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book titled Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment in a publication called the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. The roots of the decision remain murky. Within a few months after the first printing of the book, Ted Rockwell, a long time member of the Academy, started working to convince NYAS leaders that the decision to print was a grave error that was bad for science and posed a significant risk to the reputation of the Academy as a source of sound, peer-reviewed information. As part of his effort, he encouraged the current editor of Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences to appoint reviewers and to post the results of those reviews.

The German government's decision to close all of its existing nuclear reactors by 2022 shows that this shift in sentiment is gaining traction. And it increases the likelihood that the nuclear-powerplant building boom that had seemed at hand will be set back. Without a doubt, this new reality will lead to global energy shortages and much-higher energy costs.But for us as investors, the real issue is this: Which sectors will step up to alleviate the shortfall resulting from the inevitable disappearance of nuclear power?

As the recent development in Germany so clearly illustrates, one key difficulty about major energy decisions is that far too many are political in nature.

Too often, rational scientific analysis and cost-benefit analyses are ignored as hard-line environmentalists push their own agendas. Many of the environmentalists' objections are valid - at least as far as they go. But more and more, those objections seem to include every source of energy that actually works.

Windmills are objectionable because they look ugly and kill birds. Geothermal energy is objectionable because it causes earthquakes. Even solar energy is objectionable because of the vast acreages of land required to house the solar panels

Replacing Nuclear Power Figuring out which energy sources will offset the decline in nuclear power output requires three calculations:

First, a calculation of the cost of an energy source - as it now exists - in its economically most practicable uses. However, much as we may like solar power, we are not about to get solar-powered automobiles; likewise, oil-fueled power stations are inefficient on many grounds.

Second, a calculation that demonstrates whether the cost of that energy source is likely to increase or decline. With oil and hydro-electric power, for instance, the cost is likely to increase: The richest oil wells have been tapped and the best rivers have been dammed. With solar, on the other hand, the cost could decline, given how quickly the technology is advancing.

And third, an estimate that includes our best guess as to whether hard-line environmentalists will win or lose in their attempt to prevent its use.

On nuclear energy, the environmentalists appear to have won - at least for the time being. Their victory probably extends to fusion power, if that ever becomes economical. Conversely, their battles against wind and solar power are futile, as there are no scary disaster scenarios involved.

I regard the German decision to abandon nuclear power as foolish, and it should make us very cautious when investing in large-scale German manufacturers, which may be made uncompetitive by excessive power costs. But as an investor, I think it opens up a number of profit opportunities.

Actions To Take: Environmental concerns have chased investment away from nuclear energy - at least for the time being. For that reason the nuclear build-out that was just starting to gain momentum now is likely to stumble. As investors, we must look for energy sources that will most likely replace lost nuclear power output. They include:

Shale Gas: Potential damage to the environment caused by "fracking," which is the process by which shale gas is extracted, has not impeded this industry's growth. Natural gas has grown increasingly popular, as it is relatively cheap and clean, and readily abundant in the United States. A recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suggests that natural gas will provide 40% of U.S. energy needs in the future, up from 20% today. You might look at Chesapeake Energy Corp. (NYSE:CHK), the largest leaseholder in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale, which is trading at a reasonable 9.5 times projected 2012 earnings.

Shale gas. Tar sands. And solar energy. Let's look at each of the three - and identify the best ways to play them

Tar Sands: The Athabasca tar sands in Canada contain more oil than the Middle East. And at an oil price of $100 per barrel, it is highly profitable to extract. Of course, extraction makes a huge mess of the local environment, but environmentalists seem to have lost that battle - reasonably enough, in view of the "energy security" implications of dependence on the Middle East. A play I like here is Cenovus Energy Inc. (NYSE: CVE). It's a purer Athabasca play than Suncor Energy Inc. (NYSE: SU), but it's currently pricey at 16.5 times projected 2012 earnings. Suncor's cheaper at only 11 times projected 2012 earnings - so take your pick

Solar Energy: Of the many new energy sources that have received so much taxpayer money in the last five years, solar is the one with real potential. Unlike with wind farms, where there is almost no opportunity for massive technological improvement or cost reduction, there is great potential upside with solar power: The technology and economics of solar panels and their manufacture is improving steadily. Indeed, solar power seems likely to be competitive as a source of electricity without subsidy sometime around 2016-2020, if energy prices stay high.

