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NEI Nuclear Notes
June 19, 2013
Pandora’s Promise in Review
Opening Reviews? Mixed, with a tilt to the positive.
Manohla Dargis in the New York Times grabbed a little harder than I did at the drubbing of Dr. Helen Calidicott got in the picture and said it showed the movie’s one-sided view of nuclear energy.
This comic divide — the strident old lady environmentalist with the apparent bad dye job (Ms. Caldicott) versus a Yoda of the modern environmental movement (Mr. Brand) — makes for quite a setup. Yet such deck-stacking in movies can also be a viewer turnoff, no matter how seemingly worthy the cause. And “Pandora’s Promise” is as stacked as advocate movies get.
The descriptions of Caldicott and Brand are pretty terrible - remind me not to get on Dargis’ bad side. I used to work in the independent film business in New York (briefly, ineffectually) and a positive review from the Times was very important to launch an independent picture. One of the companies I worked for went pear shaped after a poor NYT review.That’s not as true now as it was when Vincent Canby ruled the NYT reviewing roost in the 70s and 80s Happily, the rise of specialized theater chains such as Landmark allow worthy films such as Pandora’s Promise to open in more than one city at a time, just like Man of Steel – well, minus 12,000 screens, but still, plenty for an adequate launch.
In many of these cities, the documentary picked up exceptionally good reviews.
For example, Michael O’Sullivan at the Washington Post understands a better than Dargis that Pandora’s Promise is more an essay than a news account.
Although the documentary ultimately argues in favor of nuclear power, an energy source that’s anathema to many tree huggers, it does so in a way that’s less strenuous than strenuously ambivalent. In the end, its somewhat equivocal message — that nuclear power might just be the lesser of several evils — is more convincing than you’d think.
This is a good point to bring out. The film does not downplay issues environmentalists – including those in the movie - have had with nuclear energy. If O’Sullivan errs a bit in considering energy choices greater or lesser evils, he sees that there is an argument to made for nuclear energy. Going from “anathema” to “ambivalent” is not nothing.
The pro-nuclear left grabs the bullhorn in this lively advocacy documentary, which argues that nuclear power is much less damaging to the environment than people think and, given the exponential rise in energy demand, the only credible alternative to fossil fuels.
While the film may not soothe every skeptic’s misgivings, it argues persuasively that nuke-produced electricity can be a major contributor to the needs of an energy-hungry world. Like many advocacy documentaries, it offers a one-sided argument. This time, however, it’s advanced by people who spent much of their lives on the opposite side.
There’s plenty more reviews, but the ability to quote them thins out behind pay walls – I’m sure Stone and his distributor will find them all the positive ones for the ads – but generally, the reviews are well-considered and judicious. Those that don’t like the film generally call it one-sided, following Dargis, but a lot get past simple minded views of journalistic balance to see the movie as it is, a film essay on nuclear energy.
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Manola Dargis is a fine reviewer, but I cannot help but think that the Times in general cannot quite figure this movie out. In an odd feature article entitled Rebel Filmmaker Tilts Conservative, writer Tom Roston works with the notion that conservative documentarians have trouble getting their wares into festivals such as Sundance, yet Stone had little problem with Pandora’s Promise.
But the Sundance director, John Cooper, said, “We like films that create dialogue.” Asked whether Mr. Stone’s history — he has had three previous films at Sundance — was a factor, Mr. Cooper replied, “The credibility of a filmmaker does matter to us.”
So, clearly, Stone’s reputation preceded him – as it should – what is the point of a reputation, after all? But more troubling is the effort in the article to pin down the ideology of the film because it is about nuclear energy. Although the focus is on environmentalists, several of them are not American, and none of their ideological affiliations are discussed. Assuming they’re all liberal or that Stone is less liberal because he supports nuclear energy is just – insulting. Access to electricity is pretty close to being a human right – no affiliation necessary.
June 18, 2013
Does Nuclear Energy Still Have a Future? You Better Believe It Does.
Ever since last week's announcement of the closure of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, we've been seeing a spate of stories in the press questioning whether or not nuclear energy has a future as part of the nation's energy mix. Here at NEI, the answer is a resounding yes, and part of the confidence springs from the fact that we've passed this way before. Back in the 1990s, we saw 10 reactors shut down for a variety of different reasons, and it wasn't uncommon for the press to wonder if the only growth part of the business was in decommissioning reactors.
So what happened? Well, the industry got back to work figuring out how to do our jobs better than before. Over the course of a decade or so, the industry's average capacity factor rose from the high 70s to near 90% across the entire fleet. And thanks to a number of companies performing plant uprates, the U.S. nuclear fleet actually produces more electricity today from fewer reactors.
But that doesn't mean folks aren't entitled to ask tough questions, which is exactly what Monica Trauzzi of E&E TV did earlier this week when she had NEI Senior Vice President Scott Peterson in the studio to talk about recent items in the news, including the San Onofre shutdown. Here are some highlights from the transcript:
Monica Trauzzi: How big of a hit is this to the industry, and is it in some ways a sign of surrender on some of the sticky safety issues that surround nuclear energy?
Scott Peterson: Absolutely not. The nuclear industry will continue to play a vital role in the electricity system for hundreds of millions of people in this country. San Onofre is an unfortunate situation for the consumers of Southern California, who relied on that plant for reliable power, for grid stability particularly in the hot summer months. And it'll be interesting to see how they survive this coming summer. But we believe that nuclear energy certainly has a role to play in this country. San Onofre is a unique situation, to the replacement of those steam generators, but when you look at the prospects of our industry, we're building five reactors today in this country. We just finished a major uprate at, FPL's plant's putting on another 500 megawatts. We're renewing licenses, and we're developing new reactor designs for the future. So we feel very good about nuclear energy's role in the electricity system going forward.
And on the progress in Georgia and South Carolina at Plant Vogtle and V.C. Summer:
Monica Trauzzi: The nuclear industry has seemingly taken hit after hit recently. What - how are investments looking in your sector? Is it difficult to secure investments?
Scott Peterson: Not at all. When you look at the new projects that we're putting in in Georgia and South Carolina, both projects are getting the financing they need. In fact, they're over-subscribed in the financing as they go into the markets to get financing for building those four AP1000 reactors. So there is a, very much the financial support for the industry. As we're putting new technologies online, we want to make sure there's an equal commitment with a cost-shared program to develop small modular reactors at the Department of Energy and through the appropriations that Congress provides for that program, as another part of moving our industry future. So there is investment happening today. There is still a strong support for nuclear energy, certainly a strong role to play, particularly when you're looking at meeting 28 percent electricity growth by 2040, and doing it in a way that really reduces greenhouse gasses as a whole.
Bottom line: not dead yet. Not by a long shot.
June 14, 2013
The Power of Doubt in Pandora’s Promise
Note: Be sure to look at all of Nuclear Notes’ coverage of this important movie, most notably Eric’s review below.
Should you trust a “review” of Pandora’s Promise, Robert Stone’s new movie on nuclear energy, from this particular site? Well, that’s up to you to decide. If I thought the movie terrible as a film going experience, there would still be a lot to say about it – and I wouldn’t want people who have waited a long time for a pro-nuclear movie to avoid it on my account unless it was a briar patch of lies.
But Pandora’s Promise is good. It’s skillfully made, accessible to an interested general audience (in both style and content – this isn’t a dry dissertation) and it maintains a simple interview approach – shots are composed but the compositions are largely determined by the subjects – it isn’t as tightly controlled as an Errol Morris special.
And it allows a more complex point-of-view than is usual for a subject vulnerable to blunt polemics – for example, it shows how decisions made early in the history of domestic nuclear energy exacerbated the current issue of storing used nuclear fuel. (Of course, making different decisions would have opened up different issues.) If nothing else – and there’s plenty else –the movie demonstrates that domestic nuclear energy was founded at the nexus of government, military, scientific, industrial and energy interests, against the 50s backdrop of an escalating cold war.
The history of domestic nuclear energy is fascinating and I’m glad the movie gives such an interesting account of it (Charles Till, of Argonne National Labs, provides a lot of the interesting background.) , but the theme of the film, in brief, is doubt – not doubt about nuclear energy per se but doubt about not nuclear energy. Because: if not nuclear energy, what then?
As the environmental movement expanded from concerns about water and air quality to the more existential issue of climate change, its highly negative view of nuclear energy began to seem, to some movement adherents, more and more untenable. From their perspective, the world would almost certainly experience disaster if nuclear energy did not exist to provide plentiful greenhouse gas-free base load energy. And that bred another doubt: that nuclear energy was ever as bad as they had believed.
To explore these doubts, Stone spoke to (and sometimes traveled with) various environmentalists, including Stewart Brand, Gwyneth Cravens (her Power to Save the World, at the link, is a great book), Mark Lynas, Richard Rhodes, and Michael Shellenberger. I assume Stone is their interlocutor, but you hear him on the soundtrack only occasionally and rarely see him. Since these are stories about their gathering doubts, the focus is on them.
