The Atomic Show

Atomic Show #204 – Nuclear vendor CEOs discuss global market outlook

Rod Adams — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:33:15 +0000

On May 15, 2013, I had the opportunity to attend a session at the Nuclear Energy Assembly titled Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: Supplying the Nuclear Energy Industry in the 21st Century.

The panel discussion was moderated by John Hamre, President and CEO of Center for Strategic and International Studies. Participants included E. James Ferland, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Babcock & Wilcox Company; Caroline A. Reda, President and Chief Executive Officer, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy; Michael W. Rencheck, President and Chief Executive Officer, AREVA Inc. and Daniel L. Roderick, President and Chief Executive Officer, Westinghouse Electric Company.

They discussed a number of challenges and opportunities including small modular reactors, competition with natural gas, market distortions caused by targeted subsidies, financial benefits to US of the Export-Import Bank, innovation, competing against government-owned corporations, and the obsolete nature of the prohibition against foreign ownership of US based nuclear power plants. (That last one was in response to a question from the floor. Some of you might recognize the source of the question. )

Since it is difficult for many nuclear professionals to take the time away from their normal duties to attend meetings like the NEA, I thought it would be worthwhile to share this informative discussion with you.

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Atomic Show #203 – Globally distributed atomic conversation

Rod Adams — Thu, 09 May 2013 09:10:24 +0000

Attempting to transition away from fossil fuels to an “all renewable” energy system is fraught with cost and reliability challenges. Germany is running into substantial challenges and is burned 5% more lignite – brown coal – in 2012 than it did in 2011. Recently completed studies that including a range of scenarios in Australia and California indicate the magnitude of the challenge of trying to do without both nuclear energy and fossil fuel.

Not surprisingly, we agreed that future energy systems that include a large dose of nuclear energy are more achievable and will also result in increasing human creative capabilities rather than restricting our development potential.

Additional topics included the recent final shutdown of the Kewaunee nuclear power station, nuclear tourism, growing interest in Small Modular Reactors (SMR) around the world, including Australia, and the positive responses that Robert Stone is getting at college campuses as he holds screenings for Pandora’s Promise. That well-received documentary that tells the story of people who have made a personal journey from nuclear opposition to nuclear energy support will be released in theaters around the US (and perhaps the rest of the world) in June 2013.

Guests on this episode of the Atomic Show:
Gwyneth Cravens, author of Power to Save the World: The Truth about Nuclear Energy
Ben Heard, director of Think Climate Consulting and a principal author of Zero Carbon Options
Margaret Harding, principal at 4 Factor Consulting
Steve Aplin, who blogs at Canadian Energy Issues
Paul Lorenzini, who was the CEO at NuScale Power from 2008-2012

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Atomic Show #202 – Atomic Earth Day 2013

Rod Adams — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:29:37 +0000

Many nuclear professionals have been attracted to the technology because of its inherently light footprint when compared to all other alternative power sources. It uses less land, less metal, less concrete, and a tiny volume of fuel when compared to producing a similar quantity of energy from other sources of reliable power, especially when the fuel extraction and delivery lifecycle is included.

Unfortunately, the established Environmental Movement turned away from nuclear energy during a transitional period in the late 1960s and early 1970s when they were convinced by key leaders that atomic energy was something to fear and fight. Before that period, conservation groups like the Sierra Club recognized that it was better for the land that they loved to produce power with “Atoms, not Dams”. During that campaign, Sierra supported nuclear energy as a better alternative than filling up a pristine valley full of water as part of the Hetch Hetchy hydroelectric power project.

Guests on this show include:

Margaret Harding, an independent consultant with 30 years of BWR fuel design experience. Margaret blogs at 4 Factor Consulting and writes a column for Fuel Cycle Week.
Will Davis, a former submarine reactor operator who blogs at Atomic Power Review and ANS Nuclear Cafe and also writes a column for Fuel Cycle Week
Meredith Angwin, who blogs at Yes Vermont Yankee and ANS Nuclear Cafe and recently published an eBook titled Voices For Vermont Yankee.
Steve Aplin, who blogs at Canadian Energy Issues

We all remain convinced that emission free power from an incredibly energy dense fuel sources is better for the environment than producing that power by burning hydrocarbons and dumping the waste product. We also believe that it is better for many of the things that true conversationists and environmentalist hold dear to produce power from reliable, compact machinery than to attempt to capture natural energy flows using inherently large machinery that is often idle and doing nothing except being a blight on formerly scenic vistas.

