Rolling Blackouts for New England? Angwin Op-Ed

Mystic Power Station

Rolling blackouts

Rolling blackouts are probably coming to New England sooner than expected.

When there’s not enough supply of electricity to meet demand, an electric grid operator cuts power to one section of the grid to keep the rest of the grid from failing.  After a while, the operator restores the power to the blacked-out area and moves the blackout on to another section. The New England grid operator (ISO-NE) recently completed a major study of various scenarios for the near-term future (2024-2025) of the grid, including the possibilities of rolling blackouts.

In New England, blackouts are expected to occur during the coldest weather, because that is when the grid is most stressed. Rolling blackouts add painful uncertainty – and danger – to everyday life.  You aren’t likely to know when a blackout will happen, because most grid operators have a policy that announcing a blackout would attract crime to the area.

Exelon announces plan to close Mystic Station

In early April, Exelon said that it would close two large natural-gas fired units at Mystic Station, Massachusetts. In its report about possibilities for the winter of 2024-25, ISO-NE had included the loss of these two plants as one of its scenarios. The ISO-NE report concluded that Mystic’s possible closure would lead to 20 to 50 hours of load shedding (rolling blackouts) and hundreds of hours of grid operation under emergency protocols.

When Exelon made its closure announcement, ISO-NE realized that the danger of rolling blackouts was suddenly more immediate than 2024.  ISO-NE now hopes to grant “out of market cost recovery” (that is, subsidies) to persuade Exelon to keep the Mystic plants operating. If ISO-NE gets FERC permission for the subsidies, some of the threat of blackouts will retreat a few years into the future.

Winter scenarios and natural gas

The foremost challenge to grid reliability is the inability of power plants to get fuel in winter.  So ISO-NE  modeled various scenarios, such as winter-long outages at key energy facilities, and difficulty or ease of delivering Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) to existing plants.

Ominously, 19 of the 23 of the ISO-NE scenarios led to rolling blackouts. The worst scenarios, with the longest blackouts, included a long outage at a nuclear plant or a long-lasting failure of a gas pipeline compressor.

A major cause of these grid problems is that the New England grid is heavily dependent on natural gas. Power plants using natural gas supply about 50% of New England’s electricity on a year-round basis. Pipelines give priority to delivering gas for home heating over delivering gas to power plants. In the winter, some power plants cannot get enough gas to operate. Other fuels have to take up the slack. But coal and nuclear generators are retiring, and with them goes needed capacity. In general, the competing-for-natural-gas problem will get steadily worse over time.

All the ISO-NE scenarios assumed that no new oil, coal, or nuclear plants are built, some existing plants will close, and no new pipelines are constructed. Their scenarios included renewable buildouts, transmission line construction, increased delivery of LNG, plant outages and compressor outages.

Natural gas and LNG

The one “no-problem” scenario (no load shedding, no emergency procedures) is one where everything goes right. It assumed no major pipeline or power plant outages. It included a large renewable buildout plus greatly increased LNG delivery, despite difficult winter weather. This no-problem scenario also assumes a minimum number of retirements of coal, oil and nuclear plants.

This positive scenario is dependent on increased LNG deliveries from abroad. Thanks to the Jones Act, New England cannot obtain domestic LNG. There are no LNG carriers flying an American flag, and the Jones Act prevents foreign carriers from delivering American goods to American ports.

We can plan to import more electricity, but ISO-NE  notes that such imports are also problematic.  Canada has extreme winter weather (and curtails electricity exports) at the same time that New England has extreme weather and a stressed grid.

New England needs a diverse grid

To avoid blackouts, we need to diversify our energy supply beyond renewables and natural gas to have a grid that can reliably deliver power in all sorts of weather.  When we close nuclear and coal plants and don’t build gas pipelines, we increase our weather-vulnerable dependency on imported LNG.

We need to keep existing nuclear, hydro, coal and oil plants available to meet peak demands, even if it takes subsidies.  Coal is a problem fuel, but running a coal plant for a comparatively short time in bad weather is a better choice than rolling blackouts.

This can’t happen overnight. It has to be planned for. If we don’t diversify our electricity supply, we will have to get used to enduring rolling blackouts.
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Meredith Angwin is a retired physical chemist and a member of the ISO-NE consumer advisory group. She headed the Ethan Allen Institute’s Energy Education Project and her latest book is Campaigning for Clean Air.

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This op-ed has now appeared in several websites and news outlets. Links below to the post in other publications, some of which have comment streams.
This post at Ethan Allen Institute, The Caledonian Record, Vermont Business Magazine, VTDigger, True North Reports,  The Commons, New England Diary   Providence Journal, Rhode Island and New England May Get Hit with Rolling Blackouts in the Future, including an interview with me, appeared in GoLocalProv.com

Special note: My op-ed has now appeared in my local paper, the Valley News, on the front page of the Sunday "Perspectives" section.  It is always a thrill to see my work in my local paper!

The Oil-filled Grid: Communications

Early January Nor'Easter
Wikimedia, NOAA

Oil on the Grid

About two weeks ago, I wrote a blog post The Northeast Grid and the Oil. This described our early-January polar weather, and how Northeastern power plants could not get enough natural gas in the below-zero weather. Homes had priority for natural gas delivery, and plants that could use oil switched from natural gas to oil.

As a matter of fact, the oil stocks were also getting depleted.

I want to update the cold-snap story with some other posts. The general public doesn't read my blog, so I did some outreach. I wrote an op-ed about the grid for my local paper, the Valley News.  The op-ed was printed on the front page of the Sunday Perspective section on January 28, and has been shared around 200 times on Facebook. Oil Kept the Power Grid Running in Recent Cold Snap.

Why were people so interested in the article?  Because a secure electric supply is an important part of personal safety during extremely cold weather.  Most home furnaces require electricity to spread the warmth into the household. People who have chosen heat pumps are also dependent on reliable electricity.

Nuclear plants and pipelines and controversy, oh my!

There were more articles on the situation, of course, not just mine.  Actually, I think there were too few articles.  Nearly running out of oil when you can't get gas---this can be a major deal during severe winter weather! I will point out some interesting articles, and I hope that people who read this will send links to a few more.

Rod Adams post described the "sobering statements" made by the grid operator about oil supply, and the weird statements made by nuclear opponents.  (Pilgrim should have shut down before the storm? Really?) He shares some graphics from ISO-NE on the weak performance of solar panels during the days of the crisis.  He also discusses Pilgrim going off-line, and whether that could have been prevented. As usual, his post has an active and informed stream of comments. Performance of the New England power grid during extreme cold Dec 25-Jan 8, at Atomic Insights blog.