They’re an impressive crew, and Stone clears space for them to explain themselves. Changing your mind about a key tenet of your guiding philosophy is very hard, akin to deciding there is no God. For many, it would be nearly impossible to fully process.
Doubt for these people occurred because personal curiosity provoked further investigation into nuclear energy; or the terms of their environmental activism changed as the impact of climate change became more apparent; or simply because age burned away some of the certainty (if none of the idealism) of their younger selves.
Most of them still consider themselves primarily as environmental activists (Shellenberger is president of The Breakthrough Institute, for example – NEI’s Insight newsletter has an interview with his partner Jesse Jenkins) but some express very severe doubts about the environmental movement in general.
Other factors doubtless weighed in, too, notably the arrival of the next generation. Mark Lynas is quite explicit that fatherhood changed many of his views while Gwyneth Cravens never loses sight of her children in any of her activism. Her original distaste for nuclear energy and her current advocacy both root in her concern for her kids – and by extension, all kids everywhere, otherwise known as the future. Others, such as Stewart Brand, seem to have bypassed the experiential and gone straight for the cosmic. Whatever road they traveled down, they arrived at a place where nuclear energy is the most potent solution to climate change, the issue that now most engages them.
One might reasonably have expected some stridency or pugnaciousness from these activists, after lives speaking and arguing and protesting. But, no, this is a very amiable crowd. There is a photograph shown of Shellenberger in younger days that suggests he could bring it when required, but in the new footage, he’s so relaxed he can barely bother with shoes.
Is the movie perfect? Is there such a thing?
From my perspective, there is one serious misstep. One small bit of footage shows Stone making a fool of Dr. Helen Caldicott, a long-time anti-nuclear activist. (Nuclear Notes has a long history with Dr. Caldicott’s brand of mendacity.) Leaving aside how easy this is to do, it inserts a Michael Moore-style mean-spiritedness into a very friendly show – the same thing could probably have been done to Gwyneth Cravens or Stewart Brand in their anti-nuclear days. It’s there for pro-nuclear people to snicker at, which in this context has no useful purpose.
I’ve read some reviews that say the film should have aimed for more balance – i.e. included some anti-nuclear activists in the mix – but this isn’t that kind of film. This is a documentary not a news report and it need not aim for any balance at all. In many news stories, after all, such balance is very often a route to confusion, with information mixed so completely with misinformation that the truth recedes into the distance.
Pandora’s Promise is clearly Robert Stone’s film about nuclear energy and he’s not in the least conflicted about nuclear energy – so there’s no reason for the film to generate artificial conflict. Think of it as an essay, not a news story. An anti-nuclear Robert Stone can have a go at his or her own film essay, but in the meantime, this is what it is.
Like many documentaries that aren’t by Ken Burns and 12 hours long, the goal here is to present a viewpoint as fully as possible and then leave it in our hands. There isn’t time to tell everything, but there is time to suggest a lot of routes for further research, including into the biographies of these people and their plentiful writings (few of them are well-known outside their sphere of interest) and the information provided about nuclear energy (for example, I had no idea that Chernobyl continued operation after the 1987 accident there well into the 1990s, but it did). Such research is unlikely to go unrewarded and I know the perfect place to start.
June 14, 2013
Did Pandora's Promise Miss John Kerry's Change of Heart on Nuclear Energy?
Sec. John Kerry
One of the big ideas pushed by Pandora's Promise concerns the potential of breeder reactors to provide a technological fix to the political question of what to do with used nuclear fuel. A considerable segment of the film tells the story of the Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II) project at Argonne National Laboratory in Idaho and how funding for the project was killed in 1994 at the behest of the Clinton Administration.
The film contains a brief clip of U.S. Secretary of State and former U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-MA) urging his fellow senators to end funding for the EBR-II. But what the film didn't mention is that like the five environmentalists profiled in Pandora's Promise, Secretary Kerry has undergone something of a conversion on the question on nuclear energy himself.
Back in 2010, then-Senator Kerry was a co-sponsor of the American Power Act. Though it failed to pass into law, the proposed legislation included a number of key incentives that would have encouraged construction of new nuclear power plants here at home. The following points were culled directly from the press materials announcing the introduction of the legislation:
Increasing Nuclear Power Generation
We have included a broad package of financial incentives to increase nuclear power generation including regulatory risk insurance for 12 projects, accelerated depreciation for nuclear plants, a new investment tax credit to promote the construction of new generating facilities, $5.4 billion in loan guarantees and a manufacturing tax credit to spur the domestic production of nuclear parts.
We improve the efficiency of the licensing process.
We invest in the research and development of small, modular reactors and enhanced proliferation controls.
We designate an existing national laboratory as a nuclear waste reprocessing Center of Excellence.
The evolution of thinking on nuclear energy is happening across America, including at the highest levels of government.
June 14, 2013
A Brief Review of Pandora's Promise
Robert Stone behind the camera.
It was back in 2006 that NEI Nuclear Notes published its first post with the title, "Another Environmentalist for Nuclear Energy." At the time, I could certainly have understood how a statement like that might seem more than a bit unbelievable.
Environmentalists? Supporting? Nuclear? Energy? Wasn't the environmental community unanimously opposed to nuclear energy?
But what I had begun to see at the time was a growing understanding on the part of a number of thoughtful people about the size and scope of the challenge before mankind. How do you support a world with a growing population that aspires to enjoy the same standard of living that we've grown accustomed to in the developed world? And how do you do it without causing catastrophic damage to the planet?
It's was that conundrum that led environmentalists like Patrick Moore, James Lovelock and the late Rev. Hugh Montefiore to reconsider their position on nuclear energy. What began as a trickle has since become a flood, which is why filmmaker Robert Stone has spent the past several years making Pandora's Promise, a film tracing the journey of five environmentalists as they reconsidered their beliefs about nuclear energy.
Many of the individuals featured in the film will be familiar to the readers of NEI Nuclear Notes. Stewart Brand is the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and one of the leading lights in the counter-cultural movement of the 1960s. Richard Rhodes is a journalist well known for his work chronicling the race to build the first atomic bomb. Gwyneth Cravens is an author who cut her teeth fighting the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant on Long Island in the 1970s. Mark Lynas is a veteran of the U.K. environmental movement who at times has been best known for episodes of bombastic public behavior.
So what can you expect out of Pandora's Promise? As I wrote earlier this week, it was impossible not to be heartened to see nuclear energy talked about in terms of the benefits it delivers instead of its supposed shortcomings, and to see that story be told in such a skillful manner. I think the world has a lot to learn from the five principal figures profiled in the film. It takes a lot of guts to seriously examine your beliefs, and decide, as Brand does near the start of the film, "that everything you thought about nuclear energy was wrong."
The driver for their change of heart, of course, is the fear that rising levels of atmospheric carbon are contributing to potentially calamitous changes in the earth's climate. Here at NEI, we're not climate scientists and have never taken a position on anthropogenic global warming. But like Pandora's gang of five, we've come to the conclusion that if you're looking for a zero emission source of baseload power, then nuclear energy is the only option that fits the bill. As Stone himself said in a post-screening discussion on Monday night in Pleasantville, NY, "To take nuclear out of the equation when we need it most is irresponsible."
The Unofficial Guide to Pandora's Promise, a Documentary Film About Nuclear Energy by Robert Stone Premiering in New York City on June 12 and Nationwide on June 14
As we near the premiere in New York on June 10, I'll be collecting all of the online coverage about the film in this space. Every time I make a major update to the content below, I'll bump this post back to the top of the blog. When I finally see the film myself, I'll write a review of my own that I'll link to below. As always, our readers are an important part of this conversation, so please don't hesitate to send us links and suggestions as to how we might improve our coverage of the film. In this guide you will find:
Impact Partners and CNN Films present PANDORA’S PROMISE, the groundbreaking new film by Academy-Award®-nominated director Robert Stone. The atomic bomb and meltdowns like Fukushima have made nuclear power synonymous with global disaster. But what if we’ve got nuclear power wrong? An audience favorite at the Sundance Film Festival, PANDORA’S PROMISE asks whether the one technology we fear most could save our planet from a climate catastrophe, while providing the energy needed to lift billions of people in the developing world out of poverty.
