Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority:

An Op-Ed in the Nikkei Newspaper

I recently had the pleasure of being asked to provide my views on Japan and its new Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) for publication in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the leading business newspaper in Japan (published by Nikkei, Inc. - home of the famous "Nikkei average").  The article was translated into Japanese and published on April 19, 2013 (page 29).  I just received permission to post the English language version in this blog.  It follows below:

The Independence of NRA and its Regulatory Activities

Both in Japan and in the U.S., a stable, safe and affordable supply of energy is essential for economic growth and individual well-being. Accordingly, it is important to assure the availability of a variety of energy sources, even in the U.S., which is now enjoying the benefit of abundant shale gas at low cost.  Therefore, nuclear power is a key part of the U.S. energy portfolio. In Japan, which lacks domestic resources, nuclear power has played a significant role in the stable supply of energy in the past. However, since the Fukushima accident, all nuclear power plants in Japan except Ohi nuclear power plant Units 3 and 4 have been shut down. This has resulted in a considerable increase of fossil fuel imports, rising power generation costs and the largest ever trade deficit (outflow of national wealth).

Prime Minister Abe’s new cabinet, inaugurated after the Lower House Election in December last year, places top priority on Japan’s economic recovery, and thus seems to emphasize restarting the nuclear power plants. Indeed, Prime Minister Abe stated in his first policy speech to the Diet at the end of February that the nuclear reactors should be permitted to restart if their safety is verified. For restarting, safety verification by the Nuclear Regulation Authority, which is a newly formed independent regulatory organization, is required, and the process for restarting operation is expected to begin after the new safety standards are established and come into effect as scheduled in July. The Nuclear Regulation Authority thus has a key role to play.

On the other hand, viewed from the U.S., there does not appear to be a consensus among Japanese people; there are very diverse opinions regarding the activities of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, its independence, and the way it should communicate with stakeholders, and also the principle of the new standards. In view of the crucial role that the Nuclear Regulation Authority will play in Japan, I would like to discuss nuclear regulation from the perspective of the longstanding experience of the independent regulatory authorities in major economies, focusing on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) as an independent nuclear regulator.

First of all, let us consider the necessity of communication. How does the need to communicate affect the independence of a regulatory organization? In the case of the NRC, the standards a regulator should meet are outlined in a document titled “Principles of Good Regulation”, which clearly states, “independence does not imply isolation”.  Therefore, the NRC focuses on equal and transparent communication with all parties in order to make fair judgments and considers the views of all stakeholders along with facts they present. These opinions include information not just from the utilities, but also from research institutes, the national government, local governments and non-government organizations (NGOs). Furthermore, communication is not just a matter of receiving public comments. The NRC (like all other U.S. Federal agencies) documents and publishes its analyses of all public comments received in response to NRC requests for comment, as well as in response to all petitions. This practice provides a public record of how the NRC has considered and addressed concerns raised by all interested parties. This is partly because the way in which NRC explains its response to public comments is subject to court review if a decision of the NRC is appealed to a court. Courts are not safety experts, so NRC’s judgment is respected as that of a specialist organization. Moreover, anyone can gain access to most of the information available to the NRC through a freedom-of-information request. Thus, close communication between the NRC and stakeholders has been established by assuring transparency and equality. It is desirable that similar practices would be made a rule in Japan as well.

Secondly, there must be a high degree of technical competence among the roughly 4000 employees at NRC to support independence. The NRC is required to make judgments “independently” as a specialist organization, irrespective of any political, economic, or other interests.  Even the President may not override the safety decisions of the NRC.  The NRC makes its judgments based on all the technical information it receives from all sources, including the public comment discussed above, and on its own review and analysis of the data. When making a judgment, the NRC may use or adopt ideas that originated from utilities and external expert committees, but only after NRC conducts its own review to confirm that any outside analyses or recommendations meet NRC’s requirements, and only after it explains that review. Therefore, to maintain independence, it is important to have sufficient technical competence to understand opinions, information and advice given by others, to analyze them, and to make its own decisions. Needless to say, it is essential for Japan’s NRA, which has about 500 employees, to improve the expertise of those employees and to increase the number of employees.

