Areva and Helen Caldicott, plus More on Hurricanes

Areva and Helen Caldicott

Helen Caldicott recently went to Canada to talk about uranium mining.  She called the nuclear industry "immoral" and compared it to Hitler.  On a radio show, she refused to back up her statements, becoming angry instead.  The radio interviewer wrote that  she “sounded like a person unhinged.”  Today, I was pleased to see Jarret Adams of Areva refute her statements about Canadian mining in his blog post: Helen Caldicott Stays One Step Ahead of the Facts.

I thought I should illustrate this post with a picture of Caldicott, but I couldn't bear to do so.  Instead, here's a picture of a bunch of us at Areva's nuclear fuel recycling facility in France, about two years ago.  That's Jarret standing behind me (I'm the white-haired woman on the right).  Rod Adams is standing next to Jarrett and behind Gwyneth Cravens.

Okay, the rest of the names are Jack Gamble (next to Rod) and Steve Aplin (next to Jack) and a very knowledgeable Areva manager at the left side of the picture.  I am so sorry I don't have his name in front of me!  I guess that is why you can amend blog posts.

Update: We are standing in front of the Melox facility, and the man on the left is Regis Faure of Areva. Thank you to Jarret Adams for this update!

Do read Jarret's post: Helen Caldicott Stays One Step Ahead of the Facts.

More About Hurricanes

Since I have already mentioned Rod Adams, I want to say that Margaret Harding, William Davis and I were on Rod's most recent podcast.  Atomic Show #190: Nuclear Plant Performance During Hurricane Sandy. I linked to  the announcement of the podcast. Here's a link to the podcast itself.  It was a great discussion. I learned a lot from Margaret Harding's honest, blunt and basically optimistic discussion.

Meanwhile, my blog post Hurricane Sandy and Nuclear Plants in the Main Stream Media has been posted at The Energy Collective.  I am always proud when they choose one of my posts.

Public Service Board Hearing Tonight

The Vermont Public Service Board is holding an in-person hearing about Vermont Yankee's Certificate of Public Good tonight. The hearing will be  at Vernon School,  Vernon, Vermont, starting at 7 p.m.  This is Vermont citizens' only chance to speak to the Public Service Board in person in favor of the continued operation of Vermont Yankee.

There will be also an interactive TV hearing later in the month.  These are the only public-input hearings that the Board has scheduled for this docket.

Attend tonight if you can!  You can read more about it at my post of a few days ago: Attend the PSB hearing, and the Docket is Now on the PSB Website.

Entergy Louisiana and Entergy Arkansas and Hurricane Sandy

The crews arrive

 Crews from Entergy Louisiana have arrived in Staten Island to help restore power after the massive destruction from Hurricane Sandy. This post is headed by a video that Con Ed (the New York utility) made about their arrival.

Reuters has a well-written article about the Entergy crews: New Orleans linemen square Katrina debt with Sandy aid.  As you might expect from a business-press article, it is very complete.  Reuters explains how the lineman are paid, their living conditions, how utility mutual assistance groups help with storm damage, and so forth.   The story finishes with a great personal quote from Glenn Nicholas of New Orleans (emphasis added by me):

Nicholas was looking forward to getting to work. Unlike New Orleans after 2005's Katrina -- a city that was wet and filthy but also largely empty except for law enforcement, rescue workers and repair crews -- New York remains full of residents who have been stuck in darkened apartments, anxious to get out again.

"The best feeling for any linemen is getting the lights back on," he said, adding: "I love New York. It's kind of like New Orleans, just way bigger."

Southerners!  Run for the hills!

I wrote this because I listened to the people in the video. They have Southern accents!

In Vermont, some so-called environmentalists think Southern accents show that  people are "not like us."  I encountered this first-hand when I debated one of these men at the Putney School a little over a year ago.  Well, no.  This man wouldn't debate me.  We were supposed to have a debate, but he decided he wanted one assembly for himself, and I would speak at the second assembly.

