An acquaintance sent me a link to the below entry into YouTube’s “Film Your Issue” contest for 2010 – Homelessness and Nuclear Power: How are they related?. It poses an interesting question from a system’s point of view – is there a relationship between homelessness today and anti-nuclear actions that took place 20-30 years ago?…
One of the pleasures that I get from writing Atomic Insights is being contacted off line by someone who is intrigued by what I have written. Over the years, those off line contacts have resulted in some excellent friendships and correspondence. Several weeks ago, a local high school student made contact for some assistance with…
There is excitement and optimism about using improved hydraulic fracturing technology to stimulate natural gas production from shale rock formations that have been known for many years to contain methane. Until horizontal drilling and fracking technology became more available, that energy resource was considered to be inaccessible. In 2008, the U. S. Energy Information Agency…
There have been several posts on Atomic Insights and on MasterResource.org that have offered contrasting views of the role of government and free markets in developing atomic energy. Jerry Taylor has taken the position that nuclear energy is hopelessly dependent on government subsidies and asserts that is a fundamental weakness with the technology. He has…
The Toshiba 4S (Super Safe, Small, and Simple) reactor is one that has intrigued me for several years, but it is also a project that is a bit difficult to evaluate. Part of the problem is that I neither speak, nor read Japanese. I am fairly certain that there is a library of material on…
A couple of days ago, I had an interesting conversation with an acquaintance who had recently presented his concept for right-sized reactors directly to T. Boone Pickens, one of the most prominent promoters of American “energy independence”. He shared a very interesting story about Pickens’s reaction to the several hour long presentation and following discussion….
Artwork by PopAtomic.org.
On April 14, 2010, Democracy Now’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Amy Goodman interviewed John Mueller, author of Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda, and John Steinbach, who has studied Israel’s nuclear weapons program. The interview is worth replaying; it is gratifying to hear a recognized political science expert surprise relatively committed anti-nuclear journalists…
I have been trying for years to help nuclear technologists understand the economics of power generation and the financial motivations of the people who make the investment decisions on the types of power plants to build. Sometimes, I have felt like a lonely voice and other times I believe that some of the people who…
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has posted a Policy Issue Information document dated March 28, 2010 titled POTENTIAL POLICY, LICENSING, AND KEY TECHNICAL ISSUES FOR SMALL MODULAR NUCLEAR REACTOR DESIGNS. The document number is SECY-10-0034. It is a fairly typical redundant, bureaucratically phrased work, but it contains a number of important statements, planned processes, and…
On April 9, 2010, Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute paid me the compliment of responding to a post that I labeled as a “smoking gun”. I gave the post that label since it provided an example of a man with evident ties to the fossil fuel industry working to discourage the use of nuclear…
On Monday, April 12, 2010, Entergy hosted a public information meeting in Brattleboro, VT about the tritium leak at Vermont Yankee and the actions taken to find and stop the leak. The meeting was set up like a science fair or trade show, with booths and posters with informative displays and knowledgeable people to answer…