Thirdly, I would like to consider what constitutes “an appropriate level of safety standards.”  What does an appropriate level mean?  The NRC continually reviews and updates its regulations based on insights gained from various events and from new knowledge and findings, and in addition, adheres to Principle 5, “Optimization of Protection” of the Safety Standards set out by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). However, the highest safety level is not necessarily achieved by providing all possible countermeasures. As an analogy, if an airplane were to be fitted with every conceivable safety feature, the increased weight could cause problems during a flight, and the airplane might actually be less safe.  Or, the cost of a very tiny improvement to safety could be so high that it would not be economical to operate the plant. When imposing new regulations, NRC performs a risk-informed analysis, to assure that the resulting regulation maintains an appropriate balance between the costs and the benefits. Such a balance can be also found in United Kingdom in the concept of “ tolerability of risk”.

Let me expand upon this point to consider a fourth point, that of NRC’s shift of safety regulations from “prescriptive (or deterministic) regulation” to “performance-based regulation”. There are two fundamental approaches to regulation:  prescriptive regulation that specifies the exact measures a licensee must take, versus performance-based regulation that provides targets to be achieved by safety measures and allows the licensee to propose how to meet the targets. This distinction is important, as there are often several means of achieving safety targets, and different measures may be optimal, depending on the detailed configurations and other characteristics in each plant. In recognition of this, NRC has been shifting the emphasis of its regulations.  Although prescriptive regulation still exists, the NRC is gradually moving in the direction of risk-informed, performance-based regulation in order to make the best use of the efficiency, originality and ingenuity of the regulated utilities in maintaining safety. The move toward risk-informed regulation is a logical extension of an older rule, known as the “backfit rule,” which applies to requirements for modifications in existing power plants. A similar rule was recently introduced in Japan. Under this rule, the NRC requires a modification to an existing facility (i.e., a backfit) “only when it determines…that there is a substantial increase in the overall protection of the public health and safety or the common defense and security to be derived from the backfit and that the direct and indirect costs of implementation for that facility are justified in view of this increased protection.”  These commitments of the NRC to safety regulation, based on scientific analysis and rational logic, may serve as a useful reference to Japan.

NRC, of course, is not perfect.  There are some who are very critical of almost everything the Agency does, and there are many others, including sometimes Commissioners and staff of the NRC itself, who acknowledge NRC shortcomings on particular activities.  Still, the NRC maintains these principles as the standards toward which it strives, and the Agency is widely regarded around the world as the “gold standard” for nuclear regulation.  The NRC is not the only regulatory organization to adopt these kinds of principles; France and the UK, among others, also function as independent and highly transparent regulatory organizations.

Furthermore, while nuclear operators have observed the NRC’s regulations, they have also voluntarily taken a number of actions to upgrade their safety performance, in some cases, beyond NRC requirements, after the accident at the Three Mile Island. It is particularly noteworthy that they have also shared their efforts with other utilities, as well as with other industries that face similar safety issues, and through collaborative activities under the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) to which all the nuclear utilities belong, have developed mechanisms and frameworks within the nuclear industry to enhance the effectiveness of their efforts industry wide. As a result, the availability of U.S. nuclear power plants has increased substantially in recent years, improving both economic efficiency and safety concurrently. Reportedly, the Japanese operators have recently started similar voluntary actions by reference to those US efforts and I hope that such measures will function effectively in Japan as well. Of course, it is not as simple as Japan performing regulatory activities following the example of the NRC because there are many differences in the culture and legal systems. However, I certainly believe that the regulatory activities in Japan can be made more successful by adopting the know-how that the NRC has cultivated in its long history of regulatory activities.

 ***

Differentiating within Energy Technologies:

Breaking Down the Monoliths

One of the problems that bloggers face is how to handle some of the comments we receive.  For me, most of the comments are easy to handle.  They either reinforce or expand upon something I said with additional information, or--equally important--point out something I missed or misconstrued.  Occasionally, they disagree with my view, but if the disagreement is thoughtful and constructive, I certainly publish them. 

In addition, I get a number of comments that say something like, "Great blog.  I really liked your comments."  What writer doesn't like to hear such accolades?  And to let the world know they have an admirer!  The first time I got a message like this, I didn't look very hard and I published it, only to have someone point out to me that the link that I'd neglected to check was to a website for bespoke suits, or something like that.

I now look more carefully, and anything with a link to a commercial product gets summarily dumped into the Spam box.

However, I recently received a comment that didn't quite fit any neat category.  It started with a comment that built on one of my recent blogs and expanded on one of my points, so I obviously wanted to post it.  But reading closely, much of the message promoted a specific product.

