Nuclear Blogger Carnival 298, at Yes Vermont Yankee

Once again, we are proud to host the Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers, right here at Yes Vermont Yankee. The Carnival is a compendium of nuclear blogs that rotates from blog site to blog site, and it is always a pleasure and an honor to host it.

Let's start with blog posts directly about nuclear energy.  Nuclear power is moving forward, world-wide, despite opposition.

Fukushima Updates--Leslie Corrice

Takahama unit #3 restart

Takahama unit #3  has restarted, and this has spurred  numerous FUD-based press reports. The main reason is the use of MOX fuel bundles in 15% of the core. The postings also focus on allegedly inadequate emergency planning, the lack of a national nuclear waste disposal option, the inference that the only benefit of nukes is making money, and citizens claiming a violation of their human rights.

Neutron Bytes - Dan Yurman

SMR developers form advocacy group in DC

Leading developers and potential customers of small modular reactors (SMR) have formed a consortium, called SMR Smart, to advance the commercialization of the innovative light water reactor designs.

Also, developers of advanced nuclear reactors are pleased with their DC summit meeting held last week.

Next Big Future--Brian Wang

China plans on at least 110 Nuclear Reactors by 2030
Many will be 1400 MW or larger.  The Chinese supply chain is well in place.

Lightbridge is making progress on improved nuclear fuel
This fuel should increase energy production by 17% in existing reactors.

Bad air quality in Japan from lack of nuclear energy and air pollution in China
Hopefully, reactor restarts in Japan will ease the problem. But right now it is pretty bad, with 60% of monitoring sites in Japan above the particulate pollution standard. 

Neutron Bytes - Dan Yurman

French gov’t struggles to overcome a panic attack about UK’s Hinkley Point nuclear power project

French energy group EDF has postponed giving final approval for construction of the twin 1600 MW Areva EPRs in Somerset, UK. The current cost estimate, which is a work in progress, is pegged at between $18-20 billion.

The move to delay the final investment decision is said to have been made as a result of concerns within the French government and by investors about whether the financing was firmly in place for the huge project and whether costs could be contained over a decade long period of construction of the reactors.

Next:  Can renewables replace fossil fuel and nuclear?  Well, no. Here are some posts on that issue.

Forbes--James Conca
Exxon Believes That Global Use Of Oil And Gas Will Continue To Increase
The largest fossil fuel company in the world predicts our energy mix won’t change a whole lot over the next 25 years. In fact, Exxon Mobil projects that oil and gas will actually increase by 2040, even as coal decreases a bit. This unfortunate future stems from the age-old conundrum of trying not to eat sugar when your pockets are full of candy. The Earth has so much fossil fuel, and it has become so cheap to extract it, that it defies logic to think that humans will not keep burning it as their main source of energy.

Northwest Clean Energy--Meredith Angwin
Reality: Less nuclear means more natural gas
Vermont Yankee and San Onofre closed recently. Natural gas-fired plants took over and made the electricity that replaced the nuclear outputs.  Meanwhile, paper after paper, and study after study, trumpet the coming world of renewables.  These are just studies.  Though renewables maybe would'a, could'a, should'a replaced the closed plants, the reality is that less nuclear means more natural gas.

Atomic Insights--Rod Adams
Another day, another model “proving” capabilities of weather-dependent power

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) jointly published a paper about a new model they've created to simulate using weather-dependent energy sources to reduce greenhouse gas production from the US electricity sector. 

Their scenarios include generous amounts of natural gas, a nationwide HVDC transmission network,  and other conditions. Some news outlets have published headlines citing  the large reduction without noting the required conditions. Shocking, isn't it?

The Atomic Show (podcast)---Rod Adams

Atomic Show #249 - All Electric America by S. David Freeman and Leah Y Parks

Freeman has been actively doubting the value of nuclear energy since the mid 1970s. He's now in his 90s. Leah Y Parks is a writer who earned an MS in environmental engineering and has some experience in developing water infrastructure projects. She, like Freeman, believes that wind, solar and water can do it all, even if all energy now supplied by burning fossil fuels is converted to electricity.  The conversation is civil, even though the participants have unresolvable disagreements. 