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Atomic Show #201 – Better Way to Clean Up Hanford Tanks

Rod Adams — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 08:59:57 +0000

Darryl Siemer is a professional chemist who spent his career in nuclear waste remediation at the Idaho National Laboratory. While there, he developed a reputation as someone who will not go along to get along and apparently made quite a few waves by suggesting improvements in processes or technical decisions that might have resulted in the loss of numerous jobs by actually completing tasks and reducing expenditures on technical dead ends.

In a world dominated by “cost plus” contracting, beneficial suggestions are often quite unwelcome and can result in efforts to isolate and marginalize the source.

Contractors will often take advantage of the fact that most people have a very difficult time understanding that decision makers must avoid worrying about “sunk costs” when they are deciding on the best path forward. They point out all of the money that has already been spent on a particular project and tell you that it will all be “wasted” if they stop what they are doing and take a path that is more likely to lead to success.

The problem with that logic is that the money that has already been spent is gone. It is already wasted if the path to completion that builds off of the “completed” work will cost more than starting all over again on a more correct path that leads to a result that is actually better than the result that can be foreseen on the current path.

Darryl points out that there are several fatal flaws in the current technical path being followed at the Hanford tank farm. He is certain that attempting to segregate the sludge in the tanks is difficult enough to be called impossible within the constraints of any foreseeable expenditures. He knows that the borosilicate glass that has been chosen as the final waste form is incompatible with several of the components of the sludge. Finally, he believes that it is a fantasy to assume that there will be any available “somewhere else” that will accept the material, no matter what form it is in.

Darryl’s suggested path forward dodges each of those flaws in a rather elegant, “lazy cheapskate’s” approach to solving the very challenging problem.

Aside: One of the highest compliments I can pay to a scientist or engineer is to point out that they are following a “lazy cheapskate” approach. In my view, a good problem solver should be a lazy cheapskate who prefers to ponder rather than work, and to come up with a solution that will not result in any excessive costs and the minimum possible work in the future. End Aside.

The Siemer approach has three main components:

Stop trying to separate the waste material
Choose a more chemically appropriate waste form – specifically iron phosphate glass marbles
Put the stable waste form back into some of same tanks it came from as part of the planned remediation process of filling up the tanks with grout – specifically MgO/KH2PO4 (“Ceramicrete”)

You can find more details of his proposed approach in the presentation titled A Practical Solution to Hanford’s Tank Waste Problem .

I thoroughly enjoyed talking with Darryl about his ideas for solving what seem to be intractable problems that are often used as an excuse for not moving forward with nuclear energy. Though he apparently did not have a terribly happy career with the DOE, he never let that organization’s famously wasteful decision making processes discourage him about the beneficial use of nuclear energy.

Dr. Siemer has been blowing his whistle rather loudly, but he has never been adopted by the people who normally support whistleblowers who complain about DOE programs. I am pretty sure that is because his complaints do not match their agenda of shutting the technology down. He sees problems and wants to solve them; he does not see barriers that cannot be overcome or that should be used as an excuse for continuing to rely on fossil fuel or unreliable alternative energy systems.

Darryl is an intellectually curious and active man who has taken on some unique hobbies at a period in his life when many would pick up clubs and slap at little round balls. He is also interested in Improving the Integral Fast Reactor’s Proposed Salt Waste Management System. That will have to the the topic of a future show, perhaps with some of my acquaintances that are well versed in the technical details of that program.

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Atomic Show #200 – Celebrating atomic communicators

Rod Adams — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 10:06:06 +0000

On March 9, 2006, Shane Brown and I recorded the first episode of The Atomic Show. We formatted the show as a couple of geeks chatting about atomic energy and published it on Cameron Reilly’s The Podcast Network. On March 17, 2013, I hosted and recorded Atomic Show #200 as a roundtable discussion that included seven talented participants. As Lawrence Welk might have said – “It’s a really good show!” (Yes, I am old enough to have enjoyed Welk’s variety show in its original broadcast form.)

The Atomic Show has traveled a meandering course over the past 7 years. There’ve been some periods where they come fast and furious, other times there have been several quiet months in a row. That is not uncommon in the podcast world where much of the work is done by passionate amateurs.

