Nuclear

New Orleans-based power giant Entergy is in hot water following revelations that its Vermont Yankee nuclear plant has leaked radioactive contamination to the environment — and its trouble isn't limited to Vermont.

The Mississippi State Attorney General is also taking aim at the company, questioning Entergy's recent transfer of more than $1 billion from its parent company that oversees its Mississippi operations to its troubled nuclear division.

There has been a lot of talk of next-generation reactors in the U.S. "nuclear revival," but some plans for new nuclear power generation are looking back rather than ahead.

Alongside a multitude of pending applications for new nuclear reactors, there is a move to restart construction at sites where the work began decades ago only to be abandoned before completion.

On Monday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission held a hearing on challenges to the reinstatement of construction permits for one such project. It involves permits granted to the Tennessee Valley Authority to build the Bellefonte nuclear reactors, two reactors that were started near Hollywood, Ala., in 1974 but never finished.

President Obama laid out an all-of-the-above energy policy in a speech to national business leaders this afternoon: America need nuclear, solar, energy efficiency, and expanded oil and gas production, he said, and “to truly transition to a clean energy economy, we need to put a price on carbon pollution.”

His words suggest White House support for the framework Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are using to write a compromise climate and energy bill.

The wildcard, of course, for that bill — which could be introduced as early as next month — and for any Senate action remains the price on carbon.

The dramatic potential for a meltdown and the dilemma posed by spent fuel tend to dominate discussions of nuclear power’s drawbacks, making it easy to forget the front end of that equation: uranium mining.

The United States imports the bulk of its nuclear fuel, but there are large deposits of uranium, mostly in the western part of the country, that could be mined. A new report from the U.S. Geological Survey looks at one such parcel of land in the Grand Canyon watershed area. It suggests that previous mining activity in the region has not resulted in serious contamination of soil or groundwater, but environmental groups and others are still trying to halt what they fear could become a huge upsurge in uranium mining activity.

A new nuclear reactor design being backed by the United States may not be durable enough to withstand earthquakes, hurricanes or a direct airplane hit, American regulators have said, raising security concerns as the country attempts an atomic revival.

President Obama announced $8.3 billion in loan guarantees this week for two new reactors planned at an existing Southern Company nuclear site some 170 miles east of Atlanta, Georgia.

The reactors would use the AP1000 third-generation technology designed by Pennsylvania-based Westinghouse, one of the world's largest makers of nuclear turbines.

The company says the AP1000 is the "safest" nuclear power plant on the market. A full one-half of 440 reactors on the books worldwide are based on it, according to its figures. In America, around 12 AP1000s are planned.

But the design has yet to get safety clearance in the U.S., and it is not generating electricity anywhere in the world.

All it took was one sentence in President Obama’s State of the Union Address last week, and an oft-maligned energy source was back on the map.

“To create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives,” the president said. “And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.”

A few days later, the White House budget was released and called for an increase in government loan guarantees for nuclear reactors from $18.5 billion to $54.5 billion.

U.S. lawmakers are considering legislation that would create a new independent federal agency to promote government investment in clean energy.

But watchdogs are raising questions about the way the proposed agency is structured, and whether it would be unfair to taxpayers and bad for the environment. Among their concerns are its bias toward nuclear power — a critical issue for the South, which is at the center of the nuclear industry's planned revival.

"We support the financing of clean energy technologies to promote the domestic development and deployment of technologies that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the most efficient, environmentally sound manner possible," stated a recent letter to lawmakers signed by 17 environmental groups.

"However, the proposed Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA) will not achieve these important goals and will in fact, as drafted, pose unnecessary and potentially enormous risks to our environment and to the U.S. taxpayer."

Read More

Bookmark/Search this post with:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• Sue Sturgis's blog
• Add new comment

The Senate launched a week of climate hearings today, starting with a line-up of Cabinet secretaries and questions from the Environment and Public Works Committee that kept returning to the issue of nuclear energy.

Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) both asked Energy Secretary Steven Chu to find ways to increase nuclear power’s use. It might not be cheap, but it creates jobs and produces carbon-free energy, Carper said.

Chu is an outspoken supporter of nuclear energy and has said repeatedly that nuclear must be part of a national climate solution.

“Quite frankly, we want to recapture the lead in utility nuclear power,” he told Alexander, who is calling for 100 new nuclear plants.

The Sierra Club called the committee's focus on nuclear energy troubling, saying it

"ignores the cleaner, cheaper, safer, and faster emissions reductions that could be achieved through energy efficiency and clean energy.

Read More

Bookmark/Search this post with:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• Stacy Morford's blog
• 2 comments

In the laboratory, algae shows more promise than any other biofuel, producing more oil per acre than any other feedstock. According to some estimates, it could produce anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 gallons per acre a year compared to corn’s 20-30 gallons.

So, why isn’t it fueling airliners and cars around the world?

Because of the financing valley of death – the difficulty that experimental projects, no matter how encouraging, have in obtaining the considerable investment needed for a commercial launch.

With the financial crisis drying up funding for new green technologies even further, lawmakers are recognizing the need to step into the breach.

A movement of lawmakers, energy companies and environmental groups is now promoting the creation of a federal green bank that would finance clean energy and energy efficiency projects.

While data shows that the world is on track to build about 240 new nuclear reactors by 2030 -- about ten a year -- an embarrassing bottleneck could bedevil the renaissance.

Why?

Because there’s still only one steel plant in the world that can produce a key part of a nuclear reactor's containment vessel in a single 600-ton piece -- a must-have for staving off radiation leakage.

Problem is, reports Bloomberg in an exclusive story: