The meeting was set up in a space at UNCW, the local university. That was the first fun thing, I don’t know all the buildings on campus, so just finding the building and a place to park was amusing. School is still in session at UNCW (finals week, I believe) so there were lots of students around.

The NRC brought in a retired NRC staff person to act as a moderator, which I thought was very effective. It prevented any one individual or group from dominating the proceedings. The meeting started with introductions and presentations by the NRC staff.

I learned a new acronym (we nuclear types really, really love acronyms) IROFS. Item Relied On For Safety. Apparently that’s the term for safety related items in nuclear fuel cycle facilities as opposed to nuclear power plants. Why in the world do we have to have different terms for the same concept? Is this just another way to confuse people?

I thought the NRC did a nice job of going over at a high level all of the various areas they look at in granting a license to a facility. The presenter, Nick Baker, spend some time talking about risk management. In simple terms, if an event has a high consequence, it must be made highly unlikely, or even better “not credible”. Not credible means impossible in regular English. He also explained passive controls as essentially setting up the facility to make safe operation automatically happen without active intervention by people or equipment.

There was some discussion about decommissioning funds. Unlike many industries, nuclear facilities licensed by the NRC must put together a plan for funding the eventual decommissioning of the site. This plan must include protections for the possibility of bankruptcy by the company that is applying to build the facility. The plan is reviewed every few years and updated. If the projections change, the company is required to increase the funding.

Then the NRC reviewed the environmental impact statement in quite a lot of detail that I’m not going to try to repeat here. I was impressed with their thoroughness. Apparently, something of archaeological significance was found on the site, and they are actually shifting the roads to avoid damage to the location.

The NRC expects to issue license September 2012. The folks at GE don’t plant to start construction until 2014. That seems like a long delay, but I presume there’s a business reason on GE’s part.

Finally, they opened the floor for questions from the audience. It was very polite, with several citizens expressing support for the project as well as asking questions in more detail. Most folks with concern were worried about potential contamination with radiation of the environment. The NRC explained how the facility will contain material and sequester any dangerous compounds.

One individual had come from South Carolina to raise concerns about proliferation. The NRC staff tried to explain the law regarding who has jurisdiction regarding proliferation concerns. It is a very complicated subject with 5 agencies having input to the matter. But in the end, the State Department has the final say.

There were also questions regarding the depleted uranium. It will be stored on site as Uranium hexafluoride (UF6), in canisters. At ambient temperatures, the material is a solid and the canisters will be slightly below atmospheric pressure, so if a leak occurs (like a shot), the canister will pull air in, the chemistry within tends to be self-sealing and will likely reseal the leak. Eventually, these tailings will be delivered to the DOE, but GE will have to pay them to handle disposal. That payment is a part of the decommissioning fund.

Since we live in hurricane territory, someone asked what would be impact of cat 4 hurricane? The NRC responded that the facility is designed to withstand it. In fact, it is built to same standard as nuclear power plants.

Finally, apparently the state has recently identified a rare flower and a rare squirrel on the site. This was new information that had only been presented to the NRC on April 23. They are still looking into the impacts.

With that the meeting ended. I was pleased by the polite interchange between the public and the NRC. Having heard of some terrible meetings where protests and abuse of presenters occurred, I was encouraged by the way the meeting was conducted and the behavior of everyone in the room.

However, this week I’m offering up something a little different for you, my readers. Last summer, I worked on an article for publication in the International Association of Energy Economists newsletter with a friend of mine, Rob Graber. That article was published this week in a newsletter dedicated to looking at how Fukushima affects the world’s energy supply. I’d like to invite you to read these articles and comment here.

Here’s the link: http://www.iaee.org/documents/2011FallEnergyForum.pdf.

We’ve been experimenting with and observing science though, as that is just a part of my nature. With so much open ocean and equally open skies, one can make observations on the effects of light. And experiment a little with polarizing lens. Your typical polarized sun glasses are set up to stop glare from horizontal surfaces, like car hoods, chrome bumpers and things like that. When you rotate them 90 degrees, the light that passes through changes. You’ll see the sky change colors as well as the clouds and the contrast in the sea changes as well.

