Pay For Performance Rewards Reliability and Nuclear

Recent Capacity Auction and Nuclear Energy

In a recent post at NEI Nuclear Notes, Matt Wald described recent changes in the Capacity Auction for the PJM area.  He explained why these changes will be good for nuclear energy.  I encourage you to read the post, and watch the two-minute video.  The PJM Capacity Auction and Nuclear Energy.

Note: PJM is the grid operator for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and a large swatch of the Midwest, just as ISO-NE is the grid operator for New England

Capacity, PJM, and Pay-For-Performance

What was the main change in this recent auction?  Pay for Performance has been implemented.  Here is PJM's page of explanation, Capacity Performance at a Glance.

In my opinion, this is the crucial sentence from that page: Generators that exceed performance commitments will be entitled to funds collected from generators that under- perform. 

The sentence is crucial, but it takes some explanation.

How the Capacity Auction Works.

We have to start with the two auctions: Forward Capacity Auctions, and Real-Time Auctions. Real-Time Auctions are constantly on-going. They auction electricity as MWh.  These are the auctions that yielded the high MWh prices on the grid during the polar vortex, as in the figure below.

High MWh prices
during 2014 polar vortex

But once a year, the grid operators run a "Forward Capacity Auction."  Power plants bid into this auction, just as they do for the Real-Time Auctions.

 But this time, the plants aren't bidding in kilowatt-hours that they plan to produce, today or tomorrow.  In the Capacity Auction, they are bidding in their AVAILABILITY to product kilowatts, in the future. The units of the Capacity Auction are Megawatt-Day (for PJM) and Kilowatt-Month (for ISO-NE).

Megawatt-Day and Kilowatt-Month are not just weird variations on the term kWh. They are deeply different.  A megawatt day is the availability of a megawatt, if needed, for one day.  A kilowatt-month is the availability of a kilowatt, if needed, for one month.

• The Real -Time auction bid is "Here's your energy, sir!" (and now…pay me for the electricity I produced.)
• The Capacity auction bid is "Ready, willing, and able, sir!" (and now…pay me for my availability to go online when needed.)

Take the Money and Don't Run?

Capacity auctions take place once year. A plant may bid that it is available at 700 MW each month.  But then, when the grid operator actually calls upon the plant to produce power,  it may say: "So sorry. I can't get online.  I can't get gas, my coal pile froze, and my cat ate the homework."

Cat from Wikipedia
Looks like it would eat homework

Until Pay-For-Performance, this did not matter. It didn't matter to the capacity payment whether or not the plant went on-line when needed. So why not bid the plant into the capacity auction?  What's the downside for the generator, after all?  Go ahead and bid,  and then take the capacity payment money. Yeah,  sometimes you have to say: "oh, sorry, can't run." But take the capacity money and run. Or not-run, as the case may be ;)

BUT, with pay-for-performance, generators won't bid into the capacity market if they realize they may get hit with a fine.  If they don't go on-line when called to go on-line, it may cost them money.  If they don't go on-line, they may have to pay a generator who does go on-line.

(Note: Sometimes generators refuse to go on-line because the spot price of their fuel is too expensive.  This sort of thing can be very hard on grid operators.  It is the source  of my cynical comment about the cat and the homework.)

As Matt Wald (and the PJM capacity-performance page) point out, pay-for-performance will tend to raise the capacity auction price on the grid.  As Wald also points out, the performance-pay rewards reliable power plants, and therefore, rewards nuclear.

Nuclear is reliable, and capacity pay-for-performance tends to reward that. 

Meeting about Decomm and Important Posts about Closing Vermont Yankee

Marlboro College
Graduate School Building
graphic from Wikipedia

The Meeting and the Comments

Yesterday, I posted about ways to comment about Vermont Yankee's decommissioning plans. The comment period is only open until Tuesday.

Tonight, there is a meeting in Brattleboro of the Vermont Nuclear Decommissioning Citizen Advisory Panel (NDCAP).  The meeting starts at 6 p.m. at Marlboro College on Vernon Street.  Here's a link to the agenda. Regrettably, I still have a rather bad cold, and I will not be attending.

Did I say "regrettably"? Hmm....I try to be more honest than that!  These meetings can be very hard to attend because the nuclear opponents tend to dominate the conversation.  However, I have heard that this NDCAP meetings have been far more civilized than the earlier VSNAP meetings.  I encourage people to attend and support Vermont Yankee's continued operation and careful closing.

