In an editorial yesterday in the Ironton Tribune, Ohio Senator George Voinovich said clearly and strongly: Ohio must engage in the nuclear renaissance.

By talking about how the industry meets key concerns about jobs and the economy, Voinovich brought up the opportunities from the new Clean Energy Park Alliance announced for southern Ohio.
 

I was also excited to join Duke and AREVA to announce a large scale clean energy production center coming to Piketon, Ohio. This means thousands of jobs for Ohio, which will be part of the finest nuclear workforce in the world.

 
Voinovich also does the math to show just how many jobs are in the works, which is reflected by the boom in applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for new nuclear reactors.
 
“This means more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs will be created to supply the needed parts and components for the 30 nuclear reactors that are currently planned here in the United States.”

But Ohio isn’t the only state with energy concerns, and it certainly isn’t the only state that could use more jobs. Much of what Voinovich expressed is true for the rest of the U.S. – especially when the goal is dependable, reliable carbon-free energy.

Today, there is a huge energy gap between the renewable electricity we would like to have and the reliable, low-cost electricity we must have.  Nuclear is the best power source we have available to meet our energy needs while also curing emissions of greenhouse gases.

Here in the US. Our 104 nuclear plants provide 20% of our electricity.  That represents over 70 percents of the nation’s emission free generation portfolio.  Meanwhile, only 1.4 percent of our emission free power comes from wind, and only .08 percent from solar.

 
Voinovich outlined why nuclear energy is going to be a large part of the future.
 

Everyone is starting to get it – nuclear is a three’fer: Without it, we will not be able to reach our goal of reducing carbon emissions; Without it , we will not be able to provide the base-load electricity our growing country will demand; And, without it, we will not be able to rebuild our manufacturing base.

Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander has called for the construction of 100 more nuclear reactors over the next 20 years:

“It is an aggressive goal, but with presidential leadership it could happen,” the third-ranking Senate Republican told an economic and technology conference at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge.

“I am convinced it should happen because conservation and nuclear power are the only real alternatives we have today to produce enough low-cost, reliable, clean energy to clean the air, deal with climate change and keep good jobs from going overseas.”

Alexander said he would deliver that message this week speaking on the floor of the Senate, where he said all 40 Republicans and many Democrats support nuclear energy. He said he hopes President Barack Obama’s administration would embrace his call under efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

…and former EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman says it can be done:

Does that sound like a realistic goal? Former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman thinks so. 

“The industry has done that. It built four to five reactors a year in the ’60s and ’70s,” said Whitman during an interview with Greentech Media this morning. Whitman now co-chairs of a nuclear power advocacy group CASEnergy Coalition in Washington, D.C.

“People shouldn’t base their information on nuclear on Bart Simpson. That’s just not reality,” aid Whitman, referring to the popular cartoon character, whose father works as a safety inspector at a nuclear power plant.

Whitman said nuclear power could replace coal as the main source of electricity.

From notes for remarks by Armand Laferrère, President and CEO of AREVA Canada, to the C.D. Howe Roundtable Luncheon, April 15, 2009 Part I

It is not enough, however, to consolidate existing resources. We must also prepare the future, by hiring the right people and by organising a strong global supply chain.
Crisis or no crisis, AREVA needs the best people available to deliver the best products and services to our customers. In 2008, AREVA hired 12,000 new recruits globally. We have now, however, decided a recruitment pause. Sorry for the latecomers.
 
At the same time, we invested massively in the supply chain. In some cases, this was done through acquisitions. Two years ago, AREVA purchased Sfarsteel, one of two companies on Earth that can deliver very large, nuclear quality forgings. Sometimes also, we expanded capacities or created new factories, as I have mentioned before.
 
But in other cases yet, we chose to build long-term, strategic partnerships in order to ensure future deliveries. Let me give you a few examples of these partnerships. For convenience, I will limit myself to the news of the last six months.
 
Last October, AREVA partnered with Northrop-Grumman to build new manufacturing capacities for heavy components in Newport News, Virginia. This will be the first new nuclear manufacturing factory in North America in four decades.
 
One month later, last November, AREVA signed an agreement with Japan Steel and Works – the second company (with Sfarsteel) which knows how to produce the largest forgings of the quality required for nuclear components. JSW will give AREVA enough forging manufacturing slots for six nuclear plants each year from 2012 to 2020. We
were the first non-Japanese company ever to be invited to take a share in JSW’s capital.
 