I have a circular polarizing filter on my camera that allows me to change the orientation of the light as well, and so I took pictures of the same scene from our balcony with the filter turned 90 degrees. You can see the significant difference in the same scene below.

It is this trick of light orientation that is used in modern 3D film making, by putting on glasses with the light polarizing at 90 degrees difference, the filmmaker can take advantage to cause one eye to see something slightly different than the other. Our brain combines these two images to create a 3 dimensional view of whatever is on the screen.

Seeing things in different ways is one of those things that engineers are supposed to do. We are trained to solve problems and find better solutions to problem presented to us. However, there are three traps that affect our ability to get to the best solution.

1)      We get stuck in a rut of seeing the problem in only one way and thus seeing only a single solution. The definition of idiocy is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

2)     We have a solution, but no corresponding problem. solution in search of a problem

3)     Sometimes we are only comfortable with a few solutions so we try to make our problem fit. If all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail.

Even people in policy making positions that are supposed to spend their time finding innovative solutions to difficult problems can get caught in any of these three traps. Worse, for some policy-makers and organizations it becomes more about keeping a reason for the organization’s existence alive. It becomes more important to sustain the agency that to solve the problem for which the agency was developed. Or the founders of the organization can’t see changing circumstances that make their pet solution or problem irrelevant.

I have spent many years taking my problem solving skills and applying them to problems in unique ways. One thing I’ve found is that by spending time ensuring that your organization truly comprehends and agrees on the problem that is being solved, you are much more likely to find creative solutions that actually fix the problem rather than the symptoms. So many times an organization gets caught up in the way things “should be” or the way people want them to be rather than the way things really are. When an organization spends the time understanding this, it can be a powerful tool for recognizing when a profound change in direction is required and finding ways to make that change happen.

The energy policy of the United States is in need of such an effort. Too many people have their polarizing sunglasses on and oriented in only one direction so they see solutions only in the light their eyes are receiving. The lack of a comprehensive long term strategy for the nation is putting us at peril for our ability to remain leaders in the world. Our country’s policy has been at the mercy of too many shortsighted interest groups and politicians looking for short term gains in order to win or maintain power in the immediate term. We desperately need leadership in government that can stand up and look at the science and the need and develop a road map to the next millennium.

So for the first five days of this cruise, which my husband chose quite intentionally, the idea was to unplug and unwind from a very eventful year and a sometimes stressful life. Of course, the first two days, the Pacific was anything but pacific. We had pretty big waves and rain and wind and even some of the crew was a bit seasick. Mark and I are pretty insensitive to such things, but none-the-less, I was glad when after two days, we could see the moon through the flying clouds, and the morning dawned with a few puffy white clouds.

I’m sitting on our balcony on the aft of the ship looking at the ships wake and a beautiful blue ocean, no land in sight at all, no other ships, just our cruise ship plowing forward at 18 knots at a heading almost due SW toward Kona, Hawaii. The in room TV has a display of the ship’s position on a globe along with information about the weather and our speed and the ocean depth (it’s now over 3 miles deep below us).

The ship I’m on is powered by huge diesel engines. In fact, we were late getting out of port while enough fuel was loaded for a trip from Vancouver to Hawaii. It’s a long ways and running out of gas in the middle would not be a good thing. There are no sails on this ship as a back-up plan if something happened. I’m not sure they would do any good anyway. This is a mid-sized cruise ship by todays standard, but she’s bigger than the Titanic.

I’ve considered before the possibility of using small modular reactors in the transportation sector. There are several areas for which such machines are great application and a natural fit. Big ocean-going ships are one of the most obvious. It doesn’t take a great leap of logic to consider that nuclear navy ships are still just ships. Cargo ships like large container ships and tankers would seem like logical ships to use nuclear power, but there’s always a security risk with such ships in unfriendly waters. Cruise ships tend to stay in friendlier parts of the world and could also benefit from the cleaner form of transportation. One could envision a system much like the navy where the ship is refueled perhaps once every five years or so, about when these ships require some refitting and updating of the interiors anyway.

