PG&E Seismic Safety Video at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant

Nuclear Street News - Wed, Jul 22 2015 1:50 PM 

Diablo Canyon Power Plant plays a major role in helping PG&E generate and deliver some of the nation’s cleanest electricity.

And there’s nothing more important to PG&E and its customers in the San Luis Obispo County region than its safe operation.

Diablo Canyon was built to a higher standard than commercial buildings to ensure that key safety systems continue to operate during an earthquake, said Jearl Strickland, PG&E's director of nuclear projects.

That’s why PG&E constantly works to ensure the plant can withstand a major seismic event – an ongoing process that puts it on the cutting-edge of seismic research and solidifies Diablo Canyon Power Plant as an industry leader.

“Seismic safety for Diablo Canyon wasn’t simply a one-shot deal with the original design and construction of the power plant. Through our long-term seismic program we’ve continued to learn additional knowledge on how earthquakes behave around the world and we continue to apply those lessons learned,” said Jearl Strickland, PG&E’s director of nuclear projects.

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UK And Canada Sign MOU For Advancing Nuclear Cooperation

Copyright © 2005 Ontario Power Generation Inc.

Nuclear Street News - The Natural Resources Canada, known as NRCan, and the British Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) have signed a memorandum of understanding that allows for greater cooperation in the field of nuclear energy.

The deal will build on the partnership between Candu Energy Inc. and GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy Canada, allowing further development of plutonium and uranium stockpiles in CANDU heavy water reactors, according to a statement.

The biggest winner in the deal is, apparently, Canada, based on the opportunities it will provide for Canadian companies. Britain is dealing with an aging nuclear power plant fleet that currently supplies the country with 18 percent of its electricity. However, all but one of the country’s nuclear power plants are expected to close by 2023.

Britain, meanwhile, has signaled that it expects to build 12 nuclear reactors by 2030 – at least enough to generate 16,000MW.

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Moment of Truth Nears for Nuclear Waste Time Bomb

Waste treatment at the Areva Nuclear Plant, western France

Reuters: By Vera Eckert - More than half a century after the world's first commercial nuclear plant went into operation in the United States, the industry may finally be nearing a way to store radioactive waste underground permanently.


The world has 270,000 tonnes of used fuel stockpiled, much of it under water in ponds at nuclear power stations, adding to the urgency of finding a permanent storage solution for material that can remain toxic for hundreds of thousands of years.

Finland and Sweden hope to be the first countries in the world to be able to put the most dangerous high-level waste (HLW) into underground storage in the next decade, using a new technology to encase fuel rods and protect them from erosion.

At a conference in Vienna this week, the 164-nation International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) heard updates from the Finish and Swedish authorities on their model solution.

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Nuclear to Play Significant Role in IEA’s Climate Strategy

By FORATOM: Posted in News-feeds - The International Energy Agency (IEA) published on 15 June 2015 a new study, World Energy Outlook Special Report on Energy and Climate Change, in which it outlines its strategy for the world to limit global warming to 2°C. The use of low-carbon energies including renewables and nuclear must sharply increase while oil and gas production must decrease for the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to peak by 2020.

The IEA defines four pillars, which are: to set the conditions for energy-related emissions to peak by 2020; to review national climate contributions regularly; to translate the national or regional climate goals into a collective long-term emissions goal; and to establish an effective process for tracking achievements in the energy sector. To do so, the IEA recommends a series of measures including increasing energy efficiency, reducing the use of inefficient coal-fired power plants, increasing investment in renewables, reducing methane emissions, and phasing out fossil fuels subsidies.

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California's Mega-Drought: Nuclear Power To The Rescue

Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant

Forbes>Energy (James Conca) - The only power facility in California that does not use any of the state’s precious fresh water is the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near San Luis Obispo. And it can even produce additional freshwater for the nearby community.

The nuclear plant desalinates ocean water using reverse osmosis and ultrafiltration. The nuclear plant depends on the desalination plant as its sole source of fresh water, used for the plant’s two nuclear reactors as well as all other water needs such as drinking water for its employees and irrigation of its grounds.

Although a relatively small plant, Diablo Canyon’s seawater desalination plant is presently the largest operating desal facility on the West Coast, producing about 675,000 gallons of freshwater a day.

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NRC Prepares for TVA’s New Nuclear Power Plant

Watts Bar 2

May 28, 2015—As the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar 2 project completes its transition from construction to operational readiness, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has granted its Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation the authority to issue a full-power operating license once it is satisfied that all regulatory requirements have been met.

TVA hailed the move toward the start-up later this year of the 1,150-megawatt reactor.

“The commission’s action was a critical regulatory step necessary to keep Watts Bar 2 on track to become the nation’s first new nuclear generation of the 21st century,” TVA Chief Nuclear Officer Joe Grimes said in a statement. “The delegation of this authority signifies confidence that NRC inspections show Watts Bar 2 is being built according to rigorous regulatory requirements and industry standards.”

