EIA International Energy Outlook 2011:

The Nuclear Perspective

On September 19, 2011, the DOE Energy Information Administration (EIA) rolled out its latest International Energy Outlook, IEO 2011 at a briefing presented by the deputy director and acting director of EIA, Dr. Harold Gruenspecht, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC. The report makes projections about the global supply and demand of different energy resources between now and 2035. I attended the event, so heard the overview of the report as well as the Q&A session that followed. I will not try to summarize the whole report, as much of it deals with oil and gas, and in any event, is available on the EIA website, as is a video of the presentation. However, I thought I could augment the report by making a couple of general observations about the IEOs in general, and also by highlighting a couple of comments Dr. Gruenspecht made that are not in the report itself.

I first want to recognize that the nuclear community has a long-standing ambivalence with past versions of this report. Over the years, many have complained that it is too pessimistic about the prospects for nuclear power. Indeed, when I worked at DOE, the projections of the Office of Nuclear Energy, where I worked, and the projections of EIA, which is an independent arm of the DOE, often differed significantly.

One fundamental reason for these differences is that the EIA makes its predictions based on existing policies and programs. In that sense, while their projection is not literally a straight-line projection, it has some of the characteristics of a straight-line projection. The projection does recognize population impacts and price impacts, but it doesn't assume that policies will change or that long-range plans will necessarily materialize, so it ends up off the mark when some of these plans actually come to pass. On the other hand, the Office of Nuclear Energy, the industry, and others often include anticipated policy changes and long-range plans in their projections, so their projections end up overestimating nuclear power growth when some of these plans and policies do not materialize.

Leaving aside the philosophical discussion about what anticipated changes one should or should not include when making projections, I found this year's report, and the discussion at the briefing, particularly interesting from a nuclear perspective.

In particular, the report has been a year in the making, and some of the information in it is already dated. The report shows the penetration of nuclear power increasing from 5% to 7% of total energy demand globally by 2035. However, Dr. Gruenspecht pointed out that the nuclear portion of the report was developed prior to the Fukushima event, and was not adjusted to reflect the decisions several countries have made following that event.

Dr. Gruenspecht did not attempt to quantify what he thought this effect might be, but he mentioned several countries whose changed nuclear stance would likely affect the projection. The countries he named were Germany, Japan, Italy, Switzerland, and China.

Now, I'm not disagreeing that the projected percentage is down--IAEA is making similar predictions (in terms of percent of global electricity demand). However, I found his list of countries a little puzzling. These countries have all announced very different decisions, and I would think their impacts on the 2035 IEO projection would range from significant to almost no change.

In the case of Germany, the change does indeed seem pretty clear. Japan is also certainly on a downward trend for the near future. In the case of Italy, Italy was only at the very beginning of their nuclear "revival" when Fukushima occurred, and since EIA doesn't factor in "plans" lightly, I have to wonder if Italy was even considered in arriving at the 2035 estimate, and therefore, if the Italian decision will affect the projection at all. Switzerland has already modified its initial statements, and I'm not sure that what it is saying now will lead to a significant change in the IEO projection. China has reportedly scaled back its new reactor plans somewhat, but many (myself included) always doubted whether their stated plans could be realized, so I seriously doubt whether the IEO projection for 2035 was based on the original Chinese plans anyway.

It will be useful to see a realistic projection, by country, taking into account 1) how optimistic or pessimistic the previous estimates were in the first place, and 2) seeing how the recent announcements by different countries have been factored in.

In that regard, however, the future of the IEO is unclear. Dr. Gruenspecht alluded to budget constraints possibly limiting EIA's ability to produce this report in the future. While some in the nuclear community will not mourn its loss, it has proved to be a useful report for many purposes. It does pull together a lot of useful information on resource estimates, price trends, population changes, and other factors.

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The Future of Nuclear Power:

Making Predictions

With the IAEA General Conference going on in Vienna this week, we are hearing a lot about the effects of Fukushima, both on current nuclear power operations and on the future of nuclear power. Given all the uncertainties in the aftermath of that event, it was very encouraging to hear the Director General of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, predict that there is still likely to be significant growth in the number of operating nuclear power plants in the future. Amano's prediction was that IAEA expected between 90 and 350 new units by 2030. The higher prediction would represent nearly a doubling of the current number of reactors operating worldwide.

