Podcast Episode 115 - 

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My first reaction was “Wow! Did I just read that correctly?!”

It was one of those “ah-ha moments” when a seemingly mundane statement leapt out of the page and whacked me on the forehead.  This time the catalyst was a twitter reply from Chris Pragman (@ChrisPragman) who describes himself as an “Avid Podcast listener, Engineer, Nuclear Power, Fire Protection, and beer geek with a long commute!”

You see, I had posted a tweet earlier in the day about the cost to taxpayers of some “green energy” jobs.  There’s a new wind farm in Oregon called Shepherds Flat that received federal cash grants totaling $490 million under the guise of job creation.  For that grand sum the Shepherds Flat project will create 35 new jobs.  The math is easy; $14 million per “green energy” job. Our tax dollars at work!

This tidbit about Shepherds Flat was part of a larger report by the Energy Tribune that among other things compared the relative size of US government subsidies to various energy industries.  The report by Robert Bryce calculated subsidy dollars per unit energy produced and concluded the renewable energy industry receives 6.5 times more federal government subsidies than the nuclear industry, and 12 times more than the oil and gas industry.  That fact really didn’t surprise me considering the billions of dollars in grants, production tax credits, and favorable depreciation rules the government lavishes upon anything branded with the “renewable” label.  Then Chris asked a great question, “What do they consider nuclear subsidies?”

When I dug into that question I learned the Congressional Budget Office is tasked with tracking the amount the government spends subsidizing various industries, and they publish their findings periodically.  There it was on page 3: $900 million in “subsidies” for the “favorable tax treatment of nuclear decommissioning funds.”  Hmmm. What could that be?

You see, every nuclear plant owner is required by federal law to set aside funds to ensure there’ll be enough money to pay for decommissioning the plant when the time comes.  Typically plant operators add to the fund each year and over time the fund grows until it’s used. The NRC monitors each fund and will require plant owners to make additional payments if they think they’re behind.  These funds are essentially forced savings accounts that add to each nuclear plants annual operating expenses.

So what’s the “favorable tax treatment?”  It turns out Title 26 of the United States Internal Revenue Code requires interest or other investment earnings of nuclear plant decommissioning funds to be taxed at “only” 20%.  Maybe I’m alone in this, but being required by law to set up a fund, then being taxed on that fund’s growth hardly fits the definition of a “subsidy!”  Other sources of energy are not required to set up such funds – they carry the potential future costs of dismantling equipment as liabilities on their balance sheets.  In the case of nuclear plants they’re forced to set aside capitol in government mandated and monitored funds, then the government takes 20% of the fund’s earnings.

Anyway, in 2009 the CBO calculated this “favorable tax treatment” to be worth $900 million, and they called that a “subsidy.”  That’s quite a different kind of subsidy from the cash grants, tax credits, and accelerated depreciation enjoyed by the renewable energy industry.  Personally, I have a tough time viewing this as a subsidy at all.

Chris, thanks for asking the question! I learned something new today, and maybe some of you out there did too.

Happy Birthday to This Week in Nuclear!

On Dec 27 This Week in Nuclear will turn seven years old.  I would like to express my heartfelt “thanks” to all of you who have supported and continue to support the blog and podcast!

Happy Holidays!

John Wheeler

This Week in Nuclear

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The environment would remain safe if Indian Point nuclear plant operates for another 20 years. That’s the opinion of a team of scientists and engineers on the staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Operating licenses for the two reactors at Indian Point nuclear plant in New York will expire in 2013 and 2015. Entergy, the plant’s owner has applied for a license renewal to allow the plants to operate for an additional 20 years.  A major portion of the application is this detailed study of the environmental impact of allowing the plant to continue operation.

This analysis has been underway for almost two years, and included analyzing public comments and issues raised by New York State and groups opposed to the plant. On December 3, 2010 the staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission released the results of their assessment which concluded there are “no environmental impacts that would preclude license renewal for an additional 20 years of operation.”

License renewals are routine.  In fact, last week the NRC issued the 60th such license renewal for a US commercial nuclear plant.  That one went to the Cooper Nuclear Station in Nebraska.  Indian Point’s environmental impact analysis is probably the most thorough ever done by the NRC.  It usually takes between 6 and 12 months for the NRC to collect public comments and conduct their environmental review.  In contract, Indian Point’s review took two years to complete.    It is a monstrous document; the report is more than 2,200 pages long compared to an average of 480 pages at other plants.  It’s worth noting that the plant’s owner pays the Federal Government more than $200 for every hour the NRC staff spent on the environmental analysis.