There are a number of ways to play this. You can select a solar-panel manufacturer like the Chinese JA Solar Holdings Co. Ltd. (Nasdaq ADR: JASO), or a rectifier producer like Power-One Inc. (Nasdaq: PWER). JA Solar is trading at a startling forward Price/Earnings (P/E) ratio of less than 5.0, mostly likely because of the Chinese accounting scandals, whereas Power-One is also cheap at less than seven times forward earnings and is U.S.-domiciled. Again, take your pick, depending on which risks you are comfortable with.

The first day we heard about the possibility of open criticality at Fukushima, a week or so after the Earthquake in March- I was shocked. It didn’t even register that this was possible. Now, it’s a regular occurrence to see it openly on these videos. (again – look for the gamma artifacts on the video – little white flashes that appear randomly on the screen) Five months ago everyone in the nuclear industry would have said what this video depicts is impossible and should be avoided at all human costs – and yet here we see it. 

August 2, 2011 at 9:39 am I don’t see anything that looks like Liquid Air in the video, but I do see what appears to me to be the Shared Spent Fuel Pool on fire and with open criticality – which is more shocking than anything I’ve ever witnessed. 

f you need a definition of ‘criticality’ here it is (from BBC) This means the fuel rods are exposed to the air. Without water, they will get much hotter, allowing radioactive material to escape.

More remarkably, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), which owns the power station, has warned: “The possibility of re-criticality is not zero“. If you are in any doubt as to what this means, it is that in the company’s view, it is possible that enough fissile uranium is present in the cooling pond in enough density to form a critical mass – meaning that a nuclear fission chain reaction could start.

The pool lies outside the containment chamber.  So if it happened, it would lead to the enhanced and sustained release of radioactive materials – though not to a nuclear explosion – with nothing to stop the radioactive particles escaping.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12762608

Looks like they have that now – F.C.

The power plant’s electricity generation capacity (basically, how much it can generate) is 110-MW, which makes it one of the larger-scale solar power plants out there today.You might have guessed by now that this type of power plant is able to provide electricity at night, and all week, because it stores heat in the form of salt that is released in the evening so that the plant can continue to generate electricity when it is dark, cloudy, or stormy.

Ministry of Education, approximately two primary – the first from the soil collected in the town Hukuzima Ookuma 3 km Fukushima, announced that it has detected trace amounts of radioactive curium. Outside the premises at the primary site has been detected for the first time. The ministry “has been released to the outside by accident. But internal exposure to radionuclides that need attention,” he explained. Curium was believed to be from this time with the operation of the reactor plutonium. Detected in soil collected on May 1 and April 29 at the point of the town Ookuma 2. On the other hand, even trace amounts of americium were detected from the soil, the ministry is “a small amount detected in the atmosphere by nuclear tests in the past” has said.

Via tsutsuji at the Physics Forum:

Low concentrations of curium were found in soil samplings in Okuma town 2 or 3 km away from the plant. This is the first time curium is found outside of the plant. It is a by-product of plutonium. The Education and Science ministry says it is a concern for internal exposure.

In finding that balance, I’m not sure it’s possible to overcome the political pressures tugging agencies and officials to stress refinement and deployment of known and maturing technologies (even though that’s where industry and private investors are most focused).

On the left, the pressure is for resources to deploy today’s “green” technology. On the right, as illustrated in a Heritage Foundation report on ways to cut President Obama’s budget for the Energy Department, the philosophy seems to be to discourage all government spending on basic inquiry related to energy.