It was an energy-related product, and I thought long and hard about whether to post the comment.  After all, posting a comment with which I disagree doesn't indicate my endorsement of the comment.  By the same token, posting a message promoting a product doesn't necessarily represent my endorsement of the product. 

Nevertheless, in the end, I decided that posting such a message moved me into a gray area of commercialization that I wanted to avoid.  On the other hand, it still bothered me that I couldn't share the very important observation made in the comment.  Therefore, I decided to build a new post around that portion of the commenter's message.

The comment was made by Wilfred Sorensen on my recent post, "Renewable Energy and Reality: Growing Recognition of the Limits and Drawbacks."  The objective of that post was to note several recent studies that point out that, as we learn more, renewable energy appears not to be as green and clean as originally thought. 

The Mr. Sorensen added an important caveat of which we should all be aware--most of the technologies we speak of so glibly are not monolithic.  Let me quote the relevant part of his message:

I have to agree with most of what Dr. Marcus has to say which appears to be 'let's not hide the true cost of renewables'. I will suggest, however, that we recognize and promote those renewables that are cost effective and environmentally beneficial.

Overshadowed as it is by PV electricity generation, solar water heating is being all but forgotten despite its cost effectiveness. 

Now, I haven't really examined the economics of different types of solar energy systems myself, so I can't vouch for this statement.  My focus is more on meeting large-scale electricity needs.  But I heartily agree with his point.  There is not just one type of nuclear reactor, or windmill, or solar energy system.  Each technology variant may have different benefits and drawbacks.  Each may be useful in different places or for different purposes.  The only change I might make in his comment is that I would say that we should "recognize and promote all energy technologies that are cost effective and environmentally beneficial." 

When I write a post such as the one about the limits and drawbacks of renewable energy, I do not intend to tar all renewable technologies and applications with the same brush.  I really intend only to be sure that the record is balanced, that all energy technologies are compared in a fair and holistic fashion, and that energy decisions are made in a realistic and balanced way.  

Nor do I think there is one "right" solution to all our energy needs.  I personally do not believe the claims that we can realistically satisfy all our energy needs using renewable energy sources.  But I also do not believe that we should turn to nuclear power for all our energy needs.  For many reasons, in most cases, the best option is a mix of technologies.  It is a mix of large-scale electric power plants and small-scale backyard systems such as solar water heaters.  It is a mix of nuclear power plants and windmills.  It is a mix of PV systems and fossil fuels.   

As we consider the right mix of energy technologies for the future, we would do well to keep in mind that we ought to differentiate between different applications, and between different technologies within such broad categories as solar, wind and nuclear power.

***

Nuclear Power vs. Coal:

Comparative Estimate of Deaths

In recent weeks, I've seen several reports on energy issues that encourage me that people really are looking deeply at the issues.  I recently reported on one set of articles on some of the potential shortcomings of renewable technologies.  In this post, I'll talk about a report that nuclear power has saved 1.8 million lives.  The news reports are based on a technical paper published by the American Chemical Society and authored by Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen.
 
This report initially got a fair amount of attention because James Hansen has become well known as an advocate for reducing greenhouse gases (although an op-ed by Clint Wolfe in the Augusta Chronicle noted that the attention has largely been limited to technical publications, and it has not gotten nearly as much attention in the general press as Hansen's earlier studies on global warming received). The authors embarked on this study because they were concerned that the reaction to Fukushima was out of proportion to its impacts.  The study compared both fatalities and greenhouse gas emissions from the entire fuel cycle for both coal and nuclear power.  (It did not look at non-fatal illnesses.)  Most of the press seems to have focused on the figures for fatalities, which are startling. 

I have been a little surprised I haven't seen more follow up on the reports.  After all, numbers in the millions seem so large that I expected some rebuttal offering different data and different results.  I must confess I haven't tried to parse all the data and calculations in the study myself, but I can only assume that the lack of counterarguments is evidence that the study results are solid.

Of course, many of us have known for a long time that there were a lot of coal-related fatalities.  The problem has been that they usually occur in small numbers at a time, and mostly among people who are elderly or in poor health, so the correlation between coal burning and health effects has tended to be masked.  

Still, a number approaching two million certainly got my attention.  I hope it will get the attention of others. 