When the first nuclear cruise ship is built, I hope I can sail on her maiden voyage. That would be an exciting day!

As I lay awake the night before, I was thinking that I should take a watch. I haven’t worn a watch in over a year for various reasons. My cell phone has sufficed as a kind of oversized pocket watch. But on board ship, especially for the several days of open cruising, the cell phone is somewhat superfluous – except for telling time and playing “Angry Birds”.

So in the morning I dug around and found my wristwatch. Of course, the battery was dead. At 5am, I didn’t think I’d find any place open to get a new one. I thought about bringing the watch along and hoping I’d have time in an airport, or something to get a battery. Then I remembered something special.

Way back when we married, we managed to take our honeymoon in Europe. A few days each in London, Geneva, and Zermatt, and finally a week in Zurich. I pretended to work in Zurich and my employer paid for my airfare and our hotel in Zurich. As my wedding gift to my husband, we shopped on Bahnhofstrasse for a special watch. We thought being in the land of the famous Swiss watchmakers made it the appropriate gift.

Pocket Watch

We purchased a beautiful pocket watch with a clear casing and watch face so that you can see the inner workings. The hours are not marked except a small indication of 12 o’clock, so one only knows the approximate time. Mark has never used it much, because such a watch demands the right kind of clothes to wear and Mark never really liked wearing a vest with a watch pocket.

However, for this trip, it is perfect for us. I wound it up and tucked it into my jeans watch pocket and fastened the chain around a belt loop. While waiting for a flight, I was studying it again, such a precision instrument and yet such an old technology. I began thinking about the beginnings of watches and why they were invented in the first place – to keep accurate time on sailing ships so that they could know where they were even without a coastline.

You see without an accurate way to tell the exact time, mariners couldn’t take a reading from the stars or the sun and know where they were from east to west. They could always tell how far north or south they were by the declination of the sun at noon (the sun’s highest point in the sky). But the early explorers were never exactly sure where they were in longitude without accurate timepieces. To be sure, there were a number of very accurate clocks in the world in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, but they used gravity and/or pendulums to maintain accurate time. On a swaying sailing ship, these devices were useless.

So the British Royal Society offered a huge prize for the time for someone to invent a timekeeping device that would work on the rolling decks of a sailing ship. The prize stood for many years until a carpenter named John Harrison invented a spring balance system in 1730. His first designs didn’t work as well as needed and the Royal Society couldn’t believe someone from such a lowly profession could have created such a complex device. So he kept refining it and finally in 1761 he submitted a winning design. As he continued to refine it, he ended up with something that looks a great deal like a modern pocket watch. The prize was £20,000 (several million dollars in today’s currency).

This invention allowed a huge leap forward in the ability of exploration and commerce to move around the globe. The ability to know precisely where one was made it possible to travel more swiftly and safely across large stretches of open ocean thus expanding the British Empire into Asia and the Americas much more rapidly that they had been able to before.

Civilization changing inventions don’t come along every day and many times civilization doesn’t recognize them when they do. Clocks had been around for a long time slowly increasing in accuracy and decreasing in size, but Mr. Harrison took a different look at things and realized there had to be a way to make a chronometer that was both compact and accurate. He kept working on it until he was successful.

As we look back in history, we can see these major inventions and their impact pretty clearly. Gutenberg’s printing press, Samuel Morse’s telegraph, Alexander Bell’s telephone, Edison’s light bulb are among those inventions that changed the world. What inventions of recent times are equally world changing?

Anti-Nuclear Movement

The nuclear movement has long had detractors that consistently find ways to try to eliminate the industry. Looking at the history of some of the major organizations and understanding the motivation can be instructive.

