Most high school projects are dim memories, but I will never forget an assignment given by Mrs. Page, my Semantics teacher. She required us to watch television at least two hours per day for a week, paying close attention to the commercials. We then had to write a paper about the ways that the advertisers…
Wouldn’t it be great if we could find and energy source that was actually better than oil? It would be incredibly terrific if that new energy source was so abundant that we could not even begin to calculate how long it would last. Perhaps if we were able to do that, we could figure out…
On occasion, people write to Atomic Insights with questions whose answers might be beneficial to a number of other people. We will be sharing some of those questions and responses with you in the Ask Atomic section of the publication. John Mahler holds an almost invisible, but extremely important job. He is in charge of…
Reprinted with permission of the author. Originally printed in the Colorado Springs Gazette. By Charles Rombough, President CTR Technical Services, Inc. The president’s energy plan has called for an expanded use of nuclear power to meet our energy needs. It is refreshing that someone in authority is starting to recognize nuclear energy’s enormous benefits. The…
I want to tell you about a development project in Argentina that has received little attention in the nuclear industry press. Its existence demonstrates the continuing international interest in nuclear technology, even at a time when many industry observers declared that the atomic age had come and gone. CAREM ( http://www.invap.net/nuclear/carem/carem_index-e.html) is classified as a…
I recently had the pleasure of spending two fun filled days in Washington meeting and socializing with a group of people that goes by the rather ’90’s appellation of NA-YGN. They are young, proud, professional, “alive and kicking.” NA-YGN (North American Young Generation in Nuclear – www.na-ygn.org) is a group of dedicated professionals under the…
The whispering is becoming a roar. In the six months since the first “For the Rest of Us” column, there have been hundreds of news stories indicating that the “N” (nuclear) word is no longer taboo. Of course, it would be unrealistic to think that there is any cause and effect relationship between my rosy…
Reprinted with permission of the author by Richard Rhodes, author of Making of the Atomic Bomb and Nuclear Renewal (Prepared for delivery at the Opening Session of the 34th Japan Atomic Industrial Forum Annual Conference, Aomori City, Japan, 25 April 2001) Conferences such as this are appropriate occasions to remind ourselves of the deep connections…
Reprinted with permission of the author By Tom McClintock The newspaper’s front page contained one of those jigsaws of incongruity that one comes to expect these days in California. One article reported that the California Independent System Operator had just declared the latest in a long series of Stage Two electricity shortages, while another reported…
People who oppose nuclear power often use the words “Three Mile Island” and “Chernobyl” as shorthand to imply that there are safety concerns relating to the technology that cannot be overcome. The great news, however, is that Three Mile Island happened more than 22 years ago, while the 15th anniversary of Chernobyl occurred Thursday, April…
I have developed a morbid fascination with reading stories about California’s energy supply situation. I am also working my way through a second reading of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. It is a good thing that the news stories appear as text on my computer screen while Rand’s book is a three-inch thick 35th Anniversary hardback…
“Clean coal” has always seemed to be an oxymoron, a phrase with words that do not belong in the same thought. Having seen the soot-coated buildings in British cities, the yellow tinged smoke pouring from the stacks of power plants around Tampa Bay, and the enormous bag houses often used to capture most of the…