Yes Vermont Yankee--Guest Post

Overreach at the Attorney General's Office: Guest post by Deborah Bucknam

In this case, strong-arm tactics are being used to promote renewable use, whether people want it or not. Recently, the Vermont Attorney general's office announced that they were investigating Annette Smith for possibly "practicing law without a license." Ms. Smith is a prominent anti-wind advocate.  In this guest post, Vermont lawyer Deborah Bucknam explains that the preposterous charge will likely be thrown out. Nevertheless, the charge will  hamper free speech and encourage wind developers. 

Vermont Yankee was replaced by natural gas: Doing the numbers

Vermont Yankee energy was replaced by natural gas.  That's the bottom line.

Three Quarters Compared

During the first three quarters of 2014, (January through September) Vermont Yankee was running.  During the first three quarters of of 2015, it had shut down.

Scott Luft writes the ColdAir blog, which is mostly concerned with Canadian energy issues. http://coldair.luftonline.net. However, in early December, Luft tweeted some comparisons of energy sources in the Northeastern U.S.,  before and after Vermont Yankee shut down.  Similar charts are below.

Changes in Fuel Usage: New England Grid
Comparison of first nine months 2015 to similar 2014
Comparison of first quarter 2015 to last quarter 2014

The rise of natural gas with the fall of nuclear

First look at the top chart--the nine-month comparisons.  About 1500 GWh more electricity was produced in the first nine months of 2015 than in the first nine months of 2014 (see the "all fuels" line).  Almost all of the change in electricity (top chart) was produced by an expansion of the use of natural gas, making up for the drop in nuclear and coal. There was also an expansion of utility-scale photovoltaic energy, but the vast majority of the change in power supply was expanded use of natural gas.

One anti-nuclear commentator challenged these results, saying that looking at the first three quarters was a clever way to cherry pick data and avoid the true story of what really happened. Nuclear and natural gas use both fell between the last quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015.

And indeed, they both did (second chart).

This wasn't anything to be proud of, however.  The first quarter of the year is quite cold in the Northeast, and people use natural gas to heat their homes.  Therefore, many natural gas-fired power plants cannot obtain fuel.  Oil and coal take up the slack.  Nowadays, natural gas plants are equipping themselves to be dual-fired, so they can burn oil.

Nuclear went down, natural gas wasn't available, and oil and coal use went up.  Nothing to celebrate. We're not looking at "green" energy expanding.

You can double-click to expand the charts.
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History of the charts

After I saw Luft's tweet, I contacted Scott Luft and asked him about his sources. Luft very kindly re-produced his sources and spreadsheets.  Luft's information came from several queries to the EIA data browser.

Luft had pulled the information into spreadsheets. Later, my husband George pulled the same data into the Macintosh spreadsheet that he likes better. Then he made the charts from the data.  The data from his spreadsheets is shown below.  It is all based on queries to this EIA database.

Deepest appreciation to Scott Luft and George Angwin.

History of the anti-nuclear comments

Also, Scott Luft compiled a "storify" of his twitter interchange with Mark Z. Jacobson on this subject.    In my opinion, Jacobson comes off badly in the exchange. It doesn't take complex work to show the flaws in Jacobson's arguments.  You simply start with quoting him directly, and the facts take it from there.

As Germany goes, so goes Vermont? Guest post by Guy Page

Guy Page

As Germany goes, so goes Vermont?

Parallels in renewable energy policy and outcomes

By Guy Page

“As Maine goes, so goes the nation,” went the political truism between 1834 and 1932, when the Pine Tree State picked the winner in almost every presidential election. When only staunch Republican (!) Vermont joined Maine in selecting Republican Alf Landon in 1936, winner Franklin D. Roosevelt’s campaign manager James Farley famously if somewhat predictably quipped: “As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.”

Eighty years later Vermont is following another trendsetter:  Germany, the Western world’s undisputed leader of government-subsidized renewable power. Visitors to Germany note that solar panels cover the south face of seemingly every village church, school and home. Germany is home to a well-funded, highly popular “feed-in tariff” (FIT) that has encouraged almost broadbased power production. Of the 40 GW of installed solar power worldwide at the end 2010, almost half – 17.4 GW – was located in Germany. In just two years Germany’s share jumped to about 30 GW, according to the Feb. 2013 Washington Post.