Now, I must confess I am very leery of predictions. If I were speaking to Mr. Amano, I would advise him of the statement of America's most famous philosopher, Yogi Berra, who said, "It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future." The same news items that reported IAEA's predictions also reported that they are lower than projections IAEA had made prior to the March 11 events.

Nevertheless, the reasons Amano cites for the continued growth of nuclear power--increasing demand around the world for clean energy--are solid, and the early signs are certainly clear that the countries with the largest nuclear power development programs are continuing to pursue nuclear power. Therefore, IAEA's prediction is based on strong evidence. While I probably wouldn't hazard a quantitative guess, I do think the signs point toward continued nuclear power development in a number of nations. Then again, IAEA has information on national plans that I don't have, so they are in a better position to place a number on their projections!

Yogi Berra still has a point, of course. Just as Fukushima changed IAEA's earlier projections, another serious incident could cut into the current prediction. But short of that, I think the nuclear renaissance that everyone was predicting a few years ago has been slowed, but not derailed.

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Uranium:

Not Just for Reactors

With this blogpost, I take a little break from the weighty issues of the day. A trip to my local Post Office the other day brought me face to face with the USPS's latest stamp offerings focusing on "pioneers of American industrial design." The set features, as one might guess, designers of things like telephones and typewriters and table lamps and clocks and radios and cameras. But there among them was one that especially resonated with me. A picture of two Fiestaware pitchers, one in a familiar brilliant orange-red glaze. A glaze made possible by the use of uranium.

Yes, uranium. Long, long ago, boys and girls, in the days before nuclear reactors, uranium was a by-product of mining for silver and other minerals. Enterprising people of the day, looking for uses for this material, found it did wondrous things in pottery and glassware. The orange-red glaze used a uranium oxide and was a signature feature of the Fiestaware product line starting in the 1930s. So much so that when the US government commandeered all supplies of uranium as part of its effort to develop the bomb, the company went into decline.

Actually, Fiestaware was not the first product to use uranium. Glass containing uranium oxide has been found in archeological sites dating from Roman times. More recently, so-called uranium glass (also sometimes called Vaseline glass because of its yellow-green color) was popular from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. Uranium glass has an interesting property that makes for a fun parlor trick. When exposed to ultraviolet light, it fluoresces. Of course, that characteristic is a consequence of the electrons, not the nucleus, but it is fun to demonstrate just the same.

I probably first became aware of Fiestaware when I attended the opening session of an ANS meeting over 20 years ago. With all due respect to the many distinguished people who have made presentations at the opening plenaries of ANS meetings over the years, the one I most enjoyed was by James Acord, an artist who gave a highly entertaining presentation about his desire to use Fiestaware in his sculptures, and his long battle with the NRC to obtain a license (yes, really!) to possess the uranium in the large quantities of Fiestaware he was acquiring. I am pleased to report that he was ultimately successful in that endeavor. I am less happy to report that, in the course of looking up some things for this blogpost, I learned that he died this past January.

I'm not an avid antique collector, but after hearing his presentation, I started to keep an eye out for pieces of original Fiestaware in the characteristic color. (Fiestaware is in production again, but doesn't use uranium glaze.) I more recently branched out and acquired a piece of uranium glass. I figure it is only fitting to use a piece or two when I entertain guests.

It's been interesting to watch people's reactions. One woman who has a good technical education surprised me by visibly backing away from a Fiestaware platter on the table. Most people, however, are just curious. Since the colors and the fluorescence are more in the realm of chemistry than nuclear science, even nuclear engineers are perplexed by why the color of the glaze is orange-red and the color of the glass is yellow-green, and why the glass fluoresces but the glaze does not.

Now admittedly, the Post Office series was not meant to honor Fiestaware per se, but rather to honor the man who designed the Fiestaware line (Frederick Hurten Rhead). Nevertheless, I thought the fact that one of 12 stamps on American industrial design features an early use of uranium was significant. So, although the Post Office's stamps would not ordinarily be a subject for one of my blogposts, I felt I could take a late summer break from the more serious stuff and write about Fiestaware and uranium glass.

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The Japanese Government and Transparency:

Another Issue for Nuclear Reactor Regulation

Left: Damaged reactors at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, Japan. Right: President Jimmy Carter arriving at Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant after accident.

Just when I thought I'd said about all I could say on aspects of the Japanese government organization and operation, two excellent articles come to my attention. One addresses an issue that I have not directly covered in my previous posts. The second provides more background on an issue I did cover before. I will spend most of this post talking about the first issue, which is the lack of transparency in the way the Japanese government has acted in the past.

