On April 18, 1973, President Richard Nixon gave a special message to the congress of the United States on energy policy. Unlike more recent offerings by presidents regarding energy, that document placed a huge emphasis on making regulatory and legislative changes that would enable the rapid expansion of nuclear power; the ‘N’ word appears in…
I’m a progressive liberal who frequently listens to Democracy Now! That makes me a bit of an oddity because I am also fiercely pro-nuclear energy. It has numerous capabilities that should appeal to progressive thinkers; it is abundant, affordable, compact, reliable, and emission-free. Unfortunately, the catechism taught to hereditary or geographical liberals includes such talking…
During the joint DOE-NRC workshop on advanced non-light water reactors held last week (Sep 1-2, 2015), John Adams of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation gave a presentation on reactor license classification terminology. It made me squirm in my chair with the desire to interrupt. Probably because he has read and…
Cara Santa Maria is an Emmy award-winning journalist who studied and taught neuroscience and psychology before deciding that her primary interest was in communicating about science. She was born and raised in Texas, but now lives in Los Angeles. She told me that she has found a terrific community of scientists, communicators, and other creative…
During the period between 1961 and 1994, an extraordinary machine called the Experimental Breeder Reactor 2 (EBR-II) was created and operated in the high desert of Idaho by a team of dedicated, determined, and distinguished people. In 1986, that machine demonstrated that it could protect itself in the event of a complete loss of flow…
Atomic Insights is not standing alone in the effort to push people and agencies to take a hard look at the basis for current radiation assumptions and regulations. Please watch Norbert Rempe, a retired professional geologist who spent much of his career performing work associated with the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, describe some of the…
Yesterday, Atomic Insights published a copy of a letter that Dr. Edward Calabrese sent to Marcia K. McNutt, the Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine. I have obtained permission to publish copies of two related letters addressed to Ms. McNutt, one from Dr. Jerry Cuttler and one from Dr. Mohan Doss. In addition, I have obtained a…
On August 8, 2015 the Saturday Paper [Melbourne, Australia] published a thought-provoking article titled South Australia’s future role in the nuclear industry. It describes how the economic opportunity presented by an expanded involvement in the nuclear fuel cycle is meeting up with a particularly stressed unemployment situation in South Australia to stimulate some frank discussions…
by BILL SACKS and GREG MEYERSON As leftists who have studied the issue of nuclear energy for years, we want to reply to Robert Hunziker’s “Real Story” titled What’s Really Going on at Fukushima? (CounterPunch, June 15, 2015). It’s time for much of the left to reconsider a long-standing opposition to nuclear energy that often…
A few days ago, a friend from Californians for Green Nuclear Power shared a letter he had written to Michael Brune, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club. He gave me permission to share his letter with Atomic Insights readers. My friend is a Sierra Club member because he agrees with many of its goals…
As a literature major during my undergraduate years, I was fascinated by the variety of stories that can be told about the same topic depending on the author’s selected point of view. Here is a brief example. Friends of the Earth (FOE) has a page on its web site titled Shutting down Diablo Canyon. The…
In March 2015, Foreign Policy magazine published an article by Sarah Laskow titled The Mushroom Cloud and The X-Ray Machine. The article described the controversy over the radiation protection model known as the linear, no-threshold dose response. Ms. Laskow conducted some admirable literature research and talked with a number of well-known people. The ones that…