Friends of the Earth (FOE)

FOE was founded in 1969 when David Brower split with the Sierra Club over nuclear power. Today, they claim environmentalism and human rights as their focus areas with a loose coalition of member organizations around the world. Campaigning against nuclear power continues to be one of their prime focusses.

While they claim to be concerned about global warming, nuclear power is considered to be a “false” solution without

GreenPeace

Founded originally to protest nuclear weapons testing in Alaska using peaceful means (ref. Wikipedia article), GreenPeace currently states it goals as follows:

Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning organization that acts to change attitudes and behaviour, to protect and conserve the environment and to promote peace by:

• Catalysing an energy revolution to address the number one threat facing our planet: climate change.
• Defending our oceans by challenging wasteful and destructive fishing, and creating a global network of marine reserves.
• Protecting the world’s remaining ancient forests which are depended on by many animals, plants and people.
• Working for disarmament and peace by reducing dependence on finite resources and calling for the elimination of all nuclear weapons.
• Creating a toxin free future with safer alternatives to hazardous chemicals in today’s products and manufacturing.
• Campaigning for sustainable agriculture by encouraging socially and ecologically responsible farming practices.

Greenpeace International

This list of priorities is most interesting in that dealing with climate change is stated as a top goal, but ending the use of nuclear power is not. When one looks further into the Wikipedia article, much is said about stopping the use of coal or oil. The article states that Greenpeace considers the nuclear industry to be a minor industry with major problems. Greenpeace has, however, launched several anti-nuclear campaigns, including terrorist acts against nuclear power plants in Spain.

This stance appears to be totally inconsistent. If climate change is a key concern, it would seem that using nuclear to lower carbon emissions and providing energy to countries desperate for more electricity (like India and China) would be far preferable to building more coal plants.

Sierra Club

Although the Sierra Club was initially not strictly anti-nuclear and actually supported the construction of Diablo Canyon. However, by the 1980’s the Sierra Club became firmly anti-nuclear. In fact, they oppose both nuclear fission and nuclear fusion.

As an aside, when I was a new engineer in California in the early 1980’s, I tried to join the local chapter of the Sierra Club, thinking that the best way to change their opinion was from the inside by convincing the local chapter that nuclear power was in alignment with their goals. When I attended the first meeting and they found out what I did for a living, I was politely asked to leave the meeting and my check for membership dues was returned to me.

Union of Concerned Scientists

Also founded originally to stop nuclear weapons testing, UCS nearly dissolved in the early 1970’s. It re-emerged as a “Nuclear Power watchdog” organization. While it claims NOT to be anti-nuclear, nothing in the records for UCS ever acknowledge positive aspects of nuclear power. When interviewed or quoted in the press, the UCS give a consistent, negative message to the public regarding nuclear power.

Conclusions

It is interesting to note that two of the four started out opposed to nuclear weapons and drifted into opposition of nuclear power. At least in the case of the UCS, this move was mostly to save the organization from oblivion. Of these organization, three claim to be concerned about global warming and yet continue to oppose nuclear power. It is mostly these groups that form the loudest anti-nuclear voices. While the organizations are quite large, many of their activities are not in direct opposition to nuclear power (with the exception of the UCS). Thus their membership does not reflect a referendum on nuclear power.

The NRC’s review process favors the interference of anti-nuclear groups. It does not take significant numbers of supporters, but only a few with relatively modest cost to develop arguments and submit contentions to the process. These contentions drive the cost up and increase the time required. The anti-nuclear organizations then claim that nuclear power is too expensive and takes too long.

Pro-nuclear organizations operate at some disadvantage. Except for unique situations like the current VY court case, there are few venues to stage a rally. Since the NRC doesn’t really have a mechanism to file “anti-contentions” to annihilate contentions (like matter and anti-matter), there is no easy way for pro nuclear grass roots organizations to directly support nuclear power in their community.