German Inspiration

The German program was an inspiration to the crafters of Vermont’s May, 2009 feed-in tariff law, the energy-generation lynchpin of the state’s plan to use 90% renewables by 2050. Then Senate Pro-Tem (and now Governor) Peter Shumlin was particularly enthusiastic. In March, 2010 he told Fox News that if overcast Germany can get 30% of its electricity from solar power, so can America. He said this just days after leading the Vermont Senate in its “no” vote on Vermont Yankee. (When Fox reporter Stuart Varney pointed out that Germany gets just one percent of its power from solar, Shumlin conceded the error but has never retreated from his central point: Vermont, like Germany, can become a leader in the new renewable power energy economy, resulting in new jobs, clean air, and energy independence.)

Like its European forebearer, Vermont’s FIT solar power program also contributes about one percent to the state’s total power portfolio – actually, about one-third of one percent. The state’s SPEED website lists 13 projects (see “project summary” page) as “online and generating,” producing about 18,000 MWh of Vermont’s total load of about 6,000,000 MWh. (The FIT program for ALL forms of generation comes in at 53,000 MWh, or just under the one percent mark.)

German FIT solar power costs about 32 cents American per kilowatt-hour. Likewise in Vermont: FIT solar power is down from 30 cents to 25.7, about five times the average market rate. And while market power rates fluctuate – for better or worse - the Vermont FIT solar power rate, once set, is fixed in contractual stone over the course of the 10 year contract.

Nuclear and Fossil

As in Germany, Vermont opponents of nuclear power were empowered by a nuclear “incident” that helped them reverse government support for nuclear power. The Vermont Senate’s 2010 vote was held amid a powerful public response to reports of a tritium leak at Vermont Yankee. In May 2011, in the wake of Fukushima, the German government announced plans to close many nuclear plants. Although Germany followed Vermont chronologically, the decisions-making process was similar: the politically astute realized that a sense of crisis had moved matters to a tipping point.

The pro-renewables, anti-nuclear policy has had an unexpected effect in both locales: they are more reliant on fossil fuels. Germany has been an acknowledged leader among the “green” nations of Europe. In 2011, Vermont had the nation’s smallest carbon footprint for power generation, thanks largely to its reliance on hydro and Vermont Yankee.

A Step Backwards for the Carbon Footprint

Lignite or "Brown Coal"

In carbon terms, both have taken a step backwards. According to a February 27 2013 Bloomberg News report, Germany plans to build 6000 new megawatts of coal-fired power generation, a move which will significantly increase their overall carbon footprint. The pragmatic Germans realize they need plentiful, domestic, baseload power capacity to support Europe’s strongest manufacturing economy. Deprived of nuclear power, the German government is turning – back – to coal.

In Vermont, something similar has happened. Vermont Yankee’s contract providing about a third of the state’s electricity expired in March, 2012. Vermont’s reliance on New England grid power jumped about one million megawatt-hours in 2012 over 2011, according to “Vermont Electricity At A Glance,” study I conducted for the Vermont Energy Partnership. That figure equals one-sixth of Vermont’s total electrical load. About three-quarters of the grid’s power is derived from fossil fuels, mostly natural gas.

Concerns about the technical Achilles Heel of intermittent power - grid instability - are present in both Vermont and Germany. The August, 2012 Spiegel Online reported that large German manufacturers have experienced expensive power interruptions related to the transition to renewable power. In Vermont, the New England transmission grid operators have “curtailed” its purchases of power from the Lowell Mountain wind turbine development due to intermittency, resulting in a million dollars of lost income this winter, according to the general manager of one Vermont utility quoted in the April 5, 2013 Vermont Digger. The project’s owner is installing a synchronous condenser - $10 million pricetag – that it hopes will solve the problem.

Looking Forward

It is only fair to point out that in neither Vermont nor Germany has the final chapter been written. Perhaps solar power will prove to be greener, in both cash and carbon, in the long run.  Someday, a bright engineer may solve the problem of “translating” intermittent power into a traditional power grid. No doubt renewable power is delivering many positive benefits right now, including energy diversity, property tax income, and strong growth in solar-related employment. Solar power’s cost of production has decreased somewhat in recent years, in part due to fierce competition from China’s solar panel producers. Nevertheless, it’s a safe bet that when the avid backers of solar power in Vermont and Germany celebrated the passage of their FIT laws, few of them were anticipating that the immediate future would have more carbon and serious concerns about power cost and reliability.

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Guy Page is a frequent guest blogger at Yes Vermont Yankee. His most recent blog post described his report on Vermont's transition to renewable energy. 