The 165 Layoffs and the Pain

As Vermont Digger posted yesterday, Entergy has announced that 165 Vermont Yankee workers will be laid off on January 19. According to an Entergy press release, 69 of these workers live in Vermont, 48 live in New Hampshire and 39 live in Massachusetts.  (I linked to the Digger article rather than the press release because you can comment on the Digger article.)

Evan Twarog at the left
Speaking at Rotary Day  at the U N

Today, I have a guest blog post at NEI Nuclear Notes about the spreading pain of Vermont Yankee closing. I attempt to cover layoffs, taxes, the grid, and my opinion that the Entergy payments for Windham County development won't help Vermont Yankee employees that much. I hope you read it and comment on it.  Pain from Vermont Yankee Closing Spreads Far and Wide.

Evan Twarog about the pain on the grid

Evan Twarog, the son of a Vermont Yankee employee, is now a blogger at Atomic Insights.  Today he has a very well-researched and thoughtful post about the price rises on the grid.  Power in New England: Why are Prices Increasing So Rapidly?  As usual, at Atomic Insights, the comment stream is also worth reading.

Those of you who follow this blog may remember that Twarog has been a frequent guest blogger, and was a summer intern at the Ethan Allen Institute Energy Education Project, two summers ago.

NEI Report on Vermont Yankee

This week, the Nuclear Energy Institute has written an excellent multi-faceted report on Vermont Yankee.  My blog post (linked above) was the final step in this report.  I encourage you to read the entire report, bookmark it, and use it!

Blog posts:

Closing Vermont Yankee, and All That It Means (overview and market problems)
Vermont Yankee and the Looming Energy Crisis (the energy market shortfalls)
Vermont Yankee and All That It Does Not Produce (effect of closing on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative)
Pain From Vermont Yankee Closing Spreads Far and Wide  (my post, referenced above)

The report itself (Permanent at the NEI site, not blog posts):

Closing Vermont Yankee (overview and links to other pages, including great links about the energy markets, nationwide)
Nuclear Plant Shutdowns Reveal Market Problems
New England's Looming Energy Crisis
Vermont Yankee Closing Will Challenge Region's Emission Goals

Earthquake Anniversary: Updated and Unplugged

The non-fatal-tragedy

School buses
 They were used for evacuation
Older people fell off the seats and died
Chaos

Today is is the third anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated large portions of eastern Japan on March 11, 2011.  Approximately 20,000 people died in the tsunami and earthquake, but the focus of the media has always been on the Fukushima "disaster" or "tragedy."

Three nuclear power plants suffered meltdowns.  Nobody died of direct radiation, and it is unlikely that there will be any detectable rise in cancer deaths. In terms of deaths, the immediate deaths came from mishandled evacuations.   See my post from last year: Fukushima: the Second Anniversary.

Updated:

In Japan, some people are being allowed to move back to areas that had been evacuated for fear of radiation. Fuel rods are being successfully removed from Fuel Pool #4.  The story in Japan is slow, but progress is being made.

Instead of trying to update the situation myself, I will share some links:

• ANS Will Davis at American Nuclear Society ANS Nuclear Cafe: Fukushima Three Years Later.This is an excellent description of current status and lessons-learned, with many diagrams and links.
• NEI NEI has a linked series of pages on Fukushima Daiichi Recovery: The Facts. Authoritative, short, and clear
• Les Corrice at Hiroshima Syndrome. Corrice has updated his Fukushima Accident page twice a week since the accident.  His blog is very complete. He has also written two e-books: Kimin, Japan's Forgotten People (about the tsunami refugees), Fukushima, the First Five Days (accident chronology)
• Atomic Insights: Atomic Show #212 at Atomic Insights What Can We Learn from Fukushima?  This is a podcast with me, Les Corrice, Rod Adams, Cal Abel, and Will Davis.

Unplugged

Camera operator
From Wikipedia

Anti-nuclear activists are using today to "Unplug Nuclear Power."  They can't actually unplug nuclear power, so they are unplugging themselves by turning off their electricity for a day. Supposedly, this will "show that nuclear power is unnecessary." Activists have defined four levels of "unplugging" yourself from electricity.  In the first level, you "turn off extra lights and cut back on video games."   

My friends, these are real quotes.  I could not begin to make this stuff up!  Shall we have a "play a video game for nuclear" day, maybe?

