During this Thanksgiving weekend, we’d want to highlight that we’re thankful for our AREVA online communities building here and on a number of social networks. Today we’d highlight our Facebook fans. Thanks everyone!
If you are a Facebook user and have not yet joined this Page, please do think about joining!
“The US will announce a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions before next month’s UN climate summit, according to a White House official. The target is expected to be in line with figures contained in legislation before the Senate – a reduction of about 17-20% from 2005 levels by 2020.”COP15 Copenhagen
- from “US will announce target for cutting carbon emissions” by Richard Black, Environment correspondent, BBC News website
Here are some great images of the heavy components as they are unloaded at the OL3 site.
Olkiluoto 3: Yesterday in Finland AREVA delivered four steam generators and pressurizer for the OL3 reactor currently under construction. These heavy reactor components that were crafted with precision at AREVA’s Saint-Marcel plant are an excellent display of AREVA’s engineering and manufacturing expertise. These pieces are also the first components ever manufactured for the generation III+ EPR™ reactor.
For more information on the successful delivery that continues the progress at OL3, check out the press release.
Heavy equipment en route to the Olkiluoto 3 site.
There have been an increasing number of articles — and we’ve tried to post many of them on the blog — noticing the trend of former opponents of nuclear energy seeing that in an age of climate change issues, that nuclear energy becomes a new, and to them, a surprising ally in battling greenhouse gasses and producing clean energy. In this week’s Washington Post front page story, they highlight several stories like this:
But Steve Cochran, director of the National Climate Campaign at the Environmental Defense Fund — a group that opposed new nuclear plants in the United States as recently as 2005 — also described a new and evolving “pragmatic” approach coming from environmental camps. “I guess you could call it ‘grudging acceptance,’ ” he said.
“If we are really serious about dealing with climate change, we are going to have to be willing to look at a range of options and not just rule things off the table,” he said. “We may not like it, but that’s the way it is.”
That position, observers say, marks a significant departure. “Because of global warming, most of the big groups have become less active on their nuclear campaign, and almost all of us are taking another look at our internal policies,” said Mike Childs, head of climate change issues for Friends of the Earth in Britain. “We’ve decided not to officially endorse it, in part because we feel the nuclear lobby is already strong enough. But we are also no longer focusing our energies on opposing it.”
Blogger Rod Adams notes this same story and adds what strikes us as wise commentary:
“My analysis of the strength of the technical advantages of nuclear energy is that anyone who is not actively opposed to nuclear energy development is effectively FOR nuclear energy. (If you are not against us, you are for us.) That is especially true when the group that has made the shift has been working so hard against the technology for so many years. Think about a massive tug of war – if some of the people on the other side simply let go and stand up, the rope moves rather rapidly in your direction.
That is, of course, assuming that your side does not stop pulling.”
We’d like to bring your attention to this article from KIDK.com (the local Idaho Falls television station), which talks about how Idaho Falls is weathering the current economic storm. The article, which is mostly about businesses in the Idaho Falls region, points out at the very end that AREVA’s planned Eagle Rock Enrichment Facility is bringing new hope to the region:
The biggest change our area will see will be the arrival of Areva and their multi-billion dollar uranium enrichment facility.
Not only will the company hire locals or bring in new jobs that will stimulate our local economy, a very hurting construction industry will be major benefactors of the company. [. . .]
Areva is likely to bring between 800 and 1,000 construction jobs alone. And once the facility is running, more than 300 jobs will be created.
That’s the kind of thing that can really help a local economy… because the money paid to the people who work those 800-1,000 construction jobs, and the 300+ permanent jobs, will keep circulating around the Idaho Falls region as the employees patronize local businesses and services. Idaho Falls is just one community that’s finding new vitality in the green jobs of the nuclear renaissance.
Mark Flanagan of NEI is highlighting a CFR interview with Duke Energy’s CEO, James E. Rogers, in which he talks about the future of the energy industry – and the importance of nuclear energy not only for our CO2-free energy future, but also for our economy:
But the difference in the jobs is quite different, because if you’re wiping off a solar panel, it’s sort of a minimum wage type of job, [with] much higher compensation for nuclear engineers and nuclear operators. If our goal is to rebuild the middle class, nuclear plays a key role there, particularly if coal is out of the equation.
He also talks about the U.S. regaining its role as the leader in nuclear energy:
People forget that [the United States was] the innovator of nuclear energy. We developed the technologies. And what people have also forgotten is that 20 percent of our electricity comes from nuclear, and that we produce twice the amount of electricity from nuclear than any country in the world. We sit here today, not turning dirt on a single nuclear plant. [. . .] We have a competitive advantage on building nuclear, on building recycling to address the spent fuel, and that would be a great loss of opportunity if we don’t find a way to seize it and rebuild the supply.
