On Sunday, 12 February 2006, the San Francisco Chronicle published an article by Stewart M. Powell and Judy Holland titled Nuclear power plans surge ahead: 14 new plants set to go online in 10 states over next 20 years. Though the article discusses topics that really nothing new for readers of Atomic Insights, the article…
There is a February 11, 2006 post on the Energy Blog titled BP Planning Power Plant That Would Sequester Carbon Dioxide. It describes a project that is supposed to provide a potential path to to an energy production system that does not release carbon dioxide to the environment. The author of the post on the…
Ronald Cooke, author of Oil, Jihad and Destiny has published an article on Energy Pulse titled The 2006 Economic Forecast: Oil Remains a Wildcard that should be required reading for government policy making officials. If you are involved in any government economics policy or if you are a strategic planner for a business, or if…
Many people that have heard me talk about the energy density of uranium have had the opportunity to see my “three shooters” demonstration. For those of you who are totally lost, here is the background. If you compute the volume of uranium needed for a pound of the material you can compare it almost exactly…
During the period from 1980-1988, a large and comprehensive study was conducted to determine the risks of occupational exposure to low levels of radiation. A summary of the study’s final report, which was completed in 1991 but not widely released, has been published under the title of Nuclear shipyard worker study (1980–1988): a large cohort…
I learned as an English major that writers are careful about selecting the words that they use. Whenever I speak about reusing the materials left over from the first pass through a nuclear reactor, I use the word “recycle”, but many people seem to like the word “reprocessing” instead. I am not sure why they…
There has been a lot of interesting news about atomic energy this past week, a fact that you might have missed if Atomic Insights is a major source of your news. I apologize – sometimes life interferes with blogging. One of the things that has taken up more time than it should have has been…
After the Chernobyl accident, Italy passed a referendum to halt new nuclear power plant construction and to shut down their existing plants. As a result of that decision and the fact that Italy has little coal, it now generates 75% of its internally generated electricity from oil or natural gas. This dependence has given Italy…