I have great hopes that that the nuclear opponents will unplug themselves from those horrible electricity hogs: broadcast media.  If they see a reporter with a video camera at one of their rallies today, they should make her leave the premises. Otherwise, she will begin sending video to some broadcast media establishment, and that group will use a lot of electricity to broadcast the video clips.  This is totally against the spirit of "unplug nuclear power."  I hope the nuclear opponents won't let this happen.

San Onofre reactions: The Accurate, the Mixed, and the Ugly

The Accurate and the Mixed

In the post at ANS Nuclear Café today, there's an accurate analysis of the San Onofre shutdown: Environmental Impact Evaluation--Seeing the Bigger (Nuclear vs. Fossil) Picture. In this post, Jim Hopf discusses various issues, including San Onofre. Among other things, he notes that old fossil-burning plants at Huntington Beach have been brought out of retirement to make up for San Onofre's power. As Hopf says:  the shutdown will  result in ~2000 MW of additional fossil fueled generation for several decades.

For a mixed analysis, let's go to NEI Nuclear Notes, with an blog post that quotes many California newspapers on the closing: Reactions to San Onofre Closing: It "ought to jolt the governor."  The Sacramento Bee admits:  The plant cannot be replaced solely with sun and wind, at least not with current technology. The Bee notes that Senator Boxer hails the shut-down. The article also notes that the possibility of rolling blackouts: ought to jolt the governor [Jerry Brown], the official who will be held most responsible if California faces rolling blackouts this summer and beyond, as happened during [former Gov.] Gray Davis' truncated tenure. 

Ah yes, I remember it well.  I lived in California during the earlier set of rolling blackouts.

However, according to a recent article in the San Luis Obispo paper, the California System Operator does not expect rolling blackouts due to the plant shutdown. They expect to make up the loss of power with gas systems, renewables, and transmission lines. Earlier articles on the shut-down focused on how tight electrical resources are likely to be: this article is more reassuring. Meanwhile, Jim Hopf's statement at ANS Nuclear Café remains true: closing San Onofre means more fossil generation.

The Mixed and the Ugly: The debate at Huffington Post Live

Yesterday, the Huffington Post Live (webstreaming) sponsored a discussion about San Onofre.  This was an excellent idea.  Instead of reading short quotes, you can hear several people discuss the closing. The four people were:

• S. David Freeman, a former nuclear regulator (against nuclear energy)
• Steve Kerekes, spokesperson, Nuclear Energy Institute
• Jim Riccio, Greenpeace, antinuclear activist 
• Ben Bergman, Reporter, KPCC

I think it always helps to hear people speak directly. The moderator, Jacob Soboroff, kept things going and prevented anybody from hogging the spotlight for too long.  I have embedded the debate below.  If you want to see the comment stream from the listeners (138 comments, including a few from me) you need to go to the web page.

So why do I call this debate "mixed" and "ugly"?  The idea was good, the moderator was good, and so forth.  What more do I want?

The Ugly

My main problem was that Mr. Freeman made the most outrageous assertions and was seldom challenged.

• Early in the debate, Freeman claims that renewable power is a better choice nowadays because now we have storage options for electricity. Huh?  We do?  
• Later, he speaks of cogeneration without mentioning that  cogeneration generally depends on a fossil fuel source being burned within an industrial facility. 
• Similarly, Freeman talks about getting heat and cooling directly from the earth, without bothering to mention heat pumps. Heat pumps are run by electricity.

I expect Riccio to say things about nuclear power that are not true: this doesn't surprise me.  But the Freeman statements bothered me.  Over and over again, Freeman spoke as if there's a free lunch out there: there's grid-level storage, there's co-generation (without mentioning fossil fuels), there's heat right from the earth!

There is no free lunch, Mr. Freeman.  Sorry.

Face Time and Faces

I congratulate Steve Kerekes of NEI for his excellent job at answering some of Freeman's statements. For example, Freeman claimed that large plants decrease the reliability of the grid. Kerekes answered that was a funny thing to say when you had the kind of grid reliability we have had in this country.

However, in order to answer the endless assertions of Freeman and Riccio, Kerekes would have had to take all the time of the discussion. This was clearly impossible.

Another thing: Riccio, Bergman and Kerekes had webcams aimed at them, and you can see them speaking.  Webcams are easily available, but Freeman didn't use one.  Instead of facing a camera,  Freeman chose to show a picture of himself in a cowboy hat. Therefore, you can't read his face as he spoke.  Did Freeman know he was saying some things that weren't true? I wish I could have seen his face on-camera.

