ESA Study Shows 114,000 New Jobs Possible for Energy Storage With Proposed Federal ITC Legislation

WASHINGTON, April 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Electricity Storage Association (ESA) released a new study, performed by KEMA, projecting the size of the rapidly growing energy storage market in the US electricity grid. The report shows the impact on job growth possible with the Federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC) incentives from the Storage Act of 2009 (S. 1091) currently being debated in Congress. The report analyzes the effects of a 20% ITC for grid-connected energy storage and a 30% credit for onsite energy storage through 2020.

"There is a growing realization among legislators and regulators (federal and state) that energy storage will be a vital element optimizing large amounts of renewable energy in the US grid," stated Brad Roberts, ESA Executive Director.

Currently pumped hydro storage plants account for just over two percent of the total generating capacity in the US. The current DOE Energy Storage Stimulus Plan is investing $185M to add 535 megawatts of additional storage in the grid from all sources ranging from Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) to flywheels and batteries. This new report shows how total storage in the US grid could double in the next decade. The KEMA analysis looks at aspects of storage applications like regulation/ancillary services, renewable energy integration (wind and solar), onsite storage for end-users and the rapidly emerging Community Energy Storage (CES) approach.

The complete report has been circulated to ESA members and a copy of the report's Executive Summary is available on the ESA website at http://www.electricitystorage.org. A KEMA presentation on the report will be made at the ESA's 20th Annual Meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina May 4-7, 2010.

About ESA

The Electricity Storage Association is an international trade association established to foster development and commercialization of energy storage technologies. The membership includes utilities, equipment manufacturers, national laboratories, system designers and academia using the ESA as the leading technical forum to promote a better understanding of the benefits of energy storage in an electricity grid. The ESA is organized as a 501 (c) (6) trade association. The ESA is in the process of moving to new headquarters in Washington, DC.

Media contacts (info@electricitystorage.org)

About KEMA

Founded in 1927, KEMA is a global provider of business and technical consulting, operational support, measurement and inspection, testing and certification for the energy and utility industry. With world headquarters in Arnhem, the Netherlands, KEMA employs more than 1,600 professionals globally with offices and representatives in more than 20 countries. KEMA's US subsidiary, KEMA, Inc., is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts and serves energy clients throughout the Americas andCaribbean.

Source: Electricity Storage Association

New Doubts About Plutonium for MOX Fuel

An article in the April 10th New York Times looks at one potential fall-out of the Fukushima Nuclear crisis:

"On a tract of government land along the Savannah River in South Carolina, an army of workers is building one of the nation’s most ambitious nuclear enterprises in decades: a plant that aims to safeguard at least 43 tons of weapons-grade plutonium by mixing it into fuel for commercial power reactors.

The project grew out of talks with the Russians to shrink nuclear arsenals after the cold war. The plant at the Savannah River Site, once devoted to making plutonium for weapons, would now turn America’s lethal surplus to peaceful ends. Blended with uranium, the usual reactor fuel, the plutonium would be transformed into a new fuel called mixed oxide, or mox.

“We are literally turning swords into plowshares,” one of the project’s biggest boosters, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said at a hearing on Capitol Hill last week.

But 11 years after the government awarded a construction contract, the cost of the project has soared to nearly $5 billion. The vast concrete and steel structure is a half-finished hulk, and the government has yet to find a single customer, despite offers of lucrative subsidies.

Now, the nuclear crisis in Japan has intensified a long-running conflict over the project’s rationale."

See the entire article at The New York Times website:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/us/11mox.html?ref=global-home

Thorium holds key to Japan's industrial future

Takashi Kamei writing in the September 2, 2010 Asahi Shimbun argues that thorium may provide many benefits for a low -arbon Japan. He writes:

"Japan wants to shift to a low-carbon society, but the challenge will be how it goes about it. The key to achieving this difficult goal is industrial revitalization. This will require technological innovation and the ability to secure precious resources. Thorium may provide an answer.

Thorium is a naturally occurring radioactive substance. Its use is almost exclusively limited to nuclear fuel. However, unlike uranium, it is not fissionable and has not been used as nuclear fuel up to now.

But it can be burned if plutonium is used to ignite it. After more than 40 years of using nuclear power, the world has a 2,000-ton stockpile of plutonium.