The Show has been on a pretty good roll in the past several months turning into an almost regular weekly conversation among the growing group of talented and excited pronuclear communicators. This week, besides a some rather humbling congratulations from my friends, we talked about a number of interesting topics including:

Keep Kewaunee Cooking (without gas) – We brainstormed various options for turning Kewaunee’s future prospects around. That fully operational, licensed and well-maintained nuclear plant is current scheduled to be shutdown in May 2013. I made a bold prediction that it will not shut permanently this year.
Encouraging nuclear professionals to get active. On the recording, we used slightly more colorful language.
Australia’s antinuclear attitude, despite being one of the world’s largest suppliers of uranium
Germany’s nuclear phaseout and the system stresses that are starting to appear
Professional antinuclear groups that have managed to operate as non-profits for many decades
Optimism that things are changing for nuclear energy, as demonstrated by upcoming pronuclear communications milestones such as the planned summer release of Pandora’s Promise

Atomic Show #199 – Fukushima happened 2 years ago

Rod Adams — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 09:53:50 +0000

Before March 11, 2011, “Fukushima” was the name of a relatively unknown prefecture in Japan. Now it is a shorthand reference to an event in which three large nuclear power plants melted and released a small quantity of long lived radioactive material that has not harmed any human being.

Here is a brief synopsis of the events that have turned “Fukushima” into one of the most frequently found words on the internet.

Immediately after a very powerful earthquake and tsunami hit the north east coast of Japan, killing at least 16,000 people and destroying the man made infrastructure over more than 100 miles of the Japanese coast, the word “Fukushima” was still not well known outside of Japan. We were focused on the tragedy and the visual images of incredible shaking in offices, malls, and tall buildings and the frightening sight of a wall of black water washing over people, automobiles, and multi-story structures.

Within about a day of the initial tragedy, however, the world was distracted as a larger and larger portion of the major news media outlets outside of Japan decided to focus our attention on the unfolding drama at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station. Though the station did not suffer any significant immediate damage, and though essentially all of the people on the site were safely protected from the effects of the earthquake and tsunami, the events had knocked out all electrical power.

Both the off-site power system and 12 out of 13 diesel generators on site were severely damaged. Off-site power was knocked out by the earthquake when a large transmission line tower fell down; the diesel generators were knocked out by the tsunami. Unfortunately, those generators were on the sea side of the plant and located below the flooding caused by the tsunami. Even their fuel tanks were washed away. This loss of power made it very difficult for the operators to provide the continuing flow of coolant required after a nuclear plant shuts down. The plants were never “out of control” but they were gradually heating up due to the effects of radioactive decay.

As Margaret Harding, one of my favorite nuclear energy professionals, describes the way the media decided to focus on the struggles at the nuclear plant instead of the immense human tragedy of the casualties and property damage caused by the earthquake and tsunami, the events at Fukushima Dai-ichi were like a slow motion disaster movie. The talking heads – or their producers – decided that it was more interesting to tell that story than to help us understand where the real needs were.

Groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and individuals like Arnie Gundersen and Helen Caldicott have worked overtime to use the difficulties at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear station to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about the use of nuclear energy. There are hundreds of thousands of real victims of that fear mongering campaign of disinformation, some of whom have already experienced shortened lives due to the negative health impacts of living under severe stress, worried that they have already become a victim of “contamination” that they cannot see, feel, or smell.

Even after scientists and technicians have used the simple instruments that can detect incredibly minute quantities of radioactive material and given a clean bill of health, the fear mongers have convinced people that they are not out of the woods. According to their purposeful campaign, affected people must continue to stress out about “hot particles”, about food whose measured radioactivity is less than the natural activity of a banana, a glass of beer or a Brazil nut, and about the very soil on which their children should be playing.

Partly as a result of the focused fear-spreading campaign, Japan is spending at least $60 billion more per year for imported fossil fuel to replace the output of its 50 operable reactors. Even with all of that extra cost, the supply of electricity is still not as abundant as it was before the event, requiring continued personal sacrifices and continued curtailment of valuable production at certain times of day.

This episode of the Atomic Show is a small attempt to spread calm by sharing useful information that can help people respect and understand radiation instead of trembling about the mere hint that it might be nearby.

Guest list:
Will Davis who publishes the excellent Atomic Power Review blog, writes for ANS Nuclear Cafe and writes a column for Fuel Cycle Week.
Gwyneth Cravens, author of Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy and one of the stars of the Sundance Film Festival sensation titled Pandora’s Promise.
Margaret Harding, principle at 4 Factor Consulting, writer at Fuel Cycle Week and a technical consultant for the NGNP (Next Generation Nuclear Plant) project
Steve Aplin, an energy policy consultant in Ontario who publishes the highly regarded Canadian Energy Issues blog
Cal Abel, a PhD Nuclear Engineering student at Georgia Tech and former nuclear submarine engineer officer who was the first person to suggest using a concrete pumper truck to refill the elevated spent fuel pools at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station.