More discussions please!

Enjoy the debate discussion below, and go to the web site if you want to see the viewer comments.  We need more of these multi-person events.  I am glad that Huffington Post Live arranged this one.

Shaffer to Testify: Cheerful Wednesday

Anti-Nuclear and Nuclear on the Committee Schedule

Last Thursday, anti-nuclear activist Robert Alvarez spoke to the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee at the Vermont State House.  This Thursday (tomorrow), Arnie Gundersen will speak to them.

However, Howard Shaffer will also be speaking to the Committee tomorrow!  That's the cheerful news.

Well, it isn't perfect news, of course.  Alvarez spoke for an hour, and Gundersen is also scheduled for an hour or more. That's two hours.  Shaffer will have slightly more than an hour, according to the schedule. Still, Shaffer will be able to share some facts about spent fuel. His facts will counter the Alvarez scare stories.

Howard Shaffer

As of yesterday, it appeared that only Alvarez and Gundersen would be testifying to the legislative committee.  At that point, I was very annoyed, and I sent a letter to the editors of the local papers.

Today, I am very happy that Howard will testify.  However, everything in my letter remains true.

My Letter to the Editor: Why Alvarez? 


On April 18, Robert Alvarez spoke to the Vermont House Natural Resources and Energy Committee about spent fuel storage at Vermont Yankee.  I attended a large portion of that meeting and I also collected his handout.  The legislature is considering a tax on spent fuel.

Committee with Alvarez testifying

At the meeting, Alvarez spoke at length about the dangers of spent fuel. He advised that, for safety, much of the spent fuel should be taken out of the fuel pool and placed in dry casks.  He also spoke about taxing the fuel, and about decommissioning.

In other words, he gave the standard anti-nuclear talk.  Upon questioning, Alvarez admitted that the organization he works for is opposed to nuclear energy, and further admitted that he has no technical degree, though he has been a politically-appointed “policy advisor” in the Department of Energy.

My first reaction was to wonder why the Vermont legislature had invited Alvarez to testify.  My second reaction was to try to figure out what he was trying to say. Why did he talk about safety?  Has safety got something to do with taxation? The NRC regulates safety at nuclear plants. Hopefully, Vermont does not plan to spend more money trying to regulate nuclear safety and then losing court cases.  If the legislature was trying to figure out how to tax Vermont Yankee, it seems they need a tax expert, not someone who would tell them scary things about radiation in the spent fuel pool.

Why was our committee listening to these scare stories, with no engineer to testify in rebuttal?  Anti-nuclear activists claim the spent fuel pools burned at Fukushima, but they didn’t. The new NRC commissioner, Allison MacFarlane, visited Fukushima in December and walked all around the unit 4 plant.  She could not have done this if there had been fires and criticalities in the fuel pool.

And what does any of this have to do with taxation?

I would like our legislature to be more than a bully pulpit that gives anti-nuclear activists an opportunity to get press coverage.

Background about the Alvarez Appearance

My post about his appearance: Shaffer Knows about Spent Fuel, Alvarez Talks About It

Alvarez's statement: (It's the last pdf in the list) YesVY downloads

NEI blog post about his appearance: Vermont Yankee and the Ink on the Rubber Stamp

NEI  blog post follow-up, on his appearance: The Ink on the Rubber Stamp, Redux

Shaffer Knows About Spent Fuel: Alvarez Talks About It

Robert Alvarez (at head of table, near door)
House Energy and Natural Resources Committee
Montpelier, VT  April 

The Committee

The Vermont House Energy and Natural Resources Committee is headed by Tony Klein, a fervent opponent of Vermont Yankee.  On April 21, Robert Alvarez made a statement to this committee.  Mr. Alvarez has no technical training (as far as I can tell) but he spoke at length about the amount of spent fuel stored at Vermont Yankee, how much cesium it contains, what a huge problem it is, and how it should all be in dry casks.  Also, he said that Entergy will leave Vermont holding the bag for cleaning up the site.  (In other words, he said the usual.)

Luckily, Howard Shaffer was at the meeting.  After the session, several reporters interviewed Howard.

The Interviews

Shaffer actually knows something about nuclear energy, spent fuel and so forth.  Among other things, he is a registered professional engineer in Vermont.  Well, you all know Howard Shaffer.

Here are links to the articles, and some quotes from Shaffer (and others).