***

Nuclear Power and Carbon Emissions:

Doing the Numbers

A recent article caught my attention because it was titled "Nuclear is NOT a Low-Carbon Source of Energy."  Now, this puzzled me.  In the first place, this is not a new argument, and in the second place, I thought it had been addressed a long time ago.
 
I remember that, some years ago, the claim emerged that nuclear power only looked clean because the last step was clean--if you took the other steps into account, the argument said--especially the enrichment--nuclear power wasn't so clean at all.  (Actually, the argument was originally made in terms of net energy produced as opposed to carbon emissions, but the point is the same.)  At the time, I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation on the enrichment step that convinced me that the energy used per unit of energy produced was reasonably small, even with the gaseous diffusion enrichment process, and subsequent research convinced me this calculation was right. 

So why, I wondered, was I reading the same thing all over again, this time focusing on carbon emissions.  When I reviewed the recent article, I saw right away that it was really all over the place in its opposition to nuclear power.  It dredges up every anti-nuclear argument, and even starts with the fact that scientists are not always right!  There is far more in this article than I want to tackle in a single post, but what stood out for me is that some of the points made are qualitatively valid (that is, they have identified emissions that do exist), but there is no quantification--and even more important, there is no comparison with other energy sources.

Furthermore, the article quotes sources that claim that, "The energy put into mining, processing, and shipping uranium, plant construction, operation, and decommissioning is roughly equal to the energy a nuclear plant can produce in its lifetime. In other words, nuclear energy does not add any net energy."  Now, this statement is bizarre on the face of it.  Even among people who believe that government and industry are the Evil Empire, most must find it a stretch to believe that so many people could have successfully pursued a strategy that didn't add net energy for such a long time.

Tracing back some of the arguments in the recent article led me to reports done around 2006 that detail some of the sources of carbon emissions from the nuclear fuel cycle (which in turn draw from a 2005 report by Storm and Smith).  Again, the arguments presented are qualitatively correct.  Mining, transportation, enrichment, construction, etc., for the nuclear fuel cycle are all energy intensive processes.  

BUT, most (although not all) of these same steps exist for other energy sources as well.  You can't capture the energy from wind or the sun efficiently and at large scales without using exotic materials such as rare earths, which have to be mined and transported.  (And some of which, by the way, may be in short supply, or may make us dependent on other countries, or may yield some quantities of hazardous waste.)  Perhaps the quantities required are smaller than the amount of uranium that must be mined, but all energy sources require materials and the mining and processing of all materials required for each technology must be taken into account if different energy sources are to be compared fairly.

Enrichment, of course, is unique to nuclear power, and is energy intensive but as noted above, is not so energy intensive as sometimes claimed.  And gas centrifuges, which are far more efficient than diffusion, are supplanting the diffusion process. 

What really took me by surprise, however, was to see the article mention the steel and concrete needed for nuclear power plants (which, of course, are made using fossil fuels).  The reason I was surprised is that recent reports have noted the much larger requirement for construction materials for the many windmills that would be needed to replace one fossil or nuclear power plant.  So raising this issue only draws attention to an measure that doesn't seem favorable for wind. 

The real point is that any such numbers must be compared to the numbers from other energy sources.  There are, in fact, a number of organizations that have done just that, and their results show that 1) nuclear power does indeed produce net energy, and a lot of it, even when the whole fuel cycle is considered, and 2) the energy use/carbon emissions of the nuclear fuel cycle is less than that of most other forms of energy when a fair comparison is made.

Some reliable sources of such studies include a study done by Yale University of life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of nuclear electricity generation, and a review conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  Although I regard these sources are reliable, I can't claim to have reviewed every one in detail and verified all the data and calculations.  I must leave that to others.  A Wikipedia page on life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions of energy sources provides references to other studies.  Finally, while some might consider the World Nuclear Association a biased source, their energy analysis of power systems includes a useful discussion of areas for which comparisons are straightforward and other areas for which comparisons may be more difficult.

Another concern I have is that many studies of net energy production assume that the future is rather static.  It is, of course, one thing to give credit for technology advances that have not yet been achieved, but it is another thing to fail to give credit for substitutions by technologies that already exist.  For example, an enrichment facility clearly could draw power from a nuclear plant, so the carbon emissions associated with enrichment are not a law of nature.  Rather, they are a consequence of the way things are done now.   