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Atomic Show #198 – Women are empowered by reliable energy

Rod Adams — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 09:16:17 +0000

A few days ago, Steve Aplin wrote an inspiring post on Canadian Energy Issues titled The electric grid: the greatest invention of all time expanded after women won the vote. That post described how important electricity was to the effort to free women from household chores so that they could choose to pursue more interesting ways to spend their time.

He also mentioned that March 3, 2013 was the 100th anniversary of a march on Washington in which at least 5,000 women organized a parade to demand the right to vote and to participate fully in American democracy. That inspired me to gather some terrific ladies together to talk about the importance of reliable energy in the form of household electricity. I tried getting Steve to participate; after all, it was his idea, but it turned out that there was another reason why March 3, 2013 was an important day for his family.

My guests on this show included:
Meredith Angwin, who blogs at Yes Vermont Yankee and has just published an eBook titled Voices for Vermont Yankee which is available for both Kindle and Nook
Gwyneth Cravens, author of Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy and one of the stars of Pandora’s Promise
Margaret Harding, the principle at 4 Factor Consulting who has recently started assisting the NGNP Alliance, with, among other things, their social media strategy.
Suzy Hobbs-Baker, the director of the Nuclear Literacy Project, the founder and director of Pop Atomic Studios and the current world traveler who is blogging about her journey at Diary of a Nuclear Tourist.

I hope that you enjoy the show and think about the important benefits provided by reliable, affordable, convenient electricity. Ensuring the continued availability of a product so important that loss to access for just a few hours makes headlines is one of the reasons that I keep doing what I do.

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Atomic Show #197 – Radium, educational museums and Voices for Vermont Yankee

Rod Adams — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 07:44:19 +0000

On Sunday, February 24, I gathered a group of fission fans to talk about a number of nuclear energy related topics. We discussed Romance of Radium and how perceptions about radiation have been molded over the 76 years since it was produced. Then, people had learned enough about the benefits of using power emitted from atomic nuclei so that the only powerfully radioactive material was valued at $750,000 per ounce, and had also learned enough about time, distance, shielding and consumption avoidance to have essentially eliminated accidental radiation related injury.

We also talked about the importance of sharing accurate nuclear science and technology related material with as many people as possible. We discussed an interesting model situation in the UK where the Sellafield installation is taking over a financially struggling, but popular tourist museum named The Beacon so that it can help people better understand the benefits of a complicated technology.

Guests on this episode of The Atomic Show include:
Meredith Angwin, who publishes Yes Vermont Yankee and who recently released Voices for Vermont Yankee on Kindle.
Steve Aplin, who publishes Canadian Energy Issues which focuses on the energy situation in Ontario. (Steve confessed that his day job employer is in the fossil fuel industry, but we don’t hold that against him. He knows the importance of energy density and ultra low emissions.)
Gwyneth Cravens, author of Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy and one of the stars of the Sundance sensation titled Pandora’s Promise. (Gwyneth talked a little about some of the opportunities she has had recently to talk to some very deep-pocketed people in Mountain View, CA who are intensely interested in using nuclear energy to save the world.
Will Davis, who publishes the authoritative Atomic Power Review and who frequently contributes to ANS Nuclear Cafe and Fuel Cycle Week.
Andrea Jennetta, who publishes Fuel Cycle Week and I Dig U Mining

I hope you enjoy the conversation. Please provide your commentary; we are always interested in learning more about how to better communicate what I believe is the most important message available – nuclear energy really does have the power to change the world and make it a cleaner, more prosperous, more energetic place.

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Atomic Show #196 – Atomic Optimists

Rod Adams — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 09:43:04 +0000

On Sunday, February 17, 2013, a group of five nuclear energy professionals gathered to share their thoughts about the current state of the atomic energy business.

Participants included:
Margaret Harding (@M2harding), 4 Factor Consulting
Meredith Angwin (@yes_VY), Yes Vermont Yankee
Andrea Jennetta (@NuclearBuzz), Fuel Cycle Week and I Dig Uranium
Cal Abel (@cal_abel), PhD candidate GA Tech
Rod Adams, Atomic Insights

We covered a lot of ground, groused a bit about the industry’s lack of aggressive marketing, and worried about how so many people have lost touch with where things that make their lives comfortable come from. We discussed uranium mining in Virginia, competing against natural gas, using nuclear heat to upgrade coal into a much more valuable liquid or gas fuel product, and the human side of engineering as a profession. We worried together about the fact that some leaders in our nation seem to be happy to be directing a post industrial economy despite the fact that people still want things, not just services like those provided by lawyers and accountants.

