On June 20 the Associated Press published the results of a year long investigative report on safety at nuclear reactors in the U.S. It is a major effort by an experienced journalist and will receive wide attention. Coming on the heels of the Fukushima crisis on Japan, the first of two article contains some strong allegations. AP's investigative reporter Jeff Donn writes that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has watered down safety regulations in order to keep older reactors like Oyster Creek open beyond 40 years.
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Idaho Samizdat: Nuke Notes: Associated Press Nukes the NRC on Reactor Safety [20Jun11] - 0 views
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Is all this true? Or is it contrary to what many nuclear professionals know to be the case with regulation of the nation's 104 reactors? I turned to John Bickel, who's impeccable credentials include several decades of nuclear engineering experience backed by advanced degrees in the field
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(Part 2 of the AP Story focuses on Tritium leaks) Nuclear expert says not so fast AP
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The article, with its spectacular allegations, was swiftly picked up by the mainstream media including USA Today along with video and a picture of an example of reactor corrosion. In a piece titled "Nuke regulator, industry compromise safety to keep reactors running," Donn wrote . . . "Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation's aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found. Time after time, officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission have decided that original regulations were too strict, arguing that safety margins could be eased without peril, according to records and interviews. The result? Rising fears that these accommodations by the NRC are significantly undermining safety - and inching the reactors closer to an accident that could harm the public and jeopardize the future of nuclear power in the United States."
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Bickel has 36 years experience in the US and International nuclear engineering profession, specializing in reliability and risk assessment. He has a Masters Degree and PhD in nuclear engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. ~ John Bickel, left, attending a meeting of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris, where he chairs the special working group on Defense in Depth of Electrical Systems (DIDELSYS) ~ I asked Bickel what he thought of the AP article. Here are some highlights of what he said in a series of email exchanges. Bickel agreed to let me post his personal email comments here. Also, he agreed to let me post his contact information at the end of this blog post so that AP, or anyone else in the media, could contact him for confirmation. Here’s what he said. "I had hoped for more insight from a prestigious organization such as AP. Their article entitled: “US nuke regulators weaken safety rules” is pretty sloppy and indicative of the fact AP failed to research much of what they have written about."
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Point and counterpoint
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The battle for the atom is heating up again [21Jun11] - 0 views
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I have been rereading a 1982 book by Bertrand Goldschmidt titled “The Atomic Complex: A Worldwide Political History of Nuclear Energy.”
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The two self-assigned homework projects are as part of a reflective effort to understand more about how human society moved from a period of optimism based on a vision of “Atoms for Peace” to a period where someone reading the advertiser supported press would believe that sensible people would logically consider giving up the whole technology out of fear of radiation and its health consequences.One of the hopeful lessons I have learned so far is that the initial conditions of our current fight to defend and expand the safe use of atomic energy are far different from those that faced the people engaged in the earliest battles against a well organized opposition to nuclear technology development. We have a much better chance of success now than we did then – and there are several reasons why that is true.
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One condition that is vastly different is the ability of nuclear professionals to have their voices heard. No longer are most people who understand nuclear energy isolated in small communities with few media outlets. In the 1970s, a large fraction of nuclear professionals were located near remotely sited national laboratories or power stations. Today, though many still work at national labs or in small market communities like Lynchburg, VA, we are all globally connected to a vast network on the Internet. We have Skype, YouTube and blogs. Some of us know that major decision makers and journalists read or listen to our words on a regular basis. We are no longer shy about responding to misinformation and unwarranted criticism.
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For example, many of you have probably seen or read the Associated Press hit piece on the effort by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the nuclear industry to address the issue of aging nuclear power stations
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The encouraging thing about that response is that it happened on the SAME DAY as the AP report was released. After Dan published his report, he notified the world via Twitter that the post was up. I have already had the opportunity to retweet his announcement and to share his link in a conversation related to a Huffington Post article titled U.S. Nuclear Regulators Weaken Safety Rules, Fail To Enforce Them: AP Investigation and in a conversation on Joe Romm’s Climate Progress titled AP Bombshell: U.S. Nuclear Regulators “Repeatedly” Weaken Safety Rules or are “Simply Failing to Enforce Them”.Think about that – it has been just 24 hours since the AP story hit the wires, yet nuclear professionals are already sharing a completely different side of the story without the filter of someone else deciding what is important.
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However, the AP reporter, most likely someone who has never worked on an old car or repaired an old submarine, took a lot of stories out of context. He added a number of scary sounding inferences about the relationship between the regulators and the regulated. In response to the story, Dan Yurman, who blogs at Idaho Samizdat and was a professional journalist before he became a nuclear professional, reached out for real expertise.
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He interviewed Dr. John Bickel, a man who has about 39 years worth of professional experience in plant aging, defense in depth and other safety related issues. You can read Dan’s excellent article at Associated Press Nukes the NRC on Reactor Safety.
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It should be no secret to anyone that the average age of nuclear power plants in the US increases by almost exactly one year with every passing year. We are only officially building one plant right now, with four more that will enter that category as soon as the NRC issues the construction and operating licenses. It is also no secret that the NRC and the industry have been working hard to address aging as part of the effort to relicense plants for an additional 20 years, a process that is complete for more than 60 plants so far.