Like Mark Flanagan said, we could spend all day highlighting great lines from this interview, but it would probably be better if you just read the interview for yourself. You should also know that Duke Energy is teaming up with AREVA on the ADAGE joint venture focusing on the biopower sector. ADAGE was recently in the news because JEA, the energy company for Jacksonville, Florida, announced that it plans to power 40,000 homes with power generated from ADAGE’s biomass plants. We’re proud to be working with Duke Energy and Jim Rogers, who clearly “gets it” when it comes to the future of energy generation in the U.S.
Nice to see a description from Idaho Samizdat’s Dan Yurman of the blogger event last week. Here’s a snippet:
While the mainstream news media panel was dissecting their coverage of the nuclear energy industry, a group of 45 people met Tuesday Nov 17 to discuss how social media is making an impact. One of the themes of the evening round table discussion is how nuclear bloggers are taking myths out of the debate.
…Areva is the only major nuclear energy firm in the U.S. that has paid any attention to social media in terms of people outside the firm who develop independent content.
The blogger meeting was organized by Rod Adams, Atomic Insights; Dave Bradish, NEI; John Wheeler, ThisWeekInNuclear, and Dan Yurman, Idaho Samizdat. Corporate support for the conference room and refreshments was provided by Areva and CoolHandNuke.
There’s a lot more detail in the full post… go read the whole thing!
Lynn Edward Weaver
“The technology is straightforward. Used nuclear fuel is taken to a recycling facility where it is chemically reprocessed into a so-called mixed-oxide fuel, which is then used in a nuclear power plant to produce more electricity. This process significantly reduces the need to mine more uranium. And, more importantly, it reduces the amount of nuclear waste that cannot be recycled and must be stored in concrete-and-steel cylinders until an underground repository becomes available….Closing the nuclear fuel cycle with a reprocessing facility would increase nuclear power’s share of electricity generation in the United States; further the goals of meeting the nation’s energy needs from power plants that don’t pollute the air or emit greenhouse gases; lessen the need for imported uranium; and significantly reduce the amount of nuclear waste that will need to be permanently disposed of. Let’s get on with it.”
– Lynn Edward Weaver, president emeritus of the Florida Institute of Technology (from news-press.com November 19, 2009)
By Katherine Berezowskyj
Multibrid M5000 Turbine
Earlier this week, the first offshore wind farm in Germany, alpha ventus, was completed. Located in the North Sea, alpha ventus features twelve 5 megawatt turbines, half of which were developed and constructed by AREVA Multibrid. Taking just under seven months to complete the entire project, this also becomes the world’s first offshore wind park to have a dozen turbines this size. This a major project for Germany as the country works to generate a larger percentage of its energy from renewable resources.
The M5000 turbine made by AREVA Multibrid is designed specifically for the difficult marine weather conditions. The installation of the Multibrid M5000 began in April of this year, and their six tripod foundations were secured within two months. The first offshore turbine was completed in the middle of July, making it the country’s first. All six of the M500 offshore turbines are complete and undergoing test runs. Already, they have produced more than 13 million kilowatt hours of clean, offshore wind generation. AREVA Multibrid is working right now to bring this renewable energy source to the United States. With the constancy of wind and generating capacity, offshore wind turbines, like the M5000, could make a huge impact in renewable energy generation for the United States.
AREVA subsidiary T&D is also contributing its knowledge and practical expertise to the alpha ventus project—they are delivering a high-voltage transformer-station platform which will receive the wind generated energy and distribute it to the shore. Please download “Offshore Wind Farm ‘alpha ventus’ 110/30 kV transformer station on an offshore platform” for more information.
by Jarret Adams
AREVA’s first U.S. Supplier Day in Baltimore played to a full house as representatives from more than 100 current and potential suppliers came to learn about how they can partner with AREVA to build new EPR™ reactors in the United States and internationally. Maryland is the first stop in a series of Supplier Days to be held in states where U.S. EPR™ reactors are planned.
The Supplier Day focused on the first project planned for the U.S. EPR™ reactor is under development by UniStar Nuclear Energy LLC, a joint venture between Constellation Energy and EDF. The new nuclear plant would be located adjacent to Constellation’s Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in southern Maryland.
“AREVA is committed to the revival of the U.S. nuclear energy industry and is investing in new nuclear projects around the country, and now we are looking for partners who can help us manufacture U.S. EPR™ nuclear plants that are ‘Made in America,’” said Mike Rencheck, President and CEO of AREVA NP Inc. “The strong response to our call for partners confirms our conviction that the AREVA EPR™ technology offers the path of greatest certainty for new nuclear power generation and to brings jobs to U.S. communities.”
In addition to creating thousands of jobs and spurring billions of dollars of investment into the regional economy, this project would require hundreds of qualified suppliers and subcontractors. That is why is AREVA is moving forward now to find the right partners not just to build new EPR™ reactors but to help revive the U.S. nuclear industry.
Here’s a great piece about the event from the Baltimore Sun.
