manufacturing and the energy sector. 

Although Bangladesh has major social issues that make it exceptionally fragile, it’s how it’s moving forward that’s interesting.

Bangladesh has begun building the first of two new nuclear power plants north of the capital, Dhaka.

The plants - each with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts - are being constructed with Russian help as Bangladesh looks to close a yawning power deficit.

I believe the facility will be called Rippur.

According to the CIA World Factbook, the country now gets 95 percent of its electricity (about 5.8 million kilowatts in 2009) from fossil fuels. The nuclear reactors will reduce this percentage immediately, even if they do not replace any other kind of facility. (I ran into stories talking about renewable energy in Bangladesh, but aside from hydro, this is all nascent.)

But the facility might replace a few older plants:

Bangladesh currently relies on dilapidated gas-fired plants for its power supplies and experiences daily electricity shortfalls.

Erratic electricity supplies have been blamed for hampering industrial production and economic growth.

I can’t help but think that a nuclear facility would be safer, too. “Dilapidated” is not the word you want applied to your power station.

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Setting the Record Straight on the Spent Fuel Pool at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4

Tom Kauffman

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

There has been a spate of online posts and articles claiming that the failure of the used fuel storage pool at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 could result in: “a big explosion, a meltdown in the pool, or a large fire,” that could have widespread health effects all over the world. These claims are false and irresponsible. Consider the facts:

• If for any reason there was a rapid loss of water from the Unit 4 storage pool exposing all of the used fuel to air, the used fuel can’t catch fire or melt because it has been cooled for more than two and-a-half years and no longer generates enough heat to damage itself. The used fuel in the pools at the other three damaged Fukushima units is even older and colder.

• By design, it is physically impossible for the fuel in any commercial reactor in Japan or the U.S. to explode like a nuclear weapon. It’s impossible because the concentration of uranium in the fuel is far too low to cause a nuclear explosion. And there’s nothing that can be done at a site to change that.

Anti-nuclear extremists are once again trying to scare people by fabricating threats based on false information. Just because they say it over and over and over doesn't make it true.

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Yucca Mountain Reawakened

Whether or not Nevada’s Yucca Mountain becomes a permanent repository for used nuclear fuel, the decision by the Obama administration to stop the project a few years ago left behind many loose ends, a fair number of them ripe for contention.

One of them was the repository’s license application submitted by the Department of Energy to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This is a valuable document in itself and the NRC’s license approval – or rejection – would carry with it a tremendous amount of information that would be practically and scientifically useful regardless of the repository’s disposition – notably the technical and safety reports. Stopping this process made the political calculation behind the closing sting all the more.

But -

A couple of months ago, this happened:

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals ordered the NRC on Aug. 13 to restart work on the process to license Yucca Mountain as the nation's repository for commercial used nuclear fuel and for high-level defense waste, much of it from Hanford.

Then this:

Nevada’s Nye County is asking NRC Chairwoman Alison Macfarlane to disqualify herself from considering any matters related to the license application to construct a repository for used nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain.

Nye County is the location of Yucca Mountain. The county wants this because, it alleges, “her statements critical of the repository made during her previous career ‘as an academic and independent technical consultant,’ statements it says would raise doubts about her impartiality during any restarted licensing proceedings.” Macfarlane disagrees with this view.

Macfarlane said the request, from pro-Yucca Nye County, Nev., was “premised upon the mistaken notion that I have somehow prejudged DOE’s license application.” She added: “I can state without hesitation that I have not prejudged the technical, policy, or legal issues in this adjudicatory proceeding, and that my expertise will enhance the commission’s deliberations and decision-making.”

The court will decide.

The story also references a request from Nevada to revive the DOE’s Licensing Support Network, a repository of documents related to Yucca Mountain.

So the gears are starting to move to get the licensing process back on its feet – it all may seem a little conflict heavy, but that’s to be expected. No one said the gears would move quickly.

But wait, as they say on late night TV ads, there’s more. And this is a very positive development.

Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., was one of the lead organizers of the letter sent to Chairwoman Alison Macfarlane. It was signed by 81 bipartisan members of Congress, including Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash.

I’m not sure how many of the 81 members are bipartisan in their makeup, but the group is definitely bipartisan, almost evenly  divided between elephants and donkeys. The reason this story focuses on Hastings and Rodgers, both Republicans, is because it comes from a Washington paper and they are the relevant representatives.

Thus, this paragraph about what’s going on:

Most of the Washington state members of Congress on Friday urged the new chairwoman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to complete the safety reports for the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., a key step toward licensing.

Much of the material at Washington’s Hanford site would go to Yucca Mountain, as noted in the first quote, hence the special interest from the great northwest.

In any event, here’s a bit from the letter:

When the license review process was shutdown in a misguided decision by your [Macfarlane’s] predecessor, NRC staff worked to complete one volume of the SER [safety evaluation report]and completed technical evaluation reports without recommendations for three of the other four volumes. It is our firm belief that completion of the SER will settle the debate and provide scientific data confirming what we have known for many years - that Yucca Mountain is a safe location for a permanent repository.

This has been the position of many House members for awhile – I’ve heard variations of it at various Capitol Hill hearings – so the unwavering faith in the outcome is not new or unexpected.

But the main takeaway from the letter?

We know you share the same hope we do of completing a permanent repository for our nation's nuclear waste. Such a goal is in the best interests of ratepayers, taxpayers, and our national security.

No argument here. There will a lot more on this -as you can see, there are many moving parts to this story.

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The Simpsons and The Reality of Nuclear Power Plant Security

It looks like the folks at Fox are pulling out all of the stops when it comes to Sunday night's season premiere of The Simpsons. Look for guest voice appearances from Kristen Wiig of Saturday Night Live and Mad Men's Elizabeth Moss in the 25th season premiere entitled, "Homerland," a spoof of the hit cable drama, Homeland. In Sunday night's episode, terrorists brainwash Homer in an attempt to, you guessed it, blow up the Springfield nuclear power plant:



With the laughs out of the way (and when it comes to The Simpsons, believe us, we do laugh) I'd like to take advantage of this teachable moment and remind everyone that America's nuclear power plants are among the most secure and best defended industrial facilities in the world. So after you've spent 30 minutes laughing with Homer and company, why not just spare 6 minutes to watch this video that outlines the realities of nuclear plant security.



For more on nuclear power plant security, please visit our website. And congratulations to the team at The Simpsons for 25 seasons on Fox. It's an amazing achievement.

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