In the end, we agreed that nuclear energy use will grow dramatically because it is so abundant, so clean, and so affordable when done correctly and at the proper scale. We agreed that humans need energy and that the best available fuel source for providing that energy is the uranium, thorium, and plutonium that we know exists in sufficient quantities to provide for abundant use for thousands of years.

We are atomic optimists, we hope that others in the nuclear energy profession will join us in talking about why we do what we do.

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Atomic Show #195 – Health effects of low level radiation

Rod Adams — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 10:55:58 +0000

On Sunday, January 13, 2013, I had a conversation with Dr. Jerry Cuttler and Dr. A. David Rossin. Each of these distinguished gentlemen has a long history of working with ionizing radiation and studying its biological effects on human beings.

Dr. Jerry Cuttler earned his PhD in 1964. He has performed radiation research, designed radiation measuring equipment, and assisted in the design of control and monitoring systems for a variety of nuclear reactors, mainly heavy water CANDU reactors. He became personally interested in radiation health effects when he was conducting neutron measuring experiments that inherently resulted in elevated exposures; shielding would have prevented an effective experiment. He wanted to learn more about the potential risks that he and his colleagues were taking.

Later, he heard a talk given by Dr. Myron Pollycove about the history of beneficial uses of radiation in medicine and became “hooked” on the topic. He has been publishing peer reviewed journal articles and giving talks on the subjects of radiation health effects, adaptive dose response, and the illogic of the Linear No-Threshold dose response assumption for nearly 20 years.

Dr. A. David Rossin spent much of his career at the Argonne National Laboratory, staring off with investigations on the effects of radiation on steel pressure vessels. He recognized that the linear equations for damage did not work for steel; with increasing dose, the damage rate slowed and even reversed at elevated temperatures. He then started to wonder if similar healing effects might be happening with biological organisms – like human beings – that have specifically adapted mechanisms for health against imposed damage.

He has often engaged in debates against antinuclear activists like Helen Caldicott and has followed up on his interest in the health effects of radiation at doses below those that are known to overwhelm repair mechanisms.

Interestingly enough, both Dr. Jerry Cuttler and Dr. A. David Rossin are the type of radiation health experts that would be automatically screened off of any future BEIR committee under current rules. As the BEIR VII report front matter clearly states, “The NRC vetted all potential members to ensure that each was free from any apparent or potential conflict of interest.”

My interpretation of that statement is that anyone who works in the fields that apply radiation technologies and is personally motivated to clearly understand radiation health is prevented from sharing their expertise in the closed door meetings where the reports are generated. (The committee might ask selected experts to make a presentation or two to the conflict-of-interest-free and inexperienced committee members.) Radiation protection professionals who have been taught from the earliest stages of their careers to assume that radiation causes damage and have learned how to apply statistical models are, of course, welcome members of the committee and happily assigned report writing responsibilities.

Jerry, Dave and I discussed the BEIR process, the very human traits of regulators who are unwilling to change, and the illogic of continuing to apply a model that never had any empirical (experimental) basis. We also discussed how application of the “conservative” model of radiation standards resulted in real, measurable harm after the events at Fukushima.

In the response to that core damaging event, thousands of vulnerable people in nursing homes and hospitals were evacuated during a natural disaster in order to avoid what turned out to be trivial doses of radiation. The evacuations were rushed, they took place during a late winter storm with freezing temperatures, and they had to use a greatly damaged infrastructure of roads that added the risk of delay in the bad weather conditions.

According to the most recent count (which was provided to me in private correspondence translated from Japanese reports by a contact in the country) there have ben more than 1,000 early deaths attributed to the forced evacuation, temporary shelters with inadequate infrastructure, and stress imposed by lengthy relocations away from family and friends.

Overreacting to one risk by dashing headlong toward a much greater risk is generally not considered to be a conservative response. Society’s current overreaction to low doses of radiation is a bit like teaching children to run into a busy street in order to avoid the second hand smoke that they might have to breathe because a someone 20 yards up the sidewalk is coming toward them while puffing on a cigarette.

After all, that second hand smoke that might reach the child might cause cancer in a few decades if the child happens to breathe it in; all that the cars can do is maim or kill the child right now.

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Atomic Show #194 – What do you do with the waste?

Rod Adams — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 10:45:51 +0000

The first Atomic Show of 2013 is a geeky, chemistry laden discussion aimed at helping to answer the question that many people who fight nuclear energy try to use as their trump card “What do you do with the waste.”

It often makes their head spin or makes them put their fingers into their ears when you take the question seriously and provide reasonable answers that start with a statement that the material is not waste, it is valuable raw material.

