What Fukushima Means for Vermont: Tsunami on the Connecticut?

Are the terrible problems at the Japanese Fukushima plants relevant to continuing to operate Vermont Yankee?

I found myself in the middle of an email fight on this subject. I am answering Vermont Senator McCormack here, the same man who doesn't think we need to have electricity available whenever we feel like using it.

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I rarely post when people are busily insulting each other, but I am going to try to make some reasonable statements here.

McCormack's argument is that loss of power and flooding can cause the same problems here as happened in Japan. That is not true. You see, nuclear plants have been running world-wide for about fifty years. They are designed to withstand loss-of-outside-power. All over the world, they have endured ice storms, floods, and hurricanes. Hurricanes generally include loss of outside power and flooding. It has not mattered. The plants did fine. Here's an article from Minnesota that I found in quick googling. It includes how Prairie Island plant withstood major floods in 2001.

Or this Florida article that includes the safe shutdown of Turkey Point during Hurricane Andrew in 1992

Here's a quote from the article about Florida:

Hannah said the fact that the Turkey Point plant withstood Hurricane Andrew in 1992 should re assure Floridians. "Hurricane Andrew was probably as bad a hurricane as can hit U.S. shores. Turkey Point survived that. It was able to shut down safely."

Does Mr. McCormack think we will have a worse hurricane in Vermont than Hurricane Andrew in Florida? Has he noticed that the Vermont Yankee power plant is hundreds of feet above the river? Florida is flat like a pancake...you can't find a place hundreds of feet above the water.

Politics or Technology?

Mr. McCormack has a political point to make, claiming that the events in Japan were NOT more difficult to deal with than events that could occur on the Connecticut. This is not rational. It is not a matter of being technical or not-technical, it is simply a matter of having some common sense. The combination of infrastructure destruction and flooding from a 9 point earthquake and a 30 foot tsumani just cannot be duplicated here, no matter what type of ice storm or hurricane we have.

In every case of the type of event we might have here, the nuclear plants have been successful in shutting down and starting up again, without incident.

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Off point:

Non-technical people can understand technical matters, if they don't have a political agenda that interferes with their understanding of the facts. Insults to the non-technical are not useful.

(This was in response to one person writing that McCormack was non-technical, and so it was hard for him to understand these things. It was not written in a kindly way.)

I worked hard for my masters degree in physical chemistry and to invent patents in pollution control. Saying that pro-nuclear people "should bow their heads in shame" and such people are "(not) scientifically competent" is equally insulting.

This was in response to the following statement from McCormack: The time has come for the pro nuke crowd to bow their heads in shame, to exhibit the judgment to just shut up or, if they must speak, to apologize and admit how thoroughly they've been discredited. But not only are they not showing the appropriate level of humiliation and remorse, they're still talking down to the rest of us, still scolding us for talking out of turn, still pretending we're scientifically ignorant and they're scientifically competent.

Aside: this email exchange went to about 80 people, including legislators and reporters. It was not private.

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Link List

For information on the backup capabilities at Vermont Yankee in an emergency, see this article in our local paper.

I will be away from my computer for much of tomorrow, because I have other obligations (amazing but true!) that were set up weeks ago. In the meantime, I recommend the following:

ANS Nuclear Cafe, with links to everything including Japanese TV in English.

Nuclear Energy Institute, which has good summaries. Here is some VERY good news from this source: Restoration of electrical power to the site was under way at the Daiichi plant as of 6:00 a.m. EDT Wednesday. A temporary cable was being connected between an off-site power line and Daiichi reactor 3. Off-site power has not been available at the site since the earthquake on March 11.

A graph of radiation levels around the power plant, from the New York Times, which I hope they will continue to update. These levels are very high, very dangerous. However, I have no equivalent information about levels a mile away or levels in Tokyo, so I can't tell about off-site implications. I began writing a post on this, but gave it up for lack of information.

Update: Another blogger began following radiation levels: The Neutron Economy. He is getting some info from Tokyo. Worth watching this blog.

An excellent blog post by Suzanne Hobbs about perspective.