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Another thing that is different about the fight over using atomic energy now, compared to the fight that happened in the late 1960s through the 1990s is that the opposition has a much less capable base of leaders. In the previous phase of the battle, the antinuclear movement grew out of a morally understandable effort to stop testing nuclear weapons in the earth’s atmosphere.
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That effort was inspired by real world events like showering a Japanese fishing vessel with lethal doses of fallout from an ill-timed test in the middle of the Pacific ocean. It was led by some of the world’s most renowned atomic scientists, many of whom bore a deep moral guilt for their wartime efforts to build the Bomb in the first place.
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When that effort succeeded in convincing the US, the UK and Russia to agree to stop atmospheric testing in 1963, some of the organizations that had been formed to do the heavy lifting saw substantial decreases in membership and contributions. After all, they could have easily hung up a large banner saying “Mission Accomplished” and closed up shop. Some did just that. Some persisted for a while with a variety of related issues like fighting against antiballistic missile installations and medium range rockets.
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The groups organized against nuclear energy today are no longer led by world renowned scientists, though they do have some media celebrities with spotty professional histories and puffed up resumes. In many cases, they are grayer than I am and less well versed in the techniques of modern communications. Their fellow travelers on blogs and message boards routinely expose their own ignorance and sometimes their near illiteracy.
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In contrast to the past, many of the renowned nuclear scientists and engineers in the profession today have no guilt at all. They did not participate in developing fearful weapons of mass destruction. Instead, they have spent their lives participating in an enterprise that provides massive quantities of emission free, low cost power to the people of the world. Seasoned professionals like Ted Rockwell, Margaret Harding, Meredith Angwin and Gail Marcus are out there blogging away and telling people what they know to be true about nuclear energy.
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Enthusiastic younger people like Kirk Sorensen, Jack Gamble, and Suzy Hobbs are sharing optimistic visions for the future and explaining why they have chosen to support nuclear energy development, often in the face of numerous friends who disagree
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I am encouraged. Atomic energy is alive and well; there is nothing that humans can do to eliminate its existence. We are entering a golden age of nuclear energy where facts and reality will overcome fictional tall tales spun by folks like Arnie Gundersen or Paul Blanche.
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History of the Antinuclear Movement, Part 2b [20Jun11] - 0 views
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Deregulate The AtomHistory of the Antinuclear Movement, Part 2b var addthis_product = 'wpp-258'; var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":false}; The different and more diffuse class composition of the European antinuclear movement found visible expression in the tactics of the activists and the police, which were much more belligerent than in America. In Europe, antinuclear protesters carried out acts of sabotage against power-lines, railroad lines, construction sites, factories supplying nuclear plants, and installations of utility companies including bombs placed near nuclear construction sites or plants. Marches and rallies attracting upward of 50,000 were commonplace. Police responded physically against demonstrators, using tear gas, clubs, dogs, even grenades, causing hundreds of injured and even death (as in the case of Malville). Civil war-like street blockades, dozens of miles away from the demonstration-sites and at national borders were set up to block demonstrators. Compared to the small showings and relatively peaceful actions in North America, the European state of affairs was much more dynamic. The movement against the nuclear plants was one of the biggest mass movements of the 1970s and 80s in Germany. After a slowdown since, it has reappeared now like a phoenix from the ashes, The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 was a pivotal event for Germany’s anti-nuclear movement, following the event, the Green Party strived for the immediate shut-down of all nuclear facilities. The SPD pushed for a nuclear phase-out within ten years. Länder governments, municipalities, parties and trade unions explored the question of whether the use of nuclear power technology was reasonable and sensible for the future.
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May 1986 clashes between anti-nuclear protesters and West German police became common. More than 400 people were injured in mid-May at the site of a nuclear-waste reprocessing plant being built near Wackersdorf. Police used water cannons and dropped tear-gas grenades from helicopters to subdue protesters armed with slingshots, crowbars and Molotov cocktails. Starting from 1995, when the first transports of nuclear waste to Gorleben took place, there was a slow, but continuous new growth of resistance, with demonstrations and blockades of the railway. In 2002, the “Act on the structured phase-out of the utilization of nuclear energy for the commercial generation of electricity” took effect, following a drawn-out political debate and lengthy negotiations with nuclear power plant operators. The act legislated for the shut-down of all German nuclear plants by 2021
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History of the Antinuclear Movement, Part 2a [20Jun11] - 0 views
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Throughout the Eighties nuclear energy continued to be a subject of intense controversy, however the conflict had shifted to the local level where planned and unfinished nuclear projects offered manifold targets for attack. This period was typified by widespread changes in how the antinuclear movement was organized, and completed the shift from a concentration on nuclear weapons to that of nuclear power. So effective was this that when the Chernobyl accident occurred in 1986, the impact on public opinion was surprisingly small. Most people had made up their minds on nuclear power and entrenched attitudes are difficult to change. In part II of this series we will examine the paths that the movement took post-Chernobyl to the present dwelling on the various changes in structure and how it has impacted the movement’s agenda.