According to Heritage, science “in service of a critical national interest that is not being met by the private sector” is fine if that interest is national defense, but not fine if it’s finding secure and sustainable (environmentally and economically) sources of energy.

I solicited reactions to the Energy Department review from a variety of technology and innovation analysts. The first to weigh in are Daniel M. Kammen, an energy technology researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who is on leave working for the World Bank, and Robert D Atkinson, the founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Here’s Kammen: The idea of a regular review and status report on both energy innovation and deployment spending is a good one. Some of the findings in the QTR review are useful, although little is new. Overall, though, this is a useful exercise, and one that should be a requirement from any major programmatic effort.

he real need in the R&D sector is continuity and matching an increasing portfolio of strategic research with market expansion. My former student and colleague Greg Nemet have written consistently on this: - U.S. energy research and development: Declining investment, increasing need, and the feasibility of expansion - Reversing the Incredible Shrinking Energy R&D Budget

Perhaps the biggest worry in this report, however, is the missing logic and value of a ’shift to near term priorities in energy efficiency and in electric vehicles.’ This may be a useful deployment of some resources, but a range of questions are simply never addressed. Among the questions that need firmer answers are:

There are some very curious omissions from the report, such as more detail on the need to both generate and report on jobs created in this sector — a political ‘must’ these days (see, e.g., the “green jobs” review by the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at Berkeley) — and straightforward comparisons in the way of ‘report cards’ on how the US is stacking up relative to other key players (e.g. China, Germany…).

given the state-by-state laboratories we already have of differing approaches to energy efficiency, the logic of spending in this area remains to be proven (as much as we all rightly love and value and benefit from energy efficiency).

Near-term electric vehicle deployment. A similar story could be told here. As the director of the University of California at Berkeley’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center (http://tsrc.berkeley.edu) I am huge believer in electric vehicles [EVs]. However, the review does not make clear what advances in this area are already supported through [the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy], and what areas of near-term research are also not best driven though regulation, such as low-carbon fuel standards, R&D tax credits, ‘feebates’ that transfer funds from those individuals who purchase inefficient vehicles to those who purchase efficient ones. Similar to the story in energy efficiency, we do have already an important set of state-by-state experiments that have been in place for some time, and these warrant an assessment of how much innovation they have driven, and which ones do and do not have an application in scale-up at the federal level.

Finally, the electric vehicle landscape is already very rich in terms of plans for deployment by automakers. What are the barriers five-plus years out that the companies see research-versus-deployment and market-expansion support as the most effective way to drive change in the industry? Where will this focus put the U.S. industry relative to China?

Following record levels funding made available to the energy industry through the [stimulus package of spending], what are the clearly identified market failures that exist in this area that added funding will solve? Funding is always welcome, but energy efficiency in particular, can be strongly driven by regulation and standards, and because good energy efficiency innovations have such rapid payback times, would regulatory approaches, or state-federal partnerships in regulation and incentives not accomplish a great deal of what can be done in this area? Congressman Holt raises a number of key questions on related issues, while pointing to some very hopeful experiences, notably in the Apollo program, in his 16 September editorial in Science.

Here’s Robert Atkinson: If DOE is shifting toward a more short-term focus, this is quite disturbing.  It would mean that DOE has given up on addressing the challenge of climate change and instead is just focused on the near term goal of reducing oil imports and modestly reducing the expansion the coal fired power plants. If DOE thinks it is still focused on climate change, do they think they are fighting “American warming”?

If so, cutting the growth of our emissions make sense.  But its global warming and solving this means supporting the development of scalable, cheap low or no-carbon energy so that every country, rich and poor, will have an economic incentive to transitioning to cheap energy.  Increasing building efficiency, modernizing the electric grid, alternative hydrocarbon fuels, and increasing vehicle efficiency do virtually nothing to meet this goal. They are “American warming” solutions.