Enlightenment and Renaissance: Which Should Come First for Nuclear

Several months ago I blogged about an engineering presentation at Dartmouth. Dr. Swartz presented a talk with the provocative title: If Vermont Yankee Had an Accident Like Fukushima.

Swartz concluded that the "worried well" would be the major problem after any type of nuclear accident. Civilians would not receive radiation at a dose that would measurably increase their chances of getting cancer or limit their life-expectancy. They would also not believe any official assurances that this was the case. Dr. Swartz said it is up to the scientific community to explain the facts to people, and to reduce the health effects of widespread fear and anxiety.

In other words, we need education about radiation. We need widespread enlightenment about its effects.

Llewellyn King and Nuclear

Nuclear Townhall is sponsoring a set of videos about nuclear energy. In the short video below, Llewellyn King explains why the Enlightenment (education) has to come before the Renaissance (new plants) in this country. In history, the Renaissance came far earlier than the Enlightenment. So the nuclear industry has its work cut out for it!

Llewellyn King is an iconic figure in energy information, having founded Energy Daily about forty years ago. I remember Energy Daily from my days at EPRI. Copies were passed around among relatively low-level technical employees like myself and other project managers. Division heads received their own copies. Everyone read it every day, because it was the best source of insights for the energy industry. I do mean that everyone at EPRI read it. If a nuclear research manager had lunch in the cafeteria with a coal research manager, they would have a common point of conversation: the articles in Energy Daily.

King recently wrote a splendid op-ed about nuclear power: Sound the Trumpets for Nuclear Power. It's not particularly politically correct for this state. For example, his editorial praises the role of the U S Nuclear Navy in keeping the peace. Still, every now and again, I like to share the words of someone who speaks the truth, even if it is impolitic.

It makes a refreshing change from watching the Vermont legislature in action.

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Update: I am pleased that this post is now featured on the Energy Collective.

It's the Energy. Why I Love Nuclear.

To me, this graph is the Reason-For-It-All. My friend Bob Hargraves put it together, and you can find the graph on his website about the promise of thorium for the future (Aim High). To build this graph, Bob went to the CIA World Factbook, which lists countries and their statistical data: population, GDP, electricity use, life expectancy, etc. The factbook is the most convenient source of information for many countries and used in many academic and scholarly papers. (Note, double-clicking on these graphs will enlarge them.)

Bob constructed a spreadsheet of GDP per capita and birthrates per woman for 82 countries. He used the countries that have populations of over ten million people. The results are shown above. Simply put, women in poor countries have terrible lives. Many children, many children dying, little opportunity for education, grinding poverty. Prosperity (being above the "prosperity" line in the graph) improves women's lives immensely.

The next chart shows another of Bob's graphs. This one illustrates how electricity use and prosperity go hand in hand. Since it does not show that prosperity depends on electricity use or vice versa, no doubt, a few hundred people will now comment on this post that we can have plenty of prosperity with low electricity use. They may also ask: What is prosperity good for anyway? I have an answer for that. Prosperity is good for making people's lives longer and richer, and allowing women to participate in the greater business of the world.

The fact is: prosperity and electricity use go together. As you can see, prosperity and electricity increase together on average as a straight line, especially in the 0 to $15,000 per capita region. That region on the chart below is equivalent to the the Up From Poverty region of the chart above.

That's why China and India are moving so quickly on electrification.

A View from the Third World

Recently, I posted about Jaczko coming to Brattleboro, and Claire sent a long comment about all the ways we can conserve, and lead to a world which is carbon-free and nuclear free. Her aim was to have households using just a few kWh a month. Some ideas were rooftop solar collectors and organic gardens on the lawn. She received interesting replies.

Steve Aplin noted that:

Claire, I have no problem with your list of suggestions. Not everybody can follow them, however, and especially people who live in high rises. High rises are (1) absolutely the cleanest way for humans to live en masse, and (2) literally uninhabitable without electricity, which brings you to and from your floor, pumps your water, ventilates your unit, and lights it. We need lots of GHG-free electricity, and sorry but renewables are not capable of providing it.

Steve blogs at Canadian Energy Issues.

Dave then commented:

Is being low in energy use intrinsically good? If you think it is can you tell me if you also think that long life spans, education and generally health are good or evil?