An interesting article in the Japan Times in the past week highlights differences in transparency in the US and Japan, using TMI and Fukushima as examples. It looks at both similarities and differences. Journalists covering both events described information coming from the respective government agencies as the events unfolded as "chaotic," "confusing" and "contradictory." Part of the real-time problems in both cases may be the almost inevitable confusion that seems to arise when information is coming in piecemeal and being redistributed the same way. In the case of Japan, however, the problems the journalists observed may have been exacerbated by the fact that it now appears that some information was withheld.

But what the article observes is the real difference between the two incidents is in the ability to reconstruct after the event what happened and what was discussed as the incident unfolded. In the US, even in the midst of the crisis, and I might add, at a time when the technical options were more limited, the NRC continued to follow the requirement to make records of all discussions that occur when a majority of the Commissioners meet. Because some of these meetings took place at odd times and places, the article reports that NRC staff carried tape recorders that they could turn on any time three Commissioners were present. Later, transcripts were made which provided a valuable record of what the NRC did and did not know.

By contrast, the rules in Japan are different. While important decisions must be recorded, until recently, the discussions leading up to those decisions did not necessarily have to be recorded. In particular, transcripts are required for formal meetings but not for impromptu meetings. The legal standing of the group holding the meeting also has allowed many meetings to take place without a record of them being made.

The good news is that a new law went into effect at the beginning of the Japanese fiscal year in April that establishes the same recording requirements for all government agencies, and extends recording requirements to cover the whole decision-making process. The bad news is that this law was not in effect in the immediate aftermath of Fukushima. Therefore, many critical meetings were held following Fukushima for which no records exist, and it may prove impossible to fully figure out what did happen in the interactions between the government and TEPCO. As a result, it will be more difficult to assure that any shortcomings are corrected in the future.

Japan does have an equivalent to the US Freedom of Information Act--the Information Disclosure Law which has been in effect since 2001. Under this law, citizens can request whatever governmental records do exist regarding the accident. However, the record will clearly have major gaps due to the lack of complete records relating to decisions, and some critics cited in the article believe that government officials will take a bureaucratic anti-disclosure stance. The fact that the world's eyes are upon them may make this more difficult. Time will tell.

The second article of interest to me this past week, also in the Japan Times, was about a reformist bureaucrat. Of particular relevance were his views on amakudari, which I addressed in an earlier blog post. The article covers much of what I covered before--that is, the Japanese government is an "up or out" system, so many bureaucrats must leave the government with inadequate pensions and years of productive working life left. The system that has evolved has them outplaced into government-affiliated organizations or private companies that are connected in some way with the ministry where they worked. Therefore, they have a powerful self-interest in protecting and supporting the industries they are supposed to be regulating. The article adds some further details and examples. It also observes that private sector workers may have the same inclination to manipulate systems to their own benefit, but the competition between their firm and other firms helps keep this tendency in check. There are no such "checks and balances" within the government.

At present, there is a bill in the Diet (the Japanese Parliament) that would institute some government reforms. However, the article says that the prospects for the success of this bill are uncertain, and in any event, it does not address the system of amakudari at all.

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ANS and Women:

My Early Days in ANS

This posting will be a little off the usual topics of this blog. It is spurred by an upcoming blog in the ANS Nuclear Cafe that will feature the personal stories of several women in the nuclear field. I am pleased to be one of the women asked to share my thoughts there. I wanted to use my allotment of the space on the ANS page to explain why I think volunteer work for one's professional society is important, and not to take up that valuable space with personal stories. Nevertheless, the exercise got me to reminiscing, so I will tell more of the back story here.

My story is not a typical one, and I am not presenting it as a model to follow. Part of this story (along with more than you really need to know about the rest of my career) has already been recounted in the July 2001 issue of Nuclear News, but there is more that I am telling here for the first time.

Most people get involved in their technical societies through their technical work. They present a couple of papers, maybe organize a session--and then later, perhaps, go into governance. My path was a little different.

When I joined the ANS in 1969, I was a grad student at MIT. I really had very little idea of what a professional society did, but I was told I should join, and the student rate was cheap, so I did. But I did not get involved at all in any student section activities.