This is also troubling because (as you point out) who else is going to invest in the long-term, more fundamental, high risk, breakthrough research than the U.S. government.  It certainly won’t be VCs. And it won’t be the Chinese who are principally interested in cutting their energy imports and exporting current generation clean energy, not developing technology to save the planet.  Of course all the folks out there who have been pushing the mistaken view that we have all the clean technologies we need, will hail this as the right direction.  But it’s doing what the rest of the market has been doing in recent years – shifting from high risk, long-term research to short-term, low risk.  If the federal government is doing this it is troubling to say the least.

or those seeking more, here are the slides used by Steven Koonin, the physicist and former BP scientist who now is under secretary for science at the department, in presenting the review earlier this week:

Rolling Out the Quadrennial Technology Review Report

Most nuclear blogs have a “blog roll”which list other publishers of information on the nuclear energy field.  Areva has done this on its North American blog. Areva handles the issue of avoiding any appearance of endorsement by noting that the list with more than two dozen entries is one of “blogs we read.” Areva also has several years of experience reaching out to the nuclear blogger community with monthly conference calls. The blog of the Nuclear Energy Institute, NEI Nuclear Notes,  lists a wide range of nuclear blogs including this one as well as the blogs published by independent analysts.

Duke’s Web site is a completely modern effort set up like a blog, with new entries on a frequent basis. On the right column, the site has a list of other places to get nuclear energy information, including the American Nuclear Society (ANS), the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

The Nuclear Information Center announces right at the top that “In this online space, you will find educational information on the nuclear industry and the nuclear stations operated by Duke Energy. We will feature insights into radiation, new nuclear, emergency planning and more . . . allowing readers to get an inside view of the industry.” That’s a big step for a nuclear utility. The reason is that like many publicly traded electric utilities, it generates electricity from several fuel sources, including coal, natural gas, solar, wind, and nuclear. Because these utilities have huge customer rate bases and supply chains, they are inherently conservative about the information they publish on their Web sites. Also, there are significant legal and financial reasons why a utility might or might not put information out there for public consumption. Press releases receive scrutiny from the general counsel and chief financial officer for very important reasons having to do with regulatory oversight and shareholder value.

Idaho National Laboratory, Areva, and recruiter CoolHandNuke.

Taken together, the four blogs that reported monthly page views represent 100,000 visits to online information pages on nuclear energy or an effective rate of well over 1 million page views per year. These are real numbers and the data are just for a small sample of the more than two dozen blogs on nuclear energy that update at least once a week. Another interesting set of statistics is who reads North American blogs overseas? It turns out that the international readership is concentrated in a small group of countries. They include, in alphabetical order for the same sample of blogs, the following countries: Australia Canada France Germany India Japan United Kingdom

Who reads nuclear energy blogs? So, who is reading nuclear blogs? On the ANS Social Media listserv, I asked this question recently and got some interesting results for the month of May 2011. Here’s a sample of the replies: Michele Kearny, at the Nuclear Wire, a news service, reports for the month of May 18,812 page views. Michele’s blog is a fast-moving series of news links that keeps readers coming back for updates. Will Davis, at Atomic Power Review, who has been publishing high quality, in-depth technical updates about Fukushima, reports 31,613 page views for the same month. Rod Adams, who recently updated the template at his blog at Atomic Insights, reported his numbers in terms of absolute visitors. He cites Google Analytics as reporting 10,583 unique visitors for May. Rod emphasizes commentary and analysis across a wide range of nuclear subjects. At my blog Idaho Samizdat, I can report 6,945 visitors and 24,938 page views for May 2011. The blog covers economic and political news about nuclear energy and nonproliferation issues. At ANS Nuclear Cafe, this blog uses WordPress to track readers, reporting 24,476 page views for the same four-week period as the other blogs. During the height of the Fukushima crisis on a single day, March 14, 2011, the blog attained over 55,000 page views as people poured on to the Internet in search of information about the situation in Japan.

5,000 people interact on LinkedIn, moderated by nuclear industry consultant Ed Kee. It is called “Nuclear Power Next Generation” and is one of dozens of such groups related to nuclear energy on the professional networking site.