 Vermont Public Radio: Expert Says Vermont Yankee Has Too Much Spent Fuel Stored on Site

When power failed at Fukushima, reactor operators could no longer pump water to keep the fuel cool. Some of the material burned, releasing radiation.

Listening to Alvarez’s testimony was Howard Schaffer, a Yankee supporter and nuclear engineer. He said that Alvarez overstates the dangers of the spent fuel pool at Vermont Yankee.

“Because most of the fuel in the pool is (cooled) down to the point where it would absorb heat in the pool, because it’s down to the point where it could be cooled in air,” he said.

(The first two sentences above are not a quote from Shaffer. They are part of the article, and I think they show the tone of Alvarez's comments.)

WPTZ: Nuclear waste expert says Vt. Yankee's growing risk

"The (Federal) NRC and the industry are more  motivated by economics than understanding the implications of the safe storage of these materials," Alvarez told lawmakers.

Some listening to his testimony think Alvarez exaggerated the problem.

"He's from an industry who makes his living saying the sky is  falling. without saying what the odds are," said nuclear engineer Howard Shaffer, of Enfield, N.H.

Rep. Mike Hebert, a Vernon Republican who sits on the committee, said Alvarez "represents an anti-nuclear group who will give the most negative position you'd expect them to do." 

AP: Vt. Lawmakers hear from nuclear waste critic
The pool ‘‘contains about nine times more cesium-137 (a radioactive isotope) than was released from the more than 600 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests around the world,’’ said Alvarez, who acknowledged under questioning from Rep. Mike Hebert, R-Vernon, that his current employer takes an anti-nuclear stance...

Howard Shaffer, an engineer with the group Nuclear Public Outreach who attended Thursday’s hearing but did not testify, said afterward that the public should not be alarmed about the safety of nuclear waste. He argued that it can be managed safely.

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Background: The Vermont State House as  Rick's Cafe Americain For Nuclear Opponents

Alvarez was at the Vermont State House because:

1. The legislature is considering taxing spent fuel and/or requiring more spent fuel to be placed in dry casks for "safety."  (I don't think I would recommend our legislature going into "safety."  I think the courts have been pretty clear about that...)
2. The committee invited Alvarez to testify about spent fuel. 

Actually, Alvarez was invited by both the Senate and House committees: he was supposed to speak at a joint session of both committees.  But the joint session never happened, and he spoke to the House committee only, in a rather small and crowded room (see picture above).

Everybody comes to Rick's

Anti-nuclear activists are often invited to speak to the House Natural Resources and Energy committee.  Next week, Arnie Gundersen will speak to them. This committee is like Rick's Cafe Americain for anti-nuclear activists.  They are all invited and they come.

In contrast, the Ethan Allen Institute sponsored Gwyneth Cravens to come to Vermont two years ago: she is the author of Power to Save the World.  However, we were unsuccessful at getting her to be invited to speak before a  legislative committee. We did arrange for Cravens to speak at a State House Round Table, which is basically a lunch-time meeting in an available committee room.   Quite a few legislators came to hear her.

You might also enjoy reading Rod Adams post:  Why does anyone trust Robert Alverez's opinions about nuclear energy?

Update: Nuclear Notes, the blog of the Nuclear Energy Institute, has a comprehensive post on the Alvarez visit: Vermont Yankee and the Ink on the Rubber Stamp.  NEI takes a national perspective, comparing the Vermont situation to similar issues in other states.  Many excellent links, also.

Fear and Facts about Nuclear Plants and Hurricanes

Hurricane Sandy from Wikipedia

The Fear 

As Hurricane Sandy approached landfall, there were plenty of things to fear.  In the media, some articles focused on the "26 nuclear plants in the path of the hurricane."

This number of plants came from Arnie Gundersen, as far as I can tell. On October 29, Russia Today (RT) headlined "Nuclear  plant alert as 26 facilities in Sandy's path."  RT quoted a Gundersen podcast as follows: “There’s 26 power plants in the East Coast that are in the area where sandy is like to hit, and hopefully as the storm track becomes better defined, the plants that are most subject to it — likely New Jersey and Pennsylvania — preventively shut down.."

Ever since Gundersen stated that a total of sixteen shad remain in the Connecticut River. I don't take Gundersen's numbers as accurate.  Whatever the number of plants, however, is it  dangerous that nuclear plants are in the path of a storm? Well, no.  But it is worth reporting about.