When looking farther ahead, we must recognize that advances are possible in all areas--but they are not to be counted on.  We all know that a major shortcoming of solar and wind systems is their intermittency.  Solutions are often proposed that involve either advanced storage technologies and/or advanced grids (and backup power sources of some variety).  While there are promising developments in both areas, they are not yet reality, and furthermore, the costs and the environmental footprint of any of these options must be incorporated into future studies.

Another example involves the possibility of using small, modular reactors (SMRs) to supply needed power for mines.  This could, of course, substantially reduce emissions associated with mining operations for a variety of energy sources.  This scenario has actually been considered by mining operators, such as for mining oil sands in Canada, so it would seem that this is not a far-off vision.  Nevertheless, SMRs are not yet a fully developed technology, and must be treated as speculative in any projections of carbon emissions from different fuel cycles.

Likewise, as already noted in some of the more negative assessments of nuclear power, the implications of using lower-quality uranium ores, should that be necessary, must be considered.  At present, it appears the supplies of uranium are adequate, and further exploration plus the potential for using a thorium fuel cycle could push the need to tap lower-quality ores far into the future.  However, whenever we speculate about such possibilities as achieving a limitless resource by extracting uranium from seawater, we must both assess the state of the technology to do that, plus add the higher energy use necessary to extract uranium from such sources.  While we may anticipate advanced technologies that would be more efficient, we should recognize that they are still in developmental stages.  

***

Renewable Energy and Reality:

Growing Recognition of the Limits and Drawbacks

Although this is supposed to be a blog about nuclear energy, I keep finding myself drawn to discussing the world in which nuclear energy operates, including the pros and cons of alternative energy sources.  As readers of this blog know, I have long been concerned that most of the public seems to believe that there are easy solutions to our energy problems.  That the intermittency problems of "new" technologies such as renewables can be solved quickly, reliably and economically.  That these technologies are more "natural" and cleaner and greener. 

In other words, the "paper reactors" of Admiral Rickover's day have been replaced in people's minds by "paper solar power plants" and "paper wind farms."

I was therefore very pleased to find a couple of articles that raise some specific points that reinforce the arguments I have been trying to make.  While I may not agree with the authors in every respect, I do agree with some major points they make.  Since most of the press seems to focus on the issues associated with fossil and nuclear power, I hope that highlighting articles such as these will help balance the dialogue.   

The first article I want to discuss is an interview with Ozzie Zehner, the author of a new book called  "Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism."  The article starts by pointing out what I said above--that many people believe that the answer to climate change (as well as to other downsides of current fossil fuel energy sources) is to shift from fossil fuels to "clean, green, renewable, alternative energy." The problem with such a solution, the article goes on to say, is that things are never as simple as they seem, and that "there's actually no such thing as a free lunch" when it comes to energy consumption and production. Further, what we're often told is "green" and "clean" is actually neither.

While I haven't had a chance to read the book yet, Zehner's description is clearly very much along the lines of my own thinking.  He says that this book  "...isn't a book for alternative energy. Neither is it a book against it. In fact, we won’t be talking in simplistic terms of for or against, left and right, good and evil ... Ultimately, this is a book of shades." 

In answer to a question about whether we can move from fossil fuels to solar and wind energy, Zehner says:

There is an impression that we have a choice between fossil fuels and clean energy technologies such as solar cells and wind turbines. That choice is an illusion. Alternative energy technologies rely on fossil fuels through every stage of their life. Alternative energy technologies rely on fossil fuels for mining operations, fabrication plants, installation, ongoing maintenance and decommissioning. Also, due to the irregular output of wind and solar, these technologies require fossil fuel plants to be running alongside them at all times.

Zehner goes on to say that every energy generation method has side effects and limitations.  He mentions several, but I will highlight one:

Finally, we have to consider the mining, health, pollution and waste problems of renewable technologies. For example, we are now learning that the solar cell industry is one of the fastest growing emitters of virulent greenhouse gases such as sulfur hexafluoride, which has a global warming potential 23,000 times higher than CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 

This, coupled with the fact that solar power usually relies on fossil fuel backup, makes it unlikely that converting to solar power will really solve climate change. 