Nuclear energy is not so widely represented on Facebook as on LinkedIn, despite its enormous popularity, and isn’t conducive to the kinds of technical dialogs that populate other nuclear social media sites. While the Facebook format is attractive to lifestyle information such as dating and the promotion of entertainment, sports, and consumer packaged goods, it doesn’t seem to work as well for business and engineering topics. It turns out Facebook is a good way to offer a “soft sell” for recruitment purposes to drive traffic to nuclear energy organization recruitment pages. It can answer the questions of what’s it like to work for an organization and the attractive amenities of life in the employer’s home town. Videos and photos can help deliver these messages.

On the other hand, Twitter, even with its limits of 140 characters, is enormously useful for the nuclear energy field. Twitter users who follow the output of nuclear bloggers number in the tens of thousands, and many nuclear energy organizations, including the major utilities such as Entergy, have invested in a Twitter account to have a presence on the service. The American Nuclear Society “tweets” under @ans_org and posts updates daily on the situation at Fukushima

Web sites maintained by NEI and the World Nuclear Organization had to make fast upgrades to their computer servers to handle millions of inquires from the media and the public and on a global scale. Getting out the facts of the situation to respond to these inquiries was facilitated by this online presence at an unprecedented scale. Even so, newspapers often had anti-nuclear groups on speed dial early in the crisis and their voices reached an unsettled public with messages of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. In response, ANS used technical experts on its social media listserv to information media engagements, which reached millions of views on network television and major newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post.

This useful mix of free form communication on the listserv and excellent outreach by Clark Communications, working for ANS, made a difference in getting the facts about Fukushima to an understandably anxious public. Margaret Harding, a consulting nuclear engineer with deep experience with boiling water reactor fuels, was one of the people tapped by ANS to be a spokesperson for the society. She wrote to me in a personal e-mail that social media made a difference for her in many ways.

In summary, she said that it would have been impossible for her to fulfill this role without many hands helping her from various quarters at ANS. She pointed out that the ANS Social Media listserv group “provided invaluable background information . . that helped me keep up-to-date and ready for the question from the next reporter.” In fact, she said, she might not have even started down this road if the listserv hadn’t already proven itself as a source of information and expertise.

Another take on the news media’s shift into anti-nuclear skepticism following Fukushima comes from Andrea Jennetta, publisher of Fuel Cycle Week.  Writing in the March 17 issue, she said that this time the “bunker mentality” that has characterized communications in prior years by the nuclear industry gave way to something new. “But instead of rolling over, the nuclear community for once is mobilizing and fighting back. I am impressed at the efforts of various pronuclear activists, bloggers, advocates and professional organizations.

NOTHING happend to the fuel in the pools at Fukushima. I would like to see some evidence other than the word of an activist who frightens kids for a living to support Gunter’s rant about peices of fuel being ejected miles away. From the looks of that video, the fuel didn’t move an inch. There is also a poll associated with the article. The poll discloses that it is completely unscientific, since it allows anyone to vote and is not based on randomly selected participants. However, I think that the results as of 0315 this morning are pretty amusing since the antinuclear opinion piece has been posted for nearly a week.