Jack Dempsey photograph through Library of Congress and Wikimedia

Image of Turkey Point from the FPL website

Japanese Reactors To Date

Simplifications and Oversimplifications

A friend of my daughter's wrote me an email: Can you write about those Japanese reactors in a way that ordinary people can understand? I decided to try, despite the fact that there are many excellent resources out there. I particularly recommend this post at the Energy Collective.

I am oversimplifying, and I don't have all the facts I would like to have. But waiting for all the facts would take a long time.

Starting with the Reactor

A boiling water reactor is a bunch of fuel rods (uranium oxide pellets with a zirconium coating to hold them together) and water circulating around them. The pellets get hot because a fission reaction liberates heat. The hot pellets heat the water, and the water boils and becomes steam. The steam turns a turbine and makes electric power.

Now, let's assume something goes wrong. Say, an earthquake. The sensors in the reactor feel the earthquake, and they shut down the reactor by putting control rods into it. These rods grab up neutrons and stop the fission reaction.

However, the uranium pellets are still hot, and so you have to keep water circulating to remove the heat. The circulating water is driven by pumps, the pumps are driven by electricity, but where does the electricity come from if the reactor shuts down? In general, the electricity comes from the grid when a nuclear plant stops making power.

However, in an earthquake or other emergency, the grid may well be unavailable. Therefore, nuclear plants have diesel generators, which can drive the pumps for a long time, until the grid goes back on-line, or it is safe to restart the plant again.

And now, we switch to talking about the Japanese reactors.

The Earthquake and the First Consequences

When the Japanese nuclear plants sensed the earthquake, they shut down quickly and simply, as they were designed to do. Within seconds, the diesels at all the plants started, and cooling water began to circulate. (The earthquake was about five times as strong as the design-basis earthquake, and everything worked very well. This was a triumph of engineering.) An hour went by, with the diesels working, the plants fuel rods cooling and everything fine.

Then the tsunami came. It knocked out the diesels at the three plants closest to the water, and they could not be started again. The Japanese also had back-up batteries, but they were not strong enough to keep the correct level of pumping going for very long.

Questions arise. Why couldn't they get more diesels? Why were the diesels placed where they were so vulnerable to flooding? I don't know. On the other hand, it is easy to ask questions on a nice spring day in America. It is much harder to work hard in the middle of a crisis.

The Second Consequences

Once the diesels and therefore the cooling had failed, it became very hard for the engineers to keep up with the situation. There were two problems:

• Rising temperatures led to rising pressures of water vapor, and it is hard to pump more water IN to a situation of high pressure
• When the zirconium fuel rods overheat, they react with water and liberate hydrogen, which is explosive.

I am not going to follow a blow by blow account of everything that happened at the plants. Basically, the engineers attempted to release pressure by releasing water vapor into the outside air. Then they added more water to make up for the water that evaporated in the bleeding-off process. There were two issues with this procedure;

• Since the water around the fuel rods was slightly radioactive, the engineers wanted to vent as little of it as possible
• Since the zirconium was overheating, hydrogen was being liberated and could explode.

At this point, the story gets more complicated, with hourly updates on the water levels, and hydrogen explosions that wreck parts of the reactor building, but don't interfere (as far as we can tell) with the main business of adding water and venting water vapor at the reactor. As far as I can tell, The graphic above shows the explosions taking place above the containment area.

A set of good graphics at the Capacity Factor blog show the that the explosion blew out panels, above the main containment area. The concrete area begins below the area that blew out.

Third Consequences: Borated Seawater

The next set of announcements were about adding borated seawater to the reactor vessels. Boron stops neutrons, and would probably aid the cooling of the fuel. This choice probably means that the reactor will be ruined. However, it is not a strange or unforeseen measure. Nuclear power plants have defense in depth and protocols for everything. Margaret Harding led nuclear safety assessment groups at GE for many years. I asked her about borated water addition and seawater additions. Her response:

Flooding BWR Reactor Pressure Vessel with borated water is a STANDARD part of the BWR design. We don't use it unless we have to because it does odd things in a reactor that bubbles, but it is certainly not "untested". I've explained that to several reporters.