I went to the first assembly to hear what he would say.  He had the kids in stitches, using humor to get them on his side.

How did he do this?  Well, he imitated a Southern accent. He said that Entergy Louisiana had sent a senior VP to talk to the legislature in Vermont, and the VP was a man with a Southern accent (imitation then followed). How could Entergy think this man could convince anyone in Vermont of anything?  He then talked about the Civil War painting in the State House.  Vermont was not Louisiana, after all!

Oh..kay.  I had my work cut out for me, after that one.

As arranged, I spoke in the same auditorium the following week. I started my talk with a quote from Abraham Lincoln ("to bind up the nation's wounds"). I followed this with a plea for tolerance and respect, even if people look different or have different accents.

This was not how I expected to start my talk about Vermont Yankee, Unfortunately, that kind of  prejudice was relevant to Vermont Yankee.

Governor Shumlin nurtures prejudice and demonizes the South

Governor Shumlin

Vermont Governor Shumlin ran against Vermont Yankee in his last election campaign.  He ran as much against Vermont Yankee as he ran against his opponent, Brian Dubie.

To bolster his campaign, he constantly described the company that owns Vermont Yankee as "Entergy Louisiana." Actually, Vermont Yankee is part of "Entergy Nuclear."  You can see all the different companies on the main Entergy site.    Still, Shumlin has never been much of a stickler about facts. It suited Shumlin's agenda to make "Entergy Lousiana" the scapegoat and he did so.

Here's a post of mine about Shumlin during the last election. Taking It Personal.  Shumlin Accuses Dubie of Serving the Interests of "Entergy Louisiana"

And here's a part of letter that Shumlin wrote to "Entergy Louisiana."  The plant wanted to restrict photography at Vermont Yankee. This letter is quoted in its entirety  on another of my blog posts.

Message to Entergy Louisiana – “You are in Vermont – Not China”
Montpelier , Vt. – Entergy Louisiana announced it is now imposing “new guidelines” for journalists. ...
“These new tactics disguised as ‘guidelines’ more resemble actions of governments like The Republic of China. Entergy Louisiana’s actions make it impossible to believe them when they say, they are committed to being more open and transparent, “said Senate President Peter Shumlin. “This is not the Vermont way!”

Note To Governor Shumlin

Entergy Arkansas Trucks at Staging Site in New Jersey

Governor Shumlin is running for re-election, and I think there is a very good chance he will be re-elected.  If he becomes Governor again, I hope he notices that he lives in the United States of America.  It's a country where people have Southern accents, Spanish accents, Vietnamese accents, and Boston accents.  It's also a country that tries to follow the American Way of mutual help in emergencies.  For example, people from Louisiana coming up to help people in New York and New Jersey.

Mutual help is the American way, Governor Shumlin.  And the Southern way. And the Vermont way, or at least I hope it's the Vermont way.  Governor Shumlin, maybe you should learn about this and stop making fun of Southerners and saying they don't do things "the Vermont way."

After all, you've got a pretty funny accent yourself.

Hurricanes and Nuclear Plants in the Main Stream Media

Hurricane Sandy

The Main Stream Press

In my post on Friday, Fear and Facts about Nuclear Plants and Hurricanes, I quoted nuclear opponents and nuclear supporters about the hurricane's probable effects on nuclear plants. I concluded that opponents and supporters were publishing only in friendly venues. Both sides were Preaching to the Choir.

The question then became: what did the main stream press think of this all? Basically, the main stream press wants a story: a new and dramatic narrative that will grab the readers' attention.  To put it bluntly, the nuclear power plants weren't a story.

You see, I would like to write a blog post that nuclear plants were treated better in the press because nuclear communicators were doing such a bang-up job.  But I have come to the conclusion it had very little to do with us.  There were thousands of stories as New York City was ravaged, people drowned in their houses in New Jersey, hospitals were evacuated. It quickly became clear that the nuclear plants weren't a story.

