ANS Conference:

A Wealth of Anniversaries

The theme of this year's American Nuclear Society (ANS) Winter meeting, which just concluded, was "75 Years of Nuclear Fission," so I fully expected a lot of reflection on this milestone event.  I was not mistaken.  What I did not expect was that a number of speakers would pick up on the theme of anniversaries, and would point out the fact that this year is a significant anniversary of several other milestones in nuclear history as well.

During the course of the opening plenary of the conference, we were reminded of the following milestones we can celebrate this year:

• It is 100 years since the discovery of the structure of the atom.

• It is 75 years since the discovery of fission.

• It is 65 years since the start of the Naval Reactor Program.

• It is 60 years since President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace address.

• It is the 20th anniversary of the Megatons to Megawatts program.

As the author of a book on nuclear history, I wrote about most of these events, so I feel a little chagrined I didn't think about all these anniversaries during the course of the year.  However, I'm glad that others reflect on history as well, and were thoughtful enough to mention the milestones in their remarks.

Speakers made note of how quickly we moved from the theoretical concept of nuclear fission to applications.  One plenary speaker, Dr. Sidney Drell, Professor Emeritus at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), reflected on fact that Enrico Fermi did an experiment in 1934 that resulted in fission, but he did not recognize it as such.  Ida Noddack, a German chemist, observed that there might be an alternative explanation to the one Fermi proposed, but her idea fell on deaf ears at the time.  Drell speculated that, had scientists heeded Noddack in 1934, Germany might have had the bomb before World War II. 

The organizers of the conference assembled an outstanding lineup of speakers to celebrate the 75th anniversary.  In addition to Dr. Drell, the opening plenary included: Ernie Moniz, Secretary of Energy; George Shultz, former Secretary of State; and Sam Nunn, former U.S. Senator.  The ANS President's Special Session that followed included: Allison Macfarlane, Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission; Pete Lyons, Assistant Secretary of Nuclear Energy, U.S. Department of Energy (who also spoke in several other sessions during the course of the conference); Ralph Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Sciences; Dan Mote, President of the National Academy of Engineering; John Browne, Director Emeritus of the Los Alamos National Laboratory; Susan Eisenhower, Chairman Emeritus of the Eisenhower Institute; and Admiral John Richardson, Director of Naval Reactors.

These sessions were followed by a technical program that included many other distinguished members of the nuclear community, and spanned the whole scope of nuclear-related activities.  Particularly noteworthy were the 4 "embedded topicals" that took place during this meeting, covering risk management, small modular reactors (SMRs), nuclear nonproliferation, and a young professionals congress.   I gained many insights from the sessions I attended, far too many to cover in one post, but I hope to have a chance to weave some of these insights into future posts.

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Uranium Glass:

 Still in Production

Art Glass by Jon Goldberg

A couple of years ago, inspired by a new stamp, I wrote a post about Fiestaware, a company that once made glazes for their line of dinnerware from the by-product uranium from silver mining.  In it, I also talked about uranium glass, or "Vaseline glass," as this was another product that used uranium, in this case, to produce a yellow-green tint in glassware.  One of the fun features of uranium glass is that it glows under ultraviolet light.

In my previous blog, I said that the glassware was popular from the late 1800s to the early 1900s.  In fact, although I didn't say one way or another, every example of uranium glass I had ever seen, and every piece of uranium-glazed pottery, was an antique.  As far as I knew, no one used uranium in glassware or pottery any more.

Imagine my surprise and delight, then, when I was touring a craft fair in Washington, DC, a few days ago and ran into a display of beautiful, modern glass sculptures made by a living, breathing artist--and it was emitting the green glow I have come to associate with uranium glass displayed under UV light.  A conversation with Jon Goldberg, the artist, confirmed that it was, indeed, uranium glass that he was using.

Now, a craft fair was not a place where I would expect to encounter anything related to the nuclear field, or where I would expect to engage in a conversation about whether the uranium was depleted or not, but Jon graciously answered all my questions.  He also pointed me to his supplier, Gaffer Glass, in Auckland, New Zealand.  A look at the Gaffer Glass website shows that they call the glass "uranium green," and they include on their website a report from the National Radiation Laboratory in New Zealand on the radioactivity levels in the glass. 

This report, in turn, led me to an Oak Ridge Associated Universities website that provides a more detailed discussion of uranium glass than I'd previously found, and gives information on the radiation exposures from such glass.  Among other things, the ORAU piece details various similar glassware and different names that have been used for it over the years.  Also, to my surprise, it identifies several manufacturers in the US that currently make products using uranium glass.  They indicate that such glassware is now produced only for decorative purposes, rather than for dinnerware, as was previously popular.  Finally, the ORAU discussion confirms my guess that, while antique uranium glass used natural uranium, newer uranium glass uses depleted uranium.

