On Monday, February 24, representatives of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring and Research Center (CEMRC), and local officials will meet with the public. The planned purpose of the meeting is to provide a status report and answer questions about the airborne contamination detected in the facility and the trace contaminants…
Recent events at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) provide an opportunity to reinforce the need to practice good communication skills in order to improve the future response to a contamination event. Though there is no public hazard associated with airborne contamination levels of 0.64 Bq of Am-241 and 0.046 Bq of Pu-239/240, the New…
Yesterday I came across a New York Times front page article from July 7, 1971 titled Nation’s Energy Crisis: Nuclear Future Looms. It is the second article in a three part article on the energy crisis that was capturing America’s attention in 1971 – two years before the Arab Oil Embargo. The discovery knocked me…
One of my favorite pastimes is listening to Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak, who bill themselves as “media assassins”, on the No Agenda Show. On yesterday’s episode, number 580, John and Adam spent about 15 minutes (starting at about 1:44:00) discussing the absurd tales that are propagating around the web regarding USS Ronald Reagan…
I have learned through my grapevine that the leaders of an organization called the Green Schools Alliance (GSA) have decided to reject the suggestions of parents who wanted to include a showing and discussion of Pandora’s Promise in the program of a planned conference on Green Business. According to my sources those leaders told the…
Hiroshima Syndrome hosts the best source of compiled information about the status of activities and investigations related to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station’s accident recovery and clean-up effort. The author, Les Corrice, is a semi-retired nuclear energy professional who works diligently to post the Fukushima Accident Update page twice a week. He has been pursuing that self-assigned…
On January 1, 2014, I asked several nuclear communicators to join me for a discussion about highlights of 2013 and predictions for 2013. We had a lively discussion about the change in the conversation about nuclear energy stimulated by the release of Pandora’s Promise, the impact of the court decision telling the NRC to restart…
Every once in a while, I like to get a feel for who is reading Atomic Insights – or, to be more technically correct, whose browser lands on one of the pages. So far this year, the geographic plot looks pretty good. However, there are a couple of white areas and just a few days…
On December 8, 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his forward-leaning Atoms for Peace speech at a gathering of the United Nations General Assembly in Bermuda. His vision for the world has not yet been realized, but remembering some of his thoughts might inspire some thinkers to take action. There are many reasons why many decision…
This show was inspired by a post on Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Healthiness titled Why I’m Not Afraid of Fukushima. That post was written by a guest blogger named Jeremiah Scott; he is an electrical engineering student who is attending college in the Pacific Northwest with the help of the GI bill. He…
Watch more video from the CNN channel on Frequency Though I sometimes suffer from the blues, I am not crazy — I swear. Even though I am just a guy who often blogs in my PJs, I’m also pretty sure that I am not a nobody. In fact, none of us are nobodies, we are…
Entergy’s announced decision to close Vermont Yankee hit me pretty hard. It was the fifth announced closure of a large nuclear reactor in 2013. It was one more indication that the nuclear renaissance that seemed so close to becoming real in 2005 is struggling. It was also an announcement that I took a little personally,…