I am aware that nuclear plants have weathered innumerable hurricanes and typhoons. But still,  I don't blame the popular press for looking at "26 plants in the path of the Frankenstorm" as an item of news interest.  After all, Fukushima was caused by a once-in-a-thousand-years tsunami, and now the East Coast was being hit with a Frankenstorm, a perfect blend of hurricane and Nor'easter. Therefore, it was reasonable to report about the nuclear plants and their preparations for the hurricane.  For example, WAMC radio interviewed Vermont Yankee and NRC on storm preparation.

The Fear-Mongers

However, reporting on nuclear plants and their preparations is fairly dull stuff when you can get great soundbytes of impending doom. Here are some of Arnie Gundersen's comments, made on his own podcast, on Russia Today  (RT) and on Democracy Now.

 Gundersen at RT: “You’ll hear in the next two days, ‘we’ve shut down the plant,’” he says, “but what that means is they stopped the chain reaction. But what Fukushima taught us was that that doesn’t stop the decay heat...."As the plant operator, as the people running the plant, it’s a little bit of a nervous time to realize that you’re on your last fall-back,” he warns. 

Gundersen at Democracy Now, on October 29.  In this interview, Gundersen concentrated on the Oyster Creek plant, which was in the direct path of the hurricane. Oyster Creek temporarily declared an NRC-required "alert" because of high water at its intake structure.  The alert has long since been lifted.

Meanwhile, here's Gundersen about the plant: Oyster Creek is the same design, but even older than Fukushima Daiichi unit 1....there’s no backup power for the spent fuel pools. So, if Oyster Creek were to lose its offsite power — and, frankly, that’s really likely — there would be no way cool that nuclear fuel that’s in the fuel pool until they get the power reestablished. ... The most important lesson we can take out of the Fukushima Daiichi and climate change, and especially with Hurricane Sandy, is that we can’t expect to cool these fueling pools." 

I wanted to go word by word through these quotes, refuting them.  For one thing, the idea that we were taught about decay heat by Fukushima!  Well, maybe Gundersen just learned recently about decay heat -- if he forgot everything he learned in engineering school. Nuclear plant designers and engineers have always known about decay heat. Nuclear plants sized their diesels and other backup systems in accordance with requirements to handle decay heat.

Part of the logo of ANS Nuclear Cafe Blog

Spreading the Facts As You Might Expect Them to Be Spread

Luckily I didn't have to write a refutation.  William Davis, a man with real operating experience, went right through the accusations and refuted them all, at the American Nuclear Society (ANS) Nuclear Cafe blog, in his post Spent Fuel Pool at Oyster Creek. Among other things, Davis describes the diesel-powered emergency cooling arrangements for the spent fuel pools. A careful and well-referenced post, by someone who didn't forget what he learned in naval reactor school.

Another source of information: the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) issued a press release that is also up on their blog: Nuclear Energy Facilities Prove Resilience During Hurricane Sandy. The NEI blog post has a complete list of plants and how they performed during the hurricane (they did fine). It also links to a more comprehensive report on hurricanes and nuclear plants.

Two excellent posts, with lots of information for laymen and reporters.

Preaching to the Choir

Gundersen made a lot of incorrect statements. ANS and NEI made a lot of correct, well-referenced statements.  However, they can both be accused of the same thing: preaching to the choir.

Who watches Democracy Now and follows Russia Today? Not many nuclear supporters, I suspect.

Who follows the ANS and NEI blogs? Not many nuclear opponents, I suspect.

Okay, so both sides were preaching to the choir.  The hurricane is over, and the power plants did well (as expected). The next question is: how did the mainstream press react to this dis-information and information about nuclear plants and hurricanes?

I think they did very well at separating facts from fiction, but that is another blog post for another day (probably tomorrow).

The Main Stream Press--a teaser

Encouraging you to tune in tomorrow (or maybe the next day) for a post on the mainstream press:

An older post from Margaret Harding on the Optimist's Conundrum: why it is so hard to report good news.

Jim Conca at Forbes: Don't Politicize Sandy: Hurricane Normal Problem for Nukes.

San Onofre Steam Generators: My Post at Atomic Power Review

Introducing my post, San Onofre and Steam Generator Design at Atomic Power Review.

