Atomic energy technology, politics, and perceptions from a nuclear energy insider who served as a US nuclear submarine engineer officer
William Pentland at Forbes Clean Beta has an interesting take on a recently released Congressional Budget Office report titled The Cost-Effectiveness of Nuclear Power for Navy Surface Ships. Though he makes it clear that the CBO’s report only supports an economic argument for nuclear powered ships under certain oil price scenarios, he points out that [...]
Philip Sharp and Ernie Moniz are both members of the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future and are ostensibly in favor of the use of nuclear energy. Richard Lester “runs the nuclear engineering department” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the premier engineering institutions in the country. I was taken aback, [...]
The video and music were created by New York University’s Studio 20 in collaboration with ProPublica, which has been investigating and reporting on the effects of hydraulic fracturing for the past three years. My view is that fracking can be safe, if done correctly, but there is a significant temptation for lightly capitalized companies to [...]
You might be hard pressed to gather more than a handful of people who agree with me, even if you live in a place where there are a lot of nuclear professionals. I continue to be impressed by the way that Japan’s nuclear plants – like all nuclear plants designed and built to standards that [...]
I do not hate oil companies, I hate their business model. I hate the fact that they are capturing a vast portion of the world’s wealth and power by extracting an ever higher price for essentially the same product that they have been selling for 100 years with few technical improvements that make it more [...]
I just spent the past hour and 9 minutes listening to the ExxonMobil earnings call for the fourth quarter of 2010. The company reported some impressive numbers. Exxon recorded $9.3 billion in net earnings for the fourth quarter and $30.5 billion in net earnings for the year. The company generated $51.7 billion in cash flow [...]
Antinuclear activists often think they have a tossed a trump card into an energy related discussion when they misquote a phrase included in a 1954 speech by Lewis L. Strauss, the politically appointed head of the Atomic Energy Commission. According to people who are fundamentally opposed to the safe and economical use of atomic fission, [...]
The above clip came from a lunchtime talk that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave to the Colorado Oil and Gas Association on July 8, 2010, during the Energy Epicenter conference. Aside: People who are not from Colorado might need some background to explain the reference to working with Governor Ritter on “1365″. There is another [...]
On July 8, 2010, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave a lunchtime speech at Energy Epicenter, the annual conference of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. That speech provides a number of insights that are useful to those who are concerned about energy issues, concerned about the environment, and interested in the activities of power brokers [...]
During the period from August 19-22, 2010, AREDAY hosted the 7th Annual American Renewable Energy Day in Aspen Co. CSPAN published a series of videos of the speeches and presentations, including one panel that is of particular interest to Atomic Insights readers titled Is Nuclear Renewable?. That panel included talks by four people, Mr. Tom [...]
The American Public Power Association (APPA) has released a detailed, 95-page study titled Implications of Greater Reliance on Natural Gas for Electricity Generation (4.8 MB PDF) that analyses the costs, required rule changes, and risks of replacing a major portion of the coal fired electricity in the United States with natural gas. APPA is the [...]
One of the most famous battles against nuclear energy in the US, a struggle whose effects remain important to this day, was fought on Long Island. The saga involved nearly two decades of highly publicized effort marred by many failures in management and a well-organized opposition effort that successfully turned out thousands of people willing [...]