I live in a second world country. I have great respect for how much energy it takes to supply a growing population. I know many people who live on less than a kwh a day. It is not pleasant and they struggle greatly. Some schools here only have light bulbs turned on if the parents in the community pay for the extra electricity. Then there is often a single light bulb in a classroom of 50 students.

This population that already uses less energy per capita than any of its still poor neighbors will not be helped by "green" energy. You cannot build an economy, (schools, jobs, roads, business, manufacturing) on sources of power that come and go randomly.

Most in this population cannot conserve more. They cannot "live with nature" more closely. Sure, pollution could be minimized, but not waste, there is NO waste, everything is used.

I include these quotes just in case you thought the Hargrave plots above were theoretical. They aren't. They are about real and suffering people

On the Other Hand

Some people don't care. Some people have furry mustaches and a down-home way of talking, and basically don't give a hang about people (probably people of color) living in other countries. Here are some quotes from people very opposed to nuclear energy.

If you ask me, it'd be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won't give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other."

—Amory Lovins, The Mother Earth - Plowboy Interview, Nov/Dec 1977, p. 22

Gosh, Mr. Lovins? Whose needs? Are you the one to decide on who-needs-what? Are we talking about your own needs (which include a certain amount of jetting around the world, giving highly-paid talks)? Or the needs of a third-world mother pregnant with her fourth child, who wishes she had clean water (water purification plants are energy hogs) and maybe even an electric stove (many many third world women die in accidents with small charcoal or wood-fired stoves, or from smoke inhalation. Full disclosure: as part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, our son-in-law Vijay Modi does research in the cookstove area.)

By the way, I found the Lovins quote in the Wikipedia article Anti-Nuclear Movement. Just in case you thought Mr. Lovins was talking about coal.

Another quote, from a somewhat less engaging personality:

Giving society cheap, abundant energy ... would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun. - Paul Ehrlich, ``An Ecologist's Perspective on Nuclear Power'', May/June 1978 issue of Federation of American Scientists Public Issue Report

The condescension is so heavy you could cut it with a knife.

If you want to see some really vicious quotes, including banning DDT as a way to get rid of people by letting them die of malaria, I recommend this collection of quotes. The quotes were gathered by a retired professor at Stanford University, John McCarthy. Read it only if you have a strong stomach. (This website was recommended to me by a friend. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of all the quotes, but the author says he will take down any quotes that are challenged. I checked two of the quotes, and they were okay.)

The Bottom Line

Nuclear power truly has the ability to change the earth, and improve the lives of poor people and save the lives of women and children. There is really nothing else like it.

Let's ignore the Euro and America-specific rantings of certain condescending and overpaid people, and look at Bob Hargraves carefully drawn charts. If we look at those charts, we will see that answer for the world is MORE energy use, not less. And the answer for more energy use is nuclear.

That's what its about, for me. It isn't just about Vermont Yankee. I am committed to better lives for everyone, through nuclear power.

Enexus

The Enexus issue comes up, and because I blog at Yes Vermont Yankee, everybody expects that I have an opinion on it. Of course, I do have an opinion. However, I haven't blogged about Enexus because I prefer to write about areas that utilize my background in chemistry and nuclear operations, areas in which I bring some value-added to the discussion.

My opinion on Enexus is just one person's opinion. This blog is an opinion piece.

The Background

Slightly over two years ago, Entergy announced that they planned to spin off their northern nuclear plants to a new company called Enexus. Late last month, the New York Public Service Commission turned down their request to start the new company and transfer the New York power plants to it. Basically, the New York Commissioners calculated that Enexus debt would be would be so high that that the company's bonds would be ranked "below investment grade." So the Commissioners decided not to allow this proposed company to own New York power plants.

Commissioners are supposed to ensure that utility infrastructure is owned by financially sound companies. In Vermont, the Public Service Board has had two black eyes recently in the telecomm area. Fairpoint Communications took over from Verizon, and within two years, Fairpoint went bankrupt. The same sort of thing happened with Burlington Telecomm, which is struggling to meet its debt payments. Utility commissions in the Northeast are pretty shy about debt now. Once burned, twice shy.

My Opinion

Well, I think New York State was right to turn Enexus down. Enexus was going to be a company with too much debt. As a matter of fact, when Entergy announced the proposed spin-off, I was annoyed. Isn't it going to be tough enough to get the VY license extension without THIS complication? I have stayed slightly annoyed, which is another reason I haven't blogged about it.

