Jeff Immelt of GE thinks nuclear is too hard – no surprises there

Jeff Immelt of GE thinks nuclear is too hard – no surprises there

There has been a flurry of commentary on the web and on Atomic Insights as a result of a recent Financial Times interview of Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE, that ran under the headline of GE Chief: Nuclear ‘hard to justify’. The article provides an informative insight into the motive for Immelt’s dismissal of…

Atomic Show #186 – SMRs, Climate Change, and Natural Gas Competition

On the evening of July 29, 2012, Suzy Hobbs-Baker, Director of the Nuclear Literacy Project and founder of PopAtomic Studios, Dan Yurman, who blogs at Idaho Samizdat and writes for Fuel Cycle Week and the ANS Nuclear Cafe, Margaret Harding, an independent nuclear energy consultant who blogs at 4 Factor Consulting, and Cal Abel, a…

Helping “The Sky is Pink” go viral

THE SKY IS PINK by Josh Fox and the GASLAND Team from JFOX on Vimeo. I am unapologetic about my support for developing more nuclear energy so that we can use less fossil fuel. Methane is a valuable, naturally occurring, fuel source, but extracting it at the rate that oil and gas marketers desire is…

Science Controversies and Print Edition Limitations – Jacobson versus radiation biology specialists

Last week, Professor Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, stepped way outside of his area of expertise by publishing a paper titled Worldwide health effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident that claimed to quantify the number of cancers that may be caused by the radioactive material released…

The Atomic Show #185 – Is Thorium Superior to Uranium?

On July 23, 2012, busy schedules aligned and I had the chance to talk with Richard Martin, the author of SuperFuel: Thorium, the Green Energy Source for the Future and Kirk Sorensen, the co-founder and chief technology officer of Flibe Energy, a start-up company formed to “develop small modular reactors based on liquid-fluoride thorium reactor…

The Atomic Show #184 – Kirk Sorensen, Co-Founder Flibe Energy

Kirk Sorensen is the co-founder and chief technologist of Flibe Energy. He is a member of a tiny club of people who can honestly claim to be atomic entrepreneurs. He is a brilliant man – one of the few people who has been both a rocket scientist and a nuclear engineer. Kirk is best known…

Jacobson misuses LNT to purposefully exaggerate effects of Fukushima radiation

Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, has a well known belief that human society can be powered entirely by wind, water, and sunlight. He was a coauthor with Mark A. Delucchi for a November 2009 Scientific American cover article titled A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030. The…

European Climate Foundation Has a Dangerous Blind Spot Regarding Nuclear Energy

The European Energy Review (free subscription required) recently published an interview with Arne Mogren, Director of the Power Programme of the European Climate Foundation (ECF) titled Everyone agrees on where we need to be in 2050, but not on how to get there. The ECF is billed as one of the more influential climate lobby…

Radiation Victims Are Not Black Swans

By Ted Rockwell An increasingly used anti-nuclear argument claims “it is impossible to prove the non-existence of something,” therefore we can’t be sure that low-dose radiation is harmless. Some day we may discover victims of low-dose radiation, just as we one day discovered the existence of black swans – lots of them (in Australia). We…

Analogy – Steroids & Home Runs vs CO2 & Extreme Weather

I like the above video, though I would make a few changes if I could draw. For example, I would more carefully choose dimensions in the scene that shows the earth surrounded by what is apparently supposed to be the atmosphere. The earth’s diameter is roughly 8,000 miles, but its atmosphere is only a few…

A little pronuclear fun for a Saturday morning

Several months ago, Suzy Hobbs of PopAtomic Studios and the Nuclear Literacy Project gave me a signed print of the Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant with some Photoshopped cooling towers. She created the print as part of her effort to show nuclear plant owners how their massive concrete structures could be used as an excellent canvas…