Clean Energy Insight - Moving Energy Forward

[Approx. Read Time: 2 minutes]

The school newspaper for Virginia Tech, the Collegiate Times, released a story on the NRC’s recent education grant to Virginia Tech to start a nuclear engineering program.  The article is great and the news is wonderful for the university and for the future of the nuclear industry in the United States.  What caught our eye here at Clean Energy Insight was the graphic that was placed in the print edition of the newspaper article. (See below)

Eric Danner and myself from Clean Energy Insight were compelled to write a letter-to-the-editor of the Collegiate Times in order to follow up on the article and let the students of Virginia Tech know that atomic bombs aren’t business-as-usual for the nuclear industry, much less a university nuclear engineering degree program.

Nuclear Engineering Graphic Bombs

Collegiate Times, 9/21/09

Last week, the CT released an article covering the recent grant from the NRC for a nuclear engineering program at Virginia Tech.  The students at Virginia Tech are some of the best and brightest in the country, and well deserving of this challenging educational opportunity.

However, at least one person made the mistake of placing a picture of a mushroom cloud in the background of a “Virginia Tech’s Nuclear Energy History” timeline.  Although this is probably more of a minor oversight by someone at the CT, it does raise a larger issue that is prevalent in today’s society.

The relationship between nuclear weapons and nuclear energy are all too often confused, mostly because of a lack of education on the subject.  It seems that in today’s world it is becoming easier to demonize something that isn’t understood, instead of attempting to understand it.

No one at Virginia Tech will be taught how to engineer nuclear weapons.  A nuclear engineering program is focused on an energy technology that creates clean, safe, and reliable energy.

Just as a bottle of petroleum jelly cannot explode while sitting in your bathroom cabinet, a nuclear power reactor cannot possibly explode like a nuclear bomb.  Although the two technologies share the same name, they are very different.  Simply, fuel for nuclear power is enriched 25-30 times less than that of weapons-grade material.

Although this new nuclear engineering program is wonderful news for the University, unfortunate inaccuracies like this can cause severe damage to the future of clean baseload energy in the United States.

Nuclear power currently accounts for 74% of clean energy production in the United States and helps the country avoid almost 700 million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year.  The second and third closest clean energy competitors are hydro and wind energy with 200 and 27 million metric tons of CO2 avoided, respectively.

Nuclear power is also the most reliable clean energy that we have available today.  It produces clean energy 100% of the time, compared to wind (30%), hydro (27%), and solar energy (19%).

Not only is nuclear power clean and reliable, it is safe.  According to the Dept. of Labor, the US nuclear power industry has a workplace accident rate lower than that of the US education and communication industries, which includes the entire faculty and staff of Virginia Tech and the CT.

Hokies, please take this opportunity to learn more about nuclear power and support the new nuclear engineering program at Virginia Tech.

J Carrington Dillon
Alumnus, Civil Engineering & Economics

Eric Danner
Alumnus, Aerospace Engineering

( By Logan Dernoshek ) [Approx. Read Time: 1 minute]

In an article published Thursday, July 23rd in the Columbia Daily Tribune, journalist T.J Greaney described his tour of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. For those of you who don’t know, Oak Ridge is the modern day Nuclear Mecca. Cutting edge research is happening there everyday. As Mr. Greaney explains it, “Basically, Oak Ridge is Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory for nerds.” One major project occurring at Oak Ridge currently is finding better ways to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. The point of the plant tour was to demonstrate the cutting edge research and technology coming out of Oak Ridge. However, Mr. Greaney makes some interesting observations in his piece.

“Suddenly, instead of thinking about the energy breakthrough, we were all picturing mushroom clouds.”

“This, I’ve realized, is the curse of nuclear power. The nuclear industry has a safety record over the past 30 years that, by most accounts, has been stellar. Nuclear power is the most potent carbon-free power source on the planet in an age when everyone is worried about carbon footprints.”

“The specter of meltdowns and weapons use hangs darkly over the science.”

“But my reaction shows just how fearful many of us still are of nuclear power. We just don’t understand it. If a nuclear renaissance is ever going to occur, we’re going to have to work hard to educate ourselves, and the industry is going to have to keep setting the bar for safety higher and higher.”

Mr. Greaney is correct. If the Nuclear industry is to win the good fight, we must continue to educate the public about its benefits while consistently exceeding safety standards.