Meanwhile, over at Forbes, several columnists were commenting on the situation.
Jude Clemente wrote What Happens When You Don't Build Natural Gas Pipeline
David Blackman wrote Amid Deep Freeze, New Englanders Can 'Thank' N.Y. Gov Cuomo For Their High Energy Bills
Christopher Helman wrote Natural Gas Demand Hits Record As Cold Bomb Targets Northeast

Over WBUR radio, Bruce Gellerman has a fascinating seven minute segment on how the power plants actually operated during the cold snap, including an interview with a manager of a peaker plant that runs about 800 hours a year. Do We Need More Natural Gas Pipelines?

There's a lot of controversy built into all these articles. The role of nuclear.  The need (or not-need) for more natural gas pipelines. Will new emissions regulations make handling the next cold snap much harder? Did renewables make a great contribution during the cold snap?  Or not?

The Electric Supply

A steady electric supply is hugely important to winter safety. In my opinion, it should not be such a subject of controversy.  My hope is that  reason will prevail, and we will have the nuclear plants, pipelines and energy security that we need.

Why Electricity Costs Spiked in New England: My Op-ed

Why Are the Rates Rising?

A Valley News "Forum" letter writer was speaking for many recently when he asked about the huge electric rate increases this winter and the paltry explanations for them. David C. Montgomery of Hanover said his electricity bill had increased by 72 percent, even as petroleum products have dropped in cost. “All we have seen,’’ he wrote, “is a rather unconvincing claim about the need for more natural gas pipelines in New England and a series of what seem to be diversionary workshops on insulation.”

His letter states the problem succinctly. Oil prices are down. Gasoline prices are down to levels not seen for years. Natural gas prices are still low. “The need for more pipelines” does seem a rather weak claim, compared to the cheapness of the commodity carried in them. Also, why would we need more pipelines now, when we didn’t need them five years ago? The demand hasn’t changed that much.

The answer is that the grid itself has changed in our region. Power plants have been retired: Salem, Mt. Tom, Vermont Yankee. When coal and nuclear plants shut down, existing gas plants run longer and use more fuel, to make up for that power. More gas-fired plants are also being planned for the future.

More Gas Needed

Around 2000, about 15 percent of New England’s electricity was made by burning natural gas. Gas was expensive, and used only during times of peak demand. The rest of the time, electricity was supplied by a mixture of coal, nuclear, oil and hydro. Back then, with only 15 percent of electricity coming from natural gas, pipelines to the Northeast were adequate.

Now, the price of natural gas has fallen, and nearly half of our electricity demand is met with the newly inexpensive natural gas. With increased demand, the pipelines are no longer adequate. Particularly during very cold weather, when homes use more natural gas for heating, there isn’t enough available for power plants.

Last year, when temperatures plummeted and natural gas ran short, power plants burned oil, diesel and even jet fuel. The price on the grid went up as utilities bought power produced with more-expensive fuels. Last year, bulk electricity prices often soared past 40 cents per kWh (kilowatt hour) during times of high demand. (It’s usually 3 to 8 cents per kWh.) You can track realtime prices on the grid operator site (ISO-NE) on the Web.

Other costs also go up when power plants retire, but these aren’t so easy to track. For example, capacity payments go up. So far, I have described prices for kWh . . . that is, for power produced. There’s also something called a “capacity payment”: a payment for a plant to be available to produce power. The capacity payment auction takes place three years in advance. In 2013, the auction yielded $1 billion for power plant operators. Then a number of plants retired. With more scarcity, the 2014 auction brought $3 billion to plant operators. These billions are not as visible as the “price on the grid,” but the money comes from ratepayers and raises everyone’s cost of electricity.

Montreal Snow
from Wikipedia

Winter Reliability

Then there’s the reliability issue. The grid operator will do whatever it must to ensure reliability. For the past two winters, our grid operator has run “winter reliability programs” and frankly, that program saved us last winter. Last winter, the operator paid about $70 million to power plants that could burn oil. The plants used this money to stock up — with a supply on site, they had fuel available when they were called upon. Indeed, when gas-fired plants could not get gas, the oil-burning plants went online.

Last year, the Winter Reliability Program cost $70 million in the Northeast. This year, it is budgeted at $80 million. These multimillion dollar programs get translated into our winter power bills and winter price rises. However, there is a bit of hope for the future. This has been a milder winter, with low oil prices. To date, the grid’s Winter Reliability Program has spent far less than last winter, and that is a hopeful sign for the future.

Renewables

What about renewables? I will not focus much on renewables or their costs, because they are a very small portion of the electricity supply. I have been watching the hourly fuel supply on the grid rather closely, and wind has never been more than 2 percent of the supply. Renewables, including biomass and refuse, are about 6 percent of the supply. Renewables are not the cost-drivers on the grid.

Solutions, Maybe

I’ve explained the reasons for recent price rises, but do I have a solution? Well, a partial solution, maybe. First, I believe in conservation, and I just invested a great deal in improved insulation for my house. (And I want to thank Efficiency Vermont for picking up part of the cost.) To me, workshops on insulation are not merely diversionary. They are terribly important.

Being in favor of insulation is about as controversial as favoring real maple syrup. My second point is a little more controversial. Supposedly, we need more pipelines because gas is the fuel of choice . . . now. It’s abundant and cheap. But I don’t think it will remain cheap. Should we be building more pipelines because of low-priced gas? I am not sure. If the price of gas goes up, the pipelines will not be fully used.

Pipeline Pig Launcher
Wikipedia

Instead of more pipelines, I think we need a diversified grid. If we choose, we can build more renewables with a diversified grid, just as we can build them with a mostly-gas grid. And with a diversified grid (yes, I mean keeping our nuclear, coal, oil, Hydro-Quebec power as well as gas), we won’t have all our eggs in one basket.

If we are going to have a heavily natural-gas grid, we could keep our costs more stable (for now) and our grid more reliable by building more gas pipelines. But I think it would be better to choose conservation and grid diversity. With that, perhaps we could have reliability and prevent further drastic price rises in the future.

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Meredith Angwin of Wilder is a physical chemist who worked for electric utilities for more than 25 years and now heads the Energy Education Project of the Ethan Allen Institute.

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This op-ed appeared in the Valley News Sunday, January 18, 2015. I have edited it slightly (such as explaining that "Forum" is the Valley News letters section.)

It was illustrated with a very nice picture of Vermont Yankee.  The op-ed has appeared other places, also, including Vermont Digger, where it began to have a lively comment stream, but then a well-known anti-nuclear activist took over the comments.