One final screening of the film is scheduled for June 10 at 7:30 p.m. at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, N.Y. (click here to buy tickets). The official opening will be in New York City on June 12 at Sunshine Cinema on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Two days later, on June 14, the film will open in an additional 15 cities nationwide:
If and when you see the film, be sure to tweet about it and include the #PandorasPromise hash tag and the official handle, @PandorasPromise. Principals:
Robert Stone is a multi-award-winning, Oscar-nominated and Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker. Born in England in 1958, he grew up in both Europe and America. After graduating with a degree in history from the University of Wisconsin/Madison, he moved to New York City in 1983 determined to pursue a career in filmmaking. He gained considerable recognition for his first film, “RADIO BIKINI” (1987) which premiered at Sundance and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary. Multi-tasking as a producer, director, writer, editor and cameraman, he has over the last 25 years developed a steady international reputation with a range of unique and critically acclaimed feature-documentaries about American history, pop-culture, the mass media and the environment.
Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger are leading global thinkers on energy, climate, security, human development, and politics. Their 2007 book Break Through was called "prescient" by Time and "the best thing to happen to environmentalism since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring" by Wired. (An excerpt in The New Republic can be read here.) Their 2004 essay, "The Death of Environmentalism," was featured on the front page of the Sunday New York Times, sparked a national debate, and inspired a generation of young environmentalists ...
RICHARD RHODES is the author or editor of twenty-four books including The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won a Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction, a National Book Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award ...
[H]as contributed articles and op-eds on science and other topics to Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. She has published five novels. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, where she also worked as a fiction editor, and in Harper’s Magazine, where she was an associate editor. She grew up in New Mexico and now lives on eastern Long Island.
Mark Lynas, Environmentalist and Climate Change Activist (also writing a companion book to the film):
[A] frequent speaker around the world on climate change science and policy, focusing in particular on how carbon neutral targets can break the international logjam on climate mitigation, and how emissions reduction should be seen as an opportunity not a sacrifice. He is also a Visiting Research Associate at Oxford University’s School of Geography and the Environment.
A good, politically charged documentary often seizes on what the audience already believes and throws fuel on the fire (see, e.g., the work of Michael Moore). A better such documentary tries to convince its audience that what it takes for granted is flat-out wrong. Pandora’s Promise, which premiered at Sundance, does just that. It makes the utterly convincing case that anyone who considers themselves an environmentalist or takes climate change seriously should favor more nuclear power.
After sifting through the anti-nuclear choruses and the considerably smaller pro-nuclear groups in an attempt to find the truth about the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear energy, Stone found his answer with Michael Shellberger, the president and co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute: "We can have a world living modern lives without killing the climate."
Can one be committed to the environment, and still be against nuclear power? Most issue docs are propaganda, and Robert Stone’s latest is a formidable sales pitch for nukes, yet the film’s points are well reasoned and urgent, and should attract viewers who have been drawn to the director’s earlier work(such as “Earth Days,” a history of the environmentalist movement).
New York City filmmaker Robert Stone, like the five experts who are the principal subjects of his documentary, began with the same impeccable environment-first attitude they did. Stone was nominated for an Oscar for his 1988 anti-nukes documentary “Radio Bikini,” about the dire consequences of American bomb testing on the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. Now Stone, who will be debating Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on nuclear power at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, NY, tomorrow night at 7:30, sheepishly admits that he confused what nuclear bombs do with what nuclear energy does. So many of our ideas about fallout and cancer rates are tied to the former, not the latter.
What has cracked that catholic opposition for Brand and others is the invisible and invidious challenge of climate change. Simply put: nuclear power is one of the few technologies available today that can produce a lot of electricity, a lot of the time without a lot of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere.
Is considering nuclear energy politically dangerous for environmentalists? Does it prevent normally-smart public servants from considering the best path forward on climate change? Indeed it is, and explains the swift and nasty response to Pandora’s Promise from anti-nuclear groups and the expected rants from professional fear-mongerers. They make some interesting fictional points, but provide no real information, using the word science like a mythological sword whose power they recognize but don’t understand.
As the director, Robert Stone, writes, “The almost theological adherence to a set of unquestionable beliefs [solar and wind power alone will save us] by most liberals and environmentalists has likely contributed as much or more to prolonging our addiction to fossil fuels as the equally appalling state of denial among many conservatives when it comes to climate change.”
What’s most likely to get us into trouble, Mark Twain observed, is not what we don’t know “it’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so”. There are few subjects on which so many people, from politicians to rock stars, NGOs and environmentalists, passionately and confidently espouse views that are so completely at variance with observed reality as nuclear energy.
The film strives to debunk several nuclear myths, such as the reportedly high radiation level and death toll caused by the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Environmental activists continue to use Chernobyl as an example of the potential danger of nuclear development. However, the film shows a radioactivity monitor at Chernobyl, as well as at other sites in America and Europe, and demonstrates that the level of radioactivity in Chernobyl in 2012 is nearly identical to that of Central Park in New York City.
In a world where most people think nuclear plants are dangerous, Pandora’s Promise challenges viewers to see the benefits of nuclear energy. Despite this daunting challenge, the most admirable aspect of Pandora’s Promise is director Robert Stone’s commitment to presenting both sides of the nuclear energy argument.
[T]he most compelling part of the documentary is illustrating how those who actually protested against nuclear power have come to now speak in favor of it. Admitting you were wrong takes some humility and can even cost you your professional career.
Stone made his name with the anti-nuclear doc Radio Bikini and would further burnish his green credentials with Earth Days. Very concerned about global warming, Stone could no longer accept the environmental movement’s unrealistic claims about solar and wind power. As his primary POV experts argue, any power plan with a significant wind or solar component will by necessity be heavily dependent on big, dirty fossil fuel plants as a back-up. The simple truth is that the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow, but coal burns 24-7.
Pandora’s Promise has the immensely difficult task of changing people’s mindsets about nuclear energy—a task that became extraordinarily more difficult after the nuclear explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan. Knowing that the film was in favor of nuclear energy, I was surprised that during the beginning of the documentary, arguments against nuclear energy were explained—I almost thought that I was wrong and that the film might be anti-nuclear energy. But in my opinion, this was one of the strongest points of the film. I thought that by clearly laying out reasons why people would be against nuclear energy ultimately made the film’s pro-nuclear stance stronger, as I understood arguments on both sides of the debate by the time the film finished.
Stone’s narrative includes personal stories from environmentalists and energy experts, including Stewart Brand, Gwyneth Craven, Mark Lynas, Richard Rhodes and Michael Shellenberger to speak about their journey in supporting nuclear energy. “This film is about hope,” Stone said, “but it can’t be done without nuclear power.”
Sure, it seems pretty strange for a devout environmentalist to take a pro-nuclear energy stance; but after seeing Robert Stone’s documentary Pandora’s Promise, it seems like a perfectly logical switch.
Follow Pandora's Promise on Twitter and Facebook. Folks on Twitter seem to be using #PandorasPromise to organize conversations around the film. You can also subscribe to the film's YouTube Channel. If you've seen the film already, consider posting your review at the Internet Movie Database. In response to critiques of the film by anti-nuclear activists, Nick Touran, a recent Ph.D. graduate of the nuclear engineering program at the University of Michigan published a defense of the film.
June 12, 2013
Lost in the Nuclear Clouds
I watched Cloud Atlas (2012) over the last two nights (it’s almost 3 hours long) and was surprised that one plotline involves a nuclear energy facility, at least tangentially.
If you haven’t seen the movie, it tells six distinct stories in widely variant time periods, each in its own style. Like D.W. Griffith’s similarly structuredIntolerance (1916), its stories are built around a common theme – in the case of Cloud Atlas, the interconnectedness of everyone through eternity.
To bring this point home, many of the actors play roles in all six stories, crossing gender, racial and ethnic lines. This is different than the David Mitchell novel the movie is based on, which doesn’t suggest the characters reincarnate; the novel also tells the six stories sequentially while the movie intercuts them, sometimes in very quick shots, to make the theme and the connections clearer.
All this sounds tricky, even gimmicky, but the filmmakers (the Wachowski siblings and Tom Tykwer) work very hard to keep the stories coherent. The nuclear plant story, put together by Tykwer, is probably the most coherent because it uses the familiar framework of a 70s paranoid thriller (think The Parallax View(1973) or Klute (1970)) to tell of a reporter (Halle Berry) who uncovers a vast conspiracy that involves the purposeful sabotage of a new nuclear facility.
When I broke at the ninety minute mark the first night, this section played like the mutant spawn of The China Syndrome (1979)and Silkwood (1982). I didn’t expect the second half to go well, especially after the intrepid heroine’s car is forced to plummet into a lake by a shadowy assassin (Hugo Weaving) employed by the shadowy nuclear plant.
Let’s pause and expand on the idea of nuclear energy as a villainous force. There’s no particular reason to get exercised by movie ideas like atomic twisters or evil energy executives having likeable young people killed. Movies, especially thrillers and other genre movies, don’t particularly care if their treatment of a subject lacks objectivity or accuracy; audiences understand this because they quite reasonably want action and thrills, not an essay on the perils or benefits of nuclear energy. The villain is a villain – just give him or her silky diction, darkly ridiculous motivations and enough henchmen to get their shadowy cabal union cards. Then, let the mayhem commence.
