The March/April 2016 issue of Mother Jones includes a thoughtful piece by Gabriel Kahn titled Dreamers of the Golden Dream: Does California have a blueprint to fix global warming?. Regular Atomic Insights readers will not be surprised to find that I’ve already decided that California’s chosen path for reducing CO2 emissions and dependence on fossil…
On March 17, 2016 a group of sign-carrying, green tee shirt clad people gathered in downtown San Luis Obispo to show their support for the continued operation of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Station. Organized by Californians for Green Nuclear Power and Friends of Diablo Canyon, the event was covered by reporters from several local…
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is an independent regulatory agency whose focus is the safe use of radiation and radioactive materials. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard from regulators, commissioners, and elected officials that the agency must make its safety decisions without regard to their cost implications. However, as any teenager, project…
Apparently, someone on Senator Feinstein’s staff believes that the concrete delamination (cracking) issue at Crystal River was an age-related issue. With that incorrect knowledge of the situation, they decided that it could be used to publicly discredit the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s cooperation in an industry-led initiative to extend the operating lives of nuclear plants beyond…
On February 23, 2016, the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability hosted a debate on following proposition: Is California’s 100% Renewable Strategy Globally Viable? The debate format was a two on two with a moderator. On the side defending the viability of the strategy, Mark Z. Jacobson, the Stanford professor and energy system model…
On April 17, 1958 the Brownsville (TX) Herald published an editorial titled “Congressmen Wanted to Control Gasoline.” It was aimed at actions by the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and the Atomic Energy Commission to maintain nearly total control of all aspects of atomic power generation. As described by Snopes, excerpts from this ancient editorial…
Yesterday at the Platts 12th Annual Nuclear Energy Conference, Darious Dixon of Politico asked NRC Commissioner William Ostendorff if he had decided whether or not he would be willing to remain of the Commission for a third term if the President chooses to nominate him again. After expressing his deep respect for the agency and…
On February 10-11, 2016, the U.S. Nuclear Infrastructure Council (USNIC) sponsored the 3rd annual Advanced Reactor Technical Summit. Oak Ridge National Laboratory provided the venue for the event. Though he wasn’t the first speaker, I’d like to begin my reports from the event with Jeffery Merrifield’s stage setting talk. Merrifield is a man with a…
Sometime between June 24, 2015 and January 21, 2016, a building remodeling project in Steamboat Springs, CO resulted in the loss of 7.5 curies of tritium. A reasonable guess is that the container holding the tritium was tossed into a construction debris dumpster and carted off to a local landfill. The incident was reported to…
Third Way bills itself as a centrist think tank that is not satisfied with just thinking; they take action that gets results. Wednesday’s (Jan 27, 2016) Advanced Nuclear Summit and Showcase provided an excellent example of Third Way’s ability to seek common ground among people from both major political parties in the United States. The…
S. David Freeman and Leah Y Parks have published a book titled All-Electric America: A Climate Solution and the Hopeful Future. There are a number of visionary sections of the book that appeal to me. However, I was not surprised to find out that the book takes a strong position in opposition to nuclear energy….
Joe Romm, an energy industry and climate change pundit who was once mentored by Amory Lovins at the Rocky Mountain Institute, recently sat down at his keyboard to produce a piece providing the basis for his opinion that James Hansen, Ken Caldeira, Tom Wigley and Kerry Emanuel — and hundreds to thousands of other nuclear…