I can't subscribe to everything that Zehner says.  In particular, he sees the only solution as being to "bring the population down over time as we also reduce per-capita consumption."  While I can see improvements in energy efficiency, even possibly substantial ones, it is harder to see how we will achieve enough through efficiency alone, and achieving the kinds of reductions in population that he seems to think are necessary is far easier said than done.  I am more optimistic that a spectrum of advanced energy technologies (including improvements in efficiency) can meet the world's energy needs.

Although that is an important point to Zehner, I think we can disagree on that but still agree that every generation method has both pros and cons.  Zehner has provided a service by bringing greater attention to the challenges we will have to face as the use of renewable technologies grows.

The articles on Zehner's book brought my attention to a two-year-old op ed by Paul Krugman on "renewable energy's not-so-bright side."  Krugman takes issue with some reports that came out two years ago that claimed that "we can have a fully renewable-based, nuclear-free economy by 2050."  And, "What’s more, the world wouldn’t have to pay that much more for energy than it does today."

Krugman points to his personal experience, early in his career, where cost projections for energy proved wildly wrong.  "They were much too optimistic about the costs of alternative energy sources, especially alternatives to oil. Basically, the engineers were understating the difficulties involved. Later, economist Marty Weitzman would formulate a law: the cost of alternatives to crude oil is 40 percent above the current price — whatever the current price is."

Krugman implicitly acknowledges that this formula may also be too simplistic, saying that, "To be fair, we probably have much more solid ideas about the costs of wind and solar power than we did about shale oil and coal liquefaction back in 1973: wind is already a widely used technology, and concentrated solar power is pretty well understood, too."

Nevertheless, he concludes, "But there will be surprises, not all of them positive."

This is a caution we all need to keep in mind, whether we are making projections about renewable technologies, advanced nuclear technologies, or new carbon-capture technologies for coal plants. 

***

Speaking on Nuclear Power:

 How Others See Us

Although I try hard not to focus on what other people think of me, every once in a while, I learn something about myself--or about what others think of me--that interests me.  This week, I came across two contrasting perspectives.  Since they relate to what I'm trying to do in this blog, I thought it might be worth looking at how people view things I have said and done.

The most recent piece was by fellow nuclear blogger Rod Adams who writes at Atomic Insights.  In his April 9, 2013 blog, he reacts to my last blog speculating whether natural gas is going to turn out to be a "flash in the pan."  Rod says the following about me:

I know Gail on a personal level and believe that she is wonderfully incapable of seeing purposefully destructive marketing behavior. Like many technically-trained nuclear professionals, she projects her natural integrity onto others who do not deserve it.  

Rod goes on to reproduce a comment he left on my blog indicating that "one of the factors behind the natural gas bubble is a purposeful effort to derail the nuclear revival."

While I appreciate Rod's compliment to my integrity, and I hope I do live up to a high standard of integrity, I really don't think integrity has anything to do with the views I expressed in my blog.  I find it more productive to focus on the facts, and not the motives, so whether the gas bubble is engineered or whether it is a case of market forces is generally not too important to me.

In fact, I was pointing out in that blog that two different articles predicted that the gas bubble was likely to be temporary and that we should not be putting all our eggs in one basket.  Both articles, to varying degrees, talked about nuclear power as one option to achieve diversity.  A third article took a more limited focus, and perhaps that is where I got myself in trouble.  That article suggested that power purchase agreements (PPAs) for wind farms could exert a downward pressure on rising gas prices.  While the article focused on wind farms, I noted that PPAs are, or can be, used for other sources of energy as well.  I didn't say so, but they can be used for nuclear power.

Unfortunately, I ended the article by saying that perhaps PPAs would allow us to "buy time" as the full dimensions of the gas bubble become clear.  I did not mean that we should do nothing and I apologize if this was not clear.  What I had in mind was that new build of any type takes time.  This article was describing a mechanism that was already in place for many wind farms.  Extending this concept might defer or dampen the gas bubble.  I admitted I was unable to predict what impact they would have in the long term, but felt that they might help us in the shorter term.

By contrast, this same week, I discovered a five-year-old blog on "nuclear lobbyists"--and was surprised to find that my name was prominently listed.  I really don't know much about this blog and had never seen it before, but it appears that they were trying to impugn the integrity of anyone and everyone who had expressed the view that nuclear power provided clean and safe energy.  Their narrative and their list of so-called "lobbyists" included people like former NRC Chairman Dick Meserve, former OECD Secretary General Don Johnson, and many others.

