Arizona, California, Nevada, Meteor Bolide? Event 14SEP2011

Arizona, California, Nevada, Meteor Bolide? Event 14SEP2011


AZ, NV, CA Meteor Bolide? 14SEP2011
v.1 (c) 2011 LunarMeteorite*Hunter / Google Earth
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Phoenix, AZ (USA) Time Here:[ 7:45pm ] Date Here[09/14/2011 ]
I was walking with my sister in law this evening and we both saw the weirdest thing in the sky. We thought it was a plane/

NEI and the Analysts; California Nuclear Dreaming

In case you hadn’t heard – and you really should’ve since it was in our spiffy Twitter feed – but NEI held a meeting for Wall Street’s financial analysts this morning to review with them issues related to the accident at Fukushima Daiichi and the NRC’s subsequent 90-day review of the accident. The NRC meant to glean the lessons that can be derived from Fukushima to benefit the American industry – well, really, any country’s nuclear industry. It’s not a secret report, after all, and you can read it here.

The head of the nuclear power industry's trade group on Tuesday said U.S. plants should move within five years to implement safety measures as a result of lessons learned from Japan's nuclear crisis.

Marvin Fertel, president and CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, said the five-year timeline put forward last week by U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko was "reasonable."

That’s from Marketwatch, but it really doesn’t capture the feeling of the meeting, which ranged broadly over a number of topics. NEI’s press release has a better feel for this.

“The nuclear energy industry has taken seriously the accident at Fukushima and continues to support the recovery efforts in Japan. The companies operating the nation’s 104 nuclear energy facilities already have taken a number of concrete actions to enhance safety during extreme events,” Fertel said.

In the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi accident, every U.S. nuclear power plant verified its ability to safely manage the impact of a severe event, regardless of its cause. Many deficiencies were resolved immediately, and many safety enhancements also were identified, Fertel said.

The whole press release is worth at least a glance. It captures a lot of the topics discussed.

But why not capture all of it? I’d recommend, since it’s available on-line, that you watch the meeting (at Ustream). I’d further recommend that you go to the half-way point or so and watch the Q&A first. The attendees, who follow nuclear energy issues as diligently as we do, asked pointed, intelligent questions and NEI’s President Marv Fertel offered frank and honest answers in return. (Note: the Ustream archive isn’t working right now. Check our YouTube page – we’ll have it up there in a day or two.)

I especially appreciated that Fertel acknowledged that there are things about the Fukushima accident that are still not well understood. For example, Fertel said we know that Fukushima’s venting systems did not work as they should, but we don’t know why yet. (He also noted that most American reactors do not use the same venting system. But about four do, so this will be important for those facilities – and in general, too, of course.)

It’s important to know there are gaps in knowledge, because it stresses that lessons learned are a process, not a recipe with set ingredients. We’ll continue to learn new things as the Japanese bring the Fukushima Daiichi facility further under control and these things will inform the response of industry around the world. We can’t know everything yet – why pretend that we can? Doing so is a text book rush to judgment and not necessary.

This was an exceptionally interesting state-of-the-industry style presentation – NEI or not, potential for log rolling or no, well worth watching.

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How about some interesting – and positive – non-NEI news?

"Nuclear power is a strong contender for zero-emissions energy because it can provide constant, or 'baseload,' power that can complement renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. While clean, many renewable energy sources produce power intermittently: if there's no sunlight and no wind, there's no power. However, a constant base output of nuclear power could make it much easier to deal with the highly variable power levels from renewables," points out chairman Burton Richter. California's law requires at least 33% of electricity generation be provided with renewable energy.

Richter is professor in the physical sciences at Stanford University and director emeritus at the University's Linear Accelerator Center. He contributed to a report called "California's Energy Future - Powering California with Nuclear Energy," issued by the California Council on Science and Technology. The council describes itself as a nonpartisan, impartial, nonprofit created in 1988 by a unanimous vote of the California Legislature.

So it’s not an industry front, which is a plus. The report is a 43 page pdf and free to download. Here’s a bit about California’s major worry, earthquakes:

Because California is “earthquake country”, reactors to be deployed in California would, of course, require special design features in order to assure that they are safe in earthquakes. This engineering problem has been solved successfully already. Both the Diablo Canyon and San Onofre reactor plants that are now operating are designed to withstand the ground motion from very large earthquakes, and meet all of the stringent NRC regulatory criteria with adequate margin. There is no reason to believe that earthquake issues should be a barrier to deploying additional reactors in California.

I expect most people here know this, but it does have the virtue of being true.

The report intends to provide a kind of primer around many of the issues concerning nuclear energy – I’d quibble with some of it, I suppose, but it’s clear the authors intend to pin down as many issues as they can.

If California pursues a future with many new reactor sites, state permitting and public acceptance will be issues that could cause major delays in implementing a nuclear route to the state’s greenhouse gas reduction goals. As far as land use is concerned, nuclear energy is much more economical than any of the renewables. For example, the entire San Onofe 34 hectare site delivers 2.2 GWe while covering all of it with 10% efficient solar cells would only deliver about 1.5% of that at noon on a bright summer day.

Again, the virtue of truth again, but with a wry spin – California does not lack for sunny expanses of land, of course, so solar energy might have a rather strong role to play in the state. Land use issues really become determinative in much more cramped circumstances. Like I said – quibbles.

A quick read – might be a viable link to your friends-on-the-nuclear-fence types.

California’s Diablo Canyon facility. I didn’t realize the “canyon” aspect was so apparent.