95% disagree with “Beyond Nuclear”. Let’s make it 99% by Rod Adams on October 14, 2011 in Antinuclear activist, Politics of Nuclear Energy, Unreliables, Wind energy Share0 One of the more powerful concepts that I studied in college was called “groupthink.” The curriculum developers in the history department at the US Naval Academy thought it was important for people in training to become leaders in the US Navy learn to seek counsel and advice from as broad a range of sources as possible. We were taught how to avoid the kind of bad decision making that can result by surrounding oneself with yes-men or fellow travelers. The case study I remember most was the ill fated Bay of Pigs invasion where virtually the entire Kennedy Administration cabinet thought that it would be a cakewalk. If Patricia Miller had bothered to do the fact-checking required by journalistic integrity she would have come across this video showing 30 feet of water above the fuel at Fukushima with all of the fuel bundles exactly where they’re supposed to be.Aside: Don’t we live in an amazing world? I just typed “Bay of Pigs groupthink” into my browser search box and instantly hit on exactly the link I needed to support the statement above. It even cites the book we used when I was a plebe in 1977, more than 33 years ago. End Aside. Not everyone, however, has the benefit of early leadership lessons about the danger of believing that a small group of likeminded people can provide actionable advice. Some of the people who are most likely to be victims of groupthink are those who adamantly oppose the continued safe operation of emission-free nuclear power plants. The writers who exclusively quote members of that tiny community have also fallen into the groupthink trap.  On October 8, 2011, the Berkeley Patch, a New Jersey based journal that regularly posts negative stories about Oyster Creek, featured an article titled Petitioners to NRC: Shut Down All Fukushima-Like Nuclear Plants . Here is a snapshot of the masthead, the headline and the lede. The article is a diatribe that quotes people on the short list of frequently quoted antinuclear activists including Paul Gunter, Michael Mariotte, Kevin Kamps, Deb Katz and Dale Bridenbaugh. The author faithfully reproduces some of their best attempts to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt using untruths about the actual events at Fukushima. For example, the article uses the following example of how antinuclear activists are still trying to spread the myth that the used fuel pools at Fukushima caught fire. Oyster Creek – the oldest nuclear plant in the United States – has generated over 700 tons of high-level radioactive waste, Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear said. “Granted that some of that has been moved into dry cast storage, but the pool remains full to its capacity,” Kamps said. “And this was a re-rack capacity. Much later in terms of quantity of high level radioactive waste than it was originally designed for.” This represents 125 million curies of radioactive cesium-137 and the NRC has reported that up to 100 percent of the hazardous material could be released from a pool fire, Kamps said. “I would like to point out that Fukushima Daiichi units one, two, three and four combined in terms of the inventory of high level radioactive waste in their storage pools does not match some of these reactors I mentioned in terms of how much waste is in these pools,” Kamps said. “So the risks are greater here for boil downs and the consequences of a radioactive fire in these pools.” Fortunately, the people who are not a part of the antinuclear community are finally beginning to recognize their own strength and to realize that they do not have to remain silent while the lies are being spread. Here is how a knowledgable commenter responded to the above segment of the article: If Patricia Miller had bothered to do the fact-checking required by journalistic integrity she would have come across this video showing 30 feet of water above the fuel at Fukushima with all of the fuel bundles exactly where they’re supposed to be.

“It took a really extraordinary event for 95 percent of the people in the world to know about it,” he said. “If they know about Fukushima, they know about Mark 1 reactors exploding in the air and releasing toxic radiation across the world and they know that’s not a good thing. Something has to be done to make sure that never happens again.” I could not let that one pass without a comment; I am quite sure that Mariotte has once again fallen victim to the fact that he surrounds himself with people who echo his own prejudices. Here is my response.

Marriotte makes an interesting statement by he claiming that “95% of the people in the world” know about Fukushima. That statement might be true about the people in the United States, where advertiser-supported television news programs covered the events with breathless hype for several months. I am pretty sure that you would have a difficult time finding anyone in China, central Africa, the Asian subcontinent, South America or the Middle East who can even pronounce Fukushima, much less know anything about GE Mark 1 containments. Most of them would not even know that they should be worried about radiation because they have never been taught to be afraid of something that they cannot smell, feel, taste, or hear especially when it occurs at levels that have no chance of making them sick within their expected lifetime. Mariotte, Gunter, Kamps, Katz and Bridenbaugh are all members of a vocal, but tiny group of people who have been carrying the water of the fossil fuel industry for decades by opposing nuclear energy, the only real competitor it has. They are victims of groupthink who believe that their neighbors in Takoma Park are representative of the whole world.

Just before making this comment, I voted in the unscientific poll associated with the article. 95% say that Oyster Creek should keep on powering New Jersey homes and businesses. They are not impressed by the Beyond Nuclear FUD; they like clean electricity.