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The case for nuclear power – despite the risks

The Conversation - Gary Was:  Nuclear power is likely the least well-understood energy source in the United States. Just 99 nuclear power plants spread over 30 states provide one-fifth of America’s electricity. These plants have provided reliable, affordable and clean energy for decades. They also carry risk - to the public, to the environment and to the financial solvency of utilities.

Risk is the product of the probability of an occurrence and its consequence. The probability of dying in a car accident is actually quite high compared to other daily events, but such accidents usually claim few individuals at a time, and so the risk is low. The reason nuclear energy attracts so much attention is that while the probability of a catastrophic event is extremely low, the consequence is often perceived to be extremely high.

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China's Coming Nuclear Power Boom

Ramping up growth in the nuclear industry will be crucial to achieving China’s emissions goals.

Get ready for China’s nuclear industry to boom (no pun intended): The China Nuclear Energy Association (CNEA) predicts that eight new nuclear reactors will begin operation this year. If so, that will mark the largest single-year increase in nuclear power production in China’s history.

China is looking to more than double the number of nuclear power plants in operation — there are currently 23 operating, with 26 under construction. If all the projects are completed as planned, it would bring China’s nuclear energy capacity up to 49.9 gigawatts, compared to the current capacity of 21.4 gigawatts. Plus, CNEA expects an additional six to eight nuclear energy projects to be approved this year.

Zhang Huazhu, the chairman of CNEA, called 2015 “an important yet for China to resume its nuclear power program.” Like many countries, China slammed the brakes on nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster in Japan; the industry in China is just beginning to regain its footing. A rapid expansion of nuclear power is critical for weaning China off of coal and reaching emissions reduction targets, but safety concerns (and public fears) continue to plague the industry. In 2014, China didn’t approve a single new nuclear power project, and investment in the industry dropped by 6.6 percent, Zhang said, speaking an industry conference in Beijing.

Currently, nuclear energy accounts for less than 3 percent of China’s total power generation. “In the coming decade, China will maintain a rapid pace of nuclear power development so that it can reach the target of nuclear installations by 2020 and make better use of energy,” Zhang said.  China’s stated goal is to have 58 gigawatts in nuclear power capacity by 2020, but that goal may be difficult to reach given the slowdown in construction after 2011.

Germany’s Nuclear Cutback Is Darkening European Skies

If Germany wants to phase out nuclear power, coal is the only realistic option

 Germany’s influence in Europe is unquestionable, but it appears that some of its neighbors may be adversely affected by recent German decisions; and Greece is not the neighbor in question here. France has been reporting heavy levels of air pollution which authorities in the country are blaming on diesel cars there. But the real culprit may in fact be the renewed German penchant for coal power.

Up until a few years ago, Germany, along with France, was at the forefront of nuclear power use. But after the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011, the Germans were quick to begin phasing out nuclear power. In some countries, phasing out nuclear power would be easy, but in 2011, Germany obtained 25% of its power from nuclear sources. This nuclear power generated no carbon dioxide emissions of course, and little in the way of other forms of pollution. But after starting the phase out of nuclear power, Germany still needed to find a source of replacement power.

Renewables like wind and solar sound great in theory, but the sporadic nature of power generation from those sources makes them imperfect substitutes for the consistency of nuclear. In that sense then, battery solutions like that announced by Tesla last week, or the solutions from General Electric, may eventually provide a solution for Germany. But as of now, the grid battery industry is still too nascent to provide serious help to Germany.

 

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Rethinking the U.S. Surrender on Nuclear Power

By

Eric McFarland

April 27, 2015 7:11 p.m. ET

 

The ghosts of Lenin and Mao might well be smirking. Communist and authoritarian nations are moving to take global leadership in, and profit from, the commercial use of nuclear power, a technology made possible by the market-driven economies of the West. New research and development could enable abundant, affordable, low-carbon energy as well as further beneficial products for industry and medicine

Yet outdated and burdensome regulations and restrictions have stifled nuclear innovation in the U.S. and other Western nations, and are pushing these opportunities to China and Russia.
China is joining Russia to build five new reactors in Iran—regardless of what becomes of the current negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program. Beijing and Moscow are also marketing nuclear technology and infrastructure to other Mideast and Asian nations. China and Russia have a clear commercial and strategic purpose in advancing nuclear technology abroad, technology that the West seems loath to exploit.

If the world is serious about shifting to low-carbon energy, nuclear energy is the most direct path. Nuclear power is the densest (in watts per square meter of land) and safest (in deaths per joule) form of energy known to man. Yet the expansion of nuclear power and other commercial applications of nuclear reactions have stalled in the West since the 1980s.

This is partly due to fears of unseen radiation and memories of accidents like the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, at a facility originally designed to produce weapons, in the now defunct Soviet Union. Mainly, though, what holds back nuclear power is its high cost, which is almost entirely due to government regulations and restrictions that have kept the industry confined to minor yet expensive improvements to existing reactor designs. Out-of-the-box thinking on new reactor concepts that could be far cheaper and safer is systemically discouraged. The most common retort to any new idea in the nuclear industry is along the lines of “that will never be approved in my lifetime.”

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