Some Irish politicians announce opposition to UK nuclear power

According to a 29 Novement 2005 article published on the online.ie web site, Irish Minister for the Environment Dick Roche, Fine Gael spokesman Fergus O’Dowd and Green Party spokesman Ciaran Cuffe have expressed their concern about the UK’s recent statements that they are considering an energy policy that might include new nuclear plants. Specific concerns…

Bitter winter would spell real trouble

The Christian Science Monitor has published an article by Mark Clayton titled If winter is bitter, brace for a natural-gas crunch. The article details some of the effects that might occur because of hurricane damage to natural gas pipelines and production facilities combined with the trend in the past ten years to focus nearly all…

NRC Briefing on Status of New Reactor Issues

On November 21, 2005, the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) (with all five members in attendance) held a series of meetings to discuss issues associated with new nuclear power plants. There were three invited groups – utilities that had expressed intentions to file a combined Construction and Operating License (COL) application, vendors and financial…

Interview with Kelly Taylor

On Wednesday, November 15, 2005, I had the opportunity to talk with Kelly Taylor, a member of the North American Young Generation in Nuclear. Kelly has been working in the nuclear power industry since her high school graduation. Nineteen years ago, when she first entered the industry, it was a rare career choice for a…

"Cheap energy" quotes from nuclear power foes

Here are some gems found using Google Book Search. I will let you judge for yourself how you feel about the sentiments expressed in the quotes. “It is not possible to characterize en masse the various “No Nukes,” but there appear to be three major recurring themes in energy discussion. The first is a general…

Quotes about nuclear opposition #1

I am learning to play with a new tool – Google Book Search Beta. Though I have some concerns about Google’s treatment of authors and their copyrights, I am excited by the prospects of being able to do serious research from my home office. Until today, I did not realize just how many obscure, but…

PBMR new contract developments

The PBMR project continues to make steady progress. In the past week, two important contracts have been signed. One, with the German firm SGL Carbon is for graphite core internals, and one with SNC-Lavalin Murray and Roberts (SLMR), a joint venture company of Canada’s SNC-Lavalin and South African Murray & Roberts covers phase one of…

Winning bet on the spread between gas and coal/nuclear prices

A small group of investors made a bet last year that the spread between the cost of natural gas fired electricity and the cost of electricity from coal and nuclear power plants would increase. They recently cashed in on the bet, netting a profit of almost $5 BILLION on a $900 million dollar investment. The…

US Deputy Energy Secretary speech to US – Japan Nuclear Energy Conference

Clay Sell, the Deputy Secretary of Energy, spoke on 21 November 2005 to the US – Japan Nuclear Energy Conference being held in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The speech mentioned a number of the topics that I have been writing about in recent months, including the nuclear incentives in the Energy Policy Act, the renewed…

Britain is ready to go nuclear

In an article titled Britain is ready to go nuclear published in the The Times on 21 November 2005, Philip Webster is reporting that Britain will start the process of planning and building new nuclear power stations. The most often cited primary motivator for this decision is the fact that many scientific advisors have determined…

View from Bangladesh

Asif Parvez has written an opinion piece for The Financial Express (Bangladesh) titled Nuclear power plant, a visible option for starved Bangladesh. It is worth the inevitable struggle to get past translation issues to read this article in order to expand understanding and to see an important issue from the perspective of an energy starved,…