Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that his country shares a common desire with oil consumers. They would both like oil prices to be lower. Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal indicated that the Saudis would like oil to be trading in the range of $70 to $80 per barrel instead of its current…
The topic of this podcast is the status of the design certification application for the Westinghouse AP1000, the system that has been chosen for about half of all of the new nuclear power plant projects that are currently planned in the United States. Last week, the Chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a…
One of the most useful ways to overcome fear of the unknown is to gain knowledge about the source of the fear. There have been a lot of scary sounding reports recently about the state of the nuclear fuel cores inside the pressure vessels at Fukushima Daiichi units 1, 2, and 3. Many of them…
I deliberately chose a provocative title to discuss a theory that surprises nearly everyone. Though full of many sincere and hard working people who are trying to make the world a cleaner and more human friendly place, I believe that most of the really big and well-funded non-profit organizations that claim to be working for…
PopAtomic Studios has taken a conversation regarding a lack of nuclear energy advertising that occurred on a private email list frequented by both amateur and professional nuclear energy communicators and decided to run with the inspiration. The Nuclear Literacy Project was approved by the PopAtomic Studios board yesterday. The new web site is not yet…
Peter Lang has published an intriguing guest post at Brave New Climate titled CO2 avoidance cost with wind energy in Australia and carbon price implications. It has attracted about 125 lengthy, mostly well-referenced comments and repeat visits from Michael Goggin of the American Wind Energy Association. I think renewable energy mythology is a clever distraction…
On May 18, 2011, Senator Mitch McConnell exercised the privilege of being the senate minority leader to visit the Senate Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Energy and Water while the committee was holding a hearing on the fiscal year 2012 budget for the Department of Energy. He asked Secretary Chu a number of pointed questions about…
I have recently been introduced to a fascinating energy industry information source called European Energy Review. It is useful to find new perspectives on a topic as broad and as important as the large and lucrative energy supply business. The situation in Europe has always been substantially different from that in the US, because it…
The editors of Scientific American published an op-ed titled Coming Clean about Nuclear Power: Regulators and industry have one precious moment to recapture the public’s trust that holds nuclear energy to an unobtainably high standard of guaranteed safety, absolutely secure operations, and complete transparency. Now the toughest regulator in the federal government has to be…
William Pentland at Forbes Clean Beta has an interesting take on a recently released Congressional Budget Office report titled The Cost-Effectiveness of Nuclear Power for Navy Surface Ships. Though he makes it clear that the CBO’s report only supports an economic argument for nuclear powered ships under certain oil price scenarios, he points out that…
No time for comments – I need to get ready for my day job, but I thought this 13 minute video showing the recovery work at Fukushima was important enough to share immediately.
Philip Sharp and Ernie Moniz are both members of the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future and are ostensibly in favor of the use of nuclear energy. Richard Lester “runs the nuclear engineering department” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the premier engineering institutions in the country. I was taken aback,…