So once again, although the details are different, people have cleverly figured out a way to take a by-product and put it to productive--and even artistic--use.

[For those who are interested, the exposure information comes from US Nuclear Regulatory Commission report, NUREG 1717, and more detailed information is available in that report.]

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The Energy Market and Carbon:

Another Look at the Energy Marketplace

A Washington Post editorial on nuclear power a few weeks ago caught my attention.  It was reacting to the continued bad news coming from Fukushima in Japan, as well as to the Entergy announcement in the US regarding their decision to close Vermont Yankee.  

The editorial made the case for nuclear power quite strongly.  Despite all the bad news, the editorial concluded that we should continue to operate nuclear power plants in the US, and even possibly to build more.  One of their arguments was that Fukushima had some underlying problems that sound regulation could address.  Their other argument was that nuclear power would be competitive if the marketplace put a value on the fact that nuclear power doesn't produce carbon emissions.  They also noted some of the attributes of advanced reactor designs, both to improve safety margins and to lower costs.

The argument about regulation looked at the situation at Fukushima and concluded that it shows us clearly how not to run a nuclear power plant.  The underlying problems at Fukushima, basic design flaws, and subsequent mismanagement, they observed, are not intrinsic to nuclear power plant operations, but rather, can be addressed by effective regulation.  They went on to cite the fact that the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has established requirements for precautionary upgrades, and to note that, of course, continued vigilance is necessary.  They also note that advanced nuclear designs are more "passively" safe.

The argument about the marketplace, and particularly that it doesn't value the fact that nuclear power produces very low carbon emissions, really struck me, coming as it did so soon after learning that Vermont Yankee was being shuttered because of marketplace inequities--that is, for pricing rules for renewables that skewed the marketplace.

At first glance, it seemed that placing a cost on carbon emissions might also skew the marketplace.  However, I concluded that this is like comparing apples and oranges.  In the first place, we have acknowledged that there is a societal cost to carbon emissions, and that cost is presently not built into the market prices.  In the second place, a market mechanism that focused on carbon would treat all low-carbon technologies equally.    Nuclear power would benefit.  Renewables would benefit, too.

The issue of just how the societal cost of carbon emissions should be monetized is way out of my area of expertise.  I realize that there are different mechanisms--a carbon tax, carbon trading mechanisms, etc.--and that each has pros and cons.  I am also aware that carbon pricing mechanisms that have been tried to date have not all met expectations.  But I trust that unexpected flaws we have found in implementation can be addressed, just as we have improved on new technologies when our field experience revealed deficiencies we hadn't anticipated.  Or, perhaps there are other solutions altogether. 

I do not know what the best solution is.  However, I do know this.  Repealing existing renewable energy benefits will be difficult politically without substituting some other provisions.  I also know that we must find a better path than one that favors one clean energy source to such an extent that it drives out other clean energy sources.  Surely, we should be able to come up with one.

What we are doing right now seems to be the worst of all worlds.  Yet the reality is that it is in the public good to support the introduction of new, cleaner technologies, and this support usually ends up as a "subsidy" of some sort.  The trick is to find a mechanism that isn't counterproductive, and that doesn't drive out other energy sources that carry similar benefits for society.

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Japan, Independence and Transparency:

Has There Been Any Change?

I recently attended a meeting where someone spoke on their recent research on the Japanese electric power system, including the nuclear reactors in the system.  Since the meeting was off-the-record, I will not divulge the venue or the speaker. 

The meeting was a bit of an eye-opener for me.  With the institution of the new Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) in Japan, plus a lot of interaction of the Japanese government and industry with representatives of nuclear regulatory systems in the US and other countries, I have been hoping that the new organization would shake up the relationships between regulators and the regulated.  Both the speaker's comments, and a discussion with another attendee after the meeting, make me wonder if I have been overly optimistic.

First, the speaker reported trying to arrange to meet with various government and non-government officials during an extended research trip to Japan.  A meeting had been scheduled with someone from NRA, but before the meeting could take place, NRA management had a change of heart.  The speaker attributed this to a revelation that someone on the NRA staff had previously met secretly with representatives of a utility.  When that was discovered, an internal directive was issued restricting meetings of NRA staffers with outsiders.  As a result, the speaker received a message from the NRA staffer canceling their meeting.  Since the NRA contact knew the speaker was scheduled to be in Japan for a long period, the message indicated that no meeting would be possible "for the foreseeable future."  The speaker waited a couple of months and tried to make contact again, but got no response at all.