Also, explain that some plants have seawater injection as a STANDARD emergency back-up option - it isn't used because we don't want that mess in the reactor unless we have to have it. Just like boron.

As far as I can tell, this set of techniques worked for reactors 1 and 3. They are still adding water and bleeding steam, but the temperatures are dropping within the reactor vessels and the chances of overheating are fading.

The hydrogen explosion at unit 3 was terrible, injuring 11 people. But those two reactors appear to be under control. Assuming all continues to go even moderately well, a few weeks from now the reactors will be ruined, but nothing much worse will have happened.

The situation is different at reactor 2.

Fourth Consequence: Big Problems at Unit 2

In the cases of units 1 and 3, the water flooding and bleeding have led to bringing the units close to safe shutdown. In these cases, the containment was not breached and the full rods spent most of their time covered in water. In unit 2, however, the situation is different. The fuel rods have been uncovered for long periods of time because a stuck valve defeated the feeding and bleeding operation. A hydrogen explosion may have damaged the integrity of the containment and/or the torus, which is that large donut-shaped object, filled with water, at the bottom of the drawing at the top of this blog.

Latest Developments (some updates)

There have been significant releases of radioactivity from unit 2. Bulletins about the plant are coming in practically by the minute, and some are contradictory. For example, now I have learned that a fire at unit 4 came BEFORE the explosion at unit 2. Reactor 4 had been shut down before the quake. The fire was at the fuel pool, and is apparently put out. I do not know if the radioactivity release is primarily from unit 2 or from the fire. You can watch English translations of the main Japanese news sessions at the the NHK World site. You will then know as much as I do about the latest developments.

Update

It has been a confusing day, with fires starting and stopping. I sometimes think I should just stop writing about Japan at all for a while--it has been too hard to follow. Cheryl Rolfer has already made that decision: her post Cooling Off or Melting Down is worth a read.

To understand today's events, though, Barry Brook's summary at Brave New Climate seems the best way to update this blog post.

Wednesday Morning Photo Update

This morning, commenter Martin Langeveld sent links to some excellent pictures of the plant. Thank you Martin! I don't want the links to be buried in the comments, a section people may or may not read.

For a recent photo of the plants (you have to scroll to see them all) see this picture. For a set of pictures, go to this site.

Fukushima: What I Think I Know So Far

Daybreak and Explosion

First thing this morning I saw the video of an explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi 1 reactor. I spent much of today trying to figure it out. There was clearly a hydrogen fire (you can see the thin blue flames rising rapidly at about 24 seconds into the video.) Beyond that, all was confusion.

The Japanese said that containment was not breached. Others said that the top of the reactor building seemed to be missing: if that wasn't "breaching containment," what was? Meanwhile, the Japanese also talked about the turbine building, and hydrogen fires in turbine buildings are pretty common. (Generators are cooled with hydrogen.) Though I no longer think the explosion is due to a generator fire, a fire in the turbine hall is still mentioned as a possibility in a recent New York Times article. (The turbines and generators are in the same building, called the turbine hall.) Atomic Insights blog also thought the explosion might be in the turbine hall. This blog also has a very informative discussion.

It's been that sort of a day. A day in which it has been very hard to figure out what is happening. When reasonable people don't know WHAT exploded, it's hard to move on from there.

Some Tentative Conclusions

Turns out that the NEI site is probably closest to correct. The outer containment building was breached in the explosion, but the inner containment of the core is intact. They are flooding the inner core with seawater and boron, which will ruin the reactor. Of course, the hydrogen fire probably means the reactor is ruined already: you don't get enough hydrogen to explode unless the fuel is uncovered and overheated.

Speaking of explosions, the top of the reactor building is sort of neat-looking. I mean, it looks too neat. The explosion goes down to a certain level, then stops, nice and even. This puzzled me, though nobody had mentioned it. However, in the comments on the Capacity Factor blog, I found this explanation: The walls that have been destroyed are actually curtain walls of the reactor building steel superstructure (which is seen on image, more or less intact). The containment and the reactor vessel are safe

That explains a lot. The containment part probably begins below those curtain walls.