But – resuming our review of the story -
Cloud Atlas did not choose nuclear energy as its viper du jour. Quite the opposite. <Note: spoilers ahead, so if you haven’t seen the movie, stop reading now>.
An army friend (Keith David) of Berry’s deceased father (who was also a journalist) enters the story and reveals to Berry (she survives her trip into the water; surprised?) that the evil spider den is actually occupied by disgruntled gas and oil executives who want nuclear power to fail because “it is the energy of the future.” These executives, led by a rotted looking Hugh Grant, are afraid of being rendered irrelevant. You could have knocked me over with a fuel rod at that revelation, but there it is.
Cloud Atlas is meant to be taken fairly seriously while delivering a load of entertainment and a fortune cookie moral. I’m not underestimating the filmmakers’ desire to have of fun with the premise – they know that the movie’s busy narrative agenda is almost a parody of ambition, so why not add a little fun?
Tykwer achieves this by setting the nuclear/oil segment in the 70s and evoking the style of that period by aping the moviemaking techniques and ideas of the time. But the titles it is referencing were interesting, well-done thrillers, not fat slabs of cheese. Even The China Syndrome is genuinely suspenseful if fantastically mendacious. The decision to take this approach, which occasionally turns Halle Berry into Pam Grier’s karate chopping Foxy Brown, makes the irresponsibility of the segment really glare. Just because the nuclear energy industry is absolved of wrongdoing (whew!) and given a shout out doesn’t make the conceit less problematic.
So, the segment’s not free of problems, but it isn’t the second coming of The China Syndrome, either. is Cloud Atlas a good movie overall? Well, the comparison to Intolerance remains apt: like its 95 year old precursor, it’s big, often silly when it means to be serious and the treatment of the theme is very, very blunt.
But it is also gigantic in scope, shot through with narrative if not thematic ambition and extremely well performed (the actors in all their roles are fascinating to watch – some of it feels genuinely transgressive, especially in light of the Larry-to-Lana Wachowski transition). It is, like many recent movies, an audio-visual experience rather than an affecting piece of work. You may come out of it feeling pummeled by the propulsion of its imagery, but at least not too annoyed at the filmmakers for their rather cavalier treatment of the atom.
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With the opening of Pandora’s Promise Friday, let’s consider this movie week at NEI Nuclear Notes.
June 12, 2013
Robert Stone and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Clash After Screening of Pandora's Promise
On Monday night, I traveled to Pleasantville, NY to attend a screening of Pandora's Promise. While I had originally intended to provide live coverage of the event via NEI's Twitter feed, I was foiled by poor reception inside the theater. I'm writing this summary to take it's place.
Pleasantville is only a 27-minute ride from Indian Point Energy Center, and a number of local anti-nuclear activists as well as plant employees were in attendance. All of us were met at the theater entrance by a volunteer from Riverkeeper who was distributing a copy of Pandora’s False Promises, a primer produced by Paul Gunter’s Beyond Nuclear. The presence of the Riverkeeper volunteer led the film’s director, Robert Stone, to quip from the podium that it was the “first time he had been picketed.”
I'm planning on posting a full review of the movie here on NEI Nuclear Notes ahead of Friday's nationwide premiere, so I won’t go into much detail concerning the film itself. From a personal perspective, it was heartening to see our industry’s value proposition explained in such an inspirational and artful manner. I don’t doubt that nuclear enthusiasts will enjoy the film and want to share it with friends and family.
Following the screening, Andrew Revkin of the New York Times moderated a discussion between Stone and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. of Riverkeeper, and it was here that the tenor of the event became contentious. The theater is not far from Kennedy’s boyhood home, and it was clear from the start that he views the film as something of a personal affront, a feeling that was no doubt magnified by the fact that he makes an appearance. In a brief clip, Kennedy is seen giving a speech to the Colorado Oil and Gas Association where he talks about how he believes that large renewable energy projects are actually natural gas plants.
Kennedy was not pleased, claiming that the clip was taken out of context, and that overall the film was “an elaborate hoax.” Among the more colorful exchanges:
According to Kennedy, none of the individuals who appeared in the film were actual environmentalists and all were compromised by the fact that they either worked for or had been paid off by the nuclear industry. That led Revkin to interject, "You invest in solar, why should I believe you?"
Kennedy said he considers The Breakthrough Institute to be an “anti-environmental” organization, and that founders Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger are “liars.” Stone retorted,"Why would I or any people in my film, lie?"
While Stuart Brand might have founded the “Whole Earth Catalog,” his work was now hopelessly compromised because his organization, “The Long Now Foundation,” took corporate donations.
When Kennedy admitted he didn’t know much about climate change advocate Mark Lynas, Revkin interjected that he was a person “who cared about science.”
And when Kennedy complained that there weren’t any alternative voices in the film that might have disputed studies concerning the health impacts of radiation, Stone stood his ground saying, “I will not put people in my films who would say documented untruths.” And after one extended Kennedy tirade, Stone said “you shouldn’t be attacking me, you should be attacking the fossil fuel industry.”
As for Stone, while he might have seemed taken aback by some of Kennedy's comments, he was clearly pleased with his finished product and the reaction it's been getting as he's been screening the documentary around the country, primarily on college campuses. According to Stone, the ideas in the film have "really brought people together," around the issue of nuclear energy, with the support crossing partisan lines.
"The solid middle realizes that climate change is a serious issue," said Stone. "To take nuclear out of the equation when we need it most is irresponsible."
June 10, 2013
Reactions to San Onofre Closing: It “ought to jolt the governor”
The reaction to the closure of San Onofre in the California Press has been mixed, to say the least. The anti-nuclear feeling out there has faded a bit, as demonstrated by the failure to get enough signatures for ballot measure to close San Onofre and Diablo Canyon, but there’s still a fair amount of it.
Still, this leads to a Jekyll-Hyde response to the closure. Here, as exhibit A, is the Sacramento Bee. Take it away, Jekyll:
But San Onofre and California's one remaining nuke, Diablo Canyon, delivered more than 15% of the state's electricity. San Onofre, located in northwest San Diego County, supplied power to 1.4 million homes. The plant cannot be replaced solely with sun and wind, at least not with current technology.
Still to be answered: Will the bills of Edison customers go up because of the utility's need to purchase more expensive power from elsewhere?
Your turn, Hyde:
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and anti-nuclear energy activists hailed the closure. Clearly, nuclear power long ago failed to live up to its promises.
Yes, clearly. At this point, Jekyll strangles Hyde:
But word that a huge source of California's electricity will be dark forever ought to jolt the governor [Jerry Brown], the official who will be held most responsible if California faces rolling blackouts this summer and beyond, as happened during [former Gov.] Gray Davis' truncated tenure.
And the two merge gracelessly:
California is leading the nation and in many respects the world into a future that embraces renewable energy. But the power grid -- and the economy -- will require reliable baseline power for the foreseeable future. With the San Onofre plant forever shuttered, there must be alternatives.
Reliable baseline power? Isn’t that the promise of nuclear power?
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Over at the Los Angeles Times, Marc Lifsher makes sure the implications of the closure are clear:
Without that nuclear plant, which accounted for about 9% of the electricity generated in California, power supplies will be tight in parts of Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties for at least the next three summers, officials said. That means periods of reduced use of air conditioners, lights and swimming pool pumps for customers of Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Co.
"Losing 2,250 megawatts from the system is a big deal, and if we ask for conservation, we need them to respond," said Steve Berberich, chief executive of the California Independent System Operator, which manages most of the state's long-distance electric transmission system from a control room in Folsom, east of Sacramento.
It’s a big deal.
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The L.A. Times editorial blames Southern California Edison for the whole situation – which cannot really be true when dealing with a situation like this - but notes:
To its credit, Edison was trying to replace its old steam generators with ones that were better and safer when it contracted with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
Which isn’t nothing. Then, it’s back to the blame game.
As for a long-term fix, there is none in sight. California needs more power plants, but they’re not being built. California law prohibits the construction of new nuclear plants until the industry finds a way to permanently dispose of radioactive waste. The state also has a “loading order” law that says fossil-fuel burning plants, regardless of how efficient, should only be considered once efforts have been made to reduce demand and find power from renewable sources such as wind and solar.
Even before the decision was made to close San Onofre, state regulators said the idled plant presented “operational challenges” and warned that a severe heat wave could lead to rolling blackouts. ISO officials also expressed concern over the potential threat from wildfires to transmission lines carrying imported power into the region.
Feels like our very own slice of Germany, doesn’t it?