Following the meeting, I was chatting with several other attendees, both Japanese and American.  One of the group was from a Japanese utility and is presently on a temporary assignment in the US.  When we started discussing the incident described above, I alluded to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Principles of Good Regulation.  I said that it seemed that the NRA was overreacting to the misstep of one of its staff by withdrawing too much, and I observed to the others that the first NRC Principle of Good Regulation, that of Independence, clearly states that "Independence does not imply isolation."  That Principle goes on to state that all views need to be sought and considered.  An internal directive limiting the possibility of interacting with all outside parties seemed to me to misinterpret "independence." 

The Japanese utility representative responded to this discussion by noting how difficult it has become for utilities to talk to the regulator.  They can no longer do so in private, without their conversations becoming known to others, so as a result, they don't want to talk to the regulator at all.  I then turned to the second of the Principles, that of Openness, and pointed out that the NRC strives to operate in an open and transparent manner so that the public is assured that decisions are not being made behind closed doors in the proverbial "smoke-filled rooms." 

The two back-to-back discussions made me wonder if the new regulatory organization in Japan has really brought about the kind of change that I think needs to occur there.  Although in my one-on-one conversation with the speaker after the meeting, I learned that my writings on the Principles of Good Regulation and on other aspects of the US and Japanese regulatory systems were well known in Japan, it is not clear if they have really adopted such principles. 

Of course, all parties will find operating in an open and transparent manner a more difficult process than the old practice of operating in secret, and of course, there will be times when they will fall short of the ideal or will overreact.  Likewise, I know that NRC is not perfect either.  However, suggestions that both NRA and the utilities are reacting to their current situation by isolating themselves represents a move in the wrong direction.  I had hoped to hear better news from Japan by now.  

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Women in Engineering:

Personal Reflections

An article in the New York Times on October 3 on why there are still so few women in science and engineering took me by surprise.  In the first place, I'd just returned from a visit to an alumni leadership conference at my alma mater, MIT, where they were parading all the good news stories about MIT, including that the number of women in the recent classes was hovering very close to 50%.  For someone who had gone to MIT...well...a number of years ago, this was indeed heartening news.  In my own freshman class, only 5% of the class was female--and that was higher than previous classes.

The New York Times article detailed at considerable length the kinds of discrimination, obstacles, and other difficulties that women still face, from professors who try to discourage them from continuing in the science and engineering professions, to difficulty combining careers and a personal life.  It all sounded like stories from a generation ago.

I must say that a part of my reaction to all these stories was that I must have been lucky, because most of these things hadn't happened to me.  And indeed, I may well have been lucky.  Everyone, male or female, ends up with a somewhat different mix of professors, classmates, supervisors and colleagues, and a few bad apples from any of these bins can hamper careers or embitter individuals.  And each of us reacts to stresses and setbacks a little differently.

Like most people, I have had bosses both good and bad.  Fortunately, most were good, and the ones that were bad were just generally bad, and not necessarily sexist.  I weathered the bad ones by remembering that what doesn't kill you outright only makes you stronger--although some days, that was a hard sell.

I can certainly recall incidents where people said things to me that were inappropriate.  And that I don't think they would say today.  And certainly, sometimes I didn't get a position after such a statement, and I wondered at the time if gender discrimination was involved.  But no one gets every job they apply for, so as long as I ended up with good opportunities, I didn't dwell on the missed chances.

But the article stirred up memories of some of those incidents, so for what it's worth, I thought I'd deviate from the usual topics of this blog and recount some of my more vivid memories of sexist comments, mostly from job interviews, as well as some of my reactions and the outcomes of the interviews.

The first story, though, is from a class in graduate school, where a very prominent professor of nuclear engineering (now deceased, and I won't speak ill of the dead) handed back tests, and as he handed me mine, said to the rest of the class (ALL male), You guys let a girl beat you!  I said nothing because I looked down at my paper and saw that the grade was only about 75 (often a good grade at MIT, but still...), so I assumed he was joking.  He wasn't.

From an interviewer at a private company--for a summer job:  I'll bet you played with dolls when you were a child.  "Well...yes."  Boys take their bikes apart and put them together again.  That's the kind of experience we want.  At the time, I was studying at MIT.  I guess that wasn't enough.  I didn't get the job.

From a regional recruiter for a certain government agency known for covert operations (if I name them, they will probably still come after me):  Let me check which jobs are open to women.  When I asked why any jobs would be limited, I was told that some jobs required living in the field.  I said that, with my background, that wasn't the kind of position I was looking for.  I didn't get past the recruiter.

From an interviewer at a US government laboratory:  We had a woman working here once.  She got pregnant and left.  Try to challenge an opinion formed from a sample of one!  Later in that same interview, they started to think about the possible plus sides of having a woman around.  If you worked here, we could send you down to sweet-talk the machinists when we want them to give our work priority.  Fortunately, I got a job offer elsewhere at that point and withdrew my application.

