Howard Shaffer and I Receive Awards at American Nuclear Society

Yesterday, at the President's Special Section of the American Nuclear Society Meeting in Chicago, Howard Shaffer and I received awards for our work in advocating nuclear power and Vermont Yankee in Vermont.  We received the President's Citation Award.  

The American Nuclear Society Nuclear Cafe blog post today is about our awards. Meredith Angwin and Howard Shaffer Receive President's Citation Awards.

NRC and Vermont Yankee Win In Federal Court

The Vermont Department of Public Service sued the NRC, claiming that the NRC should not have issued a license extension to Vermont Yankee because the plant's water quality permits were not in order.  Today, a federal court in Washington ruled for the NRC and for Vermont Yankee...the license extension was upheld.

I am still at the ANS convention in Chicago, and it's hard to blog for various reasons...like..not enough hours in the day.  However, this short article from Power Engineering contains a link to the ruling, so it is a good place to start reading about Vermont Yankee's victory.

ANS Conference, Carnival and Thorium Update

Wrigley Building, Chicago
Short walk from the ANS convention hotel 

American Nuclear Society Conference

Right now, I am at the American Nuclear Society convention in Chicago.  It feels so good to be here.  I am currently just doing a bit of coffee-drinking and email-catching-up, but I met up with Margaret Harding and Gail Marcus and Howard Shaffer and...well, LOTS of other people last night!  It's great to be here, and it's great to be in Chicago, the town where I grew up.

For fuller description of the Meeting So Far (the main meeting hasn't officially begun yet) I recommend the following posts:

Will Davis on the first few house in in Chicago for the meeting, at Atomic Power Review.

Short Video of the American Nuclear Society president Eric Loewen welcoming people to the meeting, at American Nuclear Society Nuclear Cafe.

At idaho Samizdat, Dan Yurman tells how to follow the conference on twitter and Facebook.

At this conference, Margaret Harding will receive a major and well-deserved award.  She was a voice of clarity for many during the Fukushima crisis: not pulling her punches about what was happening OR what was being exaggerated.  Read an interview with Harding at American Nuclear Society Nuclear Cafe.

110th Carnival of Nuclear Energy at Atomic Power Review

Okay.  I don't know how Will Davis does it.  He's at this conference, and he also put together a terrific blog carnival.  Maybe he doesn't need to sleep? It's a possibility...

Meanwhile, take advantage of his hard work by visiting the 110th Carnival of Nuclear Energy at Atomic Power Review.  Topics include new builds, Yucca Mountain, India, the new Commissioner.  A huge and important Carnival!

Superfuel Book Review

Comments on my Superfuel book review post have been coming thick and fast.  Some comments are about the kind of people who support thorium ("thorium heads") and those who support light water reactors ("nuclearati").  Insults on both sides.  Cavan Stone put the matter best in his comment.

No question, given everything we have available today, LWRs should be every utility's top choice for their base load power, until we develop and commercialize something EVEN BETTER. Yet I should note, nobody in the main body of the LFTR community is talking at all about shutting down LWRs. Rather everyone is talking about opening up new markets that the LWRs have not even touched. Yet, there are members of the established nuclear community trashing LFTR without scientific justification.

Meanwhile, Rod Adams is doing a series of posts based on the book: There are three suprefuels: uranium, plutonium and thorium.  Adams attempted commercialize a new type of reactor, the Adams Atomic Engine. He holds patents on that concept.  His opinions of new reactors are well worth reading. As usual, he gets terrific comments on his posts.  Comments include the fact that if a LFTR is built, the same anti-nuclear people will fight it.  Also, the LFTR might be a way to begin learning about nuclear by people who are currently anti-nuclear.

Superfuel: A Book I Wanted to Love

As you can tell from the title of this blog post, I didn't love the book Superfuel, Thorium, the Green Energy Source for the Future, by Richard Martin. I didn't even like it.

I expected to like the book. I like both the subject and the author. I recognize that I am not the target audience for this book, and I tried to take that into account in my review.  I still found the book disappointing.

Superfuel is about  the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR)  an advanced reactor technology that uses thorium fuel in circulating molten salts.  I think LFTR technology has great promise for the future.   The author, Richard Martin, is a technology journalist and contributing editor for Wired Magazine.   I admired his  January 2009 article "Uranium Is So Last Century--Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke." I thought the article was an important step in winning mainstream acceptance for new types of reactors.

I'm not the target audience

LFTR Image from Energy From Thorium blog
http://energyfromthorium.com/lftradsrisks.html

Superfuel begins well. The book starts with an effective story about how Kirk Sorenson learned about LFTRs and how they could be deployed. It describes Robert Hargraves and his Aim High work, and Charles Barton's important blog Nuclear Green. I know and admire both Hargraves and Barton, and I admire Sorenson, though I don't know him.

However, I soon noticed that the tone of the book was taking direct aim at the present nuclear industry.  There was a little too much differentiation between the brave pro-thorium engineers and the "hide-bound and risk-averse nuclear power industry." Superfuel refers to the people in today's nuclear power industry as the "nuclearati." Apparently, we are the ones impeding the development of LFTRS.  Well, it shows that I am not the book's target audience.

