A couple of days ago, Mark Lynas, author of The God Species, gave an impassioned speech to the Oxford Farming Conference during which he apologized profusely for his former actions against genetically modified organisms (GMO). He stated that he now deeply regretted his participation in organized protests and direct actions to destroy experimental crops. He…
Discussions about science and technology are often colored by opinion, world views, and political alliances. Though everyone is entitled to their opinion but not their own facts, it is nearly impossible to remove bias, even in a technical discussion, because everyone has a tendency to pick which facts they prefer to introduce into an argument….
On December 18, 2012, the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) published a notice in the Federal Register (74788-74798 vol, 77, No. 243) announcing that it would consider in the rulemaking process the issues raised in a petition (Docket No. PRM-50-96: NRC-2011-0069) asserting that existing regulations for civilian nuclear power facilities are inadequate to assure…
Though I have a deep and abiding respect for the vast majority of the people I have met who work in the nuclear energy industry, it is time for me to risk losing a few friends with some brutal honesty. Decision making has become unbalanced in the “conservative” direction to a point of a dangerous…
I stayed up past my normal bedtime to watch the President and his one Establishment challenger engage in a carefully staged and poorly moderated “debate” last night. The supposed topic was domestic policy. One of the largest components of our domestic economy is the energy industry and one of the most significant contributors to our…
It worried me to learn that on Saturday, September 22, Allison Macfarlane, the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and William Magwood, one of the four Commissioners who serve with Dr. Macfarlane on the five member Commission, held a private meeting with six representatives of groups that oppose the use of nuclear energy. From…
Dr. Jim Conca recently published an article titled What’s Better? A Carbon Tax or Energy Subsidies? for his column on Forbes.com. I invited him, along with Cal Abel, a nuclear engineering PhD candidate at Georgia Tech with a strong interest in energy economics, for a chat on the Atomic Show. We got a little off…
As promised, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s political action committee (PAC), the Searchlight Leadership Fund, has donated $10,000 to a legal defense fund set up to pay the expenses incurred by Dr. Greg Jaczko while he was serving Reid as the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Of course, there would not be a need…
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…
By Paul T. Dickman Paul Dickman was a career Federal environmental scientist specializing in nuclear waste and nuclear materials management. He served as Chief of Staff to NRC Chairman Dale E. Klein. Part 2 of 2 NRC’s Draft Waste Confidence Decision Update of October 2008 was based on an understanding of that the DOE would…
By Paul T. Dickman Paul Dickman was a career Federal environmental scientist specializing in nuclear waste and nuclear materials management. He served as Chief of Staff to NRC Chairman Dale E. Klein. Part 1 of 2 The 12th paragraph below has been revised to clarify that the 1998 rule was a reaffirmation of a 1990…
I know that some people want to declare the Jaczko era over and to move on to other items, but there is still a good deal of information about the reign and its long term effects that has not been fully exposed or discussed. Though Jaczko and his patrons have declared that the OFFICIAL USE…