Last December, we signed long-term partnership agreements with Rolls Royce and Balfour Beatty for the local engineering, manufacturing and construction of AREVA nuclear reactors in the United Kingdom.
 
And in February, we reached an agreement with the Indian nuclear commission to build a partnership with various Indian players for the delivery of at least two reactors in Jaitapur, Maharashtra.
 
Typically, these partnerships serve both a global and a local purpose.
 
Globally, they give AREVA’s partners an opportunity to provide highly specialised components to new builds around the world. Between us, this is already happening with Canadian companies as well. The plant that we are building in Finland has Canadian valves and a Canadian simulator. Canadian simulators are being installed in France as I speak, including one just below AREVA’s head office.
 
Locally, these partnerships allow us to build at a lower cost, and with maximum benefits for the local economies. They help us build local skills in a way that is consistent with our responsibilities as the industry leader.
*
How does this apply to the Canadian situation? Well, it applies directly. Since AREVA has a strong record of partnering with local companies on other markets, I do not see why anyone could believe that the situation would be different in Canada.
 
Canada has a great nuclear tradition, especially in Ontario. Even more importantly, this country kept its skills alive when others – some of them very close to here – were letting their own industry decay in times of low demand. There are 69,000 engineers in Ontario alone, and AREVA’s database includes the resumes of 25,000 Canadian nuclear professionals. This is a very attractive situation for a company like AREVA which needs the best skills worldwide. It would therefore be absurd to believe that, were AREVA to win a reactor in Canada, anybody with nuclear skills in this country could lose their job. The exact opposite is true: we would not only need to preserve the existing skills, but to build even more of them in Canada, as we have done in the United States, China, Japan, India and so on.
 
This is even more necessary when you consider that Ontario is much more than its own market. This province is at the center of a much larger North American market. This, of course, is very convenient for me today since I am not allowed to talk about the Ontario market itself.
 
First, there is Western Canada. Some oil sand projects have been delayed recently; but I don’t think that anyone doubts that they will start again when the price of oil shoots up. These projects will require enormous amounts of energy for extraction and upgrading.
 
Last year, AREVA did a simple, but telling study. We added all the oil sands and refinery projects scheduled to come on line between now and 2030. Then, we assessed what it would cost to power these new projects with natural gas alone. This showed that powering the Alberta oil industry alone would require as much natural gas in 2030 as all of Canada consumed in 2007. This would happen just as Canadian reserves for natural gas reach their natural peak. As a result, Canada would become a net importer of natural gas 15 years from now.
 
This shows that Western Canada needs to diversify its power sources, if only to continue powering its industry when the natural gas resource dries up. I am convinced that nuclear will be part of the solution.
 
But there is also the United States. U.S utilities have already announced that they will build seven AREVA reactors. Four of these projects are already in front of the U.S safety authority, while three others have been delayed due to the current economic crisis. When this crisis is over and AREVA finds itself building two reactors or more at the same time in the U.S market alone, we will need all the help we can get – engineers, valves, electrical equipment, construction capacities … you name it. The Canadian industry would be a very valuable partner in this adventure.
 
And nuclear is not the whole of this story. AREVA believes in clean air in general, not only in nuclear. This nuclear energy should therefore be complemented by the development of renewable energy where it makes economic sense. Two years ago, AREVA acquired a majority stake in Multibrid, a wind power company based in Germany with a technological leadership for large, offshore wind turbines. Demand for these turbines largely exceeds supply, so Multibrid is now looking for a site to build a second plant for blade manufacturing and assembly in North America. A team is being set up in Canada to compare possible sites and to liaise with developers all over the continent. With its recent Clean Energy Act, Ontario showed that it was ready to commit to clean energy. I do not want to anticipate on future announcements, but I can tell you already that AREVA has taken note. And we will obviously give priority to jurisdictions where AREVA, as a whole, feels welcome.
 
The electricity industry is at the dawn of a new era – an era that promises to deliver steady, reliable, zero emissions energy to meet the growing need in both developed and developing nations. AREVA is proud to be the industry leader at this time. We look forward to helping Canada carve for itself a significant role in this growing market.

