The recent climate summit at the UN offers an opportunity to contrast an understated, but effective approach to making a real difference in reducing the production of greenhouse gases and the approach taken by most of the countries in the world of producing a lot of hot air about climate change while working hard to…
Robert Hargraves, Charles Barton and Rod Adams talk about the Thorium Energy Alliance Conference and other miscellaneous atomic topics. The conversation ranged from thorium, to uranium supplies, to chemistry versus engineering, to the history of Oak Ridge, to the unreality of energy solutions that require continuous cash transfers from the public to the developer. For…
Though there are plenty of anti-nuclear activists and skeptics who believe that there is no nuclear renaissance in progress, there are apparently a number of large companies whose leaders disagree. I recently received the following press release: Nuclear Construction Summit – October 26-27, Washington, looks at how to identify, control & mitigate risk factors for…
The Horns Rev 2 wind farm, which consists of 91 wind turbines each with a peak generating capacity of 2.3 MW of electricity, went on line with much fan fare off of the coast of Denmark on September 17, 2009. According to the news reports, the project cost somewhere between $700 million and $1 billion….
During the recent IAEA Conference, Dr. Steven Chu has signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with South Africa. One mentioned area of immediate interest is the PBMR project, one that Atomic Insights has been covering for a number of years. You can read more about the agreement in the following articles: United States and South Africa…
A financial industry contact sent me a link to a press release by Yves Marignac, WISE-Paris and Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), asking me if I knew anything about the source. The release was full of lies and half truths about the French nuclear energy success story. Even the headline of the press release…
On September 13, 2009 current German Chancellor Angela Merkel debated with her Social Democratic Party challenger (and current coalition partner) Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Though most of the debate indicated broad areas of relative agreement on issues and some amount of pride from both on the country’s accomplishments in many areas, they differed on the issue of…
Barry Brook, who publishes the excellent Brave New Climate blog is also the Director of Climate Science at The Environment Institute, University of Adelaide. He was recently featured on an Australian Broadcast Company (ABC) – Stateline program discussion on the costs and benefits of nuclear energy as an eventual coal replacement. The program featured opposing…
A few days ago, I mentioned my competitive concern about the progress being made in China in its program to build new nuclear power plants. Unlike the US, which has stimulated banks and consumption to try to jump start its economy, China is taking the opportunity of a lull in consumer demand to build infrastructure…
On September 7, 2009, ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) first aired a detailed, 45 minute investigative report on the current status of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology around the world. The segment, titled “The Coal Nightmare”, shows just how little progress has been made in actually building a single demonstration that it is possible to…
As a long time observer of energy markets, I have maintained a continuing skepticism as many people assured the world that we were entering into a lengthy period of low, well-behaved natural gas prices. I have heard that before and watched as the fuel’s natural volatility took over and prices see-sawed with great drama. Though…
Over the past several days, I have read a number of stories about the political and legal challenges that companies like Southern Co., FPL, and CPS are facing as they attempt to roll some of the costs of efforts to expand their nuclear plant capacity into their current rate structure. In most cases the numbers…