So what’s unique about Indian Point that might require such an extensive review of the environmental impact? In short, it has nothing to do with the natural environment, and everything to do with the political environment in which the plant operates.  There is a very high profile and well funded anti-nuclear campaign being waged against Indian Point by organizations like Riverkeeper, the Radiation and Public Health Project, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. These organizations and others like them have taken advantage of the transparency of the license renewal process to intervene at every opportunity in an effort to slow or block the process. On one hand they claim nuclear plants are too expensive, yet they work hard to further raise the costs. For example, they claimed the plant is in violation of the US Endangered Species Act because the endangered shortnose sturgeon eggs and hatchlings are entrained in the plant’s cooling system. However, the shortnose sturgeon population in the Hudson has sky rocketed over the last 30 years while Indian Point has been running, proving the plant’s operation has little effect on sturgeon in the Hudson.  The NRC staff agrees; in this report the NRC concluded that impacts to the endangered shortnose sturgeon are “likely to be SMALL.”

The NRC’s engineers and scientists considered 92 environmental issues in it’s assessment.  Each was rated as having either SMALL, MODERATE, or LARGE impact on the environment.  In this rating system SMALL means “the Environmental effects are not detectable or are so minor that they will neither destabilize nor noticeably alter any important attribute of the [environmental] resource.”  Of the 92 environmental issues reviewed, 89 were shown to have SMALL impact.  Two of three remaining issues had MODERATE impact: impingement and entrainment of aquatic organisms. The final issue is related to the potential that the plant’s warm water discharge might overheat the Hudson River. In this case, up to date information is not yet available for the NRC to review. Thus, while they said the impact might range from SMALL to LARGE, the NRC staff essentially took a position that river heating is unlikely to create such adverse impact that it would warrant denying the license renewal application.

There have been prior studies on the thermal impact of the plant on the river. These earlier analysis demonstrated warm water from the plant does not harm the river ecosystem. Earlier this year New York State asked Entergy to update the thermal impact analysis with new data. It’s likely the new report will have a similar outcome because conditions have changed very little. Also, the Lovett plant, which was a large coal fired power plant that was directly across the river from Indian Point, was decommissioned in 2007. In the past that plant’s thermal discharge mixed with Indian Point’s in the river and provided a larger combined effect. Today the thermal effect from Indian Point alone is much less than the combined impact from Indian Point and Lovett.

The environmental impact statement from the NRC is not the final legal hurdle that Indian Point must pass to receive a license renewal. Under present law the NRC can not issue a license renewal until the plant obtains a Certificate of Water Quality from New York State. In this regard, there’s an ongoing legal battle between the plant and New York State over the best way to reduce impingement and entrainment. The state wants the plant to install massive and expensive cooling towers, while Entergy has proposed much less costly wedge wire screens. If justice prevails, then Indian Point’s position will win because wedge wire screens are in use at many power plants around the country, including the Bowline Station, a fossil fueled power plant just five miles downstream from Indian Point.

John Wheeler

This Week in Nuclear

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Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are getting a lot of attention in the nuclear industry because they offer great potential for lower initial capital investment, scalability, and they come in sizes more appropriate for locations unable to accommodate larger 1000+ MW units.  However, there are some big potential advantages that have not been widely discussed that could make SMRs a game-changer.  These advantages are the potential for enhanced safety and security.

Let me explain.

The goal of nuclear plant emergency planning is to protect people from exposure to radiation they might receive during a reactor accident. That radiation exposure would come (mostly) from radioactive gas released into the air from a damaged nuclear plant. There are three physical barriers in all modern nuclear plants that keep radioactive gas inside the reactor: the metal cladding that encases the ceramic uranium fuel pellets, the thick steel reactor vessel and piping and that contains the reactor and coolant, and the concrete and steel containment building that encloses the reactor. For people to be in danger from a reactor accident first the fuel must overheat to create the radioactive gas. Then all three barriers (clad, system piping, and containment building) must be breached to provide a pathway for the radioactive gas to reach the atmosphere. Finally, there has to be a pressure difference to push the gas out of the plant and into the atmosphere. In water cooled reactors like most in use today, the hot water turns to steam and steam pressure builds up inside the containment.  If the containment is breached this pressure pushes the radioactive gas through the hole to the air outside.

With this in mind, small modular reactors offer several big advantages that make them safer:

They are smaller, so the amount of radioactivity contained in each reactor is less. So much less in fact, that even if the worse case reactor accident occurs, the amount of radioactive material released would not pose a risk to the public. In nuclear lingo we say SMRs have a smaller “source term.”  This source term is so small we can design the plant and emergency systems to virtually eliminate the need for emergency actions beyond the physical site boundaries.  Then, by controlling access to the site boundary, we can eliminate the need for off-site protective actions (like sheltering or evacuations).