On the other hand, there are two ways that Enexus had some good things to offer. First, it was going to be a pure-play owner of nuclear plants. One of the most cogent arguments for nuclear is that it is better than coal. However, every utility that owns nuclear plants also owns coal plants. Therefore, no major utility makes the argument against coal. Only us lonely bloggers are willing to do daily comparisons with coal. It would have been nice to have one pure-play nuclear company out there, one willing to publicize: Nuclear Better Than Coal!

The second good thing would have been that Enexus could keep one set of books, not two. I don't mean that in a bad way. I just mean that if part of your company is regulated and part is not, the accounting can be nightmarish. Entergy has regulated nuclear plants in the South, and merchant nuclear plants in the North.

Difficult Accounting

I remember my own company. We had EPRI contracts, and EPRI audited our overhead rates. We were treated like a government contractor: direct, indirect, overhead, general-and-administrative. EPRI needed to know it all. How much time were we spending on direct and indirect? How much money were we spending on health insurance? Did all of this meet their guidelines?

We also had utility contracts. Utilities just asked our billing rates and paid a flat hourly rate. If the rate looked good to them, they signed the contract. They didn't care what else we were spending our time on.

Our lucrative utility contracts hurt our EPRI billing rates during the audits. It was a kind of no-win nightmare. I can see why Entergy would want to become two companies: one that accepted regulatory audits, one that didn't. Heck, there were moments that I wanted my four-person Fourth Floor Databases company to be two companies. I don't blame Entergy for trying to get the two parts of their business separate. But in this climate, and with that amount of debt, it wasn't going to work.

WIFM

Everybody listens to radio station: WIFM. What's InIt For Me. I think Entergy didn't understand that. The Enexus spin-off would have been allowed IF the Commissioners saw it as in the best interests of the ratepayers. I don't remember ever hearing an Entergy argument that went: "Your rates will go down with this spin-off. Everyone in the Northeast will be better off with this spinoff because..." Maybe it was just a failure to communicate.

But in the meantime, it handed the anti-VY people yet another weapon. Vermont Yankee is a well-run plant. It is over 500 days into a power run right now. Only well-run plants can do this sort of thing. Badly run plants break down in some manner and have to go off-line. Also, VY found and fixed the tritium leak quickly. People who hate the plant won't accept this, but it's a good plant.

VY could stay a well-run plant under Entergy or Enexus or being sold to Duke Power or....whatever. The corporate structure never struck me as a tremendously relevant issue. To me, the Enexus spin-off was just another problem that did not have to exist. Not that it was a crazy idea (pure-play nuclear, all merchant plants, no regulated plants). But it wasn't going to fly, and it hurt people's opinion of VY, and VY's chances in the Senate.

What we have here is a failure to communicate on the part of Entergy. Or perhaps, a failure have good story to communicate. A good story would have answered the question What's In It For Me about Enexus? from the ratepayer point of view.

Entergy Scraps Enexus: An Update

I put up this blog post over the weekend, and this morning, Entergy announced that it is not going ahead with Enexus. I'm glad about this decision, but I am still annoyed at the memory of all the meetings I attended where anti-nukes could say: "We don't even know who is going to own this plant! Some company that doesn't exist, some company with a lot of debt." The Enexus plan didn't make life easier for plant supporters. I never felt I could defend it. I'm happy it's over.

Don't forget. I'm still running the Helen Caldicott Satire Contest. Why cars, toothpaste and paper (so far) are terribly dangerous. Get your entry in soon. Contest ends April 15. Enter early and often!

Coal and Nuclear

A blog about coal? Why am I posting about coal? Various reasons. One reason is that I gave a class about coal yesterday, so I'm still thinking about coal. A better reason is that I see the energy rivalry as coal versus nuclear, while most people who are anti-nuclear see the rivalry as nuclear versus renewables.

At the anti-VY walkers press conference in Montpelier, I talked for a long time with one of the people opposed to Vermont Yankee. We got along famously when we discussed Improv classes that we had taken, but we disagreed about coal. I said that the Walkers, by trying to take nuclear off-line, were simply encouraging coal. He objected, saying that taking nuclear off-line meant more renewables, not more fossil.

This is the crux of so many arguments between nuclear supporters and those who feel nuclear isn't right. If not nuclear, then we will have...what?

