Jumping Fences

Don’t try this at home:

An emergency was declared at the McGuire nuclear plant in Huntersville early Sunday morning after a security breach, according to a report from Duke Energy.

The report states that security saw someone climb over a fence into an unauthorized area around 3:30 a.m. on January 1.

Uh-oh.

According to police, 18-year-old David Hamilton Drake Jr. was arrested for first degree Trespassing.

Oh. Well, I can remember annoying some trainmen while crossing the switchyard as a shortcut to school and getting chased now and then. The most that would have happened to me was likely a severe beating – those were pretty tough guys.

The bottom line is: this is something not to do. Security forces don’t treat this kind of thing more lightly than those trainmen did.

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Interesting article from the Yorkshire (U.K.) Post:

One third of all households in the UK will be in fuel poverty by 2030 unless the coalition Government rapidly moves to encourage and enable building of new nuclear plants, says a report released today.

The new report published by the Centre for Policy Studies, claims the number of homes in fuel poverty – defined as the need to spend more than 10 per cent of household income on fuel to maintain adequate warmth – could rise to nearly 8.5 million over the next 18 years, if nuclear energy generating capacity continues to fall as the Government delays approving new nuclear plants.

Fuel poverty. I don’t think I’ve heard that term before – if I had heard it, I’m not sure I’d have applied it to the British. The reason this would happen already implies how it will not happen – and unfortunately, that has nothing to do with nuclear energy:

Last winter, coal plants shouldered nearly 50 per cent of electricity demand and the report claims the coalition does not currently have the suitable plans in place to replace old coal and oil power supplies which will close by 2016 due to European Union rules.

Rules that don’t work don’t get implemented, so if the U.K. is threatened with “fuel poverty,” those coal plants will stay open.

Here’s the report, called The Atomic Clock. It’s very inside British energy. What I read sounds a bit like an industry wish list, or more generally a free trade screed like those produced by the Heritage Foundation here. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it leads to a somewhat blinkered view.

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Politico posted its 2012 Top 10 Energy Questions. Here’s the one about nuclear energy:

8) Is there a future for Yucca Mountain? A federal court in D.C. will hear arguments in a lawsuit led by Yucca supporters against the NRC over whether the agency can be compelled to complete its now-boxed review of the nuclear waste project without funding from Congress and with a president looking to nix it. If the court sides with Yucca supporters, the NRC might be forced — given the information already produced — into approving the project. But should the court side with the NRC, Yucca Mountain may actually stay dead.

“The NRC might be forced into approving the project.” The NRC would not be forced to do anything other than to finish reviewing the license application. It could choose then to approve or not approve it based on the application’s merits.

Though it’s not exactly unfair to call the lawsuit’s backers “Yucca supporters,” (they include the states of Washington and South Carolina, Aiken County, S.C., and several individuals), it’s not a fan club. The idea here is simply to enforce the law, specifically the Waste Policy Act of 1985, which names Yucca Mountain as the country’s used fuel repository. To change that legitimately, you need to change the law.

So you know, NEI filed a friend-of-the-court brief on this issue in December.

The Water Around Fort Calhoun

Last night, I saw a “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” segment of a chat show that focused on Nebraska’s Fort Calhoun station, which is sitting in an area now flooded by the swollen Missouri River. The speaker stressed that, despite the mutual presence of water around Fort Calhoun and Fukushima Daiichi, the two incidents are not similar, though he did call Fort Calhoun a Fukushima-like event in slow motion.

Is it? Let’s allow our old friends the Union of Concerned Scientists to take this one:

The Union of Concerned Scientists, one of the nuclear-power industry’s toughest critics, sprang into action when the Missouri River flood threatened the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant in Nebraska.

But after looking into the matter, the scientists group was reassured. Precautions had been taken to deal with the floodwaters, and federal inspectors had checked over the plant on Monday.

You may be sure that if there were the tiniest concern, UCS would be taking the most dire tone imaginable.

No nuclear plant is without risks [though, we should note, many fewer than other energy generators], and the flooding will complicate getting the Nebraska reactor back up and running. But “basically what we found was … good news,” said David Lochbaum, director of the nuclear safety project for the scientists group, which is based in Washington.

The NRC itself offers an interesting account of what Fort Calhoun is up to:

The plant has erected an Aquadam around the powerblock – vital areas including the containment and auxiliary buildings. The water-filled berm is eight feet tall and 16 feet wide at the base, and provides protection for up to six feet of water. The dam also protects several pieces of equipment that have been brought onsite, including an additional emergency diesel generator for supplying AC electrical power, water pumps, firefighting equipment and sandbagging supplies.

An earthern berm protects the electrical switchyard and a concrete barrier has been built around electrical transformers to protect them. Satellite phones have been distributed to key workers. Extra food and water has been stockpiled.

Because, as you might imagine, getting to and from the plant is more of a challenge. NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko visited earlier this week and said the flooding looked worse from aerial photos than from the ground, so maybe you really have to be there.

The NRC also has a post about some of the dumber rumors swirling around Fort Calhoun – you can read that part yourself, as we don’t want to promulgate them here – but trust me: dumb.

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Yesterday, we noted French President Nicholas Sarkozy’s re-embrace of nuclear energy but didn’t mention the occasion for the comments. This story from Environmental Finance tells that part of the story and tries an interesting tack:

France will invest €1 billion ($1.4billion) in its nuclear power program, bucking the post-Fukushima trend away from nuclear energy.

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The €1 billion will fund ‘fourth generation’ nuclear development and research into nuclear safety, the president said on Monday.

Interestingly, another country “bucking the trend,” as the story would have it, is Great Britain:

Meanwhile, last week, the UK government also maintained its commitment to nuclear, confirming a string of sites for possible new nuclear builds.

Here’s why:

However, Ben Caldecott, head of European policy at asset manager and adviser Climate Change Capital in London, said the government has struck a fair balance between meeting energy demands and achieving emissions targets.

“I prefer renewable energy to nuclear power, but the fact of the matter is that if you didn’t replace any existing nuclear power stations, decarbonising the electricity sector would be that much harder. And that’s the challenge that Germany will be facing,” he told Environmental Finance.

Bucking the trend! Seems to me Germany and Switzerland are the countries bucking the trend.