These smaller reactors contain less nuclear fuel.  This smaller amount of fuel (with passive cooling I’ll mention in a minute) slows down the progression of reactor accidents.  This slower progression gives operators more time to take action to keep the reactor cool.  Where operators in large reactors have minutes or hours to react to events, operators of SMRs may have hours or even days. This means the chance of a reactor damaging accident is very, very remote.

Even better, most SMRs are small enough that they cannot over heat and melt down. They get all the cooling they need from air circulating around the reactor. This is a big deal because if SMRs can’t melt down, then they can’t release radioactive gas that would pose a risk to the public.  Again, this means the need for external emergency actions is virtually eliminated.

Also, some SMRs are not water cooled; they use gas, liquid salt, or liquid metal coolants that operate at low pressures.  This lower operating pressure means that if radioactive gases build up inside the containment building there is less pressure to push the gas out and into the air.  If there is no pressure to push radioactive gas into the environment and all of it stays inside the plant, then it poses no risk to the public.

SMRs are small enough to be built underground. This means they will have a smaller physical footprint that will be easier to defend against physical attacks.  This provides additional benefits of lower construction costs because earth, concrete and steel are less costly than elaborate security systems in use today, and lower operating costs (a smaller footprint means a smaller security force).

In summary, small modular nuclear reactors offer potential safety and security advantages over larger commercial reactors because they can be designed (1) to have smaller source terms, (2) to have accident scenarios that progress more slowly, (3) to be meltdown proof, (4) to operate at lower pressures, and (5) to have smaller security footprints.

These safety and security advantages can result in considerable cost advantages.  A large percentage of a nuclear plant’s operating expenses go into emergency planning and security.  It is possible that four or five SMRs packaged together to provide the equivalent of a large nuclear unit could operate with a smaller staff size and lower costs.  However, because existing rules were written for larger reactors, some changes to NRC regulations will be required for SMRs to take full advantage of their inherent safety and security features.  There are groups already working on these changes.

These safety and security advantages offered by SMRs, when combined with lower initial capital costs, shorter construction times, and scalability, may tip the scales in favor of a new generation of small, factory built modular reactors.

John Wheeler

This Week in Nuclear

New York gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo makes no bones about it.  He plans to shut down Indian Point Nuclear Plant if he is elected.   His opposition to the plant is no secret.  He has been an out spoken critic of the plant for years, even though Federal inspectors and independent safety assessments agree the plant is safe.  As part of his bid for Governor, Cuomo published his long term energy plan, “PowerNY” in which he calls for the two Indian Point nuclear energy facilities to shut down in 2013 and 2015. 

PowerNY states,

Andrew Cuomo has long been a supporter of closing the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Westchester and has argued that the federal government should not renew the plant’s operating license when it expires in 2013.

PowerNY says New York must “find alternate sources of generation and transmission” so they can replace Indian Point.  Last week, however, the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) released its latest Reliability Assessment of the electrical grid in New York.  They are the independent non-profit organization that controls the flow of electricity throughout the state.  They are responsible for ensuring the electrical grid is safe and reliable.  In this report the NYISO concluded that without Indian Point the system would become unreliable and blackouts more frequent.  Here is what they said:

Reliability violations would occur if the Indian Point Plant were to be retired at
the latter of the two units’ current license expiration dates using the Base Case load forecast assumptions.

In layman’s terms, that means the grid would become unstable and blackouts much more likely if Indian Point is shut down.  In fact, if you read the report in detail it states that blackouts would be almost four times more likely than allowed by ISO rules if Indian Point is taken out of service.  The NYISO also stated

Under stress conditions, the voltage performance on the system without Indian Point would be degraded.

This means that during peak loads like those that occur on warm summer days voltage on the grid would drop to dangerously low levels.  When this occurs grid operators are sometimes forces to implement rolling blackouts to prevent loss of large portions of the electrical supply system.  This “degraded voltage” condition also causes accelerated wear and tear on industrial motors, household appliances and electronics because as voltage drops the current draw of the machines rises.  This can cause the appliances to short circuit and fail.

The report also says that electricity generated outside the regions would be unable to reach southern New York and New York City because of “transmission constraints.”  Simply put, there are not enough transmission lines to bring that huge quantity of energy the long distances needed to replace Indian Point.

The NYISO is not alone.  Experts from the National Academy of Sciences also say alternatives are not available. The NAS says existing power plants and transmission lines won’t be able to replace Indian Point.  New power plants would have to be built in the lower Hudson Valley or large transmission lines would need to be built to bring the power in from far away.   The NAS calls both of these unlikely because of the lack of funding and because permitting and finding suitable locations for such facilities would be difficult.

If you live in New York you should keep this in mind when you go to the polls in November.  Andrew Cuomo’s energy plan is a feel good fantasy that wont work in the real world.