From an interviewer for a private company:  Can you type?  Before I could respond, the interviewer quickly covered his gaff by saying that he meant for working on computers.  (This was back in the dark ages before everyone had a computer on their desk.)  I ended up working for that interviewer.  During the course of my employment there, I had one more memorable conversation with him.  A colleague--a young man who had been with the company for a year or two when I joined--and I went to our boss to propose a business trip.  It would be my first for the company.  My boss looked directly at me and said, You want to go away from your husband?  Again, he realized his gaffe as soon as the words were out of his mouth.  "And you want to go away from your wife?"  he said to my colleague.  A transparent recovery, as my colleague had already been on business trips, but again, we got over that, and I continued to work there for a total of about 8 years.

From an interviewer for a government agency that controls the budgets of other agencies:  Are you married?  Do you have children?  By this time, my response was faster.  "Do you ask the male applicants that?"  They assured me they did, because this was an intense job that required incredibly long hours and many 7-day weeks.  I then said to them, "Tell me the job requirements and let me make the decision as to whether I can make that commitment."  It was exactly the right answer, because they wanted people with the spine to stand up to agency managers.  I was offered the job, but I turned it down.

I'm sure every woman in a technical career has similar stories to tell.  For me, with time and distance, the stories have become mostly amusing, and I think I've managed to succeed despite the challenges these conversations suggest.  But for some women, even today, the negative stories still outweigh the positive ones.  I was very sorry to learn that is still the case.

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The Cost of Generating Electricity:

When the Free Market Isn't

I have been slow in commenting on the closure of Vermont Yankee announced a few weeks ago by Entergy.  This is because it is hard for me to know what to say.

In the end, it seems that the closure was triggered mainly by economics, and that some of the economic issues are so bizarre they simply make my head spin.

There are some economic issues I do understand.  Sort of.  I understand that the recent developments in the gas industry are leading to low costs for gas, making almost every other source of energy non-competitive.  I can argue that this is a short-sighted view, and I could wish the business world didn't have such a short-term view, but I understand that they do.

However, there are other economic issues that simply make no sense to me at all.  The fact that renewable energy suppliers are so heavily subsidized that they can bid negative numbers and still make money just doesn't make sense to me in a country that is supposed to be based on a free market.  Honestly, if I were Entergy, I would have given up long ago!

I have seen some very good coverage of this issue in other sources.  All the sources I respect feel, as I do, that something is irrational about what is happening.  Examples include a recent article in the New York Times by Matthew Wald, and a discussion on the American Nuclear Society (ANS) blog by Jim Hopf.

I do understand the government role in providing incentives to help new technologies get started, but the impacts of these incentives should be monitored to make sure they don't have unintended consequences.

As I see it now, we have subsidized renewables because we want to assure the viability of solar and wind power in the hopes of replacing dirtier and more polluting forms of energy supply, such as coal.  That might be a good idea--if that is what we actually accomplished.  However, what has really happened is that we have forced the closure of another source of clean power--that is, a nuclear power plant.

In the long run, the current situation is in no one's interest.  It will not lead to a cleaner environment and it will not lead to lower real costs for energy supply.  I do not know if the energy markets are as bizarre in other parts of the country, but if they are, it does not bode well for our national energy future.

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Financing Nuclear Construction Costs:

Thinking Outside the Box

In the United Kingdom, Sir John Armitt, the former chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority recently told the government that he could break the log-jam over the construction of new nuclear power plants by setting up a similar body to construct them.

The particular issue he was addressing is the impasse between the government of the UK and France's EDF Energy over how the costs of the planned Hinkley Point C plant will be paid.  Under the current system, the costs of electricity must be predicted decades in the future.  The alternative, according to Sir Armitt, is to create an independent government body like the Authority, which built the facilities for the 2012 London Olympics.  In the power sector, such a body could use a mix of public funds and private investments (supported by tax incentives or government guarantees) to build the units and then sell each unit to the private sector.

My first reaction, when I saw this news, was one of astonishment.  After all, I well recall, around the time of the London Olympics, hearing that the construction had incurred huge cost overruns.  In fact, I recall wondering, at the time, if cost issues might be inherent to any very large-scale construction project. 

Of course, whether or not there are cost overruns, financing the construction of nuclear power plants remains a major challenge for the industry, so it is good to see someone thinking about innovative options.  The concern about the financial risk to utilities for the construction of large nuclear power plants is well known.  Even a move to smaller designs will not entirely remove the potential cost uncertainties, particularly for the first-of-a-kind units.

Today's news suggests that the situation may have moved forward in the UK, and a financing deal for Hinkley Point C might be close.  I do not know what that deal will look like.  Whether or not Sir Armitt's concept is reflected in the arrangement this time, it is clear that financing will remain a key issue for the nuclear power industry, and innovative financing concepts deserve to be examined closely.

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