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One of the greatest strengths of the antinuclear movement in North America and the bulk of the Anglosphere has been its autonomy—from business, political parties, and in most cases, the State. Thus the antinuclear power movement has been largely autonomous from partisan party politics. This autonomy from electoral politics has enabled it to escape the inevitable dilution of its demands that is characteristic of broad movements of this sort. This is quite different from what happened in Europe. In Germany the Green Party evolved directly from the antinuclear power movement, but was later able to tap enough support to elect several representatives to the Bundestag, while on the other hand France seems to have largely embraced nuclear energy, and the movement there is weak and disorganized.
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Anti-nuclear forces in the Pacific region suffered two significant onslaughts in 1985. In April in Australia, an unholy alliance united to attack the young Nuclear Disarmament Party. In New Zealand, which was already in dispute with the US over nuclear ship visits, French secret service agents blew up the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in July, killing photographer Fernando Pereira. The Rainbow Warrior had been engaged in a battle against French nuclear testing in the Pacific.
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Although most often seen as an initiative of the Left, the antinuclear movement has been independent of both the orthodox old Left as well as the new Left. Historically, the old Left ignored the environmental problems created by industrialization and embraced nuclear powers because it viewed technology as a way to more quickly arrive at a socialist society. On the other hand, New Left ideologists have been critical of the environmental movement on the grounds that it was elitist rather than populist. Nonetheless, the antinuclear power movement became the first major environmental campaign in which large numbers of rank and file Leftists participated in.
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History of the Antinuclear Movement, Part 1 [05Feb11] - 0 views
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I believe that it is important that we understand the history of these groups to better understand the impact that they have had on the public’s perceptions of nuclear matters, and how that impacts our efforts to promote the nuclear option. More to the point, they have succeeded in raising the price of nuclear power by forcing costs higher in several areas, which has scared off investors
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Early objections to nuclear technology can be seen as developing in two distinct phases. The first phase centered around nuclear weapons, the second later stage against nuclear power stations. It is interesting to note, that while there were protests against testing nuclear weapons, and deploying nuclear weapons, there was little concern over nuclear power, and in fact this period also saw the construction of most of the plants operation to-day. While indeed there were local opposition to nuclear power stations in a few places, it was only after international agreement to limit the numbers, testing and deployment of nuclear weapon, and the signing of several treaties to this effect, did antinuclear focus shift in a major way.
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The Ban-the-Bomb Era
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The roots of the antinuclear movement are found in the Ban-the-Bomb movements of the 60′s and before when the public became concerned about fallout from nuclear weapons testing from about 1954, following an extensive series of tests in the Pacific. Manhattan Project scientist, some of whom had opposed the use of nuclear weapons during World War II, organized the Federation of Atomic Scientists (which later became the Federation of American Scientists) and the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, with Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, and Eugene Rabinowitch playing leading roles in a crusade for nuclear disarmament. A burgeoning world government movement also warned of the menace of nuclear war, as did pacifist groups like the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the War Resisters League, and the Woman’s International League for Peace and Freedom. A Communist led antinuclear campaign, focused on the Stockholm peace petition, surfaced as well.
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Fracking - energy revolution or skillfully marketed mirage? [27Jun11] - 0 views
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The New York Times published an article on Sunday, June 26, 2011 titled Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush. The article quotes a number of emails from natural gas industry insiders, financial analysts that cover the gas industry and skeptical geologists to produce a number of questions about the long term viability of an increasing dependence on cheap natural gas from hydraulic fracturing. The message is that the gas industry has been engaging in hyperbole regarding its capacity to expand production at current prices to meet market demands.
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the people quoted in the NY Times article do not agree that the technique magically produces low cost gas in unprecedented abundance.
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“Our engineers here project these wells out to 20-30 years of production and in my mind that has yet to be proven as viable,” wrote a geologist at Chesapeake in a March 17 e-mail to a federal energy analyst. “In fact I’m quite skeptical of it myself when you see the % decline in the first year of production.”
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“In these shale gas plays no well is really economic right now,” the geologist said in a previous e-mail to the same official on March 16. “They are all losing a little money or only making a little bit of money.”
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Around the same time the geologist sent the e-mail, Mr. McClendon, Chesapeake’s chief executive, told investors, “It’s time to get bullish on natural gas.”
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Aubrey McClendon, whose name is not terribly familiar to people outside of the energy industry, has an enormous financial interest in encouraging customers to become addicted to natural gas so that they will keep buying even if the price shoots up – like it did in the period from 2000-2008. During that time McClendon and his company rode a wave that resulted in growing a company from tiny to huge based on debt-financed investments in leases and drilling rigs designed to produce gas in the midcontinent region of the US. A high portion of the company’s wells were stimulated with hydraulic fracturing.
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When the price of natural gas collapsed in 2008, mostly as a result of the contraction in demand caused by the financial crisis and resulting economic recession/depression, McClendon nearly lost control of his company. He had to sell “substantially all” of shares at a dramatically lowered price in order to pay off creditors and meet margin calls.