I don't think it is worth duking it out with trolls, especially after they insult me.  For example, this line: Ms. Angwin still fails to acknowledge, however, that her basic premise is simply false: it is simply not a “fact that electricity prices are soaring all over the region.”  

In cheerier news about this op-ed, Don Kreis wrote a letter to the Valley News about my op-ed. Kreis is a former professor at Vermont Law School and a hearing officer with the Vermont Public Service Board. (His letter is not on the web, so I can't link to it.)  I am proud to quote the first sentence of Kreis's letter:

Meredith Angwin of the Ethan Allen Institute is a rock star among energy analysts, and she hits the right chord by blaming the recent run-up in electric rates on our big regional embrace of natural gas as a generation fuel.

Nuclear Power Has a Place in New England Energy Future: Guest Post by Howard Shaffer

Howard Shaffer
at a rally

New England is at a crossroads. One choice is to continue on the road now traveled, with natural gas for electricity production exceeding that of coal, hydro and nuclear power combined by 2018.

Due to a shortage of gas-pipeline capacity, we are already experiencing high prices for home heating and electricity. And there has been a decline in air quality due to the increased use of coal plants to meet electricity needs and the loss of Vermont Yankee’s 600 megawatts of emission-free power.

The other choice, the path we should be taking, is to maintain a balanced mix of low-carbon energy sources, including the Seabrook and Pilgrim nuclear plants with licenses renewed, wind and solar power. (It is always understood that on the use side, we must do the maximum conservation and efficiency.) This would enable the plants to continue running for another 20 years or longer. With less reliance on natural gas for electric power generation, households and businesses would benefit from lower energy costs.

But for that to happen, the EPA will need to modify a proposed rule to cut carbon emissions from power plants. As the rule is now written, it is rigged against nuclear power, even though the U.S. fleet of nuclear plants accounts for nearly two-thirds of the nation’s zero-carbon electricity – and they will become increasingly important as more coal plants are shuttered. The proposed rule – which would require New Hampshire to reduce its carbon emissions by 46.3 percent compared to 2005 levels by 2030 – shortchanges nuclear power, the one technology that could make a decisive contribution in the battle against global warming.

Nuclear plants are a dependable source of electricity, because they produce “base-load” power about 90 percent of the time, underpinning the stability of the electricity grid. But currently, New England’s deregulated electricity market does not recognize nuclear power’s environmental value or its critically important role in maintaining power reliability. New England’s regional and state power authorities need to make the changes necessary to ensure the continued availability of nuclear-generated electricity, which is much cheaper than most other alternatives.

At one point last winter, during the polar vortex, 75 percent of New England’s natural-gas generating capacity was not operating due to lack of supply or high prices. Public Service of New Hampshire resorted to burning costly jet fuel to meet the demand for electricity, while the price of oil rose to more than $400 per barrel.

Imagine what would happen if the Seabrook and Pilgrim nuclear plants are shut down. Once a nuclear plant closes, its license terminates. The price of electricity would skyrocket. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen.

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This column by Howard Shaffer first appeared in the Concord Monitor, on January 28, 2015.  Shaffer holds a M.S. in Nuclear Engineering from M.I.T., is a registered nuclear engineer in Vermont and New Hampshire, and was a start-up engineer and systems engineer at Vermont Yankee.  He is a featured writer at this blog.

Why Electric Rates Are Rising: My Op-ed

Reddy Kilowatt
From Wikipedia

New England electricity is too dependent upon natural gas-fired power plants. And we are about to pay a lot for that dependence.

In recent days, several New England utilities have announced major price rises for electricity. In Massachusetts, National Grid said that its customers can expect a 37 percent rate increase in November. Liberty Utilities in New Hampshire announced that there will be a 50 percent rate increase, and Unitil, which serves Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire, announced a price rise that will add over $40 a month to the average home electricity bill. These companies explained that the rate increases are due to the increasing cost of power on the grid.

Why is the grid cost increasing? Part of the reason is supply and demand. Supply has decreased. Vermont Yankee (nuclear) and Salem Harbor in Massachusetts (coal) are shutting down and will not be available this winter. During the high demand resulting from the polar vortex in early 2014, New England needed about 20,000 megawatts of power. The grid barely scraped up enough to meet the demand. This year, 1,000 megawatts, or five percent of that power, is going off-line, and no new power plants have been built.

But perhaps a bigger problem is that the New England grid is far too dependent on natural gas. During the polar vortex cold snap, which affected all of New England, many natural gas power plants could not get enough gas to operate. It was being used to heat homes. New England is often described as “pipeline-constrained”: There are not enough pipelines for the natural gas we need.

The grid operator, ISO-NE, a nonprofit company, is responsible for ensuring a reliable electric supply on the New England grid. The way the grid operates is that some plants keep running steadily all the time. The steady-operation plants are nuclear, coal and some of the natural gas facilities — basically, plants that operate on a steam cycle. When demand is higher than these plants can supply, it is met by putting more gas-fired plants into service. However, last winter, many gas-fired plants could not operate.

ISO-NE foresaw this natural gas supply crunch and had a “winter reliability” program in place. It paid $70 million to oil-burning power plants to keep oil available to burn. This was a “capacity” payment. That is, the plants were paid just to have oil on hand. (This payment also increased our electric bills.) But during the polar vortex power crunch, the oil was not enough, and some jet fuel was also burned to make power. In other words, over-dependence on natural gas led to expensive alternatives: oil and jet fuel. Using these fuels caused major price increases.

Also, even without the crunch, the price of natural gas itself has doubled since its low point in 2012.

The two issues (supply and diversity of fuel sources) are going to intersect again this winter. With two power plants closed, a cold snap this winter will require more oil and jet fuel than was required last winter. Utilities are getting their rate increases lined up to deal with the coming price spike.

What about my own local utility? I live in Vermont, and Green Mountain Power (GMP) told the press recently that because of its “efficiencies” it has lowered prices and will keep them low.

I do not believe prices will stay low in Vermont. GMP is subject to the same factors that affect the other utilities. It buys much of its power on the same markets. GMP also has large contracts with Hydro Quebec. Unfortunately, these are “market-follow” contracts. When the market price rises on the grid, Hydro Quebec will also raise the price that it charges GMP. Back in 2010, I wrote blog posts on how the new market-follow contracts were “a bad deal with Hydro Quebec.” This winter, I suspect we will find out just how bad a deal they are.

What about renewables? For many reasons, renewable build-out is not happening very quickly. As of last year, less than 10 percent of Vermont’s in-state electricity generation was by renewables, not counting hydro.

Also, renewables are generally paired with natural gas (gas-fired plants are turned on when the wind dies down or the sun sets). So renewables are not going to be much help right now.

I was recently elected to be on the coordinating committee of the Consumer Liaison Group of ISO-NE. Along with 120 people from all over the Northeast, I attended its quarterly meeting in September. Everyone there seemed to have a tale of when the big price rises would hit their local utilities. Many are planning major price increases in January 2015.

What shall we do about these price spikes? Just as in our private lives, diversity is important. I think we need to be willing to accept diversity on the grid: nuclear plants and coal plants. Natural gas is an excellent fuel, but it seems to be the one and only fuel acceptable to many people. However, what is happening on the grid right now is a classic illustration of the old saying: “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Our grid is close to just one basket right now (over 50 percent natural gas). The winter is coming, and power will be expensive if any eggs drop.
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Meredith Angwin of Wilder is a physical chemist who worked for electric utilities for more than 25 years and now heads the Energy Education Project of the Ethan Allen Institute.

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This op-ed was published on Oct 12, 2014 in the Valley News. Valley News artist Shawn Bradley provided a clever graphic of Reddy Kilowatt flipping a switch to raise rates.  In honor of that graphic, I included a classic Reddy Kilowatt graphic on this post.

The op-ed was also published on the Vermont Digger website on October 21. The article has quite a lively comment stream.

Exporting Our Carbon Problems: Op-Ed by Meredith Angwin

Exporting our carbon problems
The EPA takes a flawed state-by-state approach to greenhouse-gas policy

The Environmental Protection Agency recently issued a proposed plan for greenhouse gas mitigation: the electricity sector must cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2030. The rules are set on a state-by-state basis.

I am in favor of cutting carbon emissions, but the EPA plan is arbitrary, ineffective, and political. The abatement standards are plain backwards: states that already have a clean-energy mix have to do a higher percent of abatement than states that burn large amounts of coal.

EPA’s criteria for reduction goals are, frankly, opaque, including complex “building blocks” for reduction. To decide on the level of reduction required, the EPA looked at various issues, such as coal plants that might be already slated for retirement, and whether a state has natural gas available.

Per kilowatt hour of electricity produced, burning coal produces twice the carbon dioxide as burning natural gas. Logically, the EPA would require greater cutbacks in coal-burning states.

That did not happen.

For example, West Virginia generates 90 percent of its electricity from coal — and it must cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 19 percent.

In contrast, New York state has a pretty clean energy mix and, according to state profiles compiled by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, gets less than 10 percent of its electricity from burning coal — and it must cut its carbon emissions by 44 percent.

With this sort of regulation, it is no surprise that New Hampshire, which gets less than 10 percent of its electricity from coal, must cut carbon emissions by 46 percent.

* * *

Flag of Vermont

VERMONT, on the other hand, is a poster child for a low-carbon state. Vermont and the District of Columbia use very little fossil fuel to make electricity, so they are the only two states (well, state and district) that don’t have to submit a plan for carbon abatement in the electricity sector.

However, more than 70 percent of the electricity generated within Vermont comes from Vermont Yankee, a very low-carbon electricity supplier. When Vermont Yankee shuts down at the end of the year, Vermont will be importing energy from states with more carbon-heavy profiles.

Will it cease to be a shining example of a low-carbon state?

No. According to the EPA, Vermont will still be a low-carbon state as long as it doesn’t generate high-carbon electricity in state.

EPA regulates carbon according to power actually generated within the state, not by power purchase contracts. If other states are burning more fossil fuels to supply Vermont, the carbon mitigation rules will be their problem, not Vermont’s problem. Vermont will have exported any possible compliance problems.

* * *
That brings us to New Hampshire, which has to cut back 46 percent of its carbon emissions. With more than half of its electricity coming from nuclear and less than 10 percent from coal, cutting back to that degree might be hard.

However, the state is in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) with Vermont and other states. New Hampshire is already cutting back its carbon emissions to meet RGGI requirements, and it hopes these cuts will be enough to meet the EPA requirements also.

Flag of New Hampshire

In case New Hampshire’s RGGI cutbacks are not enough, a Concord Monitor story reported, the state is looking at whether the EPA emission caps could be set as a combined target for all the RGGI states, thereby possibly involving Vermont in the cutbacks, in a manner that has yet to be determined.

However New Hampshire meets its requirements, it won’t have to do so very quickly. Starting now, there’s a one-year period for public comment on the EPA plan, followed by another year (or more) for the states to design their mitigation plans.

According to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance white paper, state plans are due by June 2017 and multi-state plans are due by 2018. It sounds as if New Hampshire might choose to participate in a multi-state plan. In such a scenario, New Hampshire’s choices might also affect Vermont’s status. Maybe.

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The whole thing is unreasonably complicated. It is no wonder that many commentators expect a raft of lawsuits.

You can also think satire: The Onion (a humor website) describes the situation with this headline: “New EPA Regulations Would Force Power Plants to Find 30% More Loopholes by 2030.”

Or you can think confusing: The Bloomberg New Energy Finance white paper is entitled “EPA’s Clean Power Plan: 50 Chefs Stir the Pot.”

Or you can think political: The EPA clearly made major concessions to the coal states in the state-by-state requirements.

At any rate, when rules require a state that doesn’t produce much carbon to cut its production drastically while allowing comparatively minor cutbacks to a state that produces a lot, it’s hard to justify this policy as “carbon mitigation.”

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In the early part of my career, I worked on finding abatement methods for nitrogen oxide pollution:
reducing these emissions was required under the Clean Air Act.

Brownish NOx smog at the Golden Gate Bridge
Credit to Aaron Logan at Wikipedia

Nitrogen oxide emissions are the cause of the dirty brown color of photochemical smog, and they are caused by high-temperature combustion. At a high-enough flame temperature, the air burns itself, uniting nitrogen and oxygen in the air to make nitrogen oxides. This happens in cars and in almost all fossil-fired power plants.

If an area had particularly dirty air, it had to make more drastic cutbacks on pollution. For example, California cars eventually had to have more pollution controls on nitrogen oxide emissions.

Comparing these new carbon rules to my experience regarding nitrogen oxide pollution, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that an area that produces lots of carbon dioxide has to do less abatement than areas that produce little.

I do not mean to imply that in those good old days, back when I worked on nitrogen oxide pollution, nothing was political. Of course things were political. States and utilities sued one another, they sued the EPA, and so forth and so on.

However, the nitrogen regulations did not start as political: they started as general rules, and then various interest groups attempted to get changes made. In contrast, the recently issued carbon rules are strongly political from the start.

In my overview of the EPA plan, I sadly admit that I think The Onion is right: there will be 30 percent more loopholes by 2030.

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My op-ed was first published in the Valley News on June 29.  It also was published in several other newspapers and websites, including in The Commons on July 23.  I liked the headline in The Commons, so I have used the version published there. (Every time the column appeared, it was slightly different, due to different editors.)

The Proposed Entergy Settlement is Good for Vermont

The Proposed Settlement

The state of Vermont and Entergy Corporation have been battling each other for years, but the two parties reached an agreement in December about the future of Vermont Yankee. Entergy has owned and operated the 42-year-old nuclear plant in Vernon since 2002. When Entergy announced plans to close the plant by December 2014, the state, which has passed laws aimed at preventing the plant from operating, seemed surprised. It also lost some negotiating leverage. Even so, the settlement, which the Vermont Public Service Board must still approve, is a good deal for Vermont — better than I thought possible. Let’s take a look its four main points: the Certificate of Public Good; pending lawsuits; payments; and decommissioning.

The Certificate of Public Good: In 2012, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission renewed Vermont Yankee’s federal license for 20-year-period, through 2032. However, to keep operating for that period, the plant also needed state approval, specifically a Certificate of Public Good from the Public Service Board. The Shumlin administration vigorously opposed granting such a certificate, and used the state approval process to try to force the plant to shut down when its original license expired. Now that Entergy has amended its petition to operate only through the end of this year, not through 2032, the state will be on Entergy’s side before the Public Service Board.

Lawsuits: The main federal lawsuit hinged on whether Vermont interfered in the federal regulation of nuclear safety. In both district court and in appeals court, Entergy won its case, arguing that the Legislature attempted to regulate nuclear safety when the state Senate voted in 2010 to deny the plant a certificate of public good. Nuclear safety, like airline safety and drug safety, is regulated at the federal level. Though Entergy won its case, both Vermont and Entergy conceivably had grounds to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, according to the agreement, neither side will appeal. I suspect both sides breathed a sigh of relief.

The agreement also settled another lawsuit about a new “generation tax.” The state had raised the generation tax on Vermont Yankee to $12 million a year. This is a tax paid by Entergy for every kilowatt-hour that the plant generates. However, the higher tax rate applied only to power plants that were built after 1965 and were larger than 200 megawatts! Of course, there’s only one such plant in the state, and Entergy quite reasonably felt targeted. In the agreement, Entergy agreed to drop this suit and to pay the $12 million for 2014.

Payments: Entergy agreed to pay more than the new generation tax. In 2015, the plant won’t be generating any power, so Entergy won’t be required to pay the generation tax. However, Entergy agreed to pay the state $5 million in 2015, to help the state as it deals with the loss tax revenue Vermont Yankee generated. Entergy also agreed to other relatively short-term payments: a payment of $5 million to the Clean Energy Development Fund, and a further payment of $2 million a year for five years to help Windham County adapt to the plant closing.

In his address on the state budget, Gov. Peter Shumlin mentioned “one-time payments” from Entergy as part of his plan to close the state’s budget gap.

The state appears to have won the financial negotiations. However, the plant closing means that $60 million a year in payroll will disappear from the local economy. These payments hardly begin to close that gap for Vermont and neighboring states. As I have said before, it would have been far better if the plant remained open. Some people say that decommissioning will be a similar boost to the local economy, but it won’t be. Not in the next few years at least.

Decommissioning: This has been, and remains, the most difficult and contentious part of the agreement. When Entergy bought the plant in 2002, the agreement it signed with the state allows Entergy to use a delayed decommissioning plan called SAFSTOR, approved by the NRC. With
SAFSTOR, decommissioning can take up to 60 years but it could also be completed sooner. The state wanted to decommission the plant sooner, much sooner  —  immediately, as a matter of fact.

However, in the course of the negotiations, I suspect the state learned some facts about decommissioning. Decommissioning cannot start for six or more years after the plant is closed. After the plant is shut down, the last fuel from the reactor is placed in a spent-fuel pool. This fuel must cool in the pool for five years before it can be removed and put into dry-cask storage. In plants such as Vermont Yankee, the fuel pool is in the same building as the reactor.

You can’t begin tearing down the building while the fuel pool is still in use. So there has to be at least a five-year delay between plant closing and the beginning of major decommissioning work. Therefore, there will be a gap of several years in the economic activity around the plant. In the agreement, Entergy agreed to move the fuel from the pool in a timely fashion. In the press conference about the recent agreement, Shumlin said that all fuel bundles should probably be moved into dry cask storage within about seven years.

Maine Yankee dry cask storage

Other major decommissioning work can begin after the fuel is moved to dry casks. The decommissioning fund is around $580 million now, and decommissioning is estimated to cost between $600 million and $1 billion. Entergy agreed to start full decommissioning when the fund is large enough to to pay for the job. (Federal rules for SAFSTOR stipulate that owners can wait up to 60 years to complete decommissioning, no matter how big the fund.) Entergy also agreed to put $25 million into a separate fund for “greenfielding” the site. Greenfielding generally involves excavating, grading and seeding.

The Next Steps

Of course, not everyone is happy with the agreement. Opponents loudly insist that decommissioning must start immediately (it can’t), and others worry that it will take years for Entergy to have enough funds to start decommissioning. The definition of “greenfielding” is also contentious.

Even so, the agreement is a major step forward in what has been a hard battle between Vermont Yankee and the state. Both are arguing in favor of this agreement before the Public Service Board. That’s quite an unexpected development. Either side could withdraw from this agreement if the Public Service Board does not approve it by March 31, however. The board is now considering this plan, and the public comment period is still open. At the PSB website, you can read docket 7862 and write your comments. I encourage you to do so.

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Here is a direct link to the comment form on this docket.

http://psb.vermont.gov/docketsandprojects/public-comment?docket=7862

When reading docket 7862, you will note that there are two major document filings: the Memorandum of Understanding and the Settlement Agreement.  The Settlement Agreement is the agreement between Entergy and the state agencies, while the Memorandum of Understanding is the part of the Settlement Agreement that lies within the jurisdiction of the Public Service Board. The Board will rule on the Memorandum, but the Settlement Agreement was filed for informational purposes.


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The article above is an op-ed that I wrote (plus a short end section on links).

The op-ed has been published in the Valley News, True North Reports, and Vermont Digger.  It may also be published other places in Vermont. 

Be Prompt and Positive with Vermont Yankee: Guest Post by Patty O'Donnell

Patty O'Donnell speaking to Public Service Board
November 2012

Prompt, positive Vermont Yankee decision benefits everyone

By Patricia O’Donnell, Chair
Vernon Board of Selectmen


For the sake of the residents of Vernon, I strongly encourage the Vermont Public Service Board (PSB) allow Vermont Yankee and the State of Vermont to come to an equitable agreement, and issue a clean Certificate of Public Good (CPG) at the end of this year guaranteeing Vermont Yankee’s continued operation until late 2014. An unburdened CPG will provide much-needed and much-warranted economic and environmental certainty and will give all stakeholders the unobstructed opportunity to plan for the future.

As an elected representative of Vernon – a town now facing the loss of its largest employer and taxpayer, significant budget cuts, and mounting questions about its financial footing – I hope the Public Service Board will at least grant us this gift of clarity as we continue the difficult task of planning for life without Vermont Yankee.

Vernon and its residents deserve to know whether Vermont Yankee will continue to operate through next year. A prompt decision by the PSB will allow us to clearly anticipate and navigate the road through 2014 and beyond, and help to ease the financial blow to our school system, our police departments and other local services resulting from the loss of this crucial revenue source.

It is equally important for the Public Service Board to pursue a course that is both fair and equitable and looks to mitigate any further harm. Assigning a tangle of conditions or refusing outright to grant the CPG will only add insult to injury for the people of Vernon – and a contentious ruling will only hinder our efforts to recover from the loss of Vermont Yankee.

For nearly four decades, the town of Vernon, as the host community for this important economic and energy generator, has been integral to Vermont’s strength and sustainability, contributing billions of dollars in tax revenues, billions more in economic benefits, and supporting thousands of jobs statewide.

It is crucial that the PSB act expeditiously and fairly in issuing a decision, and provide some semblance of certainty as we continue through this difficult transition period. The residents of Vernon, indeed all Vermonters, deserve the security of knowing what the future holds.

Note: O'Donnell wrote this before the recent agreement between Entergy and the state.  However, it is still relevant.  The Public Service Board has not ruled yet.

Wind on the Grid: Location, Location, Location.

Wind Farm in Austria

The Plan and the Reality

The Vermont Comprehensive Energy Plan calls for a great expansion of renewable electricity. Can we achieve it? Some of the difficulties the state may encounter came to light this summer in the Northeast Kingdom.

The biggest renewable project to come online recently is the Kingdom Community Wind Project — commonly known as Lowell Mountain — which is owned by Green Mountain Power. During the mid-July heat wave, the regional grid operator, ISO-NE, did not allow Lowell Mountain to put all of its power on the grid. The wind was blowing, but the transmission lines were running at full capacity, and the grid operator told Lowell Mountain that the grid could not accept all of its power. The wind farm had to back off and not generate as much electricity as it could. It was “curtailed” by the grid operator.

As you can imagine, this incident led to quite an outcry. First off, it didn’t look good for the future of renewables. While Lowell Mountain has been controversial, it has also been a showcase for major new renewables being built in Vermont. If Lowell can’t send all of its power to the grid, it doesn’t bode well for the future growth of renewables.

In response, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin wrote a letter to ISO-NE, asking why the grid operator had called upon the generating capacity of fossil-fuel plants but not that of Vermont renewables, pointing out that Vermont is very committed to renewables, etc., etc. Shumlin was clearly grandstanding. On a hot day, ISO-NE did what it is supposed to do: keep the grid functioning. To understand why that overriding concern led ISO-NE to shun power from Lowell Mountain, it’s helpful to realize that, in one regard, the grid is like the real estate market: It’s all about location, location, location.

The Reality of the Grid

ISO-NE’s first responsibility is to keep the grid meeting its physical and reliability requirements. It matches power generation with power use and avoids overloading lines. ISO-NE’s secondary responsibility is to dispatch power from generators according to various economic and contractual priority rules. These rules tend toward priority dispatch for renewables. (Though the grid operator is strictly fuel-agnostic, the rules tend to favor renewables.) However, such priority rules come second, after the grid’s physical constraints are met.

Those physical constraints are often about location, location, location.

Wind farms are usually located in rural areas, which generally do not have transmission lines capable of handling large amounts of power. In the case of Lowell Mountain, the nearest high-voltage lines also carry Hydro-Quebec and power from other sources. On a high-electricity-use day, these power sources fill the transmission capacity.

Two Kinds of Upgrades

Transmission capacity in that area would have to be upgraded significantly to accommodate all the power generated by the wind turbines on a high-use day. At the time the Lowell turbines were built, it apparently was known that the turbine power sometimes would have to be “curtailed.” However, “curtailment” has happened more often than some expected. (That’s the simple version; it’s always more complicated on the grid.) There are other factors. Depending on the type of generator, its location and the transmission lines, additional equipment may be needed to match a generator to the grid. Lowell Mountain needs something called a synchronous condenser to “tune up” its output and match it to the grid. The Lowell Mountain developers persuaded the Public Service Board to let them connect to the grid without this expensive piece of equipment, but now the grid operator says that it will have to be installed. The condenser is now being built, and it will cost $10 million. With it, Lowell will be able to put power on the grid more often.

However, without additional upgrades of local transmission lines, Lowell may still be kept off the grid when power use is high. So, two upgrades would be needed for Lowell Mountain to have reliable access to the grid. Electricity consumers ultimately will pay for the work, but which consumers?

Green Mountain Power consumers will pay for the synchronous condenser, because GMP owns the plant. Determining payment for transmission line upgrades is more complicated because transmission lines are shared across states. If a transmission upgrade makes the entire New England system more reliable, Vermont ratepayers will pay about 4 percent of its cost. If an upgrade is considered to be only of local benefit, local ratepayers pay its entire cost. ISO-NE decides whether transmission lines are needed for grid reliability as part of its reliability planning process. At this point, it is unclear which group of ratepayers would pay.

Another question: Why is the system dealing with these problems now? Why did the Public Service Board authorize turbines without also requiring an adequate connection? For whatever it is worth, many other wind farms in other parts of the world have the same problem.

Location, Location, Location

Which gets us back to location, location, location. Wind farms face some unique transmission challenges. Throughout the world, wind turbines are located in rural areas, often far from large transmission lines or large-scale users of electricity. Wind turbines also have highly variable outputs. If you build a transmission line in a rural area and build a line that is capable of taking a considerable amount of wind energy on a day when the grid is almost full, you are going to have to build an expensive line.

Building a transmission line that can always accept wind energy can be like building a freeway that is big enough to avoid congestion if a football game lets out at rush hour. We don’t do that. It would just be too expensive to build all roads big enough to avoid congestion for the infrequent occasions of abnormally high use. As a partial solution to this problem, the grid has location-dependent congestion fees.

Meanwhile, ISO-NE officials responded to Shumlin’s accusation with their own strongly worded letter. They said that Green Mountain Power knew full well that the Kingdom Community Wind Project did not meet all of ISO-NE criteria for full grid connection.

I am sure that Green Mountain Power (and others, such as the Public Service Board) must have known that the new wind farm wasn’t meeting ISO-NE connection criteria. Though such grid issues as congestion fees and synchronous condensers are arcane to most of us, there are many competent electrical system engineers who could have foreseen these problems. They almost certainly did foresee them.

Paying for the Upgrades

What should we do now to put wind on the grid? Since Kingdom Community Wind is built, I think Green Mountain Power should take the steps necessary to be sure its energy gets on the grid more reliably. It will be expensive, but that is the only option.

However, the costs and whatever environmental impact those upgrades entail should be ascribed to the wind project. More important, these costs should be considered when other projects are proposed. That does not mean that other projects should not be built. However, Vermont now has experience with a large wind farm, and it should learn from this experience.

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Meredith Angwin is a physical chemist who worked for electric utilities for more than 25 years and now heads the Energy Education Project of the Ethan Allen Institute.
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I wrote this op-ed for the Valley News. It appeared in print on Sunday, September 22, 2013 as When Location Rules the Grid.

Vermont's Renewable Plan is Wishful Thinking

Decision Tree

The Comprehensive Energy Plan Isn't a Plan

In 2011, the Vermont Department of Public Service issued a Comprehensive Energy Plan that asserts that 90 percent of all energy used in the state ­— including electricity, transportation and building heating — will be provided from renewable sources by 2050.

Who could argue with the idea that almost all of the state’s energy should come from renewable energy by mid-century?

Probably nobody would argue, until they realize that what is called a “plan” isn’t actually a plan; it’s a collection of roughly sketched ideas, some good, some not so good. At a hearing of the Vermont Energy Generation Siting Policy Commission, one woman made a very clear statement. She said that the state energy plan is a collection of slogans, not a planning document. She was basically correct.

Nevertheless, the energy plan is guiding many statewide energy decisions: expediting small hydro installations, attempting to close Vermont Yankee, supporting ridgeline wind development. The realization that the 90% goal is influencing statewide energy policy is particularly troubling when you examine some of its implications.

We Will Need Much More Electricity

For starters, it is hard to use renewable energy for transportation and heating unless we use electricity for these sectors. We can make electricity with renewable energy, and then use it to run electric cars and heat pumps. Both these choices will increase the demand for electricity.

Right now, Vermont uses 6,000 GWh of electricity per year. (A GWh is a million kilowatt hours.) My estimate is that Vermont would need 18,000 GWh annually to achieve the 90% goal by switching to electric cars, heat pumps and so forth. That’s an outrageously big number, but it coincides with two other rough calculations I’ve seen from renewable advocates. In a recent op-ed, Charles McKenna, a local Sierra Club member, estimated the state would need 15,000 GWh in order to achieve the 90% renewable goal. In a recent Green Energy Times, David Blittersdorf, a renewable developer, said that the 90% goal will require three times the electricity we use now. (Three times 6,000 is 18,000.)

To put this number in perspective, consider that Vermont currently buys approximately 2,000 GWh from Hydro-Quebec. This is about a third of our current electricity demand, but it would be only a small fraction of the electricity needed for a 90% renewable goal.

Diffuse Energy Sources

Chihuahua Dog

Unfortunately for Vermont, renewable sources tend to be diffuse, not energy dense. If we really tried to make this much electricity with renewables, we would have to devote much of Vermont’s land to energy generation. For example, Lowell Mountain’s wind turbines each sweep the area of a football field because wind is not a dense energy source. The average wind can blow some trash around, but it can’t pick up a small dog and move it. If you want to make enough wind-based electricity to make it worthwhile to put in a transmission line, you need to build a wind turbine with a blade that is more than half the length of a football field. Then the blade can capture enough wind.

I did another rough set of calculations to estimate how many wind turbines, biomass plants, solar panels and so forth would be needed to generate 18,000 GWh of electricity. The results are appalling. For example, making 18,000 GWh using wind turbines would take about 2,000 turbines, covering 400 to 700 miles of ridgeline. Vermont is only 160 miles long. Making the same amount of electricity from biomass would require 12 million acres of woodlands, sustainably harvested. That’s twice the size of Vermont.

Of course, the state would be using a mixture of renewables, not just one type. These are crude estimates, and my husband and I are working at improving them for a report on the land use implications of renewables.

Unrealistic Plan Interferes with Realistic Choices

Energy Safari group members
Lempster Wind Farm

Adopting an unrealistic, over-arching energy plan that calls for almost all energy to come from renewable sources essentially confers a blessing on all proposed renewable projects.  Every project advances the “plan.” Objecting to to any project supposedly reveals the person as an opponent of good environmental policy or a so-called NIMBY — someone who will try to stop any development in their proximity.

People who are against overly extensive renewable development are not NIMBYs. They are not blithely ignoring environmental considerations or greedily focusing on financial factors. It is quite possible to be in favor of moderate renewable development and environmental stewardship. Indeed, in my opinion, moderate renewable development and environmental stewardship are two ideas that go well together.  For example, a goal of 20 percent  of electricity supply from new in-state renewables would be ambitious but within reach.

We also need to encourage conservation, and to its credit, the Comprehensive Energy Plan is very clear on that. On the other hand, future conservation is built into my estimates of electricity demand. Even with conservation, there will be significant energy demand, and we have to plan for it.

What a Plan Needs to Be

Basically, a plan has to be a plan.  In particular, a state's energy plan needs to be more than a collection of slogans.
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Meredith Angwin worked in many sectors of the utility industry for more than 20 years. She is the director of the Energy Education Project of the Ethan Allen Institute, a Vermont public policy research organization that emphasizes free-market solutions. Angwin and her husband, George Angwin, are developing a report for the Institute that will analyze the land use implications of the Vermont Energy Plan.

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An earlier version of this op-ed appeared in my local paper, the Valley News, and I hope it will appear in more papers in Vermont.

Actually, They Did Fix the Cooling Towers. Or, the importance of confronting falsehoods

My blog post It Was Safety Safety Safety. Lawyers can't rescue a weak case was originally published as an op-ed in my local paper, the Valley News, on February 10.  (It may be behind a paywall at this point.)  In the paper, it was illustrated by a picture similar to this one:

After  one of my op-ed pieces appears in the Valley News, I get myself emotionally ready for the replies in the letters to the editor section.   I usually handle this sort of thing pretty well.  After all, the negative comments are not really about me.  It's all about nuclear power...

The First Letter Blows My Cool

Whoops. Actually, I don't always handle it that well.  As I proved by reading the first letter that appeared, about four days after my op-ed ran.

Before we get to that first letter and what happened afterwards, let's look at that picture again. That first  letter didn't discuss my article, it discussed the picture: A Telling Picture of Vermont Yankee.  Here's the first substantive statement in that letter:

"You can tell it’s an old photo because both banks of cooling towers are working. One has since collapsed (in 2007) due to lack of maintenance and has never been repaired."

I read this and hit the roof.   What-What-What!  He claims that the cooling towers had never been repaired!  Broken since 2007! What an outright...outright...outright.....

A cooling tower is repaired or not-repaired.  It's not an ambiguous situation.   Of course the cooling towers were repaired since 2007!

I called the editor of the paper and asked him to run a correction.  Before doing so, he wanted more than my word that the cooling towers had been repaired.  He wanted the date when the cooling tower repair was completed.

This date for the completion of the repairs wasn't mentioned in any article I could find, though I did find an article that implied that repairs were complete in spring 2008.   I contacted the plant and obtained the repair-completion-date information that the editor needed. The plant sent me an email from one of the engineers, and they gave me permission to forward the email to the editor.  That took care of the matter from my end.  The Valley News editor,  Martin Frank, wrote a correction.

 Here's the correction that now appears  on the Valley News website at the end of the "Telling Picture of Vermont Yankee" letter.

CORRECTION

The following correction appeared in the Feb. 28 edition of the Valley News:

The cooling tower at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant that collapsed in 2007 was permanently repaired and back in service by May 2008. A letter published Feb. 14 incorrectly asserted that the structure had never been repaired.

Whew!  And a big thank you to editor Martin Frank for his professional handling of the situation.

Howard's Letter

This was not the only letter about my post, but it was the most difficult to deal with.  Happily, Howard Shaffer wrote a great letter refuting several negative letters. His letter, The Facts About Vermont Yankee discusses the the tower repairs, the economic requirements for owning a nuclear plant, and more. Here is one of my favorite paragraphs from Shaffer's letter:

"The third letter claims tritium is dangerous. So is arsenic in our drinking water — or not, depending on the amount. Drinking water is needed for life, but can kill you — as was proven by the tragic case of the marathon runner who drank too much. (Meredith's) op-ed never said that tritium in any amount was not dangerous, just that the tritium-tainted water that leaked from Vermont Yankee was not. “The dose makes the poison” is true of radiation, too."

Was It Worth It?

Decision Tree
from Wikipedia

All's well that ends well? Since Martin Frank wrote a correction and Howard Shaffer wrote a letter, is the problem solved? In other words, was it worth the time it took to get this correction made?

Maybe yes and maybe no.

The letters claimed all sorts of things about the dangers of the spent fuel pool, the dangers of tritium, thermal discharge into the Connecticut River etc.  (Only one letter even mentioned the economic contribution of the plant to the area, which was the gist of my op-ed.)

Yet the only thing that we countered was that the cooling towers were actually repaired.  Did that matter?

I think it did.  Most of the statements in the opponent letters are non-falsifiable. They are more matters of opinion or faith than of science.  They provide nothing to test or to verify, though there may be something to argue about.

However, when nuclear opponents begin using incorrect facts, something has to be done about it.  You have to get a correction in print.  You really have to do so if you possibly can.  At least, that's how I feel about it.

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Extra Credit Reading: About Some Other Letters

One letter was the usual thing: Safety and economics are linked.  It included the odd statement that: "Is it possible that the law regarding regulation of nuclear power was designed to present the illusion of their (safety and economic) separability in an attempt to eliminate the possibility of legal challenge by states and local communities?"

Well, that's one way of looking at federal-level  safety regulations, I guess. My main response to this letter was "ho-hum, same-old."

Another letter was somewhat more annoying.  Titled Misinformation on Vermont Yankee,  it starts with "Defenders of Entergy’s attempts to continue operation of the controversial Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon are waging a strategic war of misinformation..."It goes on to talk about the dangers of tritium. The letter finished by explaining that the letter-writer had read the "small print" at the end of the op-ed. He discovered that:  I worked for the nuclear industry in the past,  I blog as "yes vermont yankee," and I am associated with the Ethan Allen Institute.  

Gosh, I didn't think the type at the end of the op-ed was that small!  Should I ask the editor to put that information in a bigger font next time?   

Basically, once again, however, my response was "ho--hum."  Though I admit I don't like to be accused of  "waging a strategic war of misinformation."

At any rate, the accusation that I am waging a "strategic war of misinformation" is sort of....non-falsifiable.

Radiation Fears: Shaffer and Hargraves

In the past two days, Howard Shaffer and Bob Hargraves have written powerful blog posts about  fear of radiation.  Also, we have a new host for the Nuclear Blog Carnival.

The Anti-Nuclear Movement

Fluoride protester.
Not in Vermont. We don't have palm trees.

At ANS Nuclear Cafe, Shaffer posted Understanding the anti-nuclear movement: Pieces of the Puzzle.     Vermont has a highly visible anti-nuclear movement, a low rate of child vaccinations, and recent debates about water fluoridation (I kid you not).  Facts don't matter very much in this context.

Visit the anti-nuclear world-view with Shaffer. It has some virtues (I don't let anyone push me around!), but is mostly a huge drawback for society as a whole.

Radiation Superstition

Chiba Refinery in flames

At Atomic Insights, Rod Adams hosts an op-ed by Robert Hargraves: Radiation Superstition. The Chiba Refinery burned for ten days after the Japanese earthquake---ignored by the media.  Dose-response curves---ignored by the media.  LNG dangers---ignored by the media.  The superstition about harm from small amounts of radiation--constantly trumpeted by the media.

Hargraves has a Ph.D. in Physics and was vice president of Boston Scientific.  He recently spoke to the ChineseAcademy of Sciences  about thorium reactors.    In the run-up to March 11, Hargraves sent this op-ed to many prestigious journals, and was rejected by all of them.  See the list at the end of the article.

We pro-nuclear people don't try to speak only to an echo chamber of other pro-nuclear people.  That's just what happens after the main stream press rejects us. Many reporters would rather quote an anti-nuclear activist than a pro-nuclear scientist.  I guess they are more likely to get a an attention-grabbing quote from an activist.

The Carnival

Carnival 147 of Nuclear Bloggers is up now.  This is the first time it has been hosted at the blog Things Worse Than Nuclear Power.  This site describes itself as "Comparing energy sources---the take from a couple MIT engineers."  There's a new look to this Carnival. For example, it  features quick-links, separate from the summary descriptions, so you don't have to scroll very far to decide what to read.  The list is right up-front.  Great job, Things-worse!  Lots of links to important posts on Fukushima, of course.  It's that time of year....