John Wheeler

This Week in Nuclear

Podcast – download the MP3 File Here

During a recent conversation over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a friend asked if anyone in the group was boycotting BP.  This led to a lively discussion about the effectiveness of boycotts and the inevitable question,

“Who do you boycott?”

Before I answer that question, I want to make it clear that I don’t want to get overly negative.  I am sometimes critical of so called “environmental” groups like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace who seem to be against everything yet provide no realistic alternatives.  In my view, to boycott one person, place or thing means I will support an alternative.

You don’t have to look very hard to find celebrities or companies who are actively working against the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.  There was a time in my life that going to the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream shop was a ritual.  The company opened one of their first retail stores in a renovated gas station about a block from my apartment in Saratoga Springs, NY where I lived when I worked at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory.   As the company grew and the profits rolled in their founders began to become politically active in Vermont.  Unfortunately they jumped on the anti-nuclear bandwagon and began to support groups like Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility who advocate shutting down the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.  I made the decision not to buy Ben & Jerry’s ice cream because every scoop I ate was helping to fund activist efforts to shut down Vermont’s only nuclear plant.  It’s too bad Ben & Jerry’s fails to understand that without Vermont Yankee the electricity used to manufacture their ice cream would necessarily come from fossil fuels, and would contribute to air pollution and climate change.  They are probably unaware that Vermont is one of the only states to continue burning oil to generate electricity.  Their anti-nuclear campaign is in effect supporting the continued use of oil and other fossil fuels.  Fortunately for me there are plenty of ice cream alternatives!

I’m a big fan of Tom Clancy novels, and one of my favorites is “Hunt for Red October.”  I’ve read the book and enjoyed the movie when it premiered, but unfortunately I’ll never watch it again.  That’s because one of the stars of that movie is Alec Baldwin, an actor who has personally contributed millions of dollars to efforts to shut down the Indian Point nuclear plant in New York and the Oyster Creek nuclear plant in New Jersey.

Baldwin and his actress wife Kim Basinger support the anti-nuclear Radiation and Public Health Project, and have lobbied the NY State Government to acquire funding for the group.  The Radiation & Public Health Project is responsible for several junk science reports that claim commercial reactors are responsible for thousands of cancer deaths to plant workers and the general population around the plants.  Baldwin is also a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post which gives him a soap box on which to promote his radical anti-nuclear ideas (I am not against the Huffington Post.  In fact I follow a few of their other contributors regularly).  Some recent anti-nuclear articles by Alec Baldwin include The Hidden Costs of Nuclear Power and The Truth About Nuclear Power in Utility Reactors.

I will not watch any movie or television show in which Alec Baldwin or Kim Basinger appear.  To do so would support their ability to provide financial aid to anti-nuclear groups.  If you think about it, their ability to influence public opinion is based on their celebrity, and that is directly tied to the size of their audience.  If everyone quit watching Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger then their value as lobbyists and spokespersons would diminish and their ability to financially support such efforts would decline.

So tell me . . . do you boycott any companies or entertainers?  If so, who?

Post a comment and share your thoughts.

John Wheeler

Podcast – Download Audio File Here

This is a follow up to the podcast titled “Water Wars in New York” on May 27, 2010 in which I discussed how NY State is using their authority to issue Water Quality Certificates to wage war against the Indian Point Nuclear Plant.  In case you missed that show, New York is holding the plant’s 20 year  license renewal hostage by refusing to issue a Certificate of Water Quality unless the plant agrees to install expensive cooling towers.  The plant has argued that the cost of cooling towers, approximately $2 Billion, is excessive and disproportionate to the environmental benefit that would be derived.  In fact, the plant has identified an alternate technology that would provide greater environmental benefits at about one-tenth of the cost of installing cooling towers. Thus far those arguments have fallen on deaf ears.

In my further research on this topic I discovered a damning piece of evidence that proves NY State is giving preferential treatment to fossil fuels while at the same time imposing unfair regulations on neighboring nuclear energy facilities, the largest competitors to fossil fuels.

There are several other large power plants on the Hudson River that generate electricity by burning coal, oil, and natural gas.  All of those plants, like Indian Point, use the Hudson River for cooling.  One of the plants, the Bowline plant, is in Haverstraw, NY only about five miles across the river and downstream from Indian Point.  Bowline is a two unit gas and oil fired power plant with a combined output of 1,182 MW (slightly larger than each Indian Point nuclear unit).

