Scary story about explosions near London

I ran accross the following story on Google News a few minutes ago. Apparently there was at least one large explosion followed by a raging fire in the fuel depot of a the Luton airport – 20 miles outside of London. Some reports talk about a series of explosions. Few details are available – a…

Pro and anti nuclear activists argue in Montreal

Ronald Baily of Reason Magazine published a story on Tech Central Station titled TCS COP 11 Coverage: Nuclear Explosion at Montreal. Apparently there was quite a heated discussion during a session at the Montreal Climate Change Conference Conference of Parties. (Note: Those last three words is where the COP comes from; the 11 means that…

Unscientific American

Okay – I’ll admit that sometimes I am a bit slow to discover good items. There is just so much time during the day and so much material to read. Stuart Peterson, a frequent commenter on this blog, has his own blog at Nuclear Is Our Future. About a month ago, he published a terrific…

Heating oil price chart

As the Northeast shivers under its first real cold spell and snowfall of the 2005-06 winter, I thought it might be comforting to see a chart of heating oil prices during the past 17 years or so. What do you mean, you are not comforted? I thought that the heat generated by anger at the…

PBMR project update – December 6, 2005

South Africa’s PBMR (Pty) Ltd has signed two contracts with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan. One contract – worth $10 Million US – is for the long lead time items and forgings required for the Core Barrel Assembly for the demonstration PBMR project planned for the Koeberg site in Western South Africa. The second contract…

Will natural gas prices ignite a recession?

It is a bit more difficult to follow natural gas prices than it is gasoline prices. Instead of having visible signs posted at well travelled street corners, natural gas prices are only visible on market exchanges that most people rarely visit. Instead of knowing in advance how much they are spending like they are when…

Small Nuclear Power Reactor Issue Brief

The World Nuclear Association recently updated its Small Nuclear Power Reactor Information and Issue Brief. This paper is an excellent review of most of the projects around the world that include nuclear power reactors with outputs of less than 300 MWe (megawatts electric), which is the current International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) definition of a…

United States Primary Energy Consumption by Sector

Occasionally, I enter into Internet discussions with people that seem to have little access to facts. Recently, a comment was made on an email list to which I subscribe that stated that in the US cars use “1000 times” more energy than electrical power. That was obviously an incorrect statement, but I like to refer…

Even California's Pete Wilson has positive comments about nuclear power

Okay, I admit that the headline is a bit misleading, but I could not resist. I came across an article titled Nuclear Power To Heat Your Home? on the ABC-7 (San Francisco, CA) web site. The author listed for the article is Pete Wilson, a news anchorman who bears the burden of sharing the same…

British Member of Parliment (MP) excited about nuclear prospects

On Thursday, December 1, 2005, the Buisness Gazette published an article written by David Siddall titled Warm Reaction to All-Encompassing Review. It is a fascinating look into the British political environment in which the idea of new nuclear power plants is going to be evaluated. Mr. Jamie Reed, MP from Copeland had the following to…