The theme linking all these stories and editorials together is the fear of shortages that could occur because California makes it so difficult for most energy sources to thrive. It already imports about 40 percent of its electricity and if the spigot slows for any reason or for any length of time, California’s resources will thin out. Californians have seen this happen-they really don’t want to see it again. And yet, San Onofre and SoCal Edison got boxed in.
To repeat the statement made by NEI spokesman Steve Kerekes two posts down:
He said that “this situation underscores the need for an efficient and effective regulatory process that results in timely decisions on the operation of these critical energy resources.” He said that independent firms had endorsed plans to restart San Onofre’s Unit 2 and that “it’s simply intolerable to delay decisions that impact millions of customers and the company’s obligation to provide electricity to those customers.”
That’s about the size of it – and California is now waking up to the implications.
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Speaking of news, “All Things Considered,” will include a piece today on San Onofre closure impacts in California and relevance to the nuclear energy industry more broadly. NEI will be represented.
June 10, 2013
Where Can I See the Nuclear Energy Documentary Pandora's Promise?
This evening in Pleasantville, NY at the Jacob Burns Film Center, Robert Stone's new documentary, Pandora's Promise, will have its New York premiere. Following the screening, Stone will have a discussion with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. of Riverkeeper about the film. The discussion will be moderated by Andrew Revkin of the New York Times. NEI will be in attendance, and we'll be following the discussion live via our Twitter feed, @n_e_i. Please check in around 9:00 p.m. U.S. EDT for our live coverage.
If and when you see the film, be sure to tweet about it and include the #PandorasPromise hash tag and the official handle, @PandorasPromise.
June 7, 2013
NEI on the San Onofre Shutdown
Earlier today, NEI's Steve Kerekes spoke to the Washington Post concerning the announcement today by Southern California Edison that they intended to close the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station:
“This is a situation that is unique to Southern California Edison and the replacement of steam generators at the San Onofre reactors,” said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the NEI, who added that the closures were “a blow to California’s energy diversity.”
He said that “this situation underscores the need for an efficient and effective regulatory process that results in timely decisions on the operation of these critical energy resources.” He said that independent firms had endorsed plans to restart San Onofre’s Unit 2 and that “it’s simply intolerable to delay decisions that impact millions of customers and the company’s obligation to provide electricity to those customers.”
For additional links and coverage, please follow our Twitter feed.
June 7, 2013
Giant Digital Simulator Enhances D.C. Cook Plant Training
NEI’s Top Industry Practice Awards recognize innovation in the nuclear energy industry. Presented at NEI’s annual conference, the awards honor accomplishments that help the industry improve safety, streamline processes and increase efficiency. In a special series of articles this week, Nuclear Energy Overview highlights the challenges and successes of five winners. The winners of the TIP Training Award further enhanced their facility’s training by developing a way for reactor operators to hone their skills through advanced simulator training.
The plant simulation department at American Electric Power’s D.C. Cook facility in Michigan developed a 17-foot-by-7-foot rear-projection touchscreen that supports several different virtual simulations, including control room panels, safety-related field equipment and chemistry training. The system, which also includes computers for 30 students, is designed to mimic the responses of real equipment.
“You flip a switch, you turn a knob, you adjust a knob—everything’s the same,” said simulator supervisor Tim Vriezema.
According to Vriezema, bringing in supervisors and equipment experts was essential to ensure the simulations were as realistic as possible.
“They can tell you what feels wrong. They can say, ‘That responds too quickly,’ ‘This doesn’t feel right,’ so you can fine-tune it,” he said.
Training on simulators rather than on duplicate equipment has benefits for plant operators.
First, “you can actually see how what you’re doing is affecting [the equipment]. The physics behind the model is displayable,” Vriezema said.
Acquiring and maintaining duplicate safety equipment for training purposes would have cost American Electric Power $153,000 more than the simulator training development did. Simulator training also takes place outside of radiation-protected areas, keeping employees out of high-dose areas while they are learning. Vriezema praised the simulation department for its work on the project—not their first to garner recognition throughout the industry.
“It’s a staff of five, and this is the third time we’ve won [a TIP Award]. I have a very, very gifted and creative staff. You throw out an idea and they just run with it.”
June 7, 2013
Why You Can't Trust Joe Mangano and the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League on Radiation and Public Health
Putting that aside, a number of third party experts and journalists have regularly taken turns debunking Mangano's research. In 2011, Michael Moyer of Scientific American said the following about one Mangano study that claimed Americans were suffering from severe health effects in the wake of Fukushima:
[A] check reveals that the authors’ statistical claims are critically flawed—if not deliberate mistruths.
[...]
Only by explicitly excluding data from January and February were Sherman and Mangano able to froth up their specious statistical scaremongering.
This is not to say that the radiation from Fukushima is not dangerous, nor that we shouldn’t closely monitor its potential to spread (we should). But picking only the data that suits your analysis isn’t science—it’s politics. Beware those who would confuse the latter with the former.
Here's a statement from Ralph Andersen, NEI's chief health physicist regarding Mangano's track record:
Mr. Mangano's allegations of health effects associated with emissions from nuclear power plants have been reviewed in detail and repeatedly discredited by at least 8 state and 2 county public health departments, as well as the USNRC, as follows:
USNRC; State of Connecticut; State of Florida; State of Illinois; State of New Jersey; State of New York; State of Pennsylvania; State of Minnesota; State of Michigan; Westchester County, NY and Suffolk County, NY.
In fact, we are not aware of any federal, state, or local government public health departments that have reviewed Mr. Mangano's allegations and found them to be credible.
As for BREDL, they have a dubious track record of their own. Back in 2007, our own David Bradish took a closer look at some of BREDL's claims in regards to Plant Vogtle in Georgia and found ample evidence that BREDL manipulated the numbers to "fit their presumptive conclusions."
June 7, 2013
NextEra Sets Record With 700-MW Power Uprate
NEI’s Top Industry Practice Awards recognize innovation in the nuclear energy industry. Presented at NEI’s annual conference, the awards honor accomplishments that help the industry improve safety, streamline processes and increase efficiency.
In a special series of articles this week, our publication Nuclear Energy Overview highlights the challenges and successes of five winners.
This year’s Westinghouse Combustion Engineering Award went to a gargantuan project—NextEra Energy completed the largest extended power uprate project in history, adding more than 700 megawatts of additional generating capacity across four reactors in Florida and two in Wisconsin.
With more than 30 million hours worked to complete the uprate, NextEra’s project called on a workforce of thousands, an economic boon to the communities that host the facilities.
Terry Jones, vice president of nuclear power uprates, stressed the importance of instilling in the workers the nuclear energy industry’s safety culture.
“They understand how we work, how we’re just absolutely fanatical when it comes to safety,” Jones said.
Much of the workforce was new to the nuclear industry, but extensive training, on-site coaching and daily feedback ensured the work was performed safely and efficiently.
A major workforce challenge was coordinating the logistics of so many workers.
“On any given day, you’re dealing with a workforce that’s in excess of 3,000, in addition to your normal plant staff,” Jones said. “You had to set up a traffic control just to be able to get the workforce to and from the sites in a safe manner.”
The benefits of an extensive workforce outweighed the challenges, however.
“We provided a tremendous amount of employment and economic benefit to the region. We were employing more than 3,500 workers on any given day on average, and about 50 percent of that workforce was Floridian,” Jones said.
He added that NextEra will see many long-term benefits from the uprates.
“You’ve got a more modern plant that will result in improved reliability. You’ve got fuel cost savings for the customer. You’ve got greater fuel diversification. You’re reducing CO2 emissions,” Jones said.
June 6, 2013
Duke Examines 6,500 Oconee Reactor Parts in One Refueling Outage
NEI’s Top Industry Practice Awards recognize innovation in the nuclear energy industry. Presented at NEI’s annual conference, the awards honor accomplishments that help the industry improve safety, streamline processes and increase efficiency.
In a special series of articles this week, our publication Nuclear Energy Overview highlights the challenges and successes of five winners.
Rachel Doss’ team at Duke Energy’s Oconee nuclear energy facility in South Carolina earned the 2013 AREVA Vendor Award, but its project—developing and implementing guidelines for inspecting and evaluating pressurized water reactor internals—was many years in the making.
Rather than scheduling reactor internal inspections over multiple refueling outages, Duke’s winning team performed one of the industry’s largest-ever reactor vessel inspections, examining more than 6,500 reactor components during one outage at the Oconee 1 reactor.
Its scope required planning with vendors, performing numerous risk assessments and developing contingency plans.
“The engineering work contract was in place three years in advance of the project. The inspection service to get all of the tooling developed, that was in place two and a half years in advance. We started our biweekly calls one and a half to two years in advance of the inspections,” said Doss, a fleet programs engineer with Duke Energy.
“Because we started planning so far in advance, we were able to come up with a list of unknowns prior to the outage,” Doss said. The team was then able to gather reactor vessel measurements and develop new tools that allowed inspections to be performed remotely and in parallel with other work, helping the company avoid the high costs of completing the work over the course of multiple outages.