Polling Nuclear in California and Japan

Looking at recent stories from the AP and Al-Jazeera, as we’ve done over the last week, may make one think that the media has the knives out for the nuclear energy industry. To be honest, journalists never, and never should, put the knives back in the case. Trying to find malfeasance is a goal of journalism. Finding it is the tough part.

While I think the nuclear energy industry provides a poor target for malfeasance hunting, the accident at Fukushima Daiichi has put the industry front and center, so any reporter looking to fill an annoying empty space on the wall with a Pulitzer Prize has zeroed in on nuclear energy. So be it – let’s wish them well.

But let’s not pretend the stories are even remotely fair, largely because fairness would ruin the arguments. Instead, one can just point out the flaws, link to documents that demonstrate the flaws, and note logical inconsistencies.

And, of course, wait. The media is like a school of sharks in that it has to keep moving to keep up with events. Oil spills yesterday, nuclear energy today, what next? – windmills and birds? solar arrays and land use? a coal ash spill? Something. Just wait it out.

Because once the movable feast moves on, the more mundane stories will attain more prominence or at least not be embedded in negative stories:

56 percent of Californians said they believe that the state's existing power plants are safe, compared with 32 percent who do not. When asked whether existing nuclear plants in the state should be phased out over a 10-year period, 46 percent were opposed, while 39 percent were in favor.

The actual lede is that more Californians than in a previous poll do not want new facilities built. Fukushima is still pretty fresh in the mind, so this is to be expected. But determining that California’s current facilities are safe and should not be phased out – and remember, California is quite seismically active, like Japan – is rather more surprising. This might explain why, partially:

The poll also found that 53 percent of registered voters said they oppose allowing oil companies to drill more oil and gas wells in state tidelands along the California coast, while 43 percent believed they should be allowed to drill.

We can’t assume too much based on such skimpy information, but environmental concerns seem to play a part in Californians’ thinking, which may tilt opinions away from oil and toward nuclear.

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Speaking of polls, what are the Japanese thinking these days?

But surprisingly in Japan, 45 percent of people still view nuclear power as a viable energy option and 71 percent support its modernization.

"The Japanese people still show some realism," said Henri Wallard, deputy chief executive officer at [polling firm] Ipsos "They believe they will continue to use nuclear energy in the energy mix for some time."

Support for nuclear power was strongest in India, Poland and the United States where the majority of people supported it.

Now, to be honest, Ipsos is showing that in most countries, nuclear energy has lost some support. And that’s really the result you’d expect in Japan, too, not that the Japanese would want to continue with it.

In general, polls taken around the time of an accident – this was true of the BP spill as well – tend to focus all answers through the accident. But it’s interesting that some more upbeat numbers are peeking though polls about nuclear energy – a trendline, as they say in poll-speak, there’s no reason not to expect continue. (That also happened in polling on the BP spill.)

Surfing and San Onofre – just says California, doesn’t it?

They Write Letters (or Emails)

The Syracuse (N.Y.) Post-Standard introduces us to the NRC inspectors who oversee the two plants in that part of the world – Nine Mile and James A. FitzPatrick:

“Every day, we do a control room walk-down,” [Inspector Edward] Knutson said. “We look at what’s going on, we indicate what we expect them (operators) to do.”

“We talk to the control-room supervisor and get from them what has occurred in the previous shift,” [Inspector Scott] Rutenkroger said. “We see what’s in service and what’s out of service. We find out what they see as the condition of the plant.”

And they keep their eyes perpetually open:

Rutenkroger once noticed that the door between an emergency diesel-generator room and turbine building had a support missing. It could have hampered proper operation of the door and that could have led to trouble: Steam lines are located on the other side of the door. If the door hadn’t shut properly and one or more of the steam lines ruptured, steam could have seeped into the generator room and knocked out the generators — the backup power source for the plant.

Nice story – writer Debra Groom sticks close to home and doesn’t expand the story to make a point about American plants (well, except that they have regulatory inspectors on-site). Worth a read.

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Interestingly, when news readers are asked to weigh in on nuclear energy, the results are surprisingly favorable given some of the coverage. For example, the Contra Costa (Calif.) Times posted a series of letters (or emails, I guess, these days). Some excerpts:

Yes, we need new nuclear plants. Forget about the fact they will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and that they will help to meet our future needs for electricity. Instead, realize that as we build nuclear power plants, we will reduce our dependence on our own coal-fired plants.

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Let's be rational. Nuclear energy is our best prospect for future economic stability and energy independence. Our nation deserves it.

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Keep in mind that people of my generation survived atmospheric detonations of hydrogen bombs for many years in the 1950s and '60s. This irrational fear of radiation is causing us to make poor decisions based on junk science and environmentalism run amok. Life goes on, even in Chernobyl.

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Given the amount of damage done, the radiation levels, so far, have been more than survivable. Bear in mind those plants are over 30 years old and technology has improved since then.

And so on. There are a few negative comments, too:

I am constantly amazed at how short American's memories are. After the Three Mile Island disaster, everyone said "never again."After Chernobyl, there was zilch interest in new nuclear power development. Hopefully, what has happened in Japan will wake the U.S. public up to the dangers of nuclear power plants, but I'm afraid after a few months, no one will recall what has just happened, or if they do, they will say "it couldn't happen here."

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A nuclear energy accident can ruin your whole day, year, century and beyond -- thousands of years. The downside is great and the upside ethereal.

Don’t look at me. I’m not going to dispute any of this – the discussion is what’s important. Even if, in this round up, the pro-nuclear contingent enjoys a 6-2 margin, the is a good moment to hash out attitudes. In you have the means to put them online, go ahead and do it.

Lovely Contra Costa. It is inland from San Francisco, with Mt. Diablo State Park providing a lot of its scenery.