However, in one case, the industry fought back to opponent scaremongering. That's my kind of story.  So I'll start with that.

The Business Press: Fighting Back Against Scare-Mongering

A Bloomberg Business Week article was titled: Nuclear Power Industry Survives Sandy's Readiness Test.

 Kasia Klimasinska and Brian Wingfield quoted Gundersen as follows (note Gundersen's sequence of "ifs". I find Gundersen to be rather "iffy".) Gundersen said that if Oyster Creek was generating power, and the flood waters been just 6 inches deeper, it could have knocked out the pumps and triggered a disaster.

Now, what do you expect the plant owners would say about that?  I know what I expected: "Oyster Creek makes safe operation its highest priority (etc etc blah blah)."  To my surprise and happiness, Exelon actually said: “That is unequivocally false, Oyster Creek has numerous, redundant sources of reactor and spent-fuel pool cooling that would be fully operational regardless of the water levels mentioned,” Exelon’s Tillman said.

The Exelon comment was wonderful.  Every now and again, I get to root for my team, because they are actually playing!

More Business Press

A Forbes article was titled: Don't Politicize Sandy. Hurricane Normal Problem for Nukes.

Jim Conca wrote: Although those with real ideological issues against nuclear energy may have gotten bit excited, there is nothing so far to worry about with respect to the nuclear plants. There is no special issue or peculiar risk here for the nuclear plants in the path of Hurricane Sandy. 

He commented further: I truly respect Amy Goodman, but I wish she had asked a real nuclear expert to talk with her on Democracy Now! yesterday, not an anti-nuke activist like Arnie Gundersen who doesn’t really know the nuclear technical stuff, but only cares about politics. 

There's a website about small cap stocks. Small Cap Network. It's not  exactly the huge business press, but it has its audience. Their article was Nuclear Plants in the Path of Hurricane Sandy (And Anti-Nuclear Activists).

The article starts: Anti-nuclear activists and the media have apparently wasted no time to try and get people panicked about the 26 nuclear plants in the path of Hurricane Sandy.

The article ends: The Bottom Line. Don’t pay any attention to scary stories about nuclear plants being threatened by hurricanes like Hurricane Sandy. Instead, pay attention to what happens in the aftermath of the storm as Dominion Resources, Entergy Corporation, Exelon Corporation, Public Service Enterprise Group and PPL Corporation and their nuclear plants face more scrutiny from regulators.... 

Main Stream Press: Following the Real Story

First, the New York Times story by Matt Wald:  Nuclear Plants Get Through the Storm with Little Trouble, which says pretty much what the title implies.

John Horgan at Scientific American asks Does Sandy Mean We Should Have Fewer Nuclear Plants or More?   He concludes that, due to global warming, we should definitely have more nuclear plants.

Meanwhile the mainstream press is following the real stories, not the scare stories.  For example, ProPublica asked Why Do Hospital Generators Keep Failing?  Three New York City area hospitals had to be evacuated when their generators (badly placed or badly maintained) failed.  Hundreds of critically ill patients had to be moved.

The real stories. Gas has been difficult-to-impossible to obtain, the port of New York was shut for an extended time, lines of ambulances were pulled into service to evacuate hospitals, people drowned in their homes in New Jersey and  Lower Manhattan.  These are the stories the newspapers are covering.

Nuclear opponents are probably gnashing their teeth that their carefully-contrived "what if" scenarios are being neglected. But the press is busy with the true, painful, sad stories of Hurricane Sandy.

The nuclear plants were okay, as pretty much everyone expected.

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Carnival of Nuclear Bloggers 129 and a Poem

The 129th Carnival of Nuclear Energy is up at Next Big Future. It includes posts from me and ANS Nuclear Cafe on Nuclear Plants and Hurricane Sandy, Hiroshima Syndrome blog on the effects of Fukushima on seawater, NewsOK blog on how Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) works, and Next Big Future on new reactor types, new reactor builds, and uranium production.

