According to an Associated Press article published today, U.S. electric utilities are looking to buy reactors “off-the-shelf,” choosing from a few different reactor designs. The article focuses on Southern Company’s new reactor at Plant Vogtle under development in Georgia. While the Vogtle project uses the AP1000 design, the piece also mentions AREVA’s EPR technology and several other designs.

Jacques Besnainou, CEO of AREVA North America, said safety was a selling point for his firm’s EPR, which has a system to catch and cool a molten core in the event of a major accident.

Despite the challenges of building new plants, he said, AREVA is benefiting from its experience in Finland and France, and the two EPR projects are on schedule.

“The key here is to be able to demonstrate that we can build a new reactor on time and on budget,” he said. “Once we do that, the renaissance as a whole is golden.”

Click here to read the rest of the article.

And we can note how today is the 56th anniversary of the signing of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. The act declared a nuclear policy that “the development, use and control of atomic energy shall be directed so as to promote world peace, improve the general welfare, increase the standard of living and strengthen free competition in private enterprise.”

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Highly recommend that you follow the weekly nuclear blog carnival as it shifts from blogger to blogger each Friday.

This is the 16th carnival and this week’s it’s at Dan’s blog.

Bringing industry and medicine together in the battle against cancer, AREVA Med has announced another important milestone to continue this fight.

AREVA Med, an AREVA subsidiary, is dedicated to developing medical grade lead-212 isotopes to be used in promising Radioimmunotherapy. Lead-212 is a rare radioactive isotope that lies at the heart of promising nuclear medical research to develop new cancer treatments.

In nuclear medicine, the development of new treatments is dictated by isotope availability. By utilizing AREVA’s engineering and technical expertise, in March 2010, AREVA Med announced the construction of a Lead-212 industrial production plant that will allow the creation of new targeted therapies for patients. 


Now, to support the project’s rapid development, AREVA Med has formed an Advisory Committee to provide strategic advice and scientific guidance in the field of Radioimmunotherapy.
read more…

By Jarret Adams

Over at the Huffington Post today, Carl Pope of the Sierra Club has dished up another attack on the economics of nuclear energy that goes light on the facts and heavy on the rhetoric. Contrary to Mr. Pope’s wishes, nuclear energy’s revival already is well under way with more than 50 new plants under construction worldwide. More than 20 of these new reactors are being built in China alone.

The main question is whether Americans will see past the constant flood of disinformation about nuclear energy and support the revival as other industrial nations have done. In fact, nuclear energy is by far America’s largest source of electricity that does not produce greenhouse gases.

While new nuclear plants are expensive, the cost of electricity generated by these facilities over 60 year is relatively inexpensive. Once these costs are amortized, the operating costs of nuclear plants (at about 2 cents/kwh) are well below natural gas (at 5 cents/kwh) and even lower than coal.

Nuclear energy also has an excellent safety record in the United States. In fact (another fact), it is safer to work in the nuclear industry than in manufacturing, according the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Regarding ability to withstand hurricanes, the Gulf region nuclear plants withstood Hurricane Katrina without sustaining any significant damage and were among the first major power generation back online after the storm.

We at AREVA fully support renewable energy as another way to produce low-carbon electricity, especially if we are talking about our state-of-the-art offshore wind turbines, concentrated solar power, and advanced biopower facilities.

Why does Mr. Pope trash nuclear in an effort to promote renewables? In actuality, nuclear energy and renewables are complementary – a combination of the two is the best near-term way to remove CO2 emissions from our electricity grid. And why does he put in a plug for low natural gas prices?

by Patti Case
Public and Regulatory Affairs manager for Green Diamond Resource Company

Welcome to the Olympic Peninsula, where Green Diamond Resource Company owns vast acres of timberland. Our company has its roots here (pun intended); 120 years ago Sol Simpson founded Simpson Logging Company in the heart of this rainy country, and today Green Diamond is still privately owned by Sol’s descendants.

Western Washington is undoubtedly timber country, a wood basket to the world. Washington also is home to some of the toughest forest practices regulations in the world, protecting soil productivity, clean water, fish and wildlife, and ensuring long-term sustainability.