We who believe in nuclear power need to find ways to communicate about it and to publicize the positive aspects of nuclear power in responding to global warming, environmental effects of coal, and economic benefit to the community.

I’m headed out on vacation for the next couple of weeks. You may or may not see a blog from me while I’m gone. I’ll be back for sure in October.

Nuclear Industry Demographics

The impending retirement of the baby boom generation has begun to have a significant impact on many industries in the US. This impact is magnified in the nuclear industry by two unique factors.

1. Because nuclear was perceived as an undesirable career choice from 1980 to 2005, there is an entire generation largely missing from the ranks of the utilities, vendors, and regulators.
2. In the last 5-8 years there has been a significant increase in interest in nuclear energy. Driven by climate change, peak oil and other fossil fuel concerns, this sharp increase has put intense pressure on the industry to hire more workers.

These three factors have combined to create some very unusual demographic curves within the industry. As late as the early 2000’s an analysis of the age demographics in the nuclear workforce showed what is called a J-skewed distribution. The figure demonstrates the age demographics for a typical nuclear company in the time frame. Working age is typically from about 22 until 65, with some folks delaying entry into the work force and some leaving before traditional retirement at 65. You can see in this curve that the peak number of workers was between 50-55 at the time this analysis was performed. The youngest quartile ranged in age up to more than 40 years old.

Age demographics of nuclear industry in 2002

These graphs were generally moving up one year for each elapsed year as the employee population continued to age. In fact, many company were driven to hire people as qualified as those who left in order to avoid extensive training time. Such practices continued to skew the curve upward.

In “normal” industries one expects a more bell curve shape to the employee population with the peak somewhere near the mid range of employee ages. As nuclear tends to require at least a basic 4 year college degree, the average total career should be something around 40 years, with a median workforce age of 42, a few folks working beyond 65 and a few folks starting out a little less than 22.

With the renewed interest in nuclear power starting in 2003, companies began much more intense hiring campaigns and began to hire younger staff. For many companies this began to lower the age distribution. However, the age demographics are still not normal with a large population under 30 and a large population 50 and over and few people in the middle, highly productive years of their career.

This bi-modal distribution has a profound effect on the transfer of knowledge and leadership as well as the efficient restart of the industry. In some parts of the industry, significant formal training programs have been developed to bring these younger workers up to speed more quickly. In addition, efforts to hire mid-career employees from other industries with required technical skills and train them on the specifics of the nuclear industry has been helping to fill the gap.

Educational Levels

The nuclear industry tends toward a highly educated workforce. A significant fraction of the employees, especially at design firms, have advanced technical degrees. In order to provide such education, universities have to maintain vigorous nuclear engineering departments with access to test reactors and facilities. Many universities operate in partnerships with national labs or other government facilities in order to support such programs.

However, in the operations staff, less formal education and more rigorous technical training is used. Many nuclear plant operators have come out of the navy programs in the US where they are trained to operate the smaller reactors used on navy ships. Training requirements can be fulfilled through formal education or through more industry oriented courses taught by organizations like INPO or companies that specialize in industrial training.

International Views

For the developed countries that already have nuclear power well in hand, the demographics of the US are quite similar. Differences occur in countries with larger population growth and/or having maintained a growing nuclear industry. Japan, for example, has continued to build new plants on an ongoing basis and has encouraged new employment in the field throughout the past 30 years. There is less skewing of age in the workforce and more continuity in training and development.

Countries trying to develop new nuclear programs have found the education levels required to manage a program entirely within country to be quite challenging. The NonProliferation Treaty limits the use of nuclear power for military purposes, further limiting access to some basic research and educational programs. Countries developing nuclear power must look to other non-weapons states to develop models for educating a work force for supporting a nuclear energy policy that is both efficient and safe.

Last time we looked at the US economics of nuclear. The international view is more variable and worth a look at the same issues.

It is interesting to note that most countries (with a few notable exceptions) have not changed their stance on building (or not building) new nuclear plants since the events in Japan. Economics seem to be a key driver in those decisions.