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No U.S. chief executive officer has bought more of his own company’s stock in recent years than McClendon, even as the shares reached all-time highs. His appetite for Chesapeake stock made him “a darling of Wall Street,” Tulsa money manager Jake Dollarhide said. But his purchases were made on margin, meaning he used borrowed money. As the value of the stock fell, McClendon was forced to raise cash to meet margin calls. Recent losses — Chesapeake shares have plummeted 60 percent in the past three weeks — left him unable to fulfill those requirements.Read more: http://newsok.com/market-slide-wipes-out-ceos-chesapeake-holdings/article/3310107#ixzz1QSst9NnL
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McClendon responded vigorously to the NY Times’s suggestion that the gas revolution was more mirage than miracle in a lengthy letter to Chesapeake Energy employees that was published on the company’s public Facebook page. (Note: The timing of this letter with regard to the NY Times article is telling. The article appeared in the Sunday edition of the Times on June 26, 2011. The letter to employees included a time stamp indicating that it was released at 8:37 pm on the same day while the Facebook page indicates that it was posted to the world by 11:27 pm. In other words – there is no rest for the weary in the Internet era.)
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McClendon’s letter blamed the NY Times article on environmental activists that proclaim a desire to supply all of the US energy needs from wind and solar energy. It also issued a call to action for Chesapeake Energy employees:
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We hope that every Chesapeake employee can be part of our public education outreach. At more than 11,000 strong, we are an army of “factivists” – people who have knowledge of the facts and the personal knowledge and ability to spread them. You can do this by talking to your families, friends and others in your spheres of influence (schools, churches, civic organizations, etc) about the kind of company you work for and the integrity of what we do every day for our shareholders, our communities, our states, our nation, our economy and our environment. You don’t have to be an expert to stand up and tell folks that Chesapeake is committed to doing what’s right – and that commitment is expressed every day by you and your colleagues across the company.
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You can also get involved by joining Chesapeake Fed PAC, our political action committee. Our opponents are extremely well funded and organized. We need to make sure our voice is heard in Washington, DC and with elected officials who are making decisions that affect our industry, our company and our ability to operate in the many states in which shale gas and oil have been discovered.
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After describing how Chesapeake has 125 active drilling rigs and how it has developed a “swat team” with more than 100 employees that works with environmental groups to produce legislation designed to slow the development of new coal fired power plants and to hasten the closure of existing coal plants, Tom Price said the following:
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“It’s been said before, but the demand side of the equation is extremely important right now. I mean this really is a zero sum game. I think that there are a number of very progressive utilities out there that recognize the challenges that they are facing with regard to climate change, but the Transport Rule, Clean Air Act and various others.”
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I remain convinced that there is a market battle going on between natural gas and nuclear energy.
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Arnie Gundersen has inflated his resume, yet frequently claims that Entergy cannot be t... - 0 views
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Arnie Gundersen, who lives here in Burlington, is Chief Engineer of Fairewinds Associates is a well-known authority on the subject, someone who has figured prominently in recent accounts of Vermont Yankee circumstances.
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I think he exaggerated his responsibilities for projects at NU, 1972-6.
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There are several exaggerations in that brief statement. Because he has been an expert witness, Mr. Gundersen has been required to provide an accurate resume to public bodies; you can find one such document at the end of the testimony that he provided in March 2006 to oppose the Public Service of Vermont’s decision to allow Entergy to increase the power output from Vermont Yankee.
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A careful reading of that resume reveals only one mention of any kind of license to operate a reactor. In the section of his resume headed Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) 1971 to 1972, there is the following statement: “Critical Facility Reactor Operator, Instructor. Licensed AEC reactor operator instructing students and utility reactor operators in start-up through full power operation of a reactor.” Here is a quote about that critical facility from a contact who attended RPI at the same time as Gundersen did.
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It operated at no pressure, room temperature, licensed to 100W, highly enriched U, open tank of water.
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A second exaggeration comes in the statement that Gundersen has “almost four decades experience in the nuclear power industry.” His resume shows that he graduated from school in 1972 and that he stopped working for Nuclear Energy Services in 1990. From that point on, his full time employment was as a math and science teacher at a series of private schools. His resume lists several items under the heading of Nuclear Consulting 1990 – Present, but it would be interesting to hear the opinion of nuclear professionals about how those activities count as experience in the nuclear industry.
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An Atomic Insights reader who is personally familiar with the work that Gundersen did at Northeast Utilities during the period from 1972-1976 read the posted resume and shared the following comment with me using the polite and understated language that is common among engineering professionals.
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Mr. Gundersen, who has almost four decades experience in the nuclear power industry, earned his Bachelors and Masters in Nuclear Engineering from RPI. He was a licensed reactor operator and put in twenty years in the industry. He’s led teams of engineers dealing with nuclear reactors at 70 nuclear plants around the nation. He was appointed by now Governor Peter Schumlin to the Vermont Yankee Oversight Panel in 2008 and it’s his expertise that qualifies him as an expert witness on various aspects of Vermont Yankee, including plant safety, its decommissioning fund, and the suitability of the plant being extended past 2012.