I began to feel very distant from the thesis of his book, despite the fact that I support the development of LFTRs. I even made a poster presentation ("poster session") about LFTRs at a scientific research conference in 2010.  From the book's point of view, I am just one of the "nuclearati."

The Good and the Bad in Superfuel


The good. Martin is at his best in describing the history of the nuclear industry. Superfuel contains an excellent and understandable section on the various failed reactor concepts in the U. S.  It  describes the contributions of Alvin Weinburg, a  pioneer of the light water reactor and the molten salt reactor.  The chapter on the Asian nuclear race was top-notch, including a clear description of the impractical "three-stage program" in India.

The bad.  The book makes huge factual errors.  When I notice so many mistakes in areas with which I am familiar, then I can't trust the book on areas on which I am unfamiliar.  That destroys the book for me.

A secondary issue is that the book raises straw men and uses inflammatory rhetoric about the present nuclear industry in ways that I can't accept.  Yes, I realize that the point of the book is to show how LFTRs are superior to the current fleet.  Even considering "the superiority of LFTRS" as a legitimate purpose of the book,  I think it goes over the top in its rhetoric and loses credibility.

Fresh fuel pellets
NRC photo

Factual Errors: Fuel Rod Aging


Superfuel contains a major (incorrect) thesis about fuel rod aging as a weak point for today's reactors. This idea is mentioned throughout the book, but the most succinct statement is on page 74. where the book claims that "fuel rods age quickly" due to the buildup of fission products. ..."they have to be replaced every few years, even though only three to five percent of their energy has been consumed."  There are two major problems with this statement.

LWR fuel rods use fissionable material efficiently. In a LWR, fuel rods are replaced when they have consumed over 80% of the energy source (U-235) that they CAN consume. They also burn up some plutonium that they have created.  It would take a different type of reactor to consume the U-238 (95%) of the fuel effectively.

LWR Fuel rods are not life-limited by radiation damage. Martin writes about damage to the fuel as a problem the molten salt reactor solves, but such damage is not the life-limiting step for light water reactor fuel. Highly enriched uranium fuel runs Naval reactors for many years, without fuel rod replacement. Navy fuel is a different type of uranium fuel, but it is a uranium-based solid fuel. For the nuclear power industry, LWR reactor fuel is available at various degrees of enrichment, depending on the design of the plant and how long the plant chooses to run between maintenance outages.

Reactor fuel enrichment decisions are engineering decisions. Fuel damage is only one consideration in fuel design, and is not life-limiting for LWR reactor fuel.

Careless Errors


The book contains many errors.  I chose two.  You might say these are trivial problems.  However, if you are comparing two technologies (LWR and LFTR) it is important to get the facts right.

Positive and negative. On page 44, Martin says that 19th century scientists "knew that the positively charged protons (red) would necessarily repel the negatively charged electrons (black)." Actually, opposite charges attract.

Actinides and fission products. On page 186, "the buildup of actinides (including xenon, cesium, technetium and so on) eventually ruins conventional solid uranium fuel rods." The author means "fission products," not "actinides."

Attacking the Current Fleet and People


Superfuel sees uranium as dangerous.  For example, the third chapter starts a description of a ship carrying yellowcake.  The ship encounters heavy weather,  and two of the yellowcake casks were smashed open. In my opinion, this is a non-incident.  Martin writes that "the Altona averted disaster" by cleaning up the ship and not releasing any yellowcake into environment. What disaster would this have been? Until it is enriched, yellowcake isn't very radioactive.

Superfuel describes uranium as follows: "Uranium is like a finicky child at a buffet: only the right combination of moderator, fuel, core design and materials will produce a sustained fission reaction." (page 65)  This is a problem?  I thought it was engineering!  However, in the book, this statement is a mark against uranium.

The book also attacks the people involved in this generation of nuclear power plants. On page 65:  "By the limited standards of the nuclearati, nuclear power is a success."

Well, yes.  As a proud "nucearati." I do think nuclear power has been a success.  That doesn't mean we can't build better reactors in the future.

When he describes the nuclear founders, Martin can be especially vitriolic.  For example, he blames Milton Shaw for the end of the Molten Salt Reactor program at Oak Ridge.  Shaw may well have been responsible for the end of that program. Shaw was also the project leader for the first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus.  I don't know much about Shaw except that he was a project leader in the early days.

How does Martin describe Shaw? Shaw was "known as the admiral's chief henchman, Beria to Rickover's Stalin."

Stalin? Beria? With opinions like that, it's hard to take  the book's comparisons between LFTRs and LWRs completely seriously.

A word from a nuclearati


Superfuel often doesn't get the facts right.   Demonizing the current industry and its founders is also unnecessary. One can admire Weinberg without simultaneously comparing Rickover to Stalin.

If you want to learn more about the promise of the LFTR  I recommend Dr. Robert Hargraves short book Aim High!  Hargraves is a physicist and he gets his facts right. Aim High! is a small self-published book, and Superfuel comes from a major publisher, but Hargraves doesn't make so many mistakes. There are good parts of Superfuel, as mentioned above.  If you want a general history of nuclear power, Superfuel is one of many books you can read with interest.

