One of the persistent myths left over from the first Atomic Age is that nuclear reactors can only be used to produce electricity in massive, central station power plants.
That application is only one of many ways to use the heat from fissioning uranium, plutonium or thorium. In the US, fully 1/3 of the 100 quadrillion BTUs (Quads) of energy used each year is consumed by industrial process heat applications. Nearly all of that is supplied by burning hydrocarbons (some is supplied at paper mills and lumber processing plants by burning biomass).
With some clever engineering that takes advantage of research initially conducted to attempt to enable solar heat to be made available when the sun is not shining, Cal Abel is working on ways to produce, distribute or store nuclear fission heat.
We are joined in our discussion by Bob Apthorpe, another man with a degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Wisconsin, the same place where Cal earned his BS and MS.
On Sunday January 8, 2012, I chatted with Meredith Angwin who blogs at Yes Vermont Yankee and Margaret Harding, a well known independent consultant who specializes in GE Boiling Water Reactors. Our primary topic was the fate of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power station, which has been embroiled in a several year long battle to obtain permission to continue providing reliable, emission-free electricity to the New England regional power grid – as it has been producing for the past 39 years.
If all of the electricity that Vermont Yankee produced every year was sold into the state of Vermont, it would supply 85% of the state’s total load. Since the plant is located just a few miles north of the Massachusetts border and just a few dozen yards from the state line with New Hampshire, only 30% of the power stays inside state lines.
In other words, the plant is, and always has been, engaged in interstate commerce. It still confuses me why people who live in Vermont have such a basic misunderstanding of the country in which they live; no state has the right to control interstate commerce. All of them gave that up when they signed on as members of the United States of America.
Anyway, enough ranting. Hope you enjoy the show. I apologize for the echo chamber sound quality. I will do better next time – if I ever get around to doing some simple set-up upgrades.
There have been a number of recent articles about the evacuated area that surrounds the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. One in particular that caught my attention was an article published in the Washington Post titled Around the Fukushima plant, a world left behind.
The problem is that the contamination levels outside of the gate of the nuclear power station are low enough so that the projected radiation doses to someone residing in the area are lower than the doses received from natural sources in many inhabited areas around the world. Due to an excessive level of fear and the resulting “conservative” limits established by government bodies, tens of thousands of people have been forced to abandon their homes, communities and sources of livelihood.
I invited some friends to discuss ways to communicate the reality of the situation to the rest of the world to try to mitigate the damage being done by stories aimed at spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Meredith Angwin has a master’s degree in Physical Chemistry, has worked in both the renewable energy industry and the nuclear industry and has been working to reduce the fear of nuclear energy with her blog at Yes Vermont Yankee.
Cal Abel is a former nuclear submarine engineer officer and a current graduate student seeking his PhD in Nuclear Engineering at Georgia Tech.
On November 11, 2011, the Institute of Nuclear Plant Operators (INPO) released a report that provides a detailed timeline of events that occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in the days and weeks following the Great North East Japan earthquake and series of seven tsunamis. Releasing that report was a rare event; INPO is highly respected within the US nuclear industry but it is a member supported organization whose reports are normally not released to the general public.
I asked two nuclear energy experts, Cal Abel and Margaret Harding to read the report and then to share their perceptions and interpretations with you. I hope you enjoy their commentary, though it might help your understanding if you have the report handy while you are listening.
