May, 2012

The following story originally appeared in NEI’s Nuclear Energy Overview. The tsunami that brought about the nuclear accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi facility was not adequately accounted for in the facility’s design basis, said a co-author of a report for the American Nuclear Society. Michael Corradini...

The following story originally appeared in NEI’s Nuclear Energy Overview. The nuclear energy industry continues to make progress on developing guidance for implementing the highest-priority recommendations from the NRC’s Fukushima task force. The NRC meanwhile is preparing to send approved guidance back...

While the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is primarily known for its oversight functions, the agency, together with the Department of Energy, is also responsible for awarding a wide array of academic scholarships, fellowships and other institutional support that's designed to promote the development...

Who said it? “It’s a great pleasure to be back here again and a real pleasure to open something that’s going to have serious and important consequences in the years to come. “Something is going to have to be done to supply the huge increase in the amount of energy we need. There has to be some part of...

Last week at the 2012 Nuclear Energy Assembly (NEA 2012), Tony Pietrangelo, the Chief Nuclear Officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute, moderated a panel discussion on the industry’s response to the events at Fukushima. We’ve posted the video from the session on YouTube and embedded a copy...

The British Green Party tried something interesting this weekend: About 200 anti-GM activists have protested outside an agricultural research centre where a genetically modified wheat crop is being grown . Scientists at Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, had been concerned that members...

Industry/Regulatory/Political The Japanese government and four regional power companies will announce electricity rationing contingency plans by mid-June. With all of Japan’s nuclear reactors offline, the government is predicting power shortages in the western and northern areas of the country...

Over the weekend, multiple media outlets reported that trace levels of radioactive Cesium had been found in Blue Fin Tuna caught off the coast of California. The radioactive particles had been picked up from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (click here for the report), according to a report...

  NextEra Energy’s fleet operations training manager, Chuck Sizemore, oversees the initial licensing and continual training of reactor and senior reactor operators at the company’s five nuclear energy facilities in Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire and Wisconsin. Sizemore has 27 years of experience in...

As promised, we've got additional content from NEA 2012 that I wanted to share with you before we started the Holiday weekend. NEI's Anna Gomez was our go to person behind the lens for the entire show, and we're in the midst of compiling photos and writing cutlines for our NEA 2012 Flickr...

After a whirlwind three days in Charlotte at NEA 2012, I'm back in Washington. And while I'm done unpacking my suitcase at home, we're not done unpacking all of the content we created during the conference. One of the highlights of the conference had to be a roundtable discussion on industry...

We don’t see a lot of polls on nuclear energy taken in individual states. Support nationally is usually above 50 and sometimes 60 percent in most big polls taken about it ( this Gallup poll from March has it at 57 percent). But the states? Well, The Pennsylvania Energy Alliance has tried a poll and found...

The following story originally appeared in NEI’s Nuclear Energy Overview. Radiation released during the accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi facility was much lower than previously believed, according to a recently released World Health Organization report. The report gathers together more data about...

The following story originally appeared in NEI’s Nuclear Energy Overview. A panel at Nuclear Energy Assembly on implementing lessons learned from the Fukushima accident agreed that the industry’s response to regulatory changes should be approached holistically. Charles “Chip” Pardee, Exelon Generation...

CHARLOTTE, N.C.—Duke Energy Corp. employees at the Oconee Nuclear Station in South Carolina have been honored with the B. Ralph Sylvia “Best of the Best” Award for completing the first digital upgrades to commercial reactor protection systems in the United States. The conversion from the analog instrumentation...

This morning at around 10:00 a.m. U.S. EDT, NEI's Chief Nuclear Officer, Tony Pietrangelo, will chair a panel session at the 2012 Nuclear Energy Assembly entitled, "Ensuring Operational Safety While Implementing Lessons Learned from Fukushima." Panelists for the session include: Charles...

The Associated Press published a misleading article in newspapers across the country last week in which it largely calls into question some of the nuclear energy industry’s emergency preparedness programs . The article suggests that new changes to federal regulations were passed behind closed doors and...

The U.K. government Tuesday published its long-awaited draft energy bill, which contains mechanisms and incentives designed to encourage around GBP110 billion investment in low-carbon energy such as offshore wind farms and new nuclear power stations. That sounds good. The Nasdaq story shows that the...

The following story originally appeared in NEI’s Nuclear Energy Overview. NEI urged the NRC to focus on high-priority “Tier 1” recommendations from the agency’s Fukushima task force report at a meeting at NRC headquarters last week attended by NEI’s Fukushima Steering Committee and agency staff. “The...

The following story originally appeared in NEI’s Nuclear Energy Overview. The nuclear energy industry’s priority is to make post-Fukushima enhancements “that will provide the greatest safety benefits in the shortest amount of time with the least distraction to our commitment to safe operations,” NEI...

Industry/Regulatory/Political The governors of Kyoto and Shiga prefectures oppose the restart of Ohi’s reactors, which the Ohi town assembly had approved last week. The governors say that the government should first finish investigating the causes of the Fukushima Daiichi accident and complete a long...

Greetings from Charlotte, North Carolina, where I've decamped to attend the 2012 Nuclear Energy Assembly at The Westin Charlotte Hotel. Though the conference won't officially begin until tomorrow, participants have already started to arrive in town ahead of tomorrow's opening session. Working...

As you may know, most European countries have a Green Party as part of the political mix. In most countries, they may pick up a few seats, but generally the goal is to keep their views front and center. Nuclear energy usually fares poorly. Here’s the British Green Party (from last year): In elections...

The Senate approved reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank this week. This made the first page of the Washington Post, but largely because it showed a level of comity not always seen in the Senate. As a subject, the Ex-Im bank is a little dry for many. So what does the bank do? The bank, which takes...

At the end of April, former Department of Energy official Robert Alvarez sounded the alarm about the safety of the spent fuel pool at Fukushima Daiichi Unit #4 (click here for his piece from the Huffington Post). Here at NEI, we've long been familiar with Alvarez's position on the disposition...