The main evidence against me:  "The woman appointed as deputy director of Bush's DOE, Gail H Marcus, was also president of the American Nuclear Society. The political fix was in from day one."  I found that particularly interesting.  I came to DOE in December 1999.  The US President at the time was Bill Clinton.  George Bush wasn't elected until almost a year later and didn't take office until January 2001.  And I didn't even run for president of ANS until the spring of 2000, and didn't begin my term as president until June 2001, well after I came to DOE.  Furthermore, the ANS adheres very carefully to the rules that prohibit non-profit professional societies from lobbying.  

They also reported that Dick Meserve and I spoke at a conference on the nuclear renaissance in 2002.  At that time, he was Chairman of the NRC and I worked in the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy.  In those post-9/11 days, Dick Meserve spoke on the existing resistance of US plants to a physical attack and the reexamination underway.  I spoke about DOE's programs and plans to support new nuclear power plants.  I didn't think that made either of us lobbyists.

As I read through this piece, I caught many other errors, and I'm sure there are some that I missed.  I won't try to list them all.

The point of this discussion is not to try to correct or change the perceptions of others about me.  Nor is it to suggest that my approach is better than the approach of others.  I expect to continue to write and speak about the role of nuclear power and its prospects for the future, and if that makes me a lobbyist in the eyes of some, so be it.  I also intend to focus on the issues and not the personalities or motives of people on various sides of the nuclear issue, and if that makes me a person who "projects her natural integrity onto others who do not deserve it," I'll take that as a compliment.

***

Natural Gas:

A Flash in the Pan?

Several articles have been published in the past few days all addressing various aspects of the sudden rise in the prospects for natural gas, and the potential longer-term consequences of following policies that rely too much on what might be a short term availability.

The articles take somewhat different approaches to the problem.  Some of the authors, or the analysts cited, have their own biases as far as the alternatives to natural gas.  However, all have some common themes with respect to the long-term prospects for natural gas and the detrimental consequences they can wreak on other alternatives while the costs are low and everything looks rosy.

Two of the articles sum up the key issues:

Is Natural Gas the Next Bubble?  Has Fracking Promised More Than It Can Deliver?

The provocative title is a summary in itself.  The subtitle to the article succinctly states the conclusion:  New research shows that putting too much of our eggs into this energy basket could be detrimental to our future economic health.

The article goes on to provide several examples, for both coal and nuclear plants, where the cost competition from currently cheap natural gas is driving utilities to close the existing plants.  Although I take issue with their characterization of nuclear power as having "glaring environmental, safety and health issues," the authors are objective enough to recognize that substituting natural gas for nuclear power production has serious detrimental effects on carbon emissions.

Based on my own reading, I think their conclusions about the potential short-term nature of the natural gas boom are valid.  They provide a fairly detailed discussion of studies that verify the concerns, and speculate that, in the not-so-distant future, we may find ourselves facing exactly the same scenario that we face today with crude oil--"much more dependent and at a higher price."

Rise of Natural Gas May Mean Fall of Alternative Energy

This article reiterates the theme that the low cost of natural gas may be temporary.  The article also outlines various other concerns about natural gas, including the environmental effects of gas production.

The author outlines some of the paths that the current push for natural gas might lead us down.  He observes that, "Today the shift to natural gas in electricity generation is out-of-control, and consumers are going to suffer as a result. If you want to see the price of natural gas rise significantly, replace all coal and nuclear plants with natural gas over the next 30 years. We would wind up with a single fuel for electricity production just as we have one fuel for transportation. Consumers would regret it."

Although "alternative energy" for many people seems to be a code-word for "not nuclear," this article takes a broader view.  The author notes that:  "Advances in nuclear power and renewable energy sources would help maintain energy diversity. Small modular reactors built in a factory for a fraction of the cost of large nuclear plants could make a real difference in this country and globally. As we expand the use of intermittent renewable sources of electricity - especially solar and wind - base-load nuclear power will be needed to "firm" renewable sources when they are not available."

Other Articles

Still other recent items look at the same problem from other angles.  One, for example, notes that many wind farms have long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs).  These could keep costs low

and exert a downward pressure on rising gas prices.  While the article is focused only on wind, the same should, of course, be true of PPAs for other energy sources.  I am not sure what the terms are for PPAs, so wonder if these could possibly hold prices down for the longer term, but it may be one way we can buy time as the full dimensions of the gas bubble begin to take shape. 

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