Western Europe is much like the US in regards to economics at this time. Some countries are in more financial trouble than others, but stagnant economic growth and low interest rates dominate. However, there are some key differences that are driving different behaviors in different countries.

United Kingdom

The UK’s economy is much like the US, but with some key differences in the electricity and energy demand market. The UK was more strongly building wind turbines both onshore and off. With such efforts, the inefficiency of wind to meet energy needs has become more obvious. Solar was never really much of an option in the British Isles, and the decline in the North Sea oil and gas reserves as well as rising natural gas prices has given the country notice that other alternatives are needed.

The UK also had to shut down much of its aging nuclear fleet. The technology used in many of the reactors has not been as robust as was initially believed. In shutting these reactors down, the need to develop significant suitable replace power became much more obvious to policy makers and thus made nuclear as more acceptable option.

France

The French have maintained a nuclear program and have not indicated any rejection of nuclear. However with 75% of electricity already generated by nuclear, France has not indicated a plan to embark on any major building programs. As the current fleet ages, it is not yet clear how France intends to manage the impact. Some plant life extension, which is less expensive is clearly possible, but currently, there is little economic incentive for new build.

Germany

Germany has been quite divided about nuclear power with the industrialized south generally more supportive of nuclear due to its low cost and generally high reliability. However, politics seem to have driven the country to drop the nuclear option. There is an economic factor that should not be ignored. Germany has considerable in country coal deposits as well as significant economic interests in Russian natural gas. Together with low growth rates, and some that are willing to try to make wind and solar work, these unlikely interests come together to eliminate nuclear from their current strategy.

Switzerland

The Swiss had an initial knee-jerk reaction to follow in Germany’s footsteps, but at a much more measured pace. The Swiss have little outside resources beyond the hydro-electric system that they operate so well. Swizterland is a mature economy with limited growth and so has some time to make these decisions.

Eastern Europe

Several eastern European nations have looked at Germany’s announced exit from nuclear power as a potential opportunity to provide energy in the shortfall. Poland and the Czech Republic both continue to be strongly supportive on nuclear programs. With the drop in production in Germany, the economic potential of new nuclear in both countries seems to tile more in favor of building new nuclear plants.

Of course, there is a political aspect to any programs in these generally smaller countries within the EU. There is significant pressure from both Germany and Austria for these countries to give up their nuclear ambitions. In order for them to be able to fully leverage such opportunities, some support from pro-nuclear governments is needed.

Emerging markets

I include here China, India, the Middle-East, and other countries rapidly moving up the economic ladder. In all of these countries economic growth is enormous and in many there is significant shortage of energy. The choices to get large amounts of reliable power and still hold GHG emissions and cost within some reasonable limit are few. Thus, most of these countries have looked at what happened in Japan, concluded that modern designs are less prone to similar failures and are proceeding with new nuclear as quickly as they can safely do so. In many of these countries, alternative energy supply are also being pursued aggressively, but in the middle east, for example, the goal is to stop using oil for energy production so that it can be sold to other nations to continue economic growth at home.

Summary

This is a quick summary analysis of extremely complex economic drivers in the international arena. However, it is clear that in general the drive to build new nuclear around the world is more clear in economies with considerable growth. Unfortunately, many of these countries do not have as clear a track record in safe operations of such complex facilities. Countries with well developed programs need to remain engaged in the construction and operation of nuclear power plants in order to remain in a position to influence developing countries despite the unclear economic drivers for nuclear power.

I feel the earth move under my feet

I feel the sky tumblin’ down

Carole King – 1971

Another week off of my planned strategic overview. The twin events of an earthquake near North Anna nuclear power plant in Virginia and Hurricane Irene sweeping up the coast has brought a lot of FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) articles about nuclear power. Because I live in Wilmington, NC and been through a number of hurricanes (including direct “in the eye” experience) AND I lived in San Jose, CA for the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, I feel that I might offer some perspective and potential clarity.