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I spoke to that contact at length a few days ago, he told me that Gundersen was assigned to the licensing group and did not have any real design engineering responsibilities while at NU.
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In 2008, he applied to become a member of the Diablo Canyon Safety Committee. On that application, he made the following statement about his experience:
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Since 1970 Arnold Gundersen has been an expert witness in nuclear litigations at the Federal and State hearings such as Three Mile Island, US NRC ASLB, Vermont State Public Service Board, Western Atlas Nuclear Litigation, U.S. Senate Nuclear Safety Hearings, Peach Bottom Nuclear Power Plant Litigation, &c. He has also testified at the Czech Senate on nuclear matters.
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I went back and checked the resume linked to above. According to that resume, Mr. Gundersen earned his BS in Nuclear Engineering from RPI in 1971, so he was still an undergraduate student in 1970. That leads me to the conclusion that either there was a judge somewhere who has rather low standards for expertise for his witnesses, or that Mr. Gundersen needs someone to give him a calendar for Christmas.When noticing that, I also reread the first job listed on his resume. Here is how that job was described:
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“Public Service Electric and Gas (PSE&G) – 1970Assistant Engineer:Performed Shielding design of radwaste and auxiliary buildings for Newbold Island Units 1 & 2, including development of computer codes.”
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The date listed for that job was before his graduation date. My guess is that it was a summer internship since Newbold Island, NJ is 218 miles from Troy, NY, the home of RPI. That would be a long commute if the job was done during the school year
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"Green Nukes" - Important climate change mitigation tools [05Jul11] - 0 views
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There are many terrific reasons to favor the rapid development of nuclear fission technology.
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It is a reliable and affordable alternative to hydrocarbon combustionIt is a technology that can use less material per unit energy output than any other power sourceIt is a technology where much of the cost comes in the form of paying decent salaries to a large number of human beingsIt is a technology where wealth distribution is not dependent on the accident of geology or the force of arms in controlling key production areasIt is an energy production technology where the waste materials are so small in volume that they can be isolated from the environmentIt is a technology that is so emission free that it can operate without limitation in a sealed environment – like a submarineIt is an important climate change mitigation too
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Our current economy is built on an industrial foundation that removes about 7-10 billion tons of stored hydrocarbons from the earth’s crust every year and then oxidize that extracted material to form heat, water and CO2 – along with some other nasty side products due to various impurities in the hydrocarbons and atmosphere. The 20 billion tons or so of stable CO2 that we dump into the atmosphere is not disappearing – there are some natural removal processes that were in a rough balance before humans started aggressive dumping, but most of the mass of CO2 that we are pumping into the thin layers of atmosphere that surround the Earth is not being absorbed or used.
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As Curt Stager and other researchers like him have determined, the material will be suspended in our atmosphere and affecting our climate for at least 100,000 years. Many of the effects are somewhat unpredictable and not terribly beneficial. The duration of the effect gets worse if we continue on our present course and speed. An unaltered dependence on fossil fuels also puts future generations at risk of trying to figure out how to operate an economy WITHOUT access to reliable sources of controlled heat.
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The twin attributes of supply sustainability and climate change mitigation are nuclear fission power advantages topics that have attracted some high profile converts (Mark Lynas, George Monbiot, James Hansen, Stewart Brand, Gwyneth Cravens, and Patrick Moore, for example) to the cause of pronuclear advocacy. If nuclear energy’s potential as a climate change mitigation strategy is something that attracts former antinuclear protesters and causes them to reevaluate their opposition, that alone makes it something worth emphasizing
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It was interesting to hear that the primary nuclear technology that Curt mentions as being worth aggressive pursuit is based on thorium, but I am pretty sure that is mainly because thorium evangelists have done a better job of guerilla marketing since 2005 than the people who have been refining uranium-based nuclear reactors for the past 5 decades.
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As I often to tell my thorium enthused friends – you cannot build or operate a thorium reactor without uranium. I also tell both my buddies who are thorium advocates and my integral fast reactor (IFR) friends that any atomic fission power plants is better than any hydrocarbon based power plant. I hope that someday soon, fission fans will stop engaging in fratricidal attacks on each other, but I guess I have always been a bit of a dreamer
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Georgia residents may pay for Jaczko's antinuclear behavior [07Jul11] - 0 views
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Georgia Power company stock
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On a professional level, there is a lot riding on the success of the project to add two new Westinghouse AP1000 reactors to the Vogtle site in eastern Georgia along the Savannah River. It is one of only two remaining projects that is actually moving forward out of the finalists for the first round of loan guarantees initially authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. It is the only project to have actually been awarded a conditional loan guarantee and the one that is most at risk of having a significant schedule interruption if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission dallies even longer in its review process for the completed design certification license application
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This morning, the Wall Street Journal published Rebecca Smith’s article titled Georgia Eyes Cost Buffer for Nuclear Plant that described how the public utility commission is considering changing the cost recovery rules because they are being pressured by people who think that the project is in danger of a cost and schedule overrun. The company leaders testified that they would have chosen a natural gas project as being “more cost effective” (for the company) if they had known that there was a possibility of the rules of the game being changed six years after the project decision was made
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I have been involved in the financial analysis of enough large projects to know that there are two sure ways to add cost to any project. The first method is to add delay
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The second method is to add lawyers to the mix; they are professionally motivated to argue and delay. After all, they bill by the minute.
