Gifts for the Winter Solstice

2012 promises to be an extremely consequential year for American nuclear energy. In the grand tradition of sneak previews, the first news to hit made 2011:

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday approved the amended design for the Westinghouse AP1000, a reactor that several power companies intend to use for building the first new U.S. nuclear plants in decades.

“The design provides enhanced safety margins through use of simplified, inherent, passive, or other innovative safety and security functions, and also has been assessed to ensure it could withstand damage from an aircraft impact without significant release of radioactive materials,” NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said in a statement.

And that means this in – we hope – the early part of next year:

The certification brings Southern Company subsidiary Southern Nuclear one step closer to receiving the first Combined Construction and Operating License (COL) for a U.S. nuclear plant.

"This is another key milestone for the Vogtle project and the nation's nuclear renaissance," said Southern Company Chairman, President and CEO Thomas A. Fanning. "The NRC's action confirms the AP1000 design is safe and meets all regulatory requirements. The commission now has all of the technical information needed to issue the Vogtle COL.

Rapidly followed by this:

Once the AP1000 certification is complete, we expect the COL to be issued in short order for the … Summer project [in South Carolina]. Once the COL are issued, we'll begin a significant ramp-up in work ….

This is from the Shaw Group’s earnings call on December 21, so they were a day early. I captured the Summer part, but Shaw is working on Vogtle, too.

It’s like a gift, isn’t it?

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And now a completely different kind of gift, from our friends at Russia’s Rosatom (click for larger):

Yes, they’ve taken some of their more athletic and beauteous workers – from the Siberian Chemical Combine, a used fuel reprocessing plant - and posed them after statues of Greek gods and goddesses for a calendar – at least, I think they’re workers. World Nuclear News doesn’t make this clear and neither does the Rosatom blog.

But – it’s fun to imagine that’s who they are – and why not? Russian nuclear facilities often tout the athletic achievements of their workers and this tilts that interest in another direction – toward beef- and cheesecake, true, but Rosatom also does a beauty pageant. It’s a cultural thing.

The statues – in the lower left of the photos - are mostly naked but the workers are at least as clothed as Poseidon there, so decide for yourself how safe-for-work this is before clicking through.

I wonder if this sort of thing is common throughout Russian industrial spheres.

The AP1000.

Google and Amazon–And Nuclear Power?

Does America Online still exist? Why, yes it does, though it seems to have changed its business model considerably – it isn’t supporting the CD-manufacturing industry all by itself anymore, for one thing. It also has an energy site, at which we learn:

The headlines should come somewhere between December and March 2012 when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, if all goes as expected, will okay building up to four new nuclear reactors.
The licenses for two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors at Southern Co.'s Plant Vogtle in Georgia, followed quickly by two more at SCANA's Summer station in South Carolina, will be the first granted since the 1970s.

The story following is notably positive.

One plus for new nuclear is new jobs. Both the Vogtle and Summer sites will employ thousands of construction workers, as well as hundreds of operational personnel when the units start up 2016-19. Fertel said that, while the largest reactor components have to be forged overseas since no facilities exist in the US, most of the multi-billion dollar projects are sourced here.

And stays fairly positive even with a peek in from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Worth a read.
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While Vogtle and Summer will be the first new reactors in awhile, they won’t be the first new nuclear generation in North America:

Ontario nuclear power company Bruce Power said it had loaded the final uranium fuel bundle into the 750-megawatt Unit 1 at the Bruce A nuclear power plant in Ontario.

And this is the plan:

Bruce said in a release it expects to attach 750-MW Unit 2 to the Ontario power grid early in the first quarter of 2012 and start commercial operation later in the first quarter.

Bruce expects to connect Unit 1 to the grid in the second quarter of 2012 and go commercial during the third quarter.

You just knew a Canadian nuclear facility would be called Bruce. I wonder if there’s another one called Kevin. In any event, Bruce 3 and 4 have already been operating while 1 and 2 were shuttered in the mid 90s when it was decided not to upgrade them. Decision reversed, apparently.

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Too much good news:

Fukushima fallout: Renaissance in nuclear power generation now a long way off.

That’s the title of a story at the Financial Times. Surprisingly, the story is not as gloomy as that title and has to admit:

The two responses [Germany and Lithuania] are proof that while atomic power has experienced a serious setback in the wake of Fukushima, it remains a chosen source of energy for many countries.

So – can we have our renaissance back?

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Goofy:

Like the various nation-states of the world, Google vs. Amazon are also approaching their own nuclear war: both technology titans will have such growing energy demands that they will have to consider nuclear energy. And so, the key to understanding the growth opportunity of these companies is to assess their ability to use nuclear energy, and to use nuclear energy to build an infrastructure for an exponential improvement in data transmission across the Internet.

Leaving aside the awkward nuclear war metaphor, this article at Seeking Alpha seems rather peculiarly premised. Writer Simit Patel doesn’t stop there, either:

On the uranium side of things, I would love to see Google and Amazon support the growth of US-based uranium producers leveraging ISR [in-situ recovery] technology -- particularly Uranium Energy Corporation, a favorite of mine in the market.

I just have no idea.

The Bruce facility on Lake Heron.

America Technology Gets Ready to Go Big Again with New Nuclear Projects

I hear it all the time lately.

“What’s happening to American technology? Are we losing our edge?”

No more space shuttle. Steve Jobs logging off for good. The next generation space telescope on the chopping block.

So, it was with no small satisfaction last week that I listened into an NRC hearing on combined construction and operating license for new reactors at the V.C. Summer site in South Carolina. Perhaps the best bit was Stephen Byrne, executive vice president of South Carolina Electricity and Gas, explaining why a utility executive would opt to build a new nuclear power plant.

“We choose nuclear over other energy alternatives for four main reasons. First, the need for baseload power. The new units will help meet state regulatory reserve margin requirements. Second, cost. Nuclear is competitive with other baseload options when evaluated over its 40-year design life. Third is fuel diversity, adding units 2 and 3 [at V.C. Summer] will increase the share of nuclear in our fuel portfolio from approximately 11 percent to approximately 30 percent…Fourth is its low greenhouse gas emissions.”

But more than that, it was nice knowing that, after a 30-year break, America is (pending final NRC approval) going to be building a nuclear power plant again.

Think about it. Upwards of 1,000 megawatts of generating capacity all produced with a small amount of uranium. In a facility with a relatively small physical footprint, especially compared to the equivalent space renewables would use. (One of the things that struck me about my first visit to a plant was how small it was.) And it all happens without combustion, so no greenhouse gases are produced.

The AP1000 reactor design for the facilities comes from Westinghouse. Westinghouse, based in Pennsylvania, was acquired by Toshiba Corporation and other partners in 2006. But at the end of the day, a U.S. company will play a major role in building a reactor on American soil creating American jobs.

There has also been a lot of talk lately on what counts as a shovel-ready project. Both the V.C. Summer project in South Carolina and the Vogtle project in Georgia [another subject of a recent NRC mandatory hearing on its combined operating license] fit the bill. In fact, the shovels have already started digging in early work at the sites. Southern Company—which is heading up the Vogtle project—can’t wait to get started.

“We will be in a position to implement the rule-making as soon as it is affirmed,” Joseph “Buzz” Miller, executive vice president for nuclear development of Southern Nuclear Operating Co., said...

The NRC is expected to approve the Vogtle COLs sometime “very early next year.” The Summer COLs, presumably, would not be far behind.

When the COLs get issued, I will be heading over to Southern’s website on the progress at Vogtle to keep track of what’s going on. And right after that, I’ll be checking in with NASA on its next missions.