The grid is a big, robust system which includes many, many power plants. The grid is not something where you can say: take this plant off-line and therefore, renewables will happen. It just doesn't work that way.

A couple of charts about the nationwide growth of coal usage. A coal industry chart showing that the use of coal to generate electricity in the U.S. has grown from 100 to over 1000 million short tons from 1950 to 2005 (more or less) with accelerated growth recently. A rather nice pie chart about today's electricity situation can be found at a site called Kidwind.org As you can see, coal generation is 49% percent of U.S. electricity production.

If you like your statistics straight up, without graphs, EIA is definitely the source. If you look at this table, you can see electricity from coal growing from 1,700,000 thousand megawatt hours in 1995 to around 2,000,000 thousand megawatt hours between 2000 and forward. Meanwhile, nuclear grew from 673,00 to 787,000 from 1995 to 2006 as plants were uprated and became better at managing outages. Renewables, not including traditional hydroelectric, grew from 73,000 to 96,000 in the same period.

As you scroll down the table, you can see that electric power use decreased in 2007-2009, but nuclear held pretty steady and renewables grew significantly. My two favorite technologies did well! But coal is still king.

I spent a small portion of my life on pollution control research for fossil fuels. Because of this, I wanted to educate people a little about coal. Therefore, I am giving a course about coal at ILEAD a life-long learning center at Dartmouth.

Yesterday, I led the first class of All Around the (Coal) Boiler. It's a lot of work to teach that class, because, unlike nuclear or renewables, there are very few books about coal. The books focus on the problems created by coal mines. They hardly mention standard pollution control techniques or how well (or badly) they work.

I'll post more about my class soon. I am happy to say that I have arranged a field trip to a local coal plant, the Merrimack plant in Bow New Hampshire. Of course, when I tell this to many people in my hometown, they often answer: "You mean there's a coal plant around here?"

That question is part of the problem.

Thanks and Links

I posted my first blog last night, and by the time I awoke this morning Dan Yurman and Rod Adams had both posted kind words about my blog on their blogs. Thank you, Dan and Rod!

Dan Yurman posted about new nuclear bloggers here

Rod Adams posted about this blog here

And Kirk Sorenson welcomed me here

With this post, I am also adding some site links and a blogroll.

About This Blog

Yes Vermont Yankee is a blog in support of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant. Vermont Yankee is due to be relicensed in 2012, but is fighting fierce opposition from well-organized groups. For example, some anti-Yankee people are currently walking from Brattleboro to Montpelier. They are gathering accolades and publicity along the way.

The walkers apparently don't care that shutting down Yankee will mean burning more fossil fuels. Their leaders say that we will only burn more fossil fuels for a "short time" if Yankee is shut down. They claim that renewables will take over in three to five years. Will Vermont really have hundreds of megawatts of renewable baseload power in five years? I don't think so, and no reputable analyst thinks so.

Still, the anti-Vermont Yankee walkers accept the idea that Vermont will burn expensive fossil fuels for electricity for "three to five years" -- or maybe ten years, or maybe forever. They apparently don't concern themselves with global warming or pollution from fossil-fired plants. They just want to shut down Yankee, and they are very organized.

The Vermont Yankee power plant has been an asset to Vermont by providing safe, clean, reliable, inexpensive power. It has provided good jobs, charitable donations, and taxes. Yankee's low-cost electricity encourages business and employment in Vermont. Vermont Yankee has been, and can remain, a boon to the state and the region.

It is time that Vermont Yankee supporters become organized. This new blog can be a place where we can trade information. I hope it will become a rallying point for plant supporters.

You might wonder who is writing this blog. Do I work for Vermont Yankee? No. I am Meredith Angwin, a physical chemist. I have worked most of my life for the power industry. My background includes fossil fuels (patents in NOx control), risk management for natural gas pipelines, economic and corrosion assessments for geothermal energy, and corrosion control in nuclear power plants. I currently earn my living as a writer. Though I accept contracts from electric utilities and equipment suppliers (among other companies), this blog is not part of any paid work. It is completely my own, and I am responsible for its contents.

One final word. There are many excellent pro-nuclear blogs, and one of my friends asked why I wanted to start another one. However, most other blogs tend to cover the whole world, including nuclear construction in China, the latest word from Congress, and so forth. I live in Vermont, and I have started this blog specifically to concentrate on Vermont Yankee issues.