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Here is the response that I posted in the comment section of Ms. Smith’s Wall Street Journal article.The sad part of the story was the apparent lack of understanding by the project detractors of the impact of their actions on the cost of the project. The length of time spent building the plant will have a very real impact on the cost of the project due to the fact that more time means more salaries, more interest on borrowed money, and a greater chance of increased prices for materials and equipment purchased and installed at a later time than planned.
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Maintaining projected costs and schedules is highly dependent on the actions of regulators and intervenors who continue to slow down progress with legalistic arguments that have nothing to do with safety. The issues that the regulators raised are related to a difference of technical opinion on whether or not is reasonable to neglect the impact of solar heating and cooling while modeling the behavior of the containment building after an accident that releases 600 F water and steam into the building.
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Westinghouse went back and recalculated the impact of the minor term in the equation – the final result was that under absolutely worst case conditions, the final pressure inside the containment went up by about 0.3 psi and was still well below the building’s allowed maximum pressure.
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The current Chairman of the NRC is a professional political staffer whose complete professional experience following college was working for two avowed antinuclear politicians. He has cost taxpayers in 31 states billions already with his decision to refuse to finish the Yucca Mountain license review; now he is aiming to cost Georgia ratepayers and GA Power investors (remember, utility investors are often widows and orphans) hundreds of millions to billions more. He took the unprecedented step of issuing a press release calling Westinghouse’s application into question over such a technical dispute regarding the significance of terms in a mathematical model.
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Americans need to know just how job unfriendly the NRC Chairman is.Full disclosure – I work for a company that is designing nuclear reactors that will soon need to be licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I fear for my long term employment and that of hundreds of my colleagues and neighbors.
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Another blogger for nuclear energy - Decarbonise SA [08Jul11] - 0 views
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I have just spent a pleasant hour perusing a fascinating site called Decarbonise SA (where SA = South Australia). Ben Heard, an Australian who operates a consultancy named ThinkClimate Consulting is the force behind the site. He is a man on a mission – to move South Australia’s electric power system to zero carbon dioxide emissions as quickly as possible.
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Ben Heard, an Australian who operates a consultancy named ThinkClimate Consulting is the force behind the site. He is a man on a mission – to move South Australia’s electric power system to zero carbon dioxide emissions as quickly as possible
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Like a growing number of thinking people who are deeply concerned by the realization that business as usual in our energy supply system is putting future generations at grave risk of a greatly changed environment, Ben evaluated all of the possible actions that might avert danger, including taking the time to reevaluate why he was reflexively opposed to nuclear energy. Though his story is told in a completely different manner than the way that Gwyneth Cravens described her own journey from antinuclear activist to pronuclear advocate in Power to Save the World, the journey of discovery was similar.
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Ben has produced and continues to refine a PowerPoint Presentation that is worth a look. He calls it Nuclear Power from Opponent to Proponent and he is working to find ever larger audiences to hear him tell that story.
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His most recent post is titled Why pro-nuclear has failed when anti-nuclear has succeeded. It is an intriguing essay that points out a key factor – the antinuclear message is so simple that it can be stated in a single word that can be grasped and repeated by any two-year-old – “NO”. That is a message that is easy to propagate. In contrast, Ben believes that nuclear supporters have never developed a strong sales message.
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Your analysis leaves open an important question whose answer offers the key to pronuclear success – “Why?”
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Here is a copy of the comment that I left on Decarbonise SA
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The mission of the antinuclear movement is clear enough, as you stated. It is a simple “NO”. However, pronuclear activists hand that opposition all of the moral strength that they need by accepting the premise that the basis for the “NO” is fear of radiation or fear of the bomb or fear of the possibility of a massively damaging accident that never seems to actually happen.
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The real strength of the opposition to nuclear comes from the people who derive their wealth and power from the whole range of economic activities required to extract, refine, transport, distribute and consume the hydrocarbons that produce the emissions that you want to stop. Fossil fuel pushers have a fundamental reason for disliking clean, concentrated, abundant, affordable nuclear energy. They hold sway in a LOT of decision making bodies that can delay nuclear projects and add to their cost. They have influence in the media due to their continuous use of paid advertising campaigns sustained over many decades. They have influence in foundations that have been formed from fossil fuel derived wealth and they have influence in powerful unions like those associated with the railroads that derive most of their steady income from moving bulky fuels like oil and coal.
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Your message of DecarboniseSA scares the heck out of the very rich and powerful people who are rich and powerful because THEY SELL CARBON!