NNadir is a bit of a local hero for pro nuclear advocates. He is a die hard liberal Democrat who takes the future seriously. He has produced 399 diaries on Daily Kos; those entries have attracted nearly 8,000 comments. For professional reasons, he seeks to maintain his nom de plume; I respect that. However, I can tell you that he is a professional chemist with a vast store of knowledge built in a Jeffersonian fashion – by spending a large portion of his free time reading good science in libraries.

Please check back to this post later; I will be posting additional reading recommendations, but thought you would like to start listening. Before you do, pull out your periodic table; it will help make the conversation more understandable if you have that useful tool in front of you.

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Atomic Show #193 – Nuclear Wrap Up 2012

Rod Adams — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 10:18:01 +0000

On Sunday, December 30, 2012, I gathered a group of atomic advocates to talk about their favorite nuclear energy stories from 2012. Participants in the discussion included:

Gwyneth Cravens, author of Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy
Will Davis from Atomic Power Review, ANS Nuclear Cafe and Fuel Cycle Week
Meredith Angwin from Yes Vermont Yankee and the Energy Education Project of the Ethan Allen Institute
Ben Heard from Decarbonize SA and the author of the recently issued report titled Zero Carbon Options: Seeking An Economic Mix For An Environmental Outcome.

We talked about Jaczko’s departure from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the approval of COLAs for Vogtle 3 & 4 and VC Summer 2 & 3, the landslide election of a pro-nuclear party in Japan, Vermont Yankee winning in court, and the fact that the sky continues to remain in place despite all predictions to the contrary from the anti nuclear fear mongers.

There are still no instances of negative health effects from exposure to radiation or radioactive materials as a result of the small quantity of material released from three melted reactors at Fukushima Dai-ich in March and April of 2011. There is a growing body of evidence indicating that fear of radiation has caused a great deal of harm. Perhaps a thousand people experienced early deaths related to the stress of evacuating their homes or hospitals and there is a continuing contribution to ill health from lack of outdoor exercise in “contaminated” areas where dose rates are well below naturally occurring radiation levels in other areas of the world.

Ben Heard mentioned one of the best news stories that received little coverage – a man has opened a restaurant that specializes in selling food grown or raised in the Fukushima prefecture.

Finally, we mentioned what Meredith often refers to as the “brownie gap”. That is her shorthand for discussing the fact that pro nuclear advocates do not spend enough time socializing with each other and supporting each other in our mutual effort to make the world a better place by taking advantage of the energy density found in uranium and thorium. Those materials are marvelous gifts to humanity; we need to use them more often as tools to make our world a better place.

Happy New Year!

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Atomic Show #192 – Zero Carbon Options for South Australia

Rod Adams — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 08:22:14 +0000

Ben Heard is one of the growing number of environmental professionals who have seriously evaluated all options for reducing mankind’s annual production rate of carbon dioxide and discovered that the best tool available is nuclear fission energy. As a part of his continuing journey of discovery, he worked with Brown and Pang to produce a report titled Zero Carbon Options: Seeking an Economic Mix for an Environmental Outcome”.

The report uses the results of a recently completed report detailing a proposed mix of wind and solar power supplies that would produce as much electricity each year as two aging coal fired power stations in South Australia to show how much less costly and more effective it would be to replace those stations with nuclear power than to attempt to achieve the same emission abatement result using an overbuilt mix of unreliable power supplies. The full report is available as a free PDF download.

Though the initial work was unfunded, a successful campaign using Pozible has provided some financial resources for distributing and promoting the report. (Disclosure: I felt strongly enough about the importance of the effort to contribute some of my own personal funds to that campaign.)

Ben and I got together on Skype on December 16 (for me) and 17 (for him) to talk about Zero Carbon options and the need to rationally evaluate the available tools for addressing a very real problem – the steady accumulation of excessive quantities of carbon dioxide (and other, more noxious waste products from fossil fuel combustion) in our shared atmosphere. I hope you enjoy the show and consider doing what you can to spread the word that we have a proven, scalable, available technology that can no longer be ignored. The elephant in the room will no longer remain quiet as more and more people discover what Ben has discovered – atomic fission energy is fully capable of replacing a major portion of our current demand for hydrocarbon fuels.

Since fission is capable of achieving that task without requiring a great deal of other societal changes or changes in individual lifestyles, it is a far more powerful and effective tool than any other alternative. Attempting to achieve what is already a very difficult task without using the best available technology is simply absurd.

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Atomic Show #191 – 70th Anniversary of CP-1, the First Controlled Fission Chain Reaction

Rod Adams — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 01:50:02 +0000

On Sunday, December 2, 2012, I gathered together a group of nuclear professionals to talk about the impact to human history of the construction and operation of Critical Pile 1 (CP-1). That simple assembly of graphite, uranium, and uranium dioxide was built in about 6 weeks. When measurements taken during construction indicated that the system was large enough to sustain a chain reaction, Enrico Fermi scheduled a test. It worked as expected on the first try.

