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I was recently invited to attend the first annual Clean
Energy Forum, hosted by Energy Northwest in Richland, Washington, which included a tour of the Columbia Generating station.
The Tour
We were greeted at the security gate by three polite security guards who inspected the bus and checked our photo IDs against
a list. This level of security isn't unique to nuclear power stations. You would have to go through a similar procedure to take a tour of
Hoover dam. We also had to leave our cell phones on the bus (which would also be
the case should you ever get the chance to take the highly recommended Boeing, Everett factory tour).
Next, we had to pass through metal detectors very similar to
the ones I had to walk through at the airport. Between the airports and tour, I passed through metal detectors
four different times on this trip.
We were given radiation dose badges (to document
that exposure levels were well-below any amount that could possibly affect
health).
We saw the control room mock-up where crews are trained to
staff the real control room. They ran through a simulated core shutdown from an
earthquake (including a shaking floor and emergency lighting), which took only
a few seconds to complete. It looked complex but I doubt that there were many more gauges, lights,
and switches in that control room than you would find in a 747 cockpit (between
365 and 970 of them, depending on model). Because a control room does not have to fly,
the gauges and switches were quite large and widely spaced in comparison.
Photo of 747 Cockpit National Air and Space Museum
The rest of the tour was pretty much like any other tour through an industrial facility, pipes, pumps, noise. The highlight for me was looking down onto the top of the nuclear power core. So much electricity from so little space.
We were also shown a cooling pool filled with used fuel.
Divers are sometimes hired to do maintenance in these pools. The taxi driver who
took me back to the airport explained that just three feet of water would shield
the diver from radiation. More from my taxi driver later.
![]() |
Sketch of Used Nuclear Fuel Cooling Pool |
I was hoping to see the dry cask storage area and maybe
take a walk around a cooling tower, but no such luck. These structures are
located outside and ambient temperatures were approaching 100 degrees F. Too
hot for a long stroll in the sun. Consider reading James Conca's article: America's Heat Wave No Sweat For Nuclear Power.
View inside of a typical cooling tower
Below is a an animation
showing how the Columbia power station works. It's pretty much like any other
thermal power station (solar thermal, geothermal, coal) except for the source
of heat energy that makes steam.
The Forum
The Schwag
You can find my review of Pandora's Promise on
their website here.
Efficiency
Although this power station is over three decades old
(middle-aged for a nuclear power station), costs of production have dropped 20%
since 2009, in part because improvements have allowed it to produce 70 more
megawatts of power. It also recently set a record by continuously producing
power without stoppage for just short of two years.
Small Modular Reactors (SMR)
NuScale Power gave a short presentation. NuScale is a company
developing small modular nuclear power stations which will be built in a
factory and trucked to a construction site for assembly. The most appealing
aspect of these to me is their potential to be used at the brown sites occupied
by closed coal power stations which already have transmission lines and sources
of cooling water etc.
Their simplicity is also very appealing. In the event of
losing all external power, the reactor will cool off passively without moving
parts (pumps, valves, etc).
Correcting Public Misconceptions
In light of recent actions by antinuclear groups, Energy
Northwest has been taking a more active role in correcting some misconceptions:
This was a "clean" energy forum, not a nuclear energy forum. Northwest
Energy also owns and operates hydro, wind, and solar stations. Their Twitter page is titled "Green energy from nuclear,
wind, hydro, solar." A quick Google search for the terms green and clean
energy finds that nuclear fits those definitions as well as hydro, wind, and solar.
The definitions will sometimes require the source to also be renewable, but
that's cheating. Renewable is not a synonym of clean or green and contrary to
what antinuclear organizations want you to believe, renewability is not the
overarching concern right now.
Consider reading James Conca's article on this subject: Is Nuclear Power A Renewable Or A Sustainable Energy Source?
With the exception of biomass and biofuels, nuclear, wind,
solar, and hydro are all low, or zero emissions sources, which, in my humble
opinion, is the term I think we should be using instead of vague ones like renewable,
clean, and green. Better yet, how hard is it to list all of the sources you're
talking about (nuclear, wind, solar, and hydro)?
The survey finds near-unanimity on the value of energy diversity. Ninety-six percent of Americans believe it is important to maintain energy diversity; 76 percent consider it very important to do so. Similarly, 86 percent of Americans say “we should take advantage of all low-carbon energy sources, including nuclear, hydro and renewable energy, to produce the electricity we need while limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
My Conclusions
The antinuclear Seattle City Council (hundreds of miles away from Richland) recently unanimously passed a resolution opposing nuclear energy.
The antinuclear Seattle City Council (hundreds of miles away from Richland) recently unanimously passed a resolution opposing nuclear energy.
I could be wrong but there appears to be a slight cultural
divide between the two communities:
Another story told by my cab driver was being asked by visitors
if he was afraid to swim in the Columbia river with all of the radiation
leaking into it. His response was that it would be diluted to harmless levels
by the river, and any leaks would be coming from liquid waste stored in old
underground tanks from the production of military weapons, not from the operation
of the nuclear power station. It was heartening to meet a cab driver from Richland who was better informed about nuclear waste at the Hanford
reservation than both Bill Nye the Science Guy
and the Seattle City Council.
The immediate concern for some U.S. nuclear power stations
(but not all) is to weather the historically low price of natural gas. This
could be done via a price on carbon or a modest subsidy per unit energy. And in
fact, New York has just led the way in doing the latter, essentially putting a defacto
price on carbon with a modest subsidy for some nuclear (both ideas reduce the use of
natural gas).
See James Conca's latest article: Cuomo Accepts Nuclear Is Clean For Upstate New York
I'll finish with some quotes from a Simpsons episode where
Lisa has grown up and is now president of the United States:
Lisa: If I'm going to bail
the country out, I'll have to raise taxes, but in my speech I'd like to avoid
calling it a "painful emergency tax carbon tax."
Milhouse: What about, "colossal
salary grab a nuclear subsidy?"
Lisa: See, that has the same
problem. We need to soften the blow.
Milhouse: Well, if you just
want to out-and-out lie tell the truth ...Okay, we could call it a, "temporary refund
adjustment zero-emissions credit."
Lisa: I love it.
Milhouse: Really? What else
do you love, Lisa?
Lisa: Fiscal solvency.
Milhouse: [disappointedly]
Oh. Yeah, me too.
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