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The real way to defeat the “NO” to nuclear energy is to find people who benefit from “YES” to nuclear energy. The fuel suppliers have concentrated strength, but the majority of the world’s population does not supply fuel; they consume fuel and have to pay high prices, accept nasty pollution, and suffer through periods of supply constraints. Some of those consumers are major corporations in their own right and have a lot of sway – they just need to be told (over and over again) why fission is so much better than combustion.
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Growing unease at Japan's nuclear industry [14May11] - 0 views
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Until the Fukushima disaster Japan had no significant anti-nuclear lobby. That has changed, and on Saturday hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the headquarters of the Tokyo Electric Company and Chubu Electric to voice their concerns.
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Organisers said they had telephoned ahead and made an appointment with Tepco officials to present their petition, but no one turned up at the arranged time.
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Eventually A Tepco staff member did come out of the building to listen to the protesters concerns, and accept the petition.
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Anti-nuclear rally in Paris [12Jun11] - 0 views
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Three months after the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, several hundred demonstrators and activists gathered in central Paris to voice their opposition to France’s nuclear policy
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Japanese public rejects nuclear power [14Jun11] - 0 views
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Almost three-quarters of Japanese people who voted in a poll would like to see nuclear power phased out of Japan
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A Japanese government spokesman admitted voters could have been influenced by the rejection of atomic power in Italy’s referendum on Monday.
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“The situation of foreign nations could cause a certain level of influence not just over nuclear issue but also over various domestic policies.”
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Japan’s cabinet has approved draft legislation to help the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) to compensate victims of the radiation crisis around the Fukushima plant.
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In a statement on Tuesday Tepco said that it hoped the bill would be approved by parliament as soon as possible and that it will pay fair and speedy compensation payments
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Angry shareholders fail to close TEPCO nuclear reactors [28Jun11] - 0 views
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Tokyo Electric Power Company has held its first annual shareholders’ meeting since the nuclear disaster caused by the tsunami in March and it was a stormy affair, with 10,000 investors on hand – three times the number that attended last year’s gathering.
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There were protests from environmentalists outside and at the meeting itself some shareholders called on the company to abandon nuclear power – a proposal that was voted down
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That would have forced managers to scrap all nuclear reactors and stop building new ones, reflecting a wider debate in Japan and other countries over the future of atomic power generation.
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During the six-hour meeting shareholders shouting at managers over their handling of the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster and the company’s subsequent slide to near bankruptcy.
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One attendee suggested the board “jump into the reactors and die,” before being forced by security guards to sit down. Another said the board would have been forced to perform ritual disembowelment had they lived in an era when such actions were deemed necessary to preserve honour.
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The Fukushima disaster has erased close to 90 percent of the value of TEPCO stock, once considered a safe investment. In May, the company reported an annual loss of 10.4 billion euros
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TEPCO’s biggest shareholders – including Japanese financial institutions – rejected the call to close all its nuclear plants which generate nearly a third of the company’s electricity.
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“We lost today to the big investors, but our message was heard,” said Masafumi Asada, a 70-year-old from Fukushima, who introduced the anti-nuclear proposal on behalf of a group of 402 shareholders.
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Japan orders 'stress tests' on its nuclear reactors [07Jul11] - 0 views
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The Japanese government has announced it is to carry out so-called stress tests on all of the country’s nuclear reactors.
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A string of plants were shut down in the wake of the massive earthquake and tsunami that triggered a nuclear crisis in the country’s north-east.
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Japanese Industry Minister Banri Kaieda told reporters: “We will refer to the criteria of the European Union’s expertise to reassure people about the safety of nuclear energy, and this must be done as quickly as possible.”
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Meanwhile, Japan has a new Reconstruction Minister, Naoto Kan. He replaces Ryu Matsumoto who resigned after just a week in the job over remarks that offended survivors of the quake and tsunami
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After the crisis at the Fukushima plant, the EU began safety checks all of its 143 reactors. It is urging similar inspections worldwide
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The Decade Ahead in Oil and Natural Gas Exploration [07Jul11] - 0 views
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Harnessing the Heat of Indonesia's Volcanoes [07Jul11] - 0 views
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The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa killed some 40,000 people, and for centuries Indonesians have lived under constant threat from the 400-plus volcanoes that dot the country’s 18,000-odd islands. Now a project by Chevron (CVX) in Java is taking advantage of those smoldering mountains. The U.S. oil major has drilled 84 wells to a depth of two miles beneath the rainforest to tap not crude or gas, but steam. The vapors, which reach 600F, spin turbines 24 hours a day, generating electricity for Jakarta, a city with a population of 9.6 million.
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Chevron is about to get some competition. General Electric (GE), India’s Tata Group, and other companies are building geothermal projects in Indonesia, and the investment ultimately may add up to more than $30 billion. The companies are responding to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s promise in February to boost government subsidies for clean energy. Former Vice-President Al Gore has called Indonesia the first potential “geothermal superpower.”
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Geothermal is central to Indonesia’s push for alternatives to fossil fuels such as oil, which the country once exported and now must import. Brownouts are frequent on the main island of Java, and 35 percent of the nation’s 245 million population lacks access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. Yudhoyono wants to eliminate energy shortages that threaten his target for as much as 6.6 percent annual economic growth through his term’s end in 2014. His government plans to add 9.5 gigawatts of geothermal capacity by 2025, equal to about 33 percent of Indonesia’s electricity demand from about 3.5 percent now, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Iceland, also a volcanic island, gets 27 percent of its power from geothermal.