All day has been like this. Trying to figure out the questions to ask (why such a neat line after an explosion?) and then trying to get the answers.

What Does It All Mean?

I don't know. The Japanese are distributing iodine, which doesn't sound good. On the other hand, when I visited Japan, I saw many people walking about with face masks to prevent disease spread. There wasn't a single piece of garbage on any street. The culture of Japan, as far as I could tell, is very organized, clean, and willing to take precautions. So maybe the iodine is a precaution. But maybe the iodine is a symptom that things are going very wrong. I simply do not know.

I continue to recommend the ANS Nuclear Cafe site for updates. It contains links to many other sites, including English-language Japanese television. In general, the New York Times has some of the best coverage in the main-stream media. I also recommend this thoughtful and balanced article A Japanese Three Mile Island, by Christine Russell at The Atlantic.

Image from Nuclear Energy Institute

The Carnival of Nuclear Energy and the Earthquake

I don't have my usual picture of a Ferris wheel here. Areva NextEnergy Blog has the 43rd Carnival of Nuclear Energy in place, and it is a good one. I encourage you to read it. I have to admit that I am more involved in trying to figure out what is happening in Japan.

Let's start with the first entry into the Carnival, though. The ANS Nuclear Cafe is posting a constantly-updated set of links about nuclear power stations in Japan. This is a great resource for finding specifically-nuclear news about Japan. Another source I found useful was this set of pictures: Massive Earthquake Hits Japan, the Big Picture. Amidst so much devastation, I was charmed to see a picture of schoolchildren praying for the people of Japan. I found the picture warmed my heart because the schoolchildren are in Ahmedabad, India. This is our son-in-laws home town, and a place I have visited.

1989 in Palo Alto

I was in the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake in California. That was a 7.1 Richter earthquake. I can only begin to imagine what a 8.9 Richter earthquake would be like. Even thinking about it is terrifying.

Our daughter was away at college at the time, and from TV news, she pretty much thought everyone in Northern California was dead. Including us. TV repeatedly showed the same images of the Marina in San Francisco burning and the Cypress Overpass bridge collapse. It wasn't that bad all over the Bay Area, though. At our home in Palo Alto, we lost two vases from high shelves, and we spent a lot of time on the front lawn talking to our neighbors. In other words, the earthquake was not devastating. Where we lived, that is.

In this earthquake, I am trying to figure out if the same thing is happening. The damage is much greater than it was in California. Homes have been swept out to sea. An entire city is on fire, not just a neighborhood. Oil refineries are on fire. But as far as I can tell, Tokyo is shaken, not much damaged. The damage may be more localized than the pictures suggest. Or not. I am going by my own experience here, and with an 8.9 magnitude earthquake, my experience is not necessarily a good guide.

Japanese Engineering

I was in Tokyo during an earthquake once, and they have amazingly effective earthquake engineering. My hotel swayed and it woke me up. Otherwise, nothing happened. It was, however, a small earthquake, not like this one. As I watched the footage of the Japanese parliament during the earthquake, I was reminded of how good the earthquake engineering is in that country.

Anyhow, I am trying to figure things out. These are just my thoughts, and I try to have hopeful thoughts about people's survival, all over Japan.

What about that nuclear plant?

Most of the nuclear plants in Japan are still running, as I read it. The plants in the earthquake-affected area shut down automatically, as they should. The plants in that area had a loss of outside power (sometimes called a LOOP). This is a planned-for situation, though certainly not welcome. When outside power is lost, the plant shuts down automatically. The control rods go in, the plant is off-line. Within seconds after that, the diesel generators start to keep the pumps going and dissipate residual heat in the reactor. Apparently, in the case of the No. 1 reactor at Fukishama, the tsunami put the diesels out of commission.

At which point, figuring out what was actually happening became very confusing. The core of the plant is still covered with water. Batteries have been brought in. America flew coolant (water?) in, according to one report. Why? The Japanese have water, they don't have power! Then an update: No, America did not fly coolant in, the Japanese are handling it themselves. Okay, this I believe.

