In the 21 months since three the fuel cores in three nuclear reactors melted at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station, there has been a substantial investment made in learning lessons from the event. Nuclear trained people are members of a learning community, we generally try to make sure that we do not waste any…
On December 21, 2012, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) blog posted a letter from Chairman Macfarlane titled A Visit to Japan: Reflections from the Chairman. She has recently returned from a trip to Japan and a visit to the evacuated areas near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. Here are her concluding thoughts: On…
I’ve always been a National Geographic fan. I discovered this while looking for something else, and decided it was worth saving and sharing.
It is way past time to begin the long process of helping people understand how to rationally weigh the risks versus benefits of available power or fuel systems. For far too many years, promoters of immensely profitable products like natural gas have been loudly and frequently telling society about its benefits while glossing over the…
CORRECTED COPY and CORRECTED HEADLINE From Salon.com Possible explosion at Con Ed power plant UPDATE: John Miksad, Con Ed’s Sr. V.P. of Electic Operations, has confirmed to NY1 that the explosion occurred at one of the company’s substations, knocking out power for 230,000 to 250,000 residents in parts of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. There were…
The temperature in the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent fuel pool never exceeded 90 degrees C and the level in the pool never fell below the top of the used fuel that was stored there. The Chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the people who supported his testimony to Congress on the afternoon…
Tepco has recently released measurements that provide convincing evidence that virtually all of the corium in Fukushima Daiichi unit #1 remains safely stored inside an intact reactor pressure vessel. Despite all claims to the contrary, no substantial quantities of that material have melted through the pressure vessel to fall onto the concrete floor of the…
On September 9, 2010, a little more than two years ago, a San Bruno, California neighborhood was rocked by a huge explosion caused by a rupture in a 30 inch natural gas pipeline. That explosion woke up the natural gas pipeline industry and its regulators and made the public slightly more aware of the dangers…
Fukushima ‘crisis’ changed my mind on nuclear power By MICHAEL RADCLIFFE Like millions of other people in Japan, I watched the events of March 2011 unfurl with shock and trepidation. The massive earthquake, the terrible tsunami and then what seemed to be a dreadful nuclear disaster. Yet now I wonder at my naivety, because the…
One of the frequently repeated comments about the way that the ad supported media choses its coverage is that the media tends to focus on “if it bleeds it leads” and on telling dramatic stories. If that was true, why are stories about deadly, dramatic fossil fuel accidents told once and then forgotten while brief…
In December 2009, the editor of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences decided to provide printing services for a small group of people who had a history of pursuing an agenda against the use of nuclear energy. They had translated a book titled Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the…
A recurring theme on Atomic Insights is that nuclear energy is a disruptive technology that has the potential to reshuffle the wealth and power underpinning what my generation called “The Establishment”, which is essentially the same as what some now call the 1%. Though it may be a bit of an exaggeration or over simplification,…