The use of woody biomass to produce energy is one more component of this stewardship. We used to call it slash. It was in the way of planting a new forest, so foresters once employed broadcast burning, torching the woody debris where it lay in harvest units. It made for fantastic sunsets over the Olympic Mountains – and, admittedly, impacted air quality.

Several years ago, broadcast burning was replaced by controlled burning, in which foresters pile the debris, wait till a drizzly day in October or so, then burn the piles in order to open up planting sites. Near busy roads, state law requires forest landowners to abate the hazard of wildfire presented by wood slash as these residuals dry out.

Gathering wood residuals and shipping them to a biomass facility presents a positive alternative to reduce the risk of wildfire and clear areas for reforestation – one that is not economically viable unless woody biomass is needed for power generation.

State law requires that forest landowners leave both standing trees and down wood in harvested areas, to provide wildlife habitat and enrich soils. Green Diamond foresters will supervise biomass removal on our land, to ensure that sufficient woody debris is left behind and that biomass removal equipment does not compact soils. After all, forestry is a long term business. We’ve been on this landscape for 120 years, and we intend to be here for future generations, as well.

In another important step to deliver renewable energy and jobs to Washington state, ADAGE, the biopower joint venture between AREVA and Duke Energy, announced today that it has signed its first long-term biomass fuel supply agreement with Green Diamond Resource Company, who owns and manages timberland in the immediate area.

Through this agreement, a portion of the woody biomass for the ADAGE Mason County facility would come from wood residuals. This material is what remains in the forest after harvest operations, and it will be removed by Green Diamond Forestry ensuring compliance with Washington forest practice regulations and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative Standard.

The proposed Mason County facility would bring 55 megawatts of renewable biomass generation and addition to a $250 million initial investment in Mason County. The project is expected to create more than 400 direct jobs during construction and more than 100 direct jobs during permanent operation and will use state-of-the-art environmental controls to protect public health.

For more information check out the ADAGE website where you can find much more on biomass and how it contributes to clean energy generation.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission held a public meeting in Boise, Idaho, on Aug. 9 to hear from the public, elected officials and other stakeholders on the draft environmental impact statement (EIS) for the AREVA Eagle Rock Enrichment Facility under development near Idaho Falls. The NRC held this meeting in Boise at the behest of a Boise-based antinuclear group in addition to a previously scheduled public forum in Idaho Falls on Aug. 12.

AREVA welcomes these opportunities in Boise, Idaho Falls and elsewhere to allow people to learn more about the Eagle Rock project. We are developing a state-of-the-art uranium enrichment facility using proven, reliable and safe technology to produce fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.

Representatives for several elected officials, including Idaho Gov. C. L. “Butch” Otter, members of the Idaho delegation and others expressed their support for the Eagle Rock project at the Boise meeting. Also many members of Idaho’s business community praised the positive economic impact the project would have, including the creation of thousands of jobs. Others expressed concerns about the potential environmental impact of the facility. While views ran the spectrum, this well-run meeting by the NRC offered a good opportunity for stakeholders to learn more about the project.

“AREVA is excited to be a part of Idaho’s business community, and we look forward to continuing our work with the state and the people of southeastern Idaho,” said Bob Poyser, vice president of regional affairs at AREVA. “We plan to build and operate a safe, environmentally sustainable, world class facility that is important to America’s energy security, important to our American utility customers and important to the advancement of Idaho’s continued leadership in nuclear programs.”

Click here for more information on the Eagle Rock project.

In a letter yesterday, the Western Governors’ Association, representing the governors of 19 states and three US-flag Pacific islands, called on the Obama Administration to “develop a clear and unambiguous federal biomass policy,” saying that “many of the issues presented remain unresolved, consequently impeding our efforts to protect our citizens and forests, promote renewable energy and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil.”  Read the press release. 
 
By supporting the collection of wood waste biomass to fuel biopower facilities, the Administration would stimulate regional sustainable forestry economies and provide leadership in developing renewable power resources. Economic stimulus and energy policy—now, where have we heard those concepts recently?
 
Learn more about the design and development of a modern biomass power facility at our ADAGE Mason County project.