From notes for remarks by Armand Laferrère, President and CEO of AREVA Canada, to the C.D. Howe Roundtable Luncheon, April 15, 2009

I am very glad to have this opportunity to address the largest think-tank in Ontario and to exchange views with such an impressive audience.
 
I want to say first, at the risk of disappointing some of you, that I will abide by the rules that stop all vendors from discussing the current RFP in Ontario. I am allowed to say, however, that the current Ontario process is part of a global phenomenon – that of the nuclear renaissance.
 
This renaissance has been slowed by the ongoing global economic and financial crisis. Some potential customers, such as South Africa, suddenly discovered last Fall that they had lost access to the financial markets for the financing of very large projects. Others, such as some U.S utilities, have delayed their investment plans as they felt the need to clean their balance sheets before going forward.
 
But in spite of these delays, the nuclear renaissance remains a reality. Twenty-three building sites are active as we speak: sixteen in Asia, five in Russia and two in Europe. Licensing for future projects is going ahead in the U.S, Canada and U.K, among other countries.
 
More importantly perhaps, the nuclear industry is still investing. My own company announced just last week a major investment plant to expand the capacity of existing equipment factories in Europe.
 
This is a sign of an industry which remains confident that it will have to answer a growing global demand. Part of this demand is currently delayed, to be sure. But we are used to thinking in terms of decades, not weeks or months. Whatever the current difficulties, it is a simple truth that in the next few decades, huge investment will be needed to cover the world’s energy demand. In the long term, demand for energy will continue to grow. This is a moral imperative – there is simply no way to reduce poverty in a growing world population without increasing our energy consumption. The current generation capacities will age and need replacement. The prices of fossil fuels may be low today, but oil & gas reserves are not infinite. These prices will almost certainly escalate when economic growth resumes. In the meantime, the world will keep looking for CO2-free electricity generation to reduce global warming.
 
These are all reasons why the demand for nuclear remains strong. But in order to go through an economic crisis such as the one that the world is experiencing now, demand is not enough: we need to adapt and organize to answer that demand. This is what has happened all over the world in the nuclear industry in the past few years.
First of all, we have experienced significant consolidation. Initially, this was due to the increased costs of designing and building nuclear plants that are both safer and more economical than the existing fleet – the models known as Generation 3 reactors. It took hundreds of millions of dollars to design Generation 2 reactors. The bill amounts to several billions for each Generation 3 design.
 
This means that no one can go it alone anymore. Our industry has had to give up on the quaint, outdated notion of national champions able to do everything by themselves. AREVA was created in 2001 through the merger of French, German and American companies. And in 2007, we partnered with Mitsubishi to create ATMEA, a joint-venture for new plant design and for the development of new nuclear fuels. My accent may have made you think otherwise, but the truth is that I am not representing a French company at all; I represent a multinational company headquartered in Paris. This company does not sell a French technology, but a global one. A technology that evolved out of an U.S design thanks to the common work of French and German engineers, who for our next products will be complemented by Japanese teams; and that was proven out of experience feedback from China and Finland. Out of the 102 nuclear plants that AREVA built or is currently building, only 59 are in France and the rest can be found in ten different countries over four continents.
 
And this is the only way it can be today. AREVA was not the only company to gain a global industrial foothold in the last decade; all our major competitors did. In 2006, Toshiba purchased Westinghouse, creating the third-largest nuclear company in the world, straddling the Pacific Ocean. In 2007, General Electric and Hitachi joined forces in a series of joint-ventures. This is the new face of nuclear -large multinational companies reaching across the continents, which can bring together R&D teams of thousands and invest billions of dollars in the development of new designs. AREVA spent 1.2 billion dollars in research and development last year; this does not include Mitsubishi’s share of our new reactor developments.

Thanks to NEI Nuclear Notes for pointing us to this great segment by Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley. This segment will be part of an upcoming PBS special called Planet Forward.

Here’s the transcript:

I’m very much in favor of nuclear energy and I believe that the sort of technology that is now being employed in Europe, and by the French in particular, is something that needs to come to the United States. Certainly, over the short term I believe it holds a tremendous amount of promise and I think that we need to catch up. I think we’re way behind the ball on nuclear energy and I hope that we’ll have a third reactor that’s modern and that is safe and is state-of-the-art in the foreseeable future in Maryland.

We’re proud to have Gov. O’Malley standing alongside us in promoting nuclear energy as part of America’s 21st-century energy equation.

