I do not hate oil companies, I hate their business model. I hate the fact that they are capturing a vast portion of the world’s wealth and power by extracting an ever higher price for essentially the same product that they have been selling for 100 years with few technical improvements that make it more…
I love living in an era where we have access to timely videos covering subjects that have traditionally been ignored by the advertiser-supported media. The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) employs forward thinking individuals who recognize the value of communicating without commercial filters. They have created a terrific blog at NEI Nuclear Notes and YouTube channel…
About 15 months ago, I wrote a blog titled Means, Motive and Opportunity – Who Discouraged US Nuclear Developments? After several intense and interesting conversations during the past three days, I decided that it was time to update that post and provide some additional information. Please take a few minutes to follow the link for…
On January 30. 2011, Bill Loveless of Platts Energy Week interviewed Kevin Book of Clearview Energy Partners and Matthew Armstrong of Bracewell and Giuliani to get their reaction to the recent announcement that Josh Fox’s Gasland had received an Oscar nomination for best documentary film. The interview is worth watching, perhaps more than once, to…
(Source: Weekly highlight from Platts Energy Week for February 6, 2011.) Coal is already a global market, but the opportunities for high profits through exports are on the rise. The recent torrential rainfall and tragic flooding in Queensland, Australia caused a significant amount of damage to both the mining and transportation infrastructure. Though the damage…
More and more articles about nuclear energy are appearing to reach the conclusion that the technology is safe enough, reliable enough, and competitive enough except for the fact that the plants take too and cost too much. Some people in the pronuclear camp have determined that the only way to solve that problem is to…
I just read a BBC Science News article titled Chernobyl birds are small brained. The headline writer succeeded in his job – he attracted me to click on the link and read the article. The person who shared the link on Twitter also succeeded, by copying the link and headline into a tweet, he pointed…
The Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant has been under attack for several years by a concerted, organized effort to force it to shut down. One of frequently employed tactics has been to widely publicize and repeatedly mention any event that puts the plant in a bad light. The tactic of repetition imposes a perception in…
Normally, I am reluctant to simply reproduce a press release, but I figured you might be interested in this one. From the Nuclear Energy Institute: As Texas copes with rolling electricity blackouts and its coldest temperatures in decades, you should be aware that the state’s four nuclear power plants – which have a combined electric…
The Atomic Age did not really start with a bang, and the scientists who discovered that neutrons were matter altering tools that enabled them to release vast quantities of heat energy were not really focused on building destructive weapons. Instead, atomic pioneers like Szilard, Fermi, Noddack, and Mitner were excited to be both unlocking stored…
I just spent the past hour and 9 minutes listening to the ExxonMobil earnings call for the fourth quarter of 2010. The company reported some impressive numbers. Exxon recorded $9.3 billion in net earnings for the fourth quarter and $30.5 billion in net earnings for the year. The company generated $51.7 billion in cash flow…
Ajax Eastman has just published a piece on the Baltimore Chronicle, non-profit, internet only news site. Ajax’s article, titled Pulling Back the Curtain on Wind Power is one of the clearest, most concise explanations for why building massive turbines is a dumb idea that is only being done because there are large, misdirected expenditures of…