Since the earthquake occurred first, let’s tackle this one. First, nuclear power plants are not designed to “Richter Scale” criteria. The Richter Scale is used to roughly measure the energy released in the earthquake. It doesn’t consider distance from the epicenter, how deep the earthquake was, or how the energy released might travel through the earth. What really matters at a nuclear facility (or any OTHER facility for that matter) is the actual ground motion at the facility. The direction and harmonic frequency of the waves and how they might cause equipment to shake, rattle, and roll also play a factor. However, the general public knows Richter Scale, so in an effort to be helpful nuclear plants have sometimes converted the criteria into a rough equivalent of the Richter Scale.

This conversion, however, is cause for confusion and unnecessary FUD. The translation is usually meant to imply the earthquake was located on a fault directly below the facility. In reality being even a few hundred feet off that line makes a significant different in the amount of motion. So a 6.0 earthquake under the facility might provide one level of ground motion, but the same earthquake 100 yards away would be a lower ground motion at the facility.

Picture a rock thrown into a still pond. The rings of ripples spread out from the rock as they get larger in diameter, they get smaller in size until they disappear. Earthquakes are much the same. What matters for a building or facility is that ground motion.

Similarly, for hurricanes, the facilities are designed for a specific wind speed and expected storm surge (if they are on the coast). Facilities located even a few miles inland do not have potential storm surge issues, but are designed for possible flood scenarios. A category 3 hurricane (like Irene) headed toward North Carolina, does not mean that Brunswick Nuclear power plant will experience category 3 winds The category is designated by the maximum sustained winds measured in the storm, these winds are usually at or very near the center of the storm. In addition, the presence of land significantly slows the winds at ground level. So, once again, proximity to the storm and the coast matters.

In the case of hurricanes, there is yet another significant bit of knowledge, with today’s radars, satellites, and radios, we know about hurricanes many days before they make landfall. This allows the utility to prepare in advance. The NRC requires these plants to shut down if hurricane force winds are expected within a few hours. The plants are well aware of the risk to offsite power and are careful to assure themselves that the EDGs will start-up when needed.

A final word about natural disasters – I’ve seen many people ask questions about why nuclear power plants are not designed for “the ultimate natural disaster”. It is a good question. I like to explain it along these lines. All facilities, including nuclear power plants, oil refineries, and natural gas facilities, are designed to withstand events that are likely to take place during the facilities expected lifetime. The designers look at natural phenomena that occur in the region proposed for the facility, evaluate the likelihood of occurrence during the plant lifetime, the impact on the facility, the resulting impact on the surrounding population, and determine to the best of their ability the best cost vs. risk balance. In the nuclear industry, the NRC has to review and approve all of those decisions before the reactor can be built. In addition, unlike many facilities, these “design basis accidents” are re-examined when significant new information comes in. Plants are upgraded as required to assure continued safety.

Arguing that the facility should be designed to withstand the “ultimate natural disaster” is like arguing that cars should be designed to assure no one will ever die in a car crash. There are vehicles that survive crashes at 200 mph and allow the driver to walk away, they cost millions of dollars and are usually driven on race courses. If we demanded that automobiles protected the passengers such that no one ever died in a car accident, these would be the only cars on the road and very few people would drive.

In addition, how should one determine “the ultimate”? Is that a magnitude 10 earthquake directly under the facility? could a bigger quake happen? Same thing with hurricanes and floods. What is “the ultimate”? What is going to prevent something bigger? Should every facility plan for a direct hit from an asteriod as well? Determining how to draw the limit line isn’t easy, it requires turning human life into a number and weighing those numbers against each other. This calculus is done all the time from our court settlements, to insurance policies, to safety features on vehicles, to industrial facility design. Singling out a single technology and demanding that human life in regards to that technology is somehow more valuable is misguided and will result in more dangerous technologies and more deaths.