Fission, a power source that releases 2 million times as much energy per unit mass as burning the most densely concentrated hydrocarbon fuel, worked fine. If the discovery had taken place at any other time in human history, progress would have been made far more quickly to turn that new power source into an amazing boon for mankind. As it has turned out, we have made progress and developed a reliable alternative to burning fossil fuel, but there is still vast untapped potential.

Guests on this show include:

Margaret Harding – 4 Factor Consulting
Leslie Corrice – The Hiroshima Syndrome
Will Davis – Atomic Power Review
Suzy Hobbs Baker – PopAtomic Studios
Kirk Sorensen – Co-Founder, Flibe Energy and creator of Energy from Thorium

I hope you all enjoy this show as much as I enjoyed hosting the conversation.

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Atomic Show #190 – Nuclear plant performance during Hurricane Sandy

Rod Adams — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 11:14:45 +0000

There are 34 nuclear reactors located in areas affected by Hurricane Sandy. Of those, 7 were shutdown for planned maintenance. Three units tripped due to disturbances on the grid or issues with one of their redundant cooling systems. The other 24 remained operational and supplied as much power as the grid could accept.

On Sunday, November 4, I gathered a group of pronuclear communicators, each with their own blog, to talk about the technology’s resilience and about how a certain segment of the antinuclear industry loves to spread scary what if stories. Every time nature tests our nuclear power plants and they perform well, the anti’s tell us that “we almost lost (fill in the blank)”. Then they point to an event like Fukushima and tell us that proves that nature can throw more at nuclear plants than they can handle.

What they fail to admit, however, is that even a very bad event that destroys three formerly productive nuclear power units at an admittedly vulnerable site with insufficient preventive measures did not result in a single human injury any worse than a mild sunburn from exposure to radiation.

As amateur pro nuclear communicators, we have all chosen a rather unusual hobby; we continue to spread the truth about nuclear energy and continue to explain to people that it really does have the power to save the world from many of its most pressing challenges.

Guests on this show include:

Margaret Harding, who blogs at 4 Factor Consulting
Meredith Angwin, who blogs at Yes Vermont Yankee and ANS Nuclear Cafe
Will Davis, who blogs at Atomic Power Review and ANS Nuclear Cafe

Additional Reading

Spent Fuel Pool at Oyster Creek

Entergy Louisiana and Entergy Arkansas and Hurricane Sandy

Hurricanes and Nuclear Plants in the Main Stream Media

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Atomic Show #189 – Energy Subsidies

Rod Adams — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 09:02:16 +0000

Dr. Jim Conca recently published an article titled What’s Better? A Carbon Tax or Energy Subsidies? for his column on Forbes.com. I invited him, along with Cal Abel, a nuclear engineering PhD candidate at Georgia Tech with a strong interest in energy economics, for a chat on the Atomic Show.

We got a little off topic at times, but I think you will find the discussion thought provoking and worth a listen.

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Atomic Show #188 – Wheeler and Harding discuss ANS Utility Working Conference

Rod Adams — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 09:51:48 +0000

During the first week of August each year, the American Nuclear Society hosts a conference called the Utility Working Conference (ANS-UWC). It is one of my favorite ANS meetings because it draws a crowd of professionals whose daily employment is focused on safely operating electricity production facilities powered by atomic fission. Those facilities produce 20% of the electricity in the United States using less than 10% of the installed capacity.

Every one of the kilowatt hours produced by nuclear energy is one less kilowatt hour produced by coal or natural gas and somewhere between 600 and 1200 less grams of CO2 released into the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, I could not attend this year’s conference due to schedule conflicts. I did the next best thing and invited two guests who attended the meeting.

Margaret Harding (4 Factor Consulting) and John Wheeler (This Week In Nuclear) joined me on August 14 to provide their report on the important talks, sessions and hallway conversations. I hope you learn as much as I did.

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Atomic Show #187 – Women In Nuclear (US WIN) 2012

Rod Adams — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 09:48:18 +0000

During the period from July 15-18 2012, more than 440 nuclear professionals attended the annual U. S. Women In Nuclear (US WIN) conference held in Orlando, FL. I spoke to three of the attendees – Julie Ezold, Sandy DePirro, and Savannah Fitzwater – about the conference and about the organization.

