Australia is in the midst of a very public discussion about the possible use of nuclear power to ease its dependence on coal, which now provides approximately 85% of Australia’s electricity. On the June 30, 2006 episode of The G’day World Podcast Cameron Reilly asked me many of the questions that have been posed by…
One of the most popular and well read bloggers on the planet has weighed in with an excellent comment about his reaction to Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. Here is what Robert Scoble said in his June 25, 2006 post on the topic: That taught me the depth of the problem. We aren’t willing to…
On Friday, 23 June, the US NRC sent a draft license to Louisiana Energy Services, a consortium that includes URENCO, Entergy, Exelon, and Duke Power, for their proposed National Enrichment Facility to be sited in Eunice, New Mexico. The NRC, by rule, has approximately 10 days to issue the final license. The facility will use…
I was somewhat amused by my daily Google Alert yesterday. As I might have mentioned in the past, I have asked Google to automatically search the world news every day for the words “new nuclear power plants”. Two of the story links provided in yesterday’s installment provided an interesting contrast in leading paragraphs. The Green…
Ask Atomic: What was your point regarding the 760 million mile per gallon carburetor? Reader Patrick recently asked me a question about an article titled “The 760 Million Mile Per Gallon (MMMPG) Carburetor” that I originally wrote for an online publication called Power Online a bit more than 5 years ago. With current interest in…
This week Shane and I talked about recent nuclear developments in Canada, about the Ontario energy plan, and about technical choices and opportunities in the nuclear energy business in Canada. We discuss the potential use of CANDU technology for tar sands oil production and the potential use of SLOWPOKE reactors for district heating systems. During…
On episode 19 of The Atomic Show, Shane Brown and I chat about the prospects for new nuclear power plants in Canada, the choices that Ontario will be making for new nuclear power plants, and the possibility that CANDU reactors might be good choices for providing the steam and hydrogen needed to produce useful products…
Tom Fowler from the Houston Chronicle wrote an article about the NRG Energy’s recently announced project in south Texas titled Nuclear reactor plans signal renewed interest that was published on June 21, 2006. The article follows the journalistic convention of “balance” by including some quotes and information from people opposed to the announced project. According…
NRG Energy, a part owner of a two unit nuclear power station in south Texas, recently announced that they were going to add two new reactors designed by a partnership between GE and Hitachi to the site, which is located in Matagorda County, Texas. NRG Energy has decided on the ABWR design, which produces about…
The New Nation, which bills itself as “Bangladesh’s independent news source” published an editorial on June 19, 2006 titled The nuclear power option. It provides a very reasonable comparison between various ways of producing the power needed to help raise Bangladesh out of poverty. I admire the concluding paragraph: Therefore, the case for Bangladesh to…
While reading through recent posts over on Nuclear Is Our Future, my thoughts were stimulated by Stewart Peterson’s June 5 Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day. In that post, Stewart quoted from the Ploughshares Fund web site and talked about how confused he got by their idea that using plutonium for fuel is so dangerous that…
One of my favorite source of energy information has just been updated to reflect 2005 data. The BP Statistical Review of Energy is one of the best comprehensive sources of historical energy use figures available. With charts, graphs, Excel spreadsheets, and a certain amount of overview text, this is a great source for those Internet…