If thorium is used as a fuel for nuclear power generation, electricity can be supplied without discharging carbon dioxide. Another plus is that the method does not produce plutonium, which can be used to make nuclear weapons.

Thus, thorium has a potential to help in efforts to curb global warming and bring about a world without nuclear weapons at the same time."

See the whole article at the following URL

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201009010323.html

While Nuclear Waste Piles up in U.S., Billions in Fund to Handle It Sit Unused

Here is a ProPublica article on the nuclear waste problem in the U.S. and the the large government funds set aside for a solution that isn't going to happen.

http://www.propublica.org/article/while-nuclear-waste-piles-up-in-u.s.-billions-in-fund-to-handle-it-sits-unu

Amory Lovins: Learning from Japan's Nuclear Disaster

This is an anti-nuclear/pro-renewables article that makes an economic argument against slow, expensive and dangerous nuclear technology. Lovins argues that:

"Nuclear power is the only energy source where mishap or malice can kill so many people so far away; the only one whose ingredients can help make and hide nuclear bombs; the only climate solution that substitutes proliferation, accident, and high-level radioactive waste dangers. Indeed, nuclear plants are so slow and costly to build that they reduce and retard climate protection.

Here's how. Each dollar spent on a new reactor buys about two to ten times less carbon savings and is 20 to 40 times slower, than spending that dollar on the cheaper, faster, safer solutions that make nuclear power unnecessary and uneconomic: efficient use of electricity, making heat and power together in factories or buildings ("cogeneration"), and renewable energy. The last two made 18 percent of the world's 2009 electricity (while nuclear made 13 percent, reversing their 2000 shares)—and made over 90 percent of the 2007 to 2008 increase in global electricity production."

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/print/guest-post-learning-from-japans-nuclear-disaster/

Thorium Reserves by Country

Wikipedia provides the following estimates of Thorium reserves.

The prevailing estimate of the economically available thorium reserves comes from the US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries (1996–2010):^[56][61]

American estimates intonnes (2010)

Country	Reserves
United States	440,000
Australia	300,000
Brazil	16,000
Canada	100,000
India	290,000
Malaysia	4,500
South Africa	35,000
Other Countries	90,000
World Total	1,300,000

Note: The OECD/NEA report notes that the estimates (that the Australian figures are based on) are subjective, due to the variability in the quality of the data, a lot of which is old and incomplete.^[62] Adding to the confusion are subjective claims made by the Australian government (in 2009, through their "Geoscience" department) that combine the Reasonably Assured Reserves (RAR) estimates with "inferred" data (i.e. subjective guesses). This strange combined figure of RAR and "guessed" reserves yields a figure, published by the Australian government, of 489,000 tonnes.^[62] However using the same criteria for Brazil or India would yield reserve figures of between 600,000 to 1,300,000 tonnes for Brazil and between 300,000 to 600,000 tonnes for India. Irrespective, of isolated claims by the Australian government, the most credible third-party and multi-lateral reports, those of the OECD/IAEA and the USGS, consistently report high thorium reserves for India while not doing the same for Australia.

Another estimate of Reasonably Assured Reserves (RAR) and Estimated Additional Reserves (EAR) of thorium comes from OECD/NEA, Nuclear Energy, "Trends in Nuclear Fuel Cycle", Paris, France (2001):^[63]

IAEA Estimates in tonnes (2005)

Country	RAR Th	EAR Th
Australia	19,000	—
Brazil	606,000	700,000
Canada	45,000	128,000
Greenland	54,000	32,000
Egypt	15,000	309,000
India	319,000	—
Norway	132,000	132,000
South Africa	18,000	—
Turkey	380,000	500,000
United States	137,000	295,000
Other Countries	505,000	—
World Total	2,230,000	2,130,000

U.S. Nuclear Industry History Quoted from Forbes by Wikipedia

A cover story in the February 11, 1985, issue of Forbes magazine commented on the overall management of the nuclear power program in the United States:

The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale … only the blind, or the biased, can now think that the money has been well spent. It is a defeat for the U.S. consumer and for the competitiveness of U.S. industry, for the utilities that undertook the program and for the private enterprise system that made it possible.^[22]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States