June 5, 2013
What Gets Sacrificed in a Nuclear Energy Shutdown
Writer Mark Gunther over at the Energy Collective talks about his hesitation to renew his Greenpeace membership:
If Greenpeace manages to persuade the US or other governments to "eliminate nuclear power"- that's what the headline [of the renewal letter] says - the risk of catastrophic climate change will grow much worse. Climate activists [and]environmentalists who support nuclear power include Stewart Brand (in his excellent book Whole Earth Discipline), ex-DOE chief Steven Chu, contrarians Michael Shellenberger and Ted Norhaus (see Going Green? Then Go Nuclear), the former British prime minister Tony Blair, economist Jeffrey Sachs and ex-NASA scientist James Hansen.
You could throw in current DOE Secretary Ernest Moniz (“Moniz is an advocate for a low-carbon future and has, in a variety of forums, promoted the use of nuclear energy to get there.” – from the National Journal) and President Barack Obama if you want.
Gunther also brings up our old bête noir Germany and points to an excellent article in Der Spiegel about the destruction being wrought in the name of renewable energy. This stood out:
Although this conflict touches all political parties, none is more affected than the Greens. Since the party's founding in 1980, it has championed a nuclear phase out and fought for clean energy. But now that this phase out is underway, the Greens are realizing a large part of their dream -- the utopian idea of a society operating on "good" power -- is vanishing into thin air. Green energy, they have found, comes at an enormous cost. And the environment will also pay a price if things keep going as they have been.
The working cliché here is “Be careful what you wish for.” Why? We’ve talked about the land needs of wind and solar power, but biomass also has requirements.
Martin Kaiser, a forest expert with Greenpeace, gets up on a thick stump and points in a circle. "Mighty, old beech trees used to stand all over here," he says. Now the branches of the felled giants lie in large piles on the ground. Here and there, lone bare-branch survivors project into the sky.
Kaiser says this is "a climate-policy disaster" and estimates that this clear-cutting alone will release more than 1,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Kaiser and Greenpeace are none-too-happy about this outcome, but all those mighty beech trees have been repurposed to facilitate clean renewable energy,right? (Honestly, this consequence had not occurred to me – but it is potentially worse than the land mass required for solar and wind – destroying both an effective counter to carbon dioxide and a country’s natural legacy.) Germany doesn’t appear to be taking much care in how it gets to where it wants to go. Let’s hope it finds the right balance as it proceeds.
The Der Spiegel article is worth a careful read – it describes a situation like that in the Luis Bunuel faux-documentary Land Without Bread, in which efforts by the Spanish government to help the people of an impoverished region of the country only makes their lives far, far worse. (Probably, much of what the old surrealist depicts in the movie is made up, but his point is valid – as Germany is showing.)
But back to Mark Gunther. Does he renew with Greenpeace? – well, it’s only fair to go over to the Energy Collective and find out yourself. But his conclusion is valid whatever he decides:
We don't need an all-of-the-above energy strategy--that's folly, if it includes burning lots of fossil fuels--but we do need an all-of-the-above low carbon energy strategy, led by a strong commitment to renewables and energy efficiency, but including nuclear and some natural gas (ideally with carbon capture) to provide affordable baseload power. [bold in original]
I might add that fossil fuels represent a major industry with many workers – a Germany-like move here would devastate the economy of several states and pitch a lot of folks onto the street – but Gunther has the right idea withal.
June 5, 2013
Shift in Clinton Plant Refueling Cycle Increases Efficiency
NEI’s Top Industry Practice Awards recognize innovation in the nuclear energy industry. Presented at NEI’s annual conference, the awards honor accomplishments that help the industry improve safety, streamline processes and increase efficiency.
In a special series of articles this week, our publication Nuclear Energy Overview highlights the challenges and successes of five winners.
Eight-time TIP Award winner Jim Tusar is no stranger to ambitious projects. His most recent, which earned this year’s GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy Award, is no exception.
The industry standard is to schedule refueling and maintenance outages once every 18 months or two years, but Tusar and his team at Exelon Nuclear pioneered an annual outage schedule at the Clinton Power Station in Illinois.
“The idea came from acknowledging the value of [the facility] was decreasing due to the fact we had such high fuel costs, and at the same time power prices were decreasing,” said Tusar, Exelon Nuclear’s manager of nuclear fuels. “We knew that we had to do something to improve the asset value of Clinton, and the main thing to attack would be the fuel, because we can’t control the electricity prices.”
More than 40 percent of the reactor’s fuel needed to be replaced every two years.
“It’s not efficient. You’re not utilizing fuel well in that scenario,” Tusar said.
The Exelon team conducted studies with their fuel vendor, Global Nuclear Fuel, and found that an annual outage cycle would cut costs significantly.
The new schedule will alternate the typical refueling and maintenance outage with a short (13-day) outage dedicated to refueling only. The refuel-only outage is achievable because of a new core design strategy that minimizes the number of fuel moves, leaving some fuel assemblies in the same location from one cycle to the next.
The team also needed to determine the best time of year to schedule the annual outage. Exelon owns and operates 16 other reactors, so “we don’t want to overlap with any other outages. It’s a resource concern,” Tusar said. Nor did the company want to schedule an outage for summer, when power demands are highest and replacement power is costly.
The path to an annual fuel cycle is still unfolding. Clinton will begin a transitional 18-month fuel cycle this October, which will lead to a May 2015 start date for the first annual outage cycle.
June 5, 2013
Rep. John Shimkus on Yucca Mountain: Can You Hear Me Now?
Earlier today, the Chicago Tribune published an op-ed by the dogged Rep. Shimkus entitled, "Nuclear waster: The name is Yucca Mountain." Though the full text of the article is behind one of those dreaded paywalls, we've excerpted a few choice passages for your reading pleasure.
After spending $15 billion analyzing it [Yucca Mountain], the Department of Energy in 2008 finally filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission an application for a license to build and operate the project. Numbering nearly 10,000 pages, the application addressed every imaginable question of safety and environmental protection.
Later that year the tide turned. Then-Sen. Barack Obama promised to do what he could to halt Yucca Mountain. Procedural maneuvers in Congress and at the NRC helped Obama make good on that promise, even though the votes were still there to support the project in the House and the Senate.
Since then, some stakeholders and policymakers have asked, "Why don't we step back from the Yucca Mountain standoff and start looking for an alternative?" Because we share a sense of urgency to resolve the issue, my colleagues and I who have spent years working on this issue have carefully reviewed these ideas.
However, a close look confirms our belief that building a repository at Yucca Mountain would still be the fastest, best and most viable solution.
{...]
We are all frustrated by the failure to dispose of nuclear waste on the timetable provided in current law. However, assessing the pros and cons of interim storage, it does not seem to offer either economic or safety benefits. It would divert time, effort and resources away from actually solving the waste problem once and for all. Citizens want a sound nuclear policy and a safe solution for spent nuclear fuel disposal. The current law focusing on the Nevada project remains the best solution and, in time, the most likely to succeed.
Rep. Shimkus doesn't only deal with Yucca Mountain in print, he also makes a point of talking about it on the floor of the house with some frequency. Here's one statement from March 20, 2013:
New Welding Process Saves Calvert Cliffs $17.5 Million
NEI’s Top Industry Practice Awards recognize innovation in the nuclear energy industry. Presented at NEI’s annual conference, the awards honor accomplishments that help the industry improve safety, streamline processes and increase efficiency.
In a special series of articles this week, our publication Nuclear Energy Overview highlights the challenges and successes of five winners.
The staff at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear energy facility developed a new welding process that not only has improved efficiency at the plant but also saved millions of dollars.
The project earned a team from the plant the B. Ralph Sylvia Best of the Best Award, which honors the highest achievement among all TIP Award winners.
Led by Lennie Daniels, a senior project manager at Constellation Energy Nuclear Group, the team streamlined the welding required to install pressurizer lower head heater nozzles and level nozzles.
The results of the new process, known as “Mini-ID Temper Bead Welding,” are significant. For example, the volume of weld material needed was cut by 90 percent, and the time spent welding one installation dropped from 18 hours to four hours. Putting the new welding process in practice at Calvert Cliffs ultimately saved the company $17.5 million and 583 critical path hours during its maintenance outage.
Before replacing nozzles in 119 high-radiation-dose locations, the team put in plenty of time up front to optimize the entire process. With the welding to be performed on a platform eight feet in diameter 30 feet in the air, the team at the Maryland facility rehearsed the procedures on a full-scale mockup.
“It was while practicing the entire thing from start to finish that we could find those little … kinds of things that you’d never, ever think of,” said Daniels.