History

An excellent post by Dan Yurman, Debunking Some Nuclear Nonsense, introduced me to the controversies about the new steam generators at San Onofre.  The steam generators are newly installed, and having unexpected problems.  His post also introduced me to Arnie Gundersen's critiques of the San Onofre steam generators, how they were made, how they were designed, etc.  These critiques were  funded by Friends of the Earth.

I try to stick to energy issues in my own region, the Northeast, but this situation got under my skin.  You see, I actually know a great deal about steam generators and their issues.  I was a project manager in the Steam Generator Owner's Group at EPRI.  When I left EPRI to start my own company, I had contracts to help utilities with steam generator chemistry decisions. My contracts were in the U.S. and abroad. My expertise was in demand.

So, of course I fired off a geeky letter to the ANS mailing list about steam generators.  Will Davis of Atomic Power Review asked me to de-geek the letter a bit. He said he would put it on his blog, Atomic Power Review.

My post is up at Atomic Power review today.  I'm proud of it, and I very pleased that Will Davis encouraged me to write it.  It's getting a lot of hits...

Update: I was going to put in a series of links to other SG articles, but the NEI blog post today has done it for me.  A Reader's Guide to the San Onofre Steam Generator Situation.  Great guide to SG posts by Barq, Davis, Yurman, and people at Southern California Edison.  Thanks for the comprehensive guide to steam generator issues at SONGS.

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Graphic of steam generator support plates courtesy of AREVA.

86th Blog Carnival at NEI Nuclear Notes

The 86th Carnival of Nuclear Energy is up at NEI Nuclear Notes.

Many of the bloggers at the Carnival have delved into books, legislation, long reports, and law cases. They have written excellent summaries, complete with information and opinions. Reading their posts, you can become knowledgeable without reading all that material yourself. On the other hand, if you have already read the original documents, you can comment on the blog posts. So you can still have fun!

Some of the reports include:

• Dan Yurman at Idaho Samizdat reviews a book on the Integral Fast Reactor. This program included the whole fuel cycle for the reactors, including waste management.
• At ANS Nuclear Cafe, Yurman delved into the recently-passed Energy and Water Appropriations bill of 2012. Nuclear energy research was largely spared from major cuts.
• At Yes Vermont Yankee, I described five, count'em, five current or recently-resolved lawsuits about Vermont Yankee.
• At Nuclear Diner, Cheryl Rofer summarized Japan's interim report on the Fukushima accident. There is more known about the communication failures than about the physical failure sequence.
• At Atomic Power Review, Will Davis describes an upcoming symposium about reporting on Fukushima. The reporting was pretty terrible, and there's hope it will be recognized at this symposium.
• At Atomic Insights, Rod Adams looks into energy density and fuel availability. If we want a future of more than 100 years of abundant energy, the answer is New and Clear. (My pun, not Rod's.)
• At NEI Nuclear Notes, Mark Flanagan reviews how France and the U.S. are upgrading reactors in response to Fukushima.
• Brian Wang describes Toshiba's new system for cleaning soil of radioactive cesium.

Read the short, well written version of all this interesting material. Read the bloggers! Come to the Carnival!

Update Note: I also recommend Howard Shaffer's post today at ANS Nuclear Cafe: Vermont Outreach Continues as Opponents Reorganize

The Debate at UVM: Arnie Gundersen and Myself

NEI Nuclear Notes has a recent post about Gundersen: In Attack on AP-1000, Anti-Nuke Gundersen Hits a New Low. I commented on that post with a note about debate in January between me and Gundersen, This was the Janus Forum debate at University of Vermont (UVM): Vermont Yankee, Shut It Down or Keep It Running? Because of the NEI blog post, some people have asked me if I have a link to that debate.

I posted an audio link to the debate on my blog back in January: Janus Forum Debate. However, I have never posted the video of that debate.

Why didn't I post the video? Well, it took a while for UVM to send me the video, and it took a while for me to ask Cavan Stone, physics grad student and Energy Education Project part-time intern, to mount the video on YouTube. Also, there are so many things to blog about, it's hard to keep up.

I am pleased that the Energy Education Project has a YouTube channel, thanks to Cavan Stone. Sign up as a subscriber!

Practical Matters

The video is almost two hours long, which is daunting. If you want to skip around, here's the debate structure:

• Introductions
• I speak for 20 minutes
• Gundersen speaks for 20 minutes.
• Gundersen answers my presentation, for 10 minutes.
• I answer Gundersen's presentation, for 10 minutes.

We are now somewhere past the one-hour mark. The rest of the time is questions from the audience.