In the past 12 months in the US, no nuclear power plant killed a single person. They all behaved exactly as designed, shutting down when hazardous events occurred and providing electricity to hundreds of thousands of people and industries. About 37,000 people died in car crashes. About the same died from the use of coal in the US. So where should we be placing our concern regarding risk?

There was an outstanding vendor technology Exhibit. The first night, we had the opportunity to walk around and see old friends as well as learn about new technologies being applied in the industry. As usual, I was amazed and impressed by all of the people and technologies being shown. Of course, there are always innumerable cool toys and souveniors to pick-up, although I restrained myself that first night. I think I counted 111 different vendors.

The first day started out with a keynote speech from John Rowe, CEO of Exelon. Here’s a link to his prepared remarks. It wasn’t a pep talk, it was a reality discussion. It felt to me like the talk you get in the locker room when you are losing the game and you may not be able to pull it off. The reality of where you are today and what that really means. John didn’t always follow his script exactly and I fired off a number of tweets during his speech. Looking back at those, several struck me.

Not what we in this industry want to hear. We keep complaining that we aren’t being judged on a level playing field with our competition or by our critics. It’s time to stop complaining and understand that reality. What do we do to either level the playing field ourselves, or to win the game on the unlevel field we’ve been dealt?

I don’t have the answers, but maybe we should start thinking about this long and hard. Why is nuclear judged by a harsher standard? And how to we go about creating more consensus? I do not believe this will be done by staying in Washington and playing politics and policy games in the back rooms of Capitol Hill. While this is important, we as an industry also need to take our message out to the public, to engage directly with those people who are afraid or who do not know what to think. Their advocacy, or lack thereof, drives the local decisions to support, or oppose, nuclear power at the community level. By leaving these discussions to be started by groups with political and business agendas that oppose nuclear power, we allow ourselves to become defensive and to sound apologetic for our beliefs. We need to start the conversations and find common ground and ways to build consensus within those communities.

Another pair of hard truths.

John gave the industry a check on the first bullet – right reactor technology, and a big red x on the remaining 3. In his opinion, we lack a workable solution to the used fuel questions, slow growth limits the need for new generations and current natural gas prices and availability makes nuclear a poor economic choice.

Many of us would argue about whether or not a workable solution to used fuel exists, but again, in the world of national policy, it does not today. The administration has stopped work on the one repository because of prolonged and strenuous objections from powerful interests in that region. More importantly, there are many who felt that decision was a bad one because it threw away potentially useful material. This issue needs to be resolved and cost-effective, politically workable solutions developed and implemented. It is not a technical problem, it is both an economic and a political one.

On the last two points: Utilities are in the business of selling electrons, not fighting policy makers or making political statements. As long as natural gas costs are low, utilities aren’t real interested in a business busting 10-20 year bet on nuclear power. At least not in a merchant market like Exelon is in. Regulated markets like the SouthEast with high growth and poorer access to natural gas have a different economic equation. We see this same answer with other merchant generators: NRG and Constellation. The industry has a couple of choices, find a way to provide lower cost, shorter cycle solutions (perhaps SMRs). OR fight for a long term national policy that encourages and supports companies to make the big, long term investment in new nuclear plants. It is this long term policy that is allowing India, China, and other countries to continue to move nuclear energy forward.

At last, a positive note from John. He’s right. And this part of our industry is undersold and underappreciated. We allow our critics to make too many unsubstantiated claims and we fail to point out the reality. My mother taught me not to brag about myself, but the industry needs to get over this reticence and speak out.

Wow. Too many times we demand a public funding and argue for “public-private partnerships” and then complain when the private industry can’t sit in the driver seat. We need to find ways to support research and move forward without reliance on the government. We can demand that they allow us ways to do such work and the provide the avenues to be able to move new ideas into the commercial environment more quickly and efficiently. But until we are willing to pay our own way, we have to let the public half of the partnership steer the boat.

John Rowe is a hard-eyed realist who has successfully led the largest nuclear utility in the US for many years. We have to thank him for his honest assessment and now buckle down and get to work and figure out how to change our future.