Daniels cited solutions like building a stairwell so that crews didn’t need to carry heavy tools up and down a ladder and changing small components of a work platform to make it maneuverable.
“It was the little user-friendly enhancements that went a long way to help us be successful,” he said.
June 4, 2013
National Academy of Sciences Says Offshore Fisheries in Japan and California Remain Safe
Physicists argue that the Fukushima nuclear disaster was less damaging to the global fishing industry than early media reports led people to believe, according to a new report published today in PNAS. This report comes on the heels of United Nations prouncement that no foreseeable health effects are expected from the accident among the general public and the vast majority of workers from the plant.
[...]
Two surveys in 2012, also published in PNAS, calculated radioactive contamination in marine life in waters near the accident as well as from tuna that had migrated to shores near San Diego, Calif. In contrast to the ports in immediate vicinity of Fukushima, which remain closed to fishing to this day, the offshore regions of Japan and California were deemed safe.
"[Radiation] Doses to Japanese consumers were calculated to be higher than to American seafood consumers, but were still very low in most circumstances," said co-author Dr. Nicholas Fisher, Ph.D., distinguished professor at SUNY Stony Brook School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.
Both studies identified nuclear particles - cesium-134 and cesium-137 - in these marine ecosytems, but maintained that "radiation risks are below those generally considered harmful to marine animals and human consumers."
Despite this reassuring conclusion, over 1,000 stories appeared in newspapers, television, internet media, and radio outlets, with much of the coverage exaggerating the dangers posed to the seafood industry.
In the immediate aftermath of a crisis like Fukushima, it's normal for news reporting to overstate the risks, but the scientists at the National Academy make it fairly clear that the contemporary reporting in this case was further off base than usual:
"The main point of this paper is that the radiation doses (and attendant risks) to human consumers eating Pacific bluefin tuna are likely to be extremely low, indeed orders of magnitude lower than that from naturally occurring radiation in the fish," said Fisher.
The researchers estimated that, on an annual basis, the average seafood lover would consume 600 times more natural radiation than Fukushima-related radioactivity. They argue that 95 percent more radioactive potassium would be ingested by eating a common banana.
For a recreational fisherman, who the authors assumed eat about five times more seafood, the radiation dose from Pacific bluefin tuna would amount to a routine dentist's X-ray, which would increase their chances of developing cancer by 0.00002 percent.
Bloomberg has up a pretty good story about the state of nuclear energy in Japan today. The country is currently enjoying some economic gains, but the weak yen is proving a mixed blessing. It’s good for exports but terrible for imports - Or to put it more specifically, it’s good for Japan’s industries but bad for importing massive amounts of coal and natural gas to fill in the nuclear gap. Anti-nuclear forces have lost vigor and local officials (which have to approve the restart of any local nuclear facility) are relenting on keeping the plants shut.
The article is nicely done and makes a fairly complex topic easier to understand. Still this paragraph stuck out as oddly wrong headed:
The real challenge is the local governments, which have veto rights. Surprisingly, a recent poll among 135 cities located in nuclear evacuation zones showed that 49 percent of mayors would agree to a restart. The official (what Japanese call “tatemae”) argument is: Nobody likes to live near such a plant, but there they are, as toxic as ever (though certainly less volatile than when switched on), and we don’t know much about disposing of unused nuclear-power plants. So, we might as well turn them back on. The real (“honne”) story is that the plant owner/operators -- the ten local monopolists that run Japan’s energy system -- pay their annual “dues” to the localities, not just in the form of jobs but straight money to communities and incumbent local governments.
Writer Ulrike Schaede does not tell how he decided that these were the tatemae and honne stories, but both are breathtakingly cynical – I’m not sure why the first is even considered a viable argument to offer the public.
Allowing for the trauma of the Fukushima Daiichi accident – and it would be wrong to soft pedal it, even if the end result is the complete closure of all the facilities – I cannot imagine the mayors being so blasé in the first instance or so rapacious in the second.
Let’s take a look at that second part again:
The real (“honne”) story is that the plant owner/operators -- the ten local monopolists that run Japan’s energy system -- pay their annual “dues” to the localities, not just in the form of jobs but straight money to communities and incumbent local governments.
This sounds exceptionally sinister and corrupt. But what is being said here is that the facilities (or their shadowy monopolist overlords) employ local people and contribute to their communities. But don’t these activities constitute good corporate behavior?
Those “incumbent local governments” have kept the plants shut for the last two years, so they do seem to follow the public will even at the cost of a honey deal. And as public opinion starts to move back in the direction of restarting the plants, so does the government change its view. One might wish that officials would do what is best for their citizens rather than follow the variable whims of public opinion, but it’s not diabolical. If it were, virtually every politician everywhere would be in Hell (easy one – go for it!)
Rather than precipitously decommission all the facilities, Japan’s government (or governments – it’s more “volatile” than a running nuclear plant) instead waited to see if the passage of time would smooth over understandably sharp public displeasure. It seems to be happening, as the article points out. Schaede really has done a good job here - but the shadow thrown over local government does seem badly overstated, unfair and without much basis.
June 3, 2013
NEA 2013 CEO Panel Video is Must See TV for Nuclear Energy Industry Watchers
Over the past few weeks, we've gotten multiple requests from our member companies to distribute video of the most popular panel discussion at the 2013 Nuclear Energy Assembly. The clip embedded below is from a panel discussion between four industry CEOs: Tom Farrell of Dominion Resources; Chris Crane of Exelon; Tom Fanning of Southern Company; and Tony Alexander of FirstEnergy Corp. The topic: "Navigating Uncharted Seas: CEO Perspectives on the Electricity Business."
The discussion, moderated by Dominion's Farrell, was both frank and free-wheeling. If you really want to get some insight into the issues nuclear operators are facing these days in both regulated and merchant markets, this 31-minute video is a great place to start.
Now, we understand that not everyone is going to have 30 minutes to devote to watching the entire discussion. That's why we're hard at work back at the office editing this same video into smaller bites that can be digested more easily in a single sitting. Look for those sound bites sometime in the next week or so.
May 31, 2013
Taking a Closer Look at South Korea, Section 123 and the "Gold Standard" When it Comes to Nonproliferation
Ted Jones of NEI
The following is a guest post by Ted Jones, Director of International Supplier Relations for NEI.
Global Security Newswire recently published an article that quotes Tom Moore, a well-regarded nonproliferation expert at CSIS, that South Korea is a “gold standard state.” Mr. Moore has graciously posted my response to this assessment of South Korea in a blog post at Arms Control Wonk. In my comment, I explain that while it may be correct that South Korea’s domestic development of enrichment or reprocessing technologies is inconsistent with the 1992 Joint Declaration on Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, the pact between the Koreas is distinct from the “gold standard.” I argue that conflating the two commitments obscures a critical lesson that the case of South Korea can offer to U.S. policymakers about the “gold standard” as a universal policy:
The important lesson of U.S.-ROK nuclear cooperation is that a Section 123 agreement without the “gold standard” can nonetheless be an essential instrument of U.S. influence on international nuclear security and nonproliferation. The most powerful source of U.S. influence over South Korea’s E&R policies and activities is the U.S. consent right, contained in the current Section 123 agreement, over South Korea’s reprocessing of U.S.-origin fuel. The long-term successor agreement will extend this consent right to used fuel from non-U.S. reactors, and to South Korea’s enrichment and storage of plutonium or highly-enriched uranium. These consent rights, plus 8 other nonproliferation assurances and guarantees, are required in a “standard” Section 123 agreement. It is also important to note that the extensive U.S.-ROK commercial partnerships enabled by the agreement have significantly enhanced U.S. influence over nuclear energy both in South Korea and in markets, such as UAE, supplied by ROK in partnership with U.S. companies.
As the United States resumes negotiations of the long-term successor agreement with South Korea, plus 6 other renewal agreements set to expire by 2015 and new agreements with Vietnam, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, it is crucial that the consequences of tying U.S. nuclear cooperation to acceptance of the gold standard are clearly understood. Among the 10 agreements, only Taiwan has indicated its willingness to forswear E&R in a Section 123 agreement. Given that Taiwan committed to the United States decades ago never to acquire E&R, its willingness to incorporate its existing commitment into a Section 123 agreement represents little change. Vietnam and Jordan have made clear that they are not interested in negotiating Section 123 agreements that would require them to forfeit E&R rights. Negotiations with both countries began in 2010. Talks with Saudi Arabia began last year, and it is doubtful whether Saudi Arabia will accept the U.S. request to forswear E&R.
The reporter of the Global Security Newswire article, Elaine Grossman, also gives the misleading impression in writing that “other nations have gone in the opposite direction [on enrichment and reprocessing] – most notably the United Arab Emirates.” In fact, no other nation has followed UAE in accepting the “gold standard.” She mentions that Taiwan is “poised to offer a similar pledge,” but neglects to point out that Taiwan already has a decades-old commitment to the United States not to develop enrichment or reprocessing technologies. And Ms. Grossman omits that multiple negotiations of Section 123 agreements remain snagged on the “gold standard” issue. This leaves an impression of an emerging trend of countries forswearing enrichment and reprocessing rights, when in fact the opposite is the case.
