Financial Times Believes that President Obama’s Speech Should Have Emphasized Natural Gas. I Disagree.

Kate Mackenzie, who writes for the Financial Times excellent blog about energy called FT Energy Source (free registration required), published a reaction to President Obama’s June 15, 2010 Oval Office speech about energy. Her piece was titled Obama’s big oil spill speech: An opportunity only half-seized. She was apparently looking for specific actions that would…

Atomic Show #155 – Lisa Stiles Interview of NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko

At the American Nuclear Society Meeting 2010 being held in San Diego, CA from June 13-18, NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko gave one of the plenary addresses. Lisa Stiles, providing reports from the meeting to the Atomic Show and Atomic Insights filed the following report and audio interview: From Lisa Stiles: Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chairman…

TerraPower Update – Latest Series B Funding Round Raises $35 Million

TerraPower is working on the detailed design for a Traveling Wave Reactor that can effectively convert and consume actinide isotopes that are often considered to be waste products in a traditional light water reactor. The company was spun out of Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures after the team’s design progress attracted the attention of Bill Gates…

Public Versus Private Power – It Is Time To Reopen The Discussion

As a student of the electrical power industry’s history, I have found many stories of a long running competition between public and private power suppliers. For most of my life, this discussion has been rather muted, with private forces seeming to have conquered the battlefield. The vast majority of the electrical power in the US…

New Atomic Insights Artwork from PopAtomic Studios

I have been catching up with posts produced during my trip to France. (We did not have much time for web surfing.) One that I noticed was a thank you gift from my friends at PopAtomic Studios. What do you think?

Dear Areva: Thank you for an eye-opening and educational experience

I have just returned from a unique ecotourism experience. Instead of visiting a wild place with a protected and isolated habitat, I spent a week in France touring industrial facilities that are actively producing emission-free fuels and power for a large, prosperous, and well-developed country. My trip was hosted by Areva, the integrated manufacturing company…

Energy Density Comparison

One of the primary advantages that nuclear energy sources have over chemical energy competitors is energy density. Using our current, rather primitive technology that essentially obtains nuclear energy from the 0.7% fraction of uranium that is easily fissioned with a single, low energy neutron, uranium contains about 16,000 times as much energy per unit weight…

Hormesis – Low Doses of Most "Poisons" Can Be Beneficial

As science has enabled humans to measure substances and phenomena at ever lower doses and units of measure, a strange fear has been imposed upon some people. Before those tiny quantities could be measured, those same people were blissfully ignorant of the substances that made up their world. They did not worry about coming in…

Westinghouse Adds 5,000 Employees Over Last Four Years

Watch the latest business video at video.foxbusiness.com Fox Business interviews Westinghouse Senior Vice President Kate Jackson about the company’s steady growth in employees during a period that has seen other companies shrink. She explains how the nuclear industry is growing internationally, what the company is doing to find new hires, and what kind of skills…

Smooth Talking Coal King, Establishment Environmental Leaders, Politicians and Cap And Trade Fix

Businessweek has published a fascinating article by Eric Pooley titled The Smooth Talking King of Coal – And Climate Change that should be required reading for anyone who is interested in understanding how business leaders, establishment Environmental group leaders, and ambitious politicians can come together to concoct a scheme to skew important rules to tilt…

Thank Goodness I Do Not Live In the Northern Land Of Fruits And Nut Cases

There was a time when I lived in a large western state famous for producing a wide variety of fruits and nuts – both literally in their large agricultural sector and figuratively in their sadly amusing political sector. Since I was only a temporary California resident while attending graduate school, I did not get too…