I appreciate that a major author and a major publisher have released a book on the LFTR.  I wish they had spared some of the "nuclearati-Stalin" type rhetoric, and done more fact-checking.  It could have been a book I loved.

Other reviews:
Will Davis at Atomic Power Review has a more positive review of this book, Another positive review at the blog ThoriumMSR, by Rick Maltese.

Update: Rod Adams wrote a related post this morning: There are three Superfuels--uranium, thorium and  plutonium.  Fascinating post and good comments!

109th Carnival of Nuclear Energy at ANS Nuclear Cafe

The 109th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers is up at ANS Nuclear Cafe.  Dan Yurman has put together a fine carnival.  Even the blog titles are great.  Here;s a post bout the incoming NRC chair: "Questions left on the hearing room floor"?  That's Margaret Harding's blog entry.

Steve Skutnik of Neutron Economy also has some questions for incoming NRC Chairman McFarlane.  I review the recent spent-fuel storage issues, and Dan Yurman of Idaho Samizdat reviews progress (or the lack thereof) at the Vogtle build.  ANS Nuclear Cafe submits a great post by Suzanne Hobbs Baker: Sowing the Seeds of Curiosity.  This is a new look at how we talk about nuclear energy"

Meanwhile, Atomic Power Review has a guest post on water hammer.  There's been speculation about water hammer at Fukushima. former ANS president A. David Rossin wrote the guest post.  A new blog has joined the Carnival: USA Cargo, based at the Fast Flux Reactor Test Facility.  The USA Cargo post is about Mark Peters of ANS. Peters testified to Congress that America is becoming dependent on foreign research about fast-neutron reactors that can consume spent fuel. (Sigh.  A good post.  However, I wish foreign research was the only thing that Americans were becoming dependent upon.  Foreign oil, maybe?  Around here, even the coal for many of our plants comes from South America.  At what point does free trade morph into energy dependence?  Not a question I can answer.)

Come to the Carnival. New voices, new thoughts, and questions left on the hearing room floor!

Gaz Metro merger goes forward. Ratepayers stiffed.

Gaz Metro has everything it wanted.  The Green Mountain Power/Central Vermont Public Service merger was approved by the Public Service Board today. The merged companies don't have to give $21 million back to the ratepayers, as they had promised, and as AARP hoped would happen.  The state legislature wanted to intervene in favor of the ratepayers, but they didn't. Governor Shumlin got his ducks in order and the legislators reversed their stands on the issue. They didn't "quibble" (the Governor's words) about the $21 million.  I blogged about the Governor's persuasive powers in Money Settles in Gaz Metro Pockets, Dust Settles Under the Dome.

Yes, the Public Service Board (PSB) ruled to give Gaz Metro pretty much everything it wanted.  You can read the ruling itself here, and a short Alan Panebaker article  in Vermont Digger here. This is the same PSB that allowed another Gaz Metro company to charge Vermont rate-payers for building a gas pipeline, instead of funding the pipeline with Gaz Metro money.

However, when it comes right down to it, I don't blame the PSB.  The Vermont Department of Public Service (DPS) is supposed to be the ratepayers advocate in proceedings before the PSB.  DPS is supposed to protect the ratepayer and it does not protect them. Seems to me that DPS doesn't defend the ratepayers in issues about money--especially money for a Gaz Metro company.   Since nobody is on the ratepayers' side, everything is coming up roses for Gaz Metro.

Cheerful News for a Beautiful Evening: Japan, Larry Smith of Entergy, and EPR Video from Areva

News from Japan: Japan Restarts Two Reactors

According to USA Today, Japan will almost certainly start two reactors this weekend.  The mayor of the local town signed off on the plan.  Read about the restart of the two Ohi reactors here.

Brattleboro Reformer article about Larry Smith, Vermont Yankee spokesman

Josh Stilts of the Brattleboro Reformer has a thoughtful, wonderful article about Larry Smith, Vermont Yankee spokesman. Smith is retiring at the end of this week. The article describes Smith's hungry early days and his later work to set up Feed the Thousands in Brattleboro. It also describes the stresses of being spokesman for Vermont Yankee. Smith had a stress-related stroke in 2007. As Entergy spokesman, he has been called "Larry the Liar of Louisiana" (and worse).  Smith regains perspective through his charitable work: serving meals or working at Feed the Thousands

This is a terrific article. It's much more complete than my recent blog post about Larry named as Man of the Year by the Brattleboro Chamber of Commerce. From this article, it is clear why Governor Shumlin said that Larry Smith has done more for those in need than anyone in this state.

Areva Advanced Reactor Video

Areva is building four EPRs around the world, in Finland, France and China.  I'm not glossing over the fact that the European builds are behind on budget and schedule. Still, these are the first Gen III's to be built.  Reactors with these types of safety feature will be part of the future of nuclear energy.

Areva just prepared a video about EPR safety features.  I think it is worth watching.