“In coming years, reaching [climate] goals can't be done without nuclear power.”
We never forget that nuclear energy has a lot to offer in climate change mitigation, a fact that can get lost in the enthusiasm for natural gas. So it never hurts to be reminded of it, especially when the one doing the reminding has some heat.
European Commissioner for Energy, Gunther Oettinger, Thursday said the European Union's goals to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and combat climate change can only be reached with an energy mix including nuclear power.
"Without a doubt nuclear energy belongs to the [mix]," Mr. Oettinger said. "In coming years reaching [climate] goals can't be done without nuclear power."
Oettinger, by the way, is German. His comments have a special tang that must cause heartburn in Berlin, even as closing the nuclear plants there causes unnecessary distress. But he has some solid reasons for taking this tack beyond emissions control.
Mr. Oettinger's comments come as Europe faces serious economic headwinds partly due to fast-rising electricity prices for industry and retail consumers despite wholesale energy prices at record lows.
Due to nuclear energy or even natural gas? Well, no.
This is largely due to the mass rollout of renewable power generation using technologies that are still unprofitable and require subsidies paid by end-users.
Oettinger doesn’t directly take a swipe at his own country, but he insists that each EU member be allowed to make its own decision about its energy choices. Writer Sean Carney finds that this idea (and support for nuclear energy) has fans at least in the Czech Republic and Slovakia (Carney is covering a nuclear-centered conference in Prague).
Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas, speaking at the conference, said nuclear power is a "completely legitimate" source of power and can play a role in the decarbonization of the European economy.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said that the use of nuclear energy is a sovereign decision for each country.
Necas echoes Oettinger’s view that nuclear energy is key to “decarbonization.” And if that’s the goal, it’s an accurate observation. We’re fairly neutral on why a country might choose nuclear energy for electricity and/or process heat – there’s a laundry list of good reasons – and Oettinger seems focused on price as well as emissions.
In Eastern Europe (my views here are probably dated), it can do yeoman work in mitigating acid rain, too. But whatever the reasons Necas and Fico might have to implement nuclear energy (Slovakia has reactors in progress), good for them. Good for their countries.
The change in nuclear's fortunes is staggering, given that the U.S. is the world's largest producer of nuclear power, according to the World Nuclear Association. The country's 104 reactors account for more than 30 percent of nuclear electricity generation worldwide.
Which to me reads as, “it’s amazing nuclear energy is so successful given what a rank failure it is.” Downright staggering, in fact.
The reversal of fortune, which has reared up is one article or another at least once a month since the Fukushima Daiichi accident, has always been about 80 percent rhetorical, essentially a way to render nuclear energy irrelevant even as it refuses to actually be irrelevant.
It can take a lot of forms, but variations on this one are frequent enough to note:
Decreased consumption, increased energy efficiency, wind and solar, with back up from geothermal, hydropower, and biomass will get us to zero coal, zero nuclear, minimal carbon dioxide.
Which sounds so very, very good, doesn’t it? In reality, though, it is the solution of a resource-wealthy people in a rich, industrialized country. It makes one feel justified in one’s choices, in the way choosing a salad instead of a pastrami sandwich for lunch can make one feel justified – because one has those choices. It gives a perceived deprivation a tang of the saintly.
But that’s not true in much of the world, where deprivation – of energy and a lot else – is endemic. And it won’t really work. We can get to “minimal carbon dioxide” but not through feel-good solutions alone. And the rest of the world must be allowed to electrify and industrialize – the developed world can’t choose now to shut down progress in the developing world (and couldn’t succeed at doing so anyhow.)
Really, a better way to trace the fortunes of nuclear energy is to depend on what is simply true – which is often pretty upbeat:
Exelon Generation said Wednesday that it has applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for 20-year license extensions at its Byron and Braidwood generating stations, which would allow the plants to operate into the middle of the century.
You’ll notice that Exelon doesn’t seem too staggered by nuclear energy’s reversal of fortune.
A recent poll of 2,034 people in the UK showed broad overall support for new nuclear plants, with more people in favor of public subsidies for reactor development than opposed to them.
Hundreds of anti-nuke protesters rallied in the Taiwanese capital Taipei calling to vote down a referendum bill and terminate the launch of the island’s fourth nuclear power plant, amid mounting concerns since the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
So not always upbeat. But not, in aggregate, indicating a slide into irrelevance.
Maybe we should just not see energy choices as having reversible fortunes, like champion dogs at the dog race. Some days are better than others, but most of them are pretty similar and not especially grim.
December 5, 2012
JCC Energy Consulting Business Buys National Competitor
James City County-based Energy Services Group International (ESG) announced Monday that it acquired BCP Technical Services (BCP), a New Orleans-based engineering and management consulting firm.
Founded in 1983 and headquartered in Toano, ESG recruits and employs engineers and other highly skilled technical personnel for long-term assignments, primarily in the commercial nuclear power industry but also in the fossil, solar and wind power generation sectors. ESG and BCP are competitors, but each company has different clients and provides a different range of services, according to a press release from ESG.
Once the acquisition is complete, BCP will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of ESG and the company and its affiliates will employ over 850 full time employees. BCP’s current management team will continue to operate the business out of its Louisiana and Florida offices.
“The addition of BCP is a transformative event in ESG’s history, and reflects our commitment to growing as a premier energy services company,” said Tom Gillman, President and Chief Executive Officer of ESG.
“With BCP as part of our organization, we will expand our footprint to cover the entire US and that will enable us to move our resources from project to project more efficiently. ESG’s services align with the energy industry’s philosophy of maintaining a balance between outsourced workers and in-house employees in order to deliver the highest level of service in a cost-effective manner.” BCP also provides forensic accounting and in-core detector maintenance and replacement to the power industry. ESG and BCP clients are mostly blue-chip power companies, including Dominion Resources, Duke Energy, Florida Power & Light, Entergy, TVA, Exelon, Southern Company, FirstEnergy and PSE&G Nuclear.
Gillman expects good things to come of the purchase. “BCP is a growing and profitable company led by a solid, respected team of executives,” he said. “There is little overlap in our respective customer bases, which we expect will allow us to significantly enhance business development opportunities resulting from the combined competencies and relationships of BCP and ESG.”
February 2, 2011
ESGI Enters Into Master Agreement for Supply of Contract Labor with Southern Nuclear Company
Toano, Virginia—Energy Services Group International (ESGI) has entered into a Master Services Agreement with Southern Nuclear Company (SNC) to supply professional contract labor to SNC’s nuclear power plants (Vogtle, Hatch, and Farley), as well as SNC’s home office in Birmingham, AL. This three-year agreement has initially resulted in ESGI being requested to provide Instrument and Control personnel at Plant Vogtle for their March 2011 outage. While initially focused on SNC’s nuclear fleet, the Agreement may be expanded in scope to encompass fossil units in the Southern Company System as well. For more information, please contact Bill Bruce or Tom Bond of ESGI at 757-741-4040.
January 13, 2011
ESGI Offers Boiler Circ Pump Assistance
Toano, Virginia—Energy Services Group International (ESGI) is now offering expert technical support to those utilities with CE boilers incorporating Boiler Water Circulating Pumps (BWCPs.) Dick Smith, a BWCP specialist for the past 30 years, is heading up ESGI’s effort to bring cost-effective know-how to those plants requiring either on-site or off-site assistance. Smith can direct your crews on-site in removal and re-installation, inspection, and repair. If a pump fails, he can perform failure analysis, and he can review your inventory for spare parts optimization. Away from the power plant, Smith can oversee inspections and all phases of overhaul, including stator re-winds. For more information, contact Tom Bond of ESGI at 757-741-4040, or TBond@esgi.net.
January 13, 2011
ESGI Introduces Utility SWAT Team
Toano, Virginia---Energy Services Group International (ESGI) has formed the Fossil and Hydro SWAT Team, designed to provide results-oriented consulting services for power plant managers looking for positive changes in their operations. This team will allow utility clients the opportunity to leverage over 100 years of combined experience and know-how. Comprised of Randy Sizemore (Safety), Bruce Easley (Environmental), and Garrett Nolen (Maintenance), the ESGI SWAT Team can augment the strained resources at the plant level to bring fresh insight and new thinking to the problems that inhibit excellence in operations. Working separately or in combination, they can use their expertise to create and implement unique solutions to your most troublesome issues. For more information, or to schedule a no-obligation initial discussion, please contact Lee Stocks at ESGI, at 757-741-4040, or lstocks@esgi.net
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