I finished my doctorate and moved to the Washington, DC area in 1972. The November meeting was in Washington that year, so I prepared and submitted a paper on my thesis, which had been on radiation damage studies using proton channeling. This would be my first paper presented at a professional meeting, and since it was in my local area, I wanted my husband, Mike, to come lend some moral support.

I duly registered him for the meeting, and when we picked up the registration material, we noticed something odd. The badge was pink! In those days, the non-technical program for guests of attendees was called the "Wives' Program." My husband turned to me and said, "You ought to do something about this." And so I did. I complained to the management, and the "Wives' Program" became the "Guest Program" shortly thereafter.

But that incident started me thinking. I had always assumed that the nuclear field was different from all other fields with respect to gender equality. After all, one of the earliest leaders of the field, Marie Curie, was a woman. Somehow, I hypothesized that this should mean that the men in the field recognized the equal capability of women. I decided to ask ANS if I could test that hypothesis by doing a survey of the female members of ANS.

This, of course, required me to ask for approval--and support--for such a survey, and was my first real brush with Society governance. If I would do the work, they agreed to authorize the activity and cover the postage. (There was no e-mail in those pre-historic days, let alone LinkedIn, Google + or Facebook!) In due course, I prepared a survey, ANS sent it out, and I received and analyzed the answers. To my surprise (really!), the results did not support my hypothesis at all. Women in the ANS suffered all the problems that women in other fields were experiencing at that time. There was even one added issue. Because of the effects of radiation on unborn children, some companies were effectively barring all women of child-bearing age from all activities that might expose them to radiation, just in case.

My involvement with the ANS might well have ended there, except that I received a phone call from a stranger one day. She introduced herself on the phone. It was Gail de Planque. She was one of the women who had received and responded to the survey, and now she had a question for me. "What are you going to do next?" "Next?" I replied. I hadn't thought that far ahead. "What you need to do," she told me, "is to put together a special session on women's issues for the upcoming ANS meeting." "How do you do that?" I asked. I hadn't a clue. So she and I partnered and co-chaired a very successful session that covered my survey and a number of other issues of interest to women.

In the course of developing and running the session, Gail introduced me to a number of other active members of the Society, and I was getting to know the ropes. Octave du Temple, the Executive Director of the ANS at the time, made it a point to seek me out at meetings and ask how I was doing. A few years later, Clyde Jupiter asked me to serve as Assistant Technical Program Chair for the November meeting when it was again in Washington, DC. I knew nothing about organizing technical sessions, but he was a patient teacher, and being on the conference committee helped me meet other people in the local nuclear community. Shortly after that, I was asked to serve on the Honors and Awards Committee. I knew nothing about honors and awards either, but I realized that being on a committee helped me get approval from my boss to attend meetings, so I said yes. At the time, I worked for a company whose work was mostly classified, and in any event, was outside the mainstream of ANS activity, so presenting papers on my work was not an option.

Following that, one committee assignment led to another. I used to joke to my husband that the ANS management noticed I had a lot of energy, and was trying to channel my energy where they wanted it and not leave me to my own devices. Perhaps there was some truth to that, but by the time I started chairing subcommittees, then committees, I realized that managing a volunteer activity was a bit tricky. There is no stick, and there is very little carrot! So you really need someone who has ideas, energy, and follow through. You always do professional society work in addition to your day job, so it's nice to work with people who deliver without a lot of nagging. And someone who can produce a good product and meet deadlines is worth his or her weight in gold. Or maybe in uranium!

So pretty soon, I found myself involved in a number of different aspects of ANS. The work was interesting and I got to know a lot of fascinating people I would not otherwise have met. I was awed that I was rubbing elbows with people who were real movers and shakers in the field. Over time, I also learned a lot from side conversations about parts of the nuclear field outside my own. So whenever someone asked me to participate in something new, I always found it hard to say no. I got to know many different facets of the Society--honors and awards, scholarship, planning, program, finance, international. I always started out with very little knowledge of an area, but I invariably developed a strong interest in each area. Although I put a lot of time into ANS, I felt I got a lot out of it, too. I had a chance to do things like prepare proposals and lead activities that I later was able to draw upon when I was faced with doing these types of things in my paying job.

For me, involvement in my technical division (nuclear installations safety) and my local section came after service on a number of the governance committees and on the ANS Board of Directors. That is perhaps the opposite of how most ANS members get involved in ANS, and while I wouldn't particularly recommend that approach as the optimal one, it certainly worked well in my case, leading ultimately to my serving as president of ANS (2001-2). And the skills I gained, the knowledge I picked up, and the connections I made served me in good stead throughout my career as well.