Besides, coolant isn't the problem. Power is the problem. Why are there batteries instead of diesel generators on the job? (I have no idea.) The fuel rods are still covered by water, and, as Margaret Harding explained, as water is brought in, the pressure rises and must be vented in short bursts. (Margaret Harding was one of the blue ribbon people when I was trying to give a blue ribbon every Monday. She is a nuclear engineer who was head of a GE task force on safety planning.) However, since the fuel rods are covered, the vented water is not particularly radioactive. If the fuel rods were not covered with water, the situation would be different. But so far, things are basically under control, or as under-control as an earthquake and tsunami allow.

I think.

I am following the breaking news, and probably some of the things I wrote in this blog will turn out to be incorrect. However, I have the advantage of following not only the news itself, but the comments of some pretty smart people on a nuclear listserve.

I hope this post is helpful to my readers. This is the sort of thing that it is easier to blog about...in retrospect.

This just in: According to my listserve, this post of David Lochbaum at the Union of Concerned Scientist is probably pretty accurate. I try to give credit when it is due.

NRC Will Renew Vermont Yankee License

Today, the NRC issued a letter saying that it would renew the license at Vermont Yankee. This is good news. Not unexpected news, but very good news nevertheless. As I noted in a previous post, the NRC was treating equal-performing nuclear plants in un-equal ways, depending on the amount of noise being made by anti-nuclear groups. Specifically, the Duane Arnold renewal (sister plant to Vermont Yankee) took slightly more than two years. Vermont Yankee's renewal took over five years.

Yesterday, the NRC also announced that Vermont Yankee had passed its annual review with All Green (highest quality) indicators for safety.

Technical Review?

The latest kerfuffle was about contentions by the New England Coalition, a long-term anti-nuclear group based in Maine. They carefully analyze whatever the NRC is investigating as a possible generic safety question, and immediately bring a contention that Vermont Yankee must be adhere to as-yet-unannounced standards that the NRC may someday-in-the-future decide to promulgate. The latest contention was the issue of water in electric cabling.

In my earlier blog post, I pointed out that this was equivalent to telling a business owner that he couldn't open a business because they were still deciding on some type of regulation about signs. If the problem was an immediate safety issue, the NRC would have acted, not put the issue up for review. If an issue is up for review, all plants can await the NRC's ruling on what should be done. The NRC finally recognized this.

Just to note: the person filing contentions from New England Coalition is also the man who boasted of getting state regulators "by the short hairs" about decommissioning. Looks like the NRC broke free of this grip.

Political Pressure on the NRC

Various senators and congressmen have put pressure on the NRC about Vermont Yankee in recent days.

Republican Politicians: Two Republican senators, James Inhofe and David Vitter, recently objected to the lengthy delays of the NRC in relicensing some plants.

Vermont Politicians: The Vermont congressional delegations went to the NRC to try to persuade it to forbid Vermont Yankee from using the SAFSTOR decommissioning option. Like our governor, the delegation seems to have forgotten that the state signed an agreement allowing SAFSTOR as an option. The NRC can't break that agreement. Or if it can, it can also take away the state's powers to regulate the plant. THAT would be interesting!

Assuming they are reasonable, who is NRC is more likely to listen to?

• Senators telling them to do their job without lengthy delays
• Senators telling them to beat up a power plant's agreement with a state

The NRC chose to do their job, thank heavens!

Or, if you don't like reason, try politics.

Who will the NRC listen to?

• A true-blue state that has three total votes (2 senators, 1 congressman) and is sure to vote with Obama's plans, whatever the NRC does.
• Populous Republican states, whose congressional delegations can conceivably help (or not block) Obama initiatives.

This question has an underlying assumption that the NRC is influenced by politics. I hope that is not true. Still, it's nice when reason and politics actually work in the same direction.

I am elated to see Vermont Yankee get relicensed!

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I also want to recommend the Idaho Samizdat post on the renewal, with reactions from anti-nuclear groups and a perspective on the state situation. As usual, Dan Yurman pulls it all together!

