A couple of days ago, I happily reported on an article by Mark Lynas indicating that Friends of the Earth (FOE) UK was reconsidering its stance on nuclear energy. Aside Mark’s article reminded readers that FOE is a federation, not a monolithic organization; each country’s chapter can produce its own policies. End Aside. Mark based…
Mark Lynas has published a remarkable interview with Mike Childs, the head of policy, science and research for Friends of the Earth UK. The article includes a full transcript of the audio interview so that people cannot claim that Lynas has taken Mr. Childs’s views out of context. The bottom line is that FOE UK…
It is difficult to organize pronuclear rallies because happy, prosperous, employed people can rarely be bothered to get out on the street, shout and shake signs. However, Meredith Angwin and Howard Shaffer have done a pretty fair job of organizing some interesting pronuclear rallies in Vermont, but they have generally received just local coverage. It…
I just finished watching the archived video of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on the nominations of Dr. Allison Macfarlane to be a Commissioner and Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Kristine Svinicki to serve an additional five year term as a Commissioner. It was disheartening to see that the Senate’s…
A number of people who have read of my opposition to the appointment of Dr. Allison Macfarlane to be the Chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission have counseled me to passively accept a “done deal” because they believe it is obvious that the fix has been in for quite some time. They think that…
Dr. Allison Macfarlane, an associate professor at George Mason University, with a PhD in Geology from MIT, has been nominated by President Obama to be both a Commissioner and the new Chairman of the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Agency. If the President does not change his mind, that decision alone will be enough to turn…
On Monday, May 21, 2012, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission released Dr. Greg Jaczko’s letter of resignation. The first phrase in the letter jumped out at me as an example of why I have been so strongly opposed to his tenure at the Commission. After nearly eight years on the Commission, I am announcing my…
Dr. Arjun Makhijani has been fighting against the use of nuclear fission energy since his college days in the late 1960s. He was influenced by Professor Thomas Pigford at the University of California, Berkeley who lectured on the need to build 1000 nuclear reactors because using fission was better than depending on coal. After hearing…
Linus Pauling was one of the most famous scientists of his era. In the period immediately following WWII, he became active in efforts to ban the bomb and stop atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. Like Hermann Muller, he had no compunction against using inaccurate information about the health effects of radiation to instill sufficient fear…
This evening I had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Arjun Makhijani, the President and Senior Engineer at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) of Takoma Park, MD. The conversation is available at Atomic Show #183 – Arjun Makhijani Explains Carbon Free, Nuclear Free Strategy Dr. Makhijani is the author of Carbon Free,…
There is a scary myth floating around the internet. According to the tall tale, the spent fuel pool at Fukushima Daiichi unit four poses a dire threat to all mankind. As I explain in the above video, nothing could be farther from the truth. The sources of the lies have a well established history of…
I’ve been following a couple of conversations about a recent story that has been floating around the web from an antinuclear Chicken Little named Robert Alvarez. According to Alvarez, a man who seems to believe that it is physically possible for dense, corrosion-resistant, solid material to instantaneously vaporize, the spend fuel pool at Fukushima Daiichi…