Sometimes, when I reflect back on my service in ANS, the contacts I made there, and the progression of my career, I wonder what would have happened if ANS had not handed my husband a pink badge in 1972!

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Good News in the Nuclear World:

Reflecting on a Good Week

Left: Tomari Nuclear Power Station, Hokkaido, Japan; Right: Indian Point Energy Center, Buchanan, New York

For a change, most of the news on the nuclear front this past week seemed to be good:

- One reactor in Japan that had been down for repairs was permitted to restart by the local authorities. Under the Japanese system, approval from the local government is a step in the restart process after outages at nuclear power plants. It had been expected that local opposition might make it difficult for local government officials to give such approval, so getting that first approval is a positive sign. Of course, other regions and other government officials may respond differently, and any further hiccups at Fukushima could continue to erode public confidence, but for now, there is at least one sign that cooler heads can still prevail in Japan.

- The Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) approved the completion of the Bellefonte nuclear power plant. No board members voted against the move. There had been some vocal local opposition, which included demonstrators costumed as zombies, but they did not sway a single member of the board. Bellefonte had been under construction when it was cancelled in the late 1980s, so its resurrection is a welcome sign.

- NRC has completed its safety evaluation for two reactors, Summer 2 and 3, proposed for construction by SCANA Corp's South Carolina Electric &Gas and has found no safety issues that would preclude issuing a license for the construction and operation of the plant. A mandatory hearing is still required, but this is a major milestone for that project.

- Despite all the rhetoric from New York's state capital, a poll showed that 49% of the residents near the Indian Point nuclear power plant want it to remain open. While some might not find that terribly impressive--after all, it is technically less than half--there is always an undecided group, so this 49% is actually more than the 40% in favor of shutting the plant down.

Individually, these are small steps, and clearly, this is no time to rest on our laurels. There is much, much more to be done in all these cases, as well as on many other nuclear matters. Still, having four positive events occur in close succession gives some hope that people are getting past the news of the past few months. That, to me, is a very hopeful sign.

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Observations on Japan and its Nuclear Program:

Not Anti-Japanese!

A reader said to me recently that it sounded like my recent posts on the Japanese situation were anti-Japanese. I was surprised to hear that, because nothing could be further from the truth. But if he thought that, others might also have the same impression, so I thought I should set the record straight.

First, my husband and I have a long-standing love and affection for all things Japanese. We have visited Japan numerous times, have lived and worked there twice, have seen more of Japan's famous sights than many Japanese (climbed Mount Fuji, traveled to Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku and Okinawa, etc.), and have many, many good friends in Japan.

Having lived and worked there, I do feel I have more of an inside view of both its strengths and weaknesses. And truly, every personal trait or national characteristic has both a plus and a minus.

On the plus side, as we all saw in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami, the Japanese people--as a whole--are more cooperative, more patient, and more polite, even in the face of unspeakable calamity, than many other nationalities. (I say "as a whole" because I realize that any population exhibits the whole spectrum of human behavior, just in different proportions.) I'll leave it to sociologists to explain why, but I have encountered the kindness and helpfulness of strangers many times in Japan. Also on the plus side, I have never seen a more diligent and dedicated workforce.

On the minus side, maybe the same communal perspective that encourages people to help each other and to share scarce resources also causes organizations to tend to close ranks and protect each other in the face of a revelation of wrongdoing or misconduct. Maybe the well-known horror at the thought of losing face causes people to try to hide mistakes instead of acknowledging them and fixing them.

Since my last posting, new revelations have come to light about attempts by the Japanese nuclear regulatory authority to "stack the deck" at public meetings, so I think I can stand by my previous observations. I suspect I could draw up a similar set of pluses and minuses for American workers, but the U.S. is not as much in the spotlight at the moment.

The point of bringing these things up is not to try to trash the Japanese character. It is just to try to share my perspective on why events have unfolded as they have, and to point out some of the behaviors that should be considered closely in making decisions about how to revamp the Japanese nuclear industry and its regulators. Just as an individual can train him- or herself to suppress certain behaviors and to emphasize others, or to exercise somewhat different behaviors in different situations, so can an organization.

As the Japanese are grappling with the aftermath of the Fukushima incident, I hope the insights I have offered and may continue to offer can provide some suggestions about what to do in the future.

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