There are many similarities between Bowline and Indian Point: Bowline, like Indian Point, is required to maintain a NY State water permit.  Bowline, also like Indian Point, evaluated several alternative technologies to reduce fish and fish larva mortality. The Bowline analysis reached similar conclusions to the one performed by Indian Point; they concluded that converting to a closed cooling water system using cooling towers would provide the greatest reduction in fish mortality, but at a very high cost.  Instead, the Bowline plant offered to use a combination of technologies that would provide 80% to 95% percent of the benefit that would be derived from the vastly more expensive cooling towers, but at 1/30th of the cost.

That’s where the similarities end.  In the case of the Bowline oil and gas plant, the New York State Department of Environmental Conversation accepted the lower cost alternatives to installing cooling towers.  On the topic of cooling towers, in a letter from Denise Sheehan, the DEC Commissioner they stated;

The estimated cost of retrofitting Bowline with a closed cycle cooling system is more than 30 times greater than the selected suite of technologies yet yields approximately equivalent reductions in impingement mortality. While potential entrainment reductions from closed-cycle cooling would be approximately 10 -15% greater than called for in this permit, the Department has determined that, at this time, the cost of closed cycle cooling at Bowline is wholly disproportionate to the reductions.

The cost of the “alternative technologies” at Bowline were estimated to be less than one percent of one year’s revenue, while the cost of cooling towers were said to be about 30 times more.

So here’s the “smoking gun” proving institutionalized anti-nuclear bias in the NY State government: for a gas and oil power plant they allowed the cost of various technologies to be considered, and they ruled out cooling towers because the high cost was “disproportionate” to the benefit provided.  Yet, when the nuclear plant next door tried to make the exact same argument the state refused!  In the case of Indian Point, New York stated cooling towers are the only available option, even though the plant provided for lower cost alternatives that would, over the life of the plant, provide GREATER reductions in fish fatalities!

Here’s another tidbit to consider:  because of the high cost of oil and natural gas the Bowline plant (according to NY State) operates only about half of the time.  If Indian Point is forced to install cooling towers the plant will have to shut down for about 44 months.  During that time Bowline will be one of the electricity generating plants that will be called upon to make up for the lost generation.  This means the Bowline plant will be running more, killing more fish, and emitting more air pollution and greenhouse gases.  And don’t forget when they run at 100% rather than their normal 50% their profits double too!

This favoritism towards oil and gas and bias against nuclear is occurring in a deregulated, competitive electricity market.  The state’s role in a deregulated energy market is to set fair policies and laws that promote fair competition and to protect the customers from unfair practices.  In this case NY State is doing the opposite by imposing unfair and onerous rules on one form of generation while giving competitors a pass!  If the state gets their way the ratepayers will suffer two ways; their electricity bills will be higher and the air they breath will get dirtier. I’ll pose this question to my listeners, “In light of this clearly biased treatment, do you think the federal government should intervene?  Could this case fall under the jurisdiction of either the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or the US Environmental Protection Agency?”

Indian Point is not alone in this battle.  The State of New jersey is going down the same path with the Oyster Creek Nuclear plant, and the State of California has recently imposed similar rules on nuclear plants on the Pacific Ocean.  At least in California they are applying the rule uniformly to fossil fueled plants, but that’s a story for another day.

Links to Documents discussed in this show:

• Letter on the Bowline Plant from the NY DEC
• Response from the NY DEC on Indian Point’s Water Permit Application

John Wheeler

This Week in Nuclear

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In April the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation denied Indian Point Nuclear Plant’s application for a water quality certification. In their 28 page letter, the NY DEC told the plant they have no alternative but to install expensive cooling towers to eliminate the plant’s impact on fish and fish larva in the Hudson River.

Power plants of all types (not just nuclear plants) that draw cooling water from bodies of water adversely affect aquatic organisms in three primary ways: thermally by heating the water, by entrainment where small fish and fish larva are sucked into the cooling system and are injured as they pass through, and by impingement where fish are injured by the plant’s intake but not sucked though the cooling system.

The plant had proposed installing “wedge wire screens,” essentially large high tech strainers on the water intake. The screens would virtually eliminate fish impingement, and would reduce entrainment (according to the DEC) by between 72% and 76%. That was not a sufficient reduction in entrainment to satisfy NY State.

The letter covered many issues, but the main reasons they denied the proposal are:

1. They said cooling towers are a better option because they would eliminate about 20% more entrainment (at least 90%) than wedge wire screens.
2. They said wedge wire screens are still “experimental in nature” and unproven in aquatic environments like the Hudson River, and at nuclear power plants like Indian Point.
3. They also stated Indian Point was violating the law by killing endangered shortnose sturgeon by impingement and entrainment.