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Indonesia has signed contracts for 2.3 gigawatts of plants, Bloomberg New Energy Finance data show. A gigawatt is about equal to the output of a new atomic reactor, and requires $2 billion to $4 billion of investment. “There’s a remarkable opportunity for Indonesia to increase the amount of power generated from geothermal,” says Stephen W. Green, former head of Chevron’s Indonesia and Philippines operations and now its vice-president of policy, government, and public affairs. “There are synergies between oil and geothermal and it makes sense for us to exploit that.”
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Unocal negotiated Indonesia’s first foreign-partnership geothermal license in 1982 with the help of U.S. President Barack Obama’s late stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, who worked for the U.S. company as a government liaison. Chevron acquired Unocal in 2005. At the plant in Java, which lies inside a nature preserve, hot water and steam are pumped from as deep as 10,535 feet below the earth’s surface through 34 miles of pipes to turn turbines to make power. Each well takes as much as 90 days to drill and costs up to $7 million, Chevron says. The company is now planning additional plants in Indonesia, including a potential 200-MW facility in South Sumatra.
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A Labor Shortage for U.S. Nuclear Plants [07Jul11] - 0 views
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It took Japan’s Fukushima disaster to make nuclear energy interesting to students in Karl Craddock’s advanced placement chemistry class at William Fremd High School in Palatine, Ill. Too bad the buzz was about radiation plumes, iodine pills, and potential deadly threats at nuclear power plants that generate more than half the electricity in Illinois. It wasn’t the sort of talk to get kids excited about a career in nuclear energy. “It doesn’t have the cool factor right now, that’s for sure,” says Craddock, who has taught science at the suburban Chicago high school for seven years.
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Nuclear utilities in the U.S. will need to hire nearly 25,000 people to replace the 39 percent of its workforce that will be eligible for retirement by 2016, says Carol L. Berrigan, senior director for industry infrastructure for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a Washington-based trade group. Meanwhile, U.S. universities awarded a total of 715 graduate and undergraduate degrees in nuclear engineering in 2009, the most recent year for which data is available.
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After nuclear plant disasters at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and Chernobyl in Ukraine, nuclear power lost political support in the U.S. Hiring slowed through the 1990s and nuclear workers under the age of 40 became a rarity as talk turned from expansion to shutting down existing plants. “That’s not an exciting prospect for a young person thinking about their career,” says K.L. “Lee” Peddicord, a professor of nuclear engineering and director of the Nuclear Power Institute at Texas A&M University.
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With nuclear power out of favor, the number of academic institutions offering degrees shrank to 32 in 2010 from 77 in 1975, according to the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education. Bachelor’s degrees awarded in nuclear engineering fell to 120 in 2001, from 863 in 1978. Power companies and engineering schools redoubled their recruiting efforts in recent years to replace retiring baby boomers and staff the 34 new plants that were on the drawing boards as of 2009. Urged by two utilities with nuclear ambitions in Texas—South Texas Project and Exelon (EXC) —Texas A&M University in College Station launched the Nuclear Power Institute in 2008 to spearhead a statewide effort to train 2,000 nuclear workers, boost math and science programs at high schools, and develop a new two-year nuclear training degree with community colleges based near eight proposed new plants.
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The Nuclear Power Institute has graduated its first two classes of technicians, yet Peddicord worries that the weak economy and the growing uncertainty overhanging a U.S. nuclear expansion will depress interest in the program. The partners in two new reactors planned for nearby Bay City— NRG Energy (NRG) and Tokyo Electric Power, operator of the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant—yanked funding for the project after the disaster. “The real test will come in the fall, when we look at enrollment,” he says.
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The bottom line: Nuclear plants in the U.S. need to recruit some 25,000 new workers by 2016. Japan’s nuclear crisis has made reaching that goal harder.
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Nuclear plants in the US need to recruit some 25,000 new workers by 2016, Japan's nuclear crisis has made reaching that goal harder.
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Has Social Media Become More Important Than the Environment? [06Jul11] - 0 views
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"Companies that make online games, social networks, and web coupons seem to be able to raise a lot more money in IPOs right now than companies that make energy technology, greener transportation and biofuels. Zynga’s reported potential $2 billion raise could deliver Zynga five times Tesla’s combined IPO and follow-on offering. If Groupon raises at least $750 million, it would bring in more than the IPOs of Amyris, KiOR, Gevo and Zipcar, and the planned IPOs of EnphaseEnergy and Luca Technologies combined. It’s kind of sad, actually."
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Scott Edward Anderson also wrote about this very column for his blog, The Green Skeptic and he nailed it with his take..."We'd rather throw angry birds at pigs than throw our genius at building a productive new economy based on real, tangible solutions to our energy and environmental problems. Rather than produce real food for real people who really need it, we build virtual farms so our virtual friends can help us grow virtual food."