Champagne image from Wikimediaa

Guest Blog by Willem Post: Subsidies for Wind and Solar

Guest blog by Willem Post

Today's Valley News (my local paper) contained a front-page article: Is the Home Solar Market Dimming? The article was by Chris Fleisher, an excellent business writer, and included a picture of Kimberly Quirk, a local engineer who owns the Energy Emporium in Enfield, New Hampshire. I have known Kim for several years, and have the greatest admiration for her knowledge and her store.

The article had a picture of Ms. Quirk in her super-insulated basement, but very little else about conservation. Willem Post wrote this guest post in response to the Valley News article.

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The March 6th, 2011, Sunday Valley News article Is Home Solar Market Dimming? describes that the future of PV solar looked bright until about 2008. Then the Great Recession began to bite. Many households in the top 5% of income, who had been benefiting the most from the generous PV solar subsidies, decided to be less green as there was less of the green stuff in their financial accounts.

Vermont had a substantial amount of funds in the Clean Energy Development Fund (CEDF) but it was decided to rapidly spend most of it (lest legislators would raid that kitty for other "worthwhile" state programs) on subsidies of up to $250,000 per project for wind turbine and PV solar systems. The politically well-connected received most of the subsidies for commercial projects (groSolar recently sold its residential division), leaving not enough for no-political-clout households.

The CEDF has about $800,000 left. Vermont Yankee had been required to kick in about $6 million per year since about 2002, but with the prospect of that plant closing that source of funds will disappear.

A CEDF Funded Project

For example, the CEDF provided a $250,000 subsidy to the Bolton Valley Ski Area so it could install a 100 kW, Vermont-made, wind turbine for $750,000; it has not been not operating for at least a week, even though there was plenty of wind.

According to Bolton Valley's website, the wind turbine generated 204,296 kWh from October 2009 to-date, about 17 months. Capacity factor is (204,296 kWh/1.4 years)/(8,760 hr/yr x 100 kW) = 0.17.

The web site has extensive information on the turbine. The wind turbine was sold to Bolton Valley on the basis it would produce 300,000 kWh/yr, for a capacity factor of 300,000 kWh/yr/(8,760 hr/yr x 100 kW) = 0.34. It is somewhat like selling a car and telling the new owner it will do 34 mpg, whereas it actually does only 17 mpg.

Icicles and the Use of Taxpayer Money

It is a travesty to waste scarce taxpayer money on projects of dubious value considering the many low-income households "living, i.e., freezing their toes off", in leaky, drafty, under-insulated single and doublewide housing all over the Vermont.

There are icicles hanging off almost ALL roofs in Vermont. The icicles mean that heat rises through the openings in the ceiling of the house, moves through the poor insulation into the attic, warms the roof, melts the snow to water which runs down to the colder eaves where it refreezes and forms an ice dam. Then the water backs up, forms a puddle, goes under the shingles and into one's living space.

How about a 30% subsidy for insulating houses, instead of the comparatively measly PACE program where households that borrow money to install energy systems have to pay back the loans with interest? (Note: Vermont's PACE program is described in the Valley News article. PACE stands for Property Assessed Clean Energy, and is a way for homeowners to borrow for energy improvements.)

Keeping the Subsidies Predictable

The end of the current funding from the CEDF was discussed extensively in the Valley News article. The concern was that on-again, off-again subsidies would not encourage the renewable industry. Rep. Margaret Cheney is a member of the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee. What are Cheney and her cohorts cooking up to bring subsidy predictability back?

The Committee is considering flat fee of 55 cents per month for households and a higher fee for businesses. These fees will be added to the electric bill. Note the fee for businesses is not specified. Will it be on kWh consumption? Will funds raised from households be allocated to households and funds raised from businesses be allocated to business? The idea is to start the fee low and jack it up later, as was done with the Efficiency Vermont fee (a quasi-state agency reporting to the Public Service Board. The head count at Efficiency Vermont is well over 175) which started at about 2% and is now about 5% of monthly electric bills, or $60/yr.

Energy Independence?

The Valley News story ends with this quote from Rep. Cheney:

“We need to become independent from out-of-state energy sources,” she said.

Cheney looks forward to the day Vermont becomes independent from out-of-state energy sources, such as Hydro Quebec which supplies about 30% of Vermont's power. However, many in the legislature look forward to closing Vermont Yankee which supplies about 35% of Vermont's power; both reliably provide low-cost, CO2-free, 24/7/365, steady power. Cheney has not taken a position on Vermont Yankee. Last year, around the time of the vote, she said that she would prefer to vote after tritium investigations ran their course. She said, however, that if she were to vote right at that moment, she would vote against relicensing the plant. (The House did not vote last year on Vermont Yankee. Only the Vermont Senate voted.)

Efficiency

I think Cheney should forward to the day Vermont is really serious about energy efficiency.

Energy efficiency will have a much bigger role in the near future, as energy system analysts come to realize that tens of trillions of dollars will be required to reduce CO2 from all sources and that energy efficiency will reduce CO2 at a lesser cost and more effectively.

Energy efficiency projects

• will make the US more competitive, increase exports and reduce the trade balance.
• usually have simple payback periods of 6 months to 5 years.
• reduce the need for expensive and highly visible transmission and distribution systems.
• reduce two to five times the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions and create two to three times more jobs than renewables per dollar invested; no studies, research, demonstration and pilot plants will be required.
• have minimal or no pollution, are invisible and quiet, something people really like.
• are by far the cleanest energy development anyone can engage in; they often are quick, cheap and easy.
• have a capacity factor = 1.0 and are available 24/7/365.
• use materials, such as for taping, sealing, caulking, insulation, windows, doors, refrigerators, water heaters, furnaces, fans, air conditioners, etc., that are almost entirely made in the US. They represent about 30% of a project cost, the rest is mostly labor. About 70% of the materials cost of expensive renewables, such as PV solar, is imported (panels from China, inverters from Germany), the rest of the materials cost is miscellaneous electrical items and brackets.
• will quickly reduce CO2 at the lowest cost per dollar invested AND make the economy more efficient in many areas which will raise living standards, or prevent them from falling further.
• if done before renewables, ENERGY EFFICIENCY will reduce the future capacities and capital costs of renewables.

I look forward to the day when Vermont is serious about Energy Efficiency.

Wind Turbine from Wikimedia

German PassivHaus thermogram (house on right, with low thermal leakage) from Wikimedia.

Nuclear News Interview with Shaffer and Angwin

The American Nuclear Society (ANS) is a professional society for the nuclear industry. Howard Shaffer has been a member for over thirty years. For much of my working life in the nuclear industry, I was a member of the corrosion engineers' society, NACE International. I joined the American Nuclear Society when I moved to Vermont.

Though the American Nuclear Society has American in its name, it is actually international in scope. For example, ANS just opened a section in India. Howard Shaffer and I both write guest blogs at ANS Nuclear Cafe. Here's a link to Howard's most recent post, and to mine.

The American Nuclear Society also started the Vermont Pilot Project. This project is co-sponsored by the ANS as a whole and by the Northeastern Section of ANS. Howard Shaffer heads the Pilot Project outreach program, which makes nuclear expertise available for advocacy efforts in Vermont. The Energy Education Project (I am director) works closely with the ANS Vermont Pilot Project. In other words, Howard and I still work together.

With all this activity (blogging, Pilot Project), I wasn't totally surprised when people at ANS said they wanted to interview us for an article in Nuclear News. Nuclear News is a monthly publication sent to 11,000 ANS members worldwide. When ANS asked to interview us, I imagined we would be a little one-page interview, tucked somewhere in the magazine.

Instead, Howard and I are delighted and honored to have been the cover story in Nuclear News in February. The article is several pages long, with many quotes from us about the situation in Vermont and our outreach efforts. During February, however, the story was behind a paywall at the ANS website. Now, in March, you can download it and read it in full.

Upcoming Meeting

At the March meeting of the Northeastern Section of the American Nuclear Society, I will present a talk on Vermont Pro-Nuclear Activism: A History and Lessons Learned to Date. This ANS meeting will be in the Boston area on the evening of March 22. ANS meetings are primarily for ANS members, but guests are welcome. Contact me at mjangwin at gmail for more information.