I would like to address each of these three claims:

First, while it is true that on any given day cooling towers are slightly more effective at eliminating fish and larva entrainment than wedge wire screens. That’s not the whole story. To assess the full benefit to the river one must consider how long each mechanism is in service. Wedge wire screens are relatively easy to install and could be in service within five years. That would mean the screens would be working and reducing entrainment for virtually the full term of Indian Point’s 20 year license extension. Cooling towers on the other hand would require 15 years to permit and build. This means cooling towers would provide no benefit at all for at least 15 years. When you consider the entire remaining life of the plant, wedge wire screens offer far more protection to Hudson River aquatic life.

It is illogical for NY State to object to the use of wedge wire screens one the basis that the technology is experimental and unproven. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency wedge wire screens have been successfully tested in a variety of settings in New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Florida, and Kansas, and on bodies of water including the St John River and the Delaware River in conditions very similar to the Hudson River. In these examples wedge wire screens essentially eliminated impingement and reduced entrainment from 66 to 99%. On the issue of lack of experience at large nuclear plants, from the perspective of the cooling source, the fuel source is irrelevant; steam plants are steam plants. Wedge wire screens have been used at large 770 MW fossil fueled plants. While not quite as large as Indian Point where each of the two reactors is about 1000 MW, the size is in the same ballpark. Keep in mind each unit has it’s own separate intake from the river.

The DEC’s argument that Indian Point is killing endangered sturgeon is so ridiculous that it is almost hysterical! They should be embarrassed! The current Indian Point nuclear reactors have been on line since the mid-1970’s and during that time the population of shortnosed sturgeon in the Hudson River has INCREASED more than 400% (Sturgeon populations have skyrocketed in the Hudson River since the 1970’s). In fact, the fish population has recovered so much that shortnosed sturgeon are no longer endangered in the Hudson River. The fish is being kept on the endangered species list because it has not yet recovered in other rivers. While it may be true some baby sturgeon and sturgeon eggs are destroyed by the plant’s cooling water system, the impact on the fish population in the river ecosystem is negligible.

Cooling towers have problems of their own. The water in the Hudson River near Indian Point is brackish and contains a good deal of salt. If that water is used in a cooling tower it will emit a considerable amount of salt spray to the immediate vicinity. Salt is corrosive to vehicles, power lines, and building materials. Constant salt spray on vegetation will cause much of it to die, and salt deposition on the ground could make its way into drinking water wells. Turkey Point Nuclear plant in Florida experimented with a saltwater cooling tower many years ago and discovered it defoliated acres of sensitive wetlands. The same thing could happen if cooling towers are installed at Indian Point.

The state is focusing solely on water quality and is failing to consider the overall impact to the environment. Cooling tower construction would force the plant to shutdown for an extended period of time. During that shutdown replacement power would come primarily from coal and natural gas, both of which cause air pollution and greenhouse gasses. In addition, cooling towers emit particulate air pollution of their own.

Why is the NY DEC so insistent that Indian Point Nuclear Plant should install cooling towers?  Just follow the money: cooling towers would cost about ten times more than wedge wire screens. Wedge wire screens would provide more benefit over the life of the plant at one-tenth of the cost of cooling towers.

It’s Not About the Environment!

Don’t forget that the New York State Atty General Andrew Cuomo is hard core anti-nuclear. He’s made it very clear he wants the plant to shut down (as a side note, Andrew Cuomo recently announced he is running for governor of New York). The NY position on Indian Point is not about protecting the environment; it is about imposing onerous financial burden on the plant to make it less competitive with the end goal of shutting the plant down for good.   In this regard, New York like New Jersey and California is using the state’s authority over water quality permits as a way to raise costs and drive nuclear plants out of the market.

Why is the water quality certificate so important? The clock is ticking; the current operating licenses for the Indian Point rectors will expire in 2013 and 2015. The plant must have a valid water permit from NY State before the NRC can issue a license renewal.

Thankfully, this legal fight is far from over.

John Wheeler

“This Week in Nuclear”

Podcast – Download the MP3 Here

 This has been a deadly year for fossil fuels in the United States.  In February five workers lost their lives in an explosion at the Kleen Energy natural gas power plant in CT.  Then in April 29 coal miners perished in a mining accident at the Massey Energy coal mine in West Virginia.  Of course that was followed by the disaster on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform that killed 11 workers and caused a massive oil spill that is contaminating hundreds of miles of coastline.

With events like these (and others similar events around the world), and our growing reliance on huge quantities of imported oil and natural gas, it is time for America to expand its domestic supply of uranium. 

On this show I was joined by a panel of experts who discussed efforts underway in Virginia to unlock the vast potential of uranium resources that have been discovered there.  My guests were:

• Aaron Ruby from the Virginia Energy Independence Alliance
• Patrick Wales, the project manager and geologist for Virginia Uranium, Inc, and
• Lisa Stiles, a nuclear engineer with many years experience in the nuclear industry, and a former president of NA-YGN and the International Youth Nuclear Congress.