The women work in three very different parts of the nuclear energy enterprise spread in three geographically separate areas of the country. Julie is the manager of an isotope production program at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Sandy is a member of the oversight group at the Crystal River Nuclear Plant, and Savannah is a graduate student specializing in nuclear non-proliferation issues at the Colorado School of Mines.

They told me the the US WIN conference was an “amazing” event filled with incredible networking opportunities and engaging technical sessions. They also told me that the organization has made a significant impact on their lives and on their careers.

Please listen to the show to hear more of the details.

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Atomic Show #186 – SMRs, Climate Change, and Natural Gas Competition

Rod Adams — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 08:46:20 +0000

On the evening of July 29, 2012, Suzy Hobbs-Baker, Director of the Nuclear Literacy Project and founder of PopAtomic Studios, Dan Yurman, who blogs at Idaho Samizdat and writes for Fuel Cycle Week and the ANS Nuclear Cafe, Margaret Harding, an independent nuclear energy consultant who blogs at 4 Factor Consulting, and Cal Abel, a PhD student at Georgia Tech and the founder of a startup company developing nuclear process heat production systems, joined me for a roundtable discussion about a variety of atomic topics that have been in the recent news.

Dan filled us in with details about the Department of Energy’s Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for the development of small modular reactors using light water reactor technology.

Suzy introduced the topic of encouraging nuclear scientists and engineers to recognize the expertise of climate scientists and to aggressively offer nuclear technology as an ultra low carbon energy source. Suzy has published a thought provoking blog post on the topic at the ANS Nuclear Cafe titled Climate Change and Nuclear Energy: We Need to Talk.

Cal explained how he was working hard to develop and then provide technology that performs the challenging balancing act of increasing our access to useful energy, decreasing the cost of that energy, maintaining the value of much of our current energy production infrastructure, decreasing our CO2 emissions, AND increasing the reliability of our energy production systems. He is not talking about perpetual motion machines but real system designs based on hard science and engineering.

Margaret offered her usual expert commentary on all topics discussed.

I continued singing my currently favorite song about how highly motivated the global fossil fuel industry marketers and decision makers have been during the past fifty years to discourage any shift in the energy markets from fossil to nuclear energy.

As Dan pointed out, however, even some of the world’s most prolific producers of petroleum are making serious investments in nuclear energy production systems. When the UAE, Iran and Saudi Arabia all decide that it is time to build nuclear power plants, they are sending the world a signal indicating that they know their fossil reserves are getting more and more difficult to extract at a rate that will allow them to continue developing.

We should all be paying attention to the many reasons why it is past time to be building lots of new nuclear power plants. There is an old saying about trees that is apropos here:

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

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The Atomic Show #185 – Is Thorium Superior to Uranium?

Rod Adams — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 09:10:26 +0000

On July 23, 2012, busy schedules aligned and I had the chance to talk with Richard Martin, the author of SuperFuel: Thorium, the Green Energy Source for the Future and Kirk Sorensen, the co-founder and chief technology officer of Flibe Energy, a start-up company formed to “develop small modular reactors based on liquid-fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) technology.” Kirk is also the founder of Energy from Thorium.

Thought I did not think of phrasing it in this manner until I sat down to post the show, the initial question we discussed was “is thorium superior to uranium”? Even if Martin and Sorensen were able to win that argument, the more important question was determining whether the answer matters as much as the fact that both uranium and thorium (and their periodic table neighbor, plutonium) are atomic fission fuels that have serious advantages over combustion fuels in terms of energy density, total energy value and ability to produce power without pollution.

We talked quite a bit about my solidifying theory that a major part of the long running battle against using any of the three available nuclear fission fuels has derived from the fact that the current kings of the energy hill do not want either one to take their market share away. As is often the case, my discussion opponents initially labeled my theory as a crackpot conspiracy theory; I stubbornly continued explaining that pointing to a business strategy that includes efforts to “raise the barriers of entry” for formidable competitors should not be dismissed.

It is not a conspiracy theory to point out the enormous amount of capital that is invested in the global effort to locate, extract, transport, refine, distribute and market coal, natural gas and oil. It is not a conspiracy theory to point out that politicians and the advertiser supported media have numerous reasons to help their friends continue to capture trillions of dollars worth of revenue each year from suppling industrial society with the fuels that keep it running at prices that are far higher than they would be if there were amply supplies of nuclear fission based machines being allowed to operate on a remotely level playing field.

I hope you enjoy the discussion. Rick had another engagement, so he dropped out at the 45 minute point, but he suggested that we continue the conversation within the next six months as more developments occur. I think that is a capital idea. I’m looking forward to more discussions about the complicated but exceedingly important topic.

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