The Huffington Post recently posted an article on July 29, 2011 titled Big Oil Companies Post Huge Profits On High Gas Prices that has apparently tapped a deep well of anger and emotion – it has already received more than 3,400 comments. I can empathize with that anger; though I drive a small car that…
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. That is one of the sayings that I remember whenever I read works about energy by people like Amory Lovins or Ralph Nader and find myself agreeing with something they have written. (I rarely agree with either of them, but that does not mean that I…
Steve Kirsch, an MIT graduate and enough of an entrepreneurial success to have an auditorium at the school that carries his name, has updated his challenge to the faculty at his alma mater in a post on The Huffington Post titled Is MIT Afraid to Debate Nuclear Report?. Steve is quite serious about this challenge…
An Atomic Insights reader pointed me to Joe Romm’s recent post titled False Balance Exposed: BBC Gives Too Much Weight to Fringe Views on Climate Change, Independent Review Finds. Duh. In that post, Joe discusses how an outside reviewer has determined that the BBCs strong desire to show impartiality can result in providing poor information…
One of my favorite participants in the energy conversation is NNadir, who intermittently blogs at Daily Kos. (I have always wondered about the etymology of that handle – it turns out that it is derived from “Not Nader” as in not Ralph.) His most recent post, titled Were the Japanese Engineers Who Built Fukushima Incompetent?…
CBS News aired a short piece titled US heat wave causes new look at nuclear energy that is worth a look. Though it includes the obligatory appearance of a professional antinuclear activist – in this case, Dr. Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists – the story provides some encouraging clips of the massive…
I learned something new and useful while watching Energy Now’s July 24, 2011 show titled The Promise and Problems of Shale Gas. If I want to attempt to get an honest answer from natural gas industry promoters about the potential hazards of extracting natural gas from unconventional formations like coal beds and shale, I cannot…
I have an all-star team of people I can assemble to debate your position on the urgency of fast reactors (top DOE brass, nuclear industry, environmental leaders, etc). You pick the place and time. Near the end of 2010, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a summary of a report titled The Future of the…
“In These Times” published an article that was slanted in favor of the groups that have organized themselves to fight against the licensing and construction of Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear power plants throughout the southeast United States. The article, titled After Fukushima, New Fears in U.S. quotes people from NC Warn, the Friends of the Earth,…
The European Energy Review (available with a free registration) has published a detailed article titled Gazprom: back in the game – and ready to take on Brussels that paints a picture of Gazprom’s continued pattern of aggressive market actions aimed at locking European customers into long term contracts at prices that must make many US…
It is difficult to do battle with imaginary boogeymen, especially when you are a rational-minded person steeped in reality. In the money-driven battle over our future energy supply choices, the people who fight nuclear energy have imagination on their side. They can, and often do, invent numerous scary tales about what might happen without the…
Bill Loveless of Platts Energy Week recently interviewed Don Santa, President and CEO of INGAA (Interstate Natural Gas Association of America), about a study that his organization commission from ICF International. According to the study, the shifts in natural gas supply areas combined with shifts in the customer base, will require the construction of approximately…