Topics we discussed included why allowing safe uranium mining in Virginia is so important,  the huge untapped Coles Hill uranium deposit, uranium mining safety, and the many benefits that developing the Coles Hill mine would bring to an economically depressed region.

Enjoy!

John Wheeler

“This Week in Nuclear”

Fast Fission Podcast #23 – Download mp3 Here

Ever thought about how many zeros there are there in a “pico” something?

Remember back in grade school when we learned the metric system of measures?  We started out with units that are easy to visualize: meters get 1000 times bigger and become kilometers; meters get 1000 times smaller and become millimeters.  We understand these intuitively because we have a frame of reference and can visualize each of those unites of length and distance.  Units of mass are the same way; we know a gram is a small unit of mass – we can hold a gram of almost any material in the palm of our hand.  For example, a penny weighs 2.5 grams. Stack up 400 pennies and you have a kilogram, or 1000 grams.  Cut a thin copper shaving off a penny and you have a milligram, or one 1,000th of a gram.  Again, these are things we can see, and that makes it easier to understand.

As our schooling progressed we learned about very large and very small numbers, exponents, and scientific notation.  We put these principles to use in science and learned there are other units of measure larger than a “kilo” and smaller than a “milli”.  These are harder to visualize because we have to think in terms we can’t see.  For example, the mass of Mount Everest,  is 3E18 grams, or 3 “exa-grams” and the mass of the planet earth is 6×10^24 kg, or 6E27 grams (6,000 “yotta-grams”) (see note below).

On the opposite end of the scale is the prefix “nano” or 1E-9 of a unit. A nanometer is 1E-9 meters, and a nanosecond is 0.000000001 seconds.  I had a hard time visualizing a nano second of time until I learned that it takes about 1 nanosecond for a beam of light to travel one foot.  That kind of puts a nano into perspective, doesn’t it?  The newest computer chips, for example have transistors with a thickness of 45 nanometers!  We can only see things that small with powerful electron microscopes.

A “pico” is even smaller than a “nano” , 1000 times smaller!  “Pico” means there are 12 places behind the decimal point.  Even for a person like me who deals with engineering and science all the time, it can be difficult to visualize a “pico” of something.  A pico is so small that even a million picos is still very small amount. It takes a million, million pico grams to make one gram.  If you have a million pico-curies in a liter of water, it would take one million liters to provide a total of one curie.  To give you a sense of scale, an Olympic sized swimming pool (about 2.5 million liters) filled with water containing one million pico-curies of tritium per liter would hold a total of about 0.3 milligrams of tritium.  Said another way; if I had an olympic swimming pool full of pure water and I sprinkled in 0.0003 grams of tritium (less than the mass of one drop of water), then mixed it up, I would have a mixture containing 1,000,000 picocuries of tritium per liter.

It is very hard to measure anything as small as a nano or pico of anything.  There’s one area where we can: with advances in science, we’ve gained the ability to measure radioactivity in very, very small amounts down to the energy released by single energy particles or beams.  This gives us the ability to quantify radioactive material in extremely small quantities.

Anti-nuclear activists around the country aided by an uninformed media have grabbed on to the issue of tritium leaks at some nuclear plants around the USA, and are using the issue very effectively to create fear and distrust.  Nervous politicians are retreating from positions of outward support for nuclear plants even though the federal government, state agencies, and independent scientists all agree that the leaks pose no threat to public health and safety. The leaks have produced concentrations in special monitoring wells (not drinking water wells) in the range from few hundred to a million or so pico-curies per liter.  As I’ve shown, a million pico-curies per liter may sound like a lot, but in reality it is a tiny, tiny amount.

Every form of energy production has some impact on the environment.  Even wind and solar energy which are viewed by many as environmentally benign, have measurable effects.  The production of solar panels results in highly toxic chemicals, and worn out panels could leach chemicals into water supplies. Wind turbines cause noise pollution, kill bats and migratory birds, and catastrophic blade failures can throw lethal fragments hundreds or even thousands of feet.  Coal plants dump toxins into the land, water, and air, and the radioactive releases from coal plants are hundreds of times higher than allowed by nuclear plants.  Gas power plants emit greenhouse gases and, as we’ve seen in the last week, can and do explode and kill people.  Gas pipeline accidents kill people in the USA every year.

When nuclear plants shut down all the other plants in that market make money – lots of money.  Don’t think for a moment that fact is lost on people who are in the business of selling electricity from natural gas.  The increase in gas demand causes gas prices to rise and that hurts everyone else, except but gas distributors, of course.  I’m also sure this cash bonanza is not lost on politicians who are recipients of donations from coal, oil and gas companies.