A great Carnival, and worth a visit.

While I am suggesting visits to great blogs, let me give a hat tip to Mary Gerdt's blog Travelogue for the Universe.  Marty Gerdt wrote a short poem about one of my Vermont Yankee blog posts.  Then Joffan wrote a limerick as a comment on her post.  A terrific exchange.  And readers, you can visit Travelogue and add to the exchange.

  Thank you so much, Mary!  And Joffan, too!

Vermont Yankee a Clean Power Alternative: Guest Post by Guy Page

Guy Page
Communications Director of VTEP

Vermont Yankee a cleaner power alternative than natural gas, coal
Guest Post by Guy Page

It is interesting if not peculiar that Rep. Tony Klein may move to repeal the state’s new ban on hydrofracking, a process which uses chemicals and a large volume of water to extract natural gas (Oct. 30 Burlington Free Press, “The Renewable Energy Debate”)! He wants Vermonters who are unhappy with the industrial wind development he has championed to realize that the likely alternative is nuclear power, natural gas and even coal.


It is unclear why Rep. Klein believes instate renewables and Vermont Yankee can’t co-exist. Both are low-carbon, jobs-producing, tax-paying domestic power sources benefiting New England, our own state included. Clean power diversity is a good thing, especially when one source (renewable wind and solar) is expensive per kilowatt-hour and operates at full power only part of the time. Vermont Yankee, a low-cost, 24/7 producer, can compensate for these shortfalls by making the region’s power run more smoothly, reliably and affordably.

Representative Tony Klein

Vermont’s legislative leadership has, as a practical matter, helped push Vermont and all of New England further into the arms of the natural gas-burning electricity producers of southern New England. If successful, the effort to close Vermont Yankee would make Vermont and the rest of New England depend more than ever on the regional power grid, for which the main fuel source is natural gas. The loss of 620 megawatts of virtually carbon-free power would result in more, not less, greenhouse gases. This obvious, if inconvenient, fact of cause-and-effect has been generally ignored, but never rebutted, by the “close Vermont Yankee, live carbon-free, build renewables” coalition of advocacy groups and elected and appointed officials.

The Vermont Public Service Board will soon hear Vermonters’ testimony about Vermont Yankee’s economic,  environmental, and reliability fitness for a 20-year Certificate of Public Good. The huge economic benefit of more than 1000 jobs, millions in annual state revenue, and low-cost power are widely recognized. So is the plant’s longtime, proven record of reliable 24/7 delivery of power on demand. Yet the environmental case for approving Vermont Yankee is for many people even more compelling, because in our great state of Vermont, the environment matters more than economics.  And like most compelling arguments, it is fairly simple: if Vermont really wants to reduce greenhouse gases, we cannot close the state’s biggest carbon-free power producer, thus forcing the combustion of even more natural gas, coal and oil to meet the region’s energy needs.

A report recently released by the prestigious New England Council, the region’s oldest business organization, underscores this point. The Council says  the most important step New England can make to be energy competitive and reduce greenhouse gases is to keep open the region’s four nuclear power plants.

Advocates of renewables and energy conservation will continue to articulate their vision. And it is indeed a glittering future that many Vermonters hope will come true – sometime. Yet the fact remains: closing Vermont Yankee would lead immediately to more reliance on fossil fuels and the addition of millions of tons of carbon to the atmosphere every year. Vermont can, and should, do better.


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Guy Page is the communications director of the Vermont Energy Partnership (www.vtep.org), a Montpelier-based coalition of about 90 Vermont manufacturers, businesses and business groups, utilities, labor unions, and individuals committed to promoting a clean, safe, affordable and reliable energy future for Vermont. Entergy, owner of Vermont Yankee, is a member of VTEP.

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.