“A 1,000-megawatt coal plant is fed by a 110-car coal train arriving every day. A nuclear reactor is replenished by a single tractor-trailer bringing new fuel rods once every 18 months. Over the course of a year, the coal plant will release 400,000 tons of sulfur and fly ash. Some of this ends up in landfills, but most escapes into the atmosphere where it kills 30,000 people annually, according to the E.P.A. Then there’s the carbon dioxide — seven millions tons annually from each plant — which is the principle cause of global warming.

By comparison, the “wastes” of nuclear power can once again be contained in a single truck. I recently watched one of these spent fuel assemblies being lifted into the receiving room at France’s nuclear reprocessing center in La Hague. It is an eerie sight — the most radioactive object in the solar system emitting double what you would have received standing at ground zero in Hiroshima. Yet a three-foot wall separated us, and the emissions didn’t even register on our badges. More than 95 percent of the spent fuel rod can be recycled. That is why France is able to store all its “waste” (from 30 years of producing 75 percent of its electricity) beneath the floor of a single room.

It all seems too good to be true. People conjure up all kinds of nightmare scenarios just to compensate. Yet the reality remains: nuclear energy is the most environmentally benign discovery ever made.”

– William Tucker, author of Terrestrial Energy

It makes sense to at least have other options out there…

— Oklahoma House Speaker Chris Benge,on his fossil fuel rich state lifting the moratorium on nuclear power

The official White House website has added a new feature, “Open For Questions,” which allows people to ask the President key questions on the economy and vote up other people’s submissions.

So far, over 13,000 people have submitted over 16,000 questions. There are a number of good questions on the economic effect of nuclear energy, in the category of Green Jobs and Energy. Here are some that caught our eye:

Mr. President why not embrace Nuclear Power it would create tens of thousands of jobs and cut our dependence on foreign oil . The job creation would be sustaniable and would occur in may areas of the country that need them.
jsc, malvern, pa

With the scarcity of Oil looming as well as other resources, has your administration thought about implimenting Nuclear power on a more massive scale, so that we would get a large amount of our power from nuclear energy, similar to France?
Wesley M, Sammamish, WA

Do you have any plans on closing the nuclear fuel cycle in the United States so that we can recycle our spent nuclear fuel?
C-los with the Most, Knoxville, TN

The French success with nuclear power is based on standardized designs and recycling uranium. When will the DOE and NCR benchmark this success?
raymillr, Cincinnati, OH

Mr. President, if cutting green house emissions are such a high priority in your agenda, why not continue government support for bringing the next gen nuclear power plans on line. This technolgy is ultra clean and would create numerous jobs.
jrgarne, monterey, ca

We’d recommend you go make your voice heard, and ask your questions. If you like these questions and ones like them, go vote them up. The President will answer some of the most popular questions on Thursday, so submit questions and vote soon to make your voice heard!

From Greenpeace’s Nuclear Reaction blog:

We see the US arm of French nuclear titans Areva – not wishing to be outdone by us here at Nuclear Reaction – have got themselves a blog… if you ever need any advice about blogging just give us a call.

We’re glad our blog caught their eye and hope we can spark some dialogue between our blogs (which in a small way is just now happening). Although they’re clearly in the anti-nuclear energy camp (unlike many other environmental groups), and we disagree with them in a lot of places, we have in common the desire for a U.S. energy future that moves past carbon-based fuels, and we share a deep concern over effects on present and future climate change if we fail to achieve that.

by Laurence Pernot

Though people who follow the debate over used nuclear fuel are well aware of the benefits of recycling, we’ve found that many in the general public don’t even know that it’s an option.  There’s a lot of confusion out there about used fuel recycling – whether it’s feasible, practical, and safe.

So we’ve prepared this brief FAQ about nuclear fuel recycling and about AREVA’s innovation in this crucial part of our nuclear future.  We hope you’ll find it useful.  Please be sure to post any other questions you might have about recycling in the comments section… we’re always looking for ways to engage in better and more fruitful dialogues about nuclear fuel recycling.

Why should the US recycle used nuclear fuel?

First and foremost, here in the U.S., that is a decision that has to be made by the government – taking into account its own policy determinations and the needs of U.S. utilities.  Nevertheless, we think that recycling is an economically, environmentally and socially responsible approach.  Here’s why:
read more…