It’s time for lawmakers, public service boards, and elected officials to do a reality check.  In the case of tritium in groundwater we’re talking about microscopic amounts of material with ZERO safety impact, and ZERO environmental risk.  Any time a nuclear plant is shut down, forced to reduce power, or delayed in starting up the replacement power has to come from another form of energy, usually natural gas.  When gas demand rises the price goes up and we get higher electricity bills, huge increases air pollution, and further reliance on a volatile, dangerous energy source.

John Wheeler

This Week in Nuclear

2/16/2010 Note: Thank you to a listener who recognized errors in my discussion of the mass of  Mt Everest and planet Earth – my numbers were way too low! After double checking my math, and performing the Earth mass calculation from scratch  (there were errors in my source data) I revised these show notes with the correct values.  I’ll update the audio podcast as soon as I am able.

John

Fast Fission Podcast #23 – Download MP3 Here

I’ve been reading a lot about the Toyota gas pedal recall because I own a Camry that is a few years old.  Several people have been killed in accidents resulting from sudden acceleration caused by a faulty accelerator design. So far my car is not in the group of affected vehicles, but I’m keeping my eye on it.

I’m sure you’ve noticed the press is having a feeding frenzy and many are demonizing Toyota. Congress has decided to get involved – they’ve scheduled a hearing to oversee the government’s response. Overall it’s been much like when an airplane crashes or a contaminated food product gets recalled – some people die, government agencies demand action to fix the immediate problem, and politicians act concerned until the media moves on to the next high profile news story.

Then the hypocrisy dawned on me – how differently we treat problems in the nuclear industry! For example, in Vermont where a minute, a barely measurable quantity of slightly radioactive liquid in test wells has politicians demanding action from Federal regulators, the state government and Public Service Board are delaying important decisions that threaten the plant’s long term financial viability, and many newspapers are regurgitating unsubstantiated claims of environmental harm made by sworn enemies of the plant.   Keep in mind that the tritium that has leaked from Vermont Yankee has not broken any laws, not exceeded any environmental limits, nor harmed even the smallest field mouse.

Consider that in the entire history of the US nuclear industry (about 40 years) not a single person has died from a reactor mishap at any commercial nuclear reactor in the United States. However, in this single instance of a gas pedal design defect a number of people have died (the exact number is not available) , many more have been injured, and these types of problems occur almost every year! If the government response to the Toyota acceleration issue, a problem that has actually killed people, used the same rules that we apply to the operation of commercial nuclear plants (where no deaths have occurred) we would have

• Placed a federal ban on driving all Toyotas until the problem was thoroughly analyzed, the root cause determined, and repairs completed.
• There would be an extent of condition analysis by a team of engineers to determine what other vehicles have similar gas pedals, and to recommend a course of action.
• We would have added two full time government (NTSB) inspectors to every automobile manufacturing plant and every licensed automobile repair shop. The auto makers and repair shops would have to pay the salaries of the inspectors, plus a mark-up for administrative costs.  They would raise prices to pass along the cost to car buyers and owners.
• Every car in America would be retrofit with two redundant emergency braking systems and battery backup power. Car owners would be forced to pay for the upgrades even if the cost was more than the car was worth. Violators would be subject to fines and prosecution.
• We’d require special training for all drivers on how to respond to stuck accelerators, and what to do even if both emergency braking systems failed while driving at 120 mph hour going into a sharp turn – after all, that’s the worst case scenario, right?
• Don’t forget we’d have to place a tax on every mile driven so we could pay for the environmental impact of waste oil and exhaust fumes, and for the eventual scrapping and decommissioning of the vehicles.

I am suggesting none of this. I’m merely pointing out the inequity in the amount and cost of Nuclear regulation considering the low risks posed by nuclear plants and the great benefits they provide: low cost, clean, reliable energy.

There are many risks in life that we as a society choose to ignore. Sometimes we’re willing to accept what is actually a very high risk (for example, riding a bicycle, driving a car, smoking, eating unhealthy foods, and playing sports) because we believe those activities add to our quality of life.  We also tend to perceive the risk to be less when we feel we have some control over the outcome.

There are many people who stand to gain financially and politically if Vermont Yankee shuts down or is denied a license renewal. The big financial winners would be companies and individuals who sell competing energy from gas and coal because that’s where the replacement power would come from.  The political winners would be anti-nuclear activists and politicians who have aligned themselves with the antis. The rest of us would be the losers: we’d suffer from higher energy prices, greater amounts of air pollution, and the loss of thousands of direct and indirect jobs.

If this scenario were to evolve in part from this ridiculous focus on an inconsequential tritium leak it would be an immense travesty of justice.

John Wheeler

This Week in Nuclear