On September 16, 2014, Stephen Burns and Jeff Baran were confirmed as Commissioners at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the Senate. Thirty days later, on October 14, 2014, Jeff Baran was sworn in and began serving out the remainder of the term of William Magwood, who left the commission to take over as Director-General of…
Atomic Insights is expanding. I’d like to introduce our newest writer, Evan Twarog. Some of you may recognize his name; in the friendly world of pro-nuclear bloggers, Evan has made a name for himself as a bright young man who started learning the importance of public communications about nuclear energy when he was just 14…
This is a reprint of an article published in HP News, an official publication of the Health Physics Society (www.hps.org). Neither the Health Physics Society nor the author of the article have any affiliation with Atomic Insights. Barbara Hamrick, CHP, JD, HPS Fellow At 2:46 p.m. Japan Standard Time (JST) on 11 March 2011, the…
Please count me as an extreme skeptic on the possibility of anything useful coming from the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works fusion project described in the below commercial. The only explanation I can think of for the recent hype and attention given to this project is that there is a competition that I do not know…
The email introducing the below video included the following description. The attached film is so ridiculous and the author is an idiot. The second clause of that sentence is not quite true; the author is an intelligent man who has created a few tall tales for a nefarious purpose. I’d like to crowd source an…
Low dose radiation suppresses cancer. Note: Low dose in this case is defined as being below a threshold value of somewhere between 100 – 200 mSv depending on exposed organ. That bold, conventional wisdom-challenging statement is supported by an incredibly important paper titled Cancer risk at low doses of ionizing radiation: artificial neural networks inference…
After an informative tour of the NuScale facilities in Corvallis, OR on October 20, I continued my quick visit to the Pacific Northwest. I had originally arranged my travel plans to fly into Portland, OR instead Richland, WA — which was my ultimate destination — for a variety of reasons. It enabled the visit to…
On October 21, 2014, I was invited to be a speaker at the Eastern Washington American Nuclear Society Meeting. That talk was recorded and produced by volunteers at the section. Perhaps as a result of jet lag or nervousness, I neglected to provide proper credit for borrowed slides. Though the words were mine, the slides…
An article in the Berkshire (MA) Eagle News titled New England Clean Energy Council hopes for renewable energy push from candidates appeared in my Google News Alert on “new nuclear power plants” this morning. If you follow that link and begin reading, you might wonder how Google found this article. The story headline and most…
Disclosure: I have a small contract to provide NuScale with advice and energy market information. That work represents less than 5% of my income for 2014. On October 20, 2014, I had the opportunity to visit NuScale’s facilities in Corvallis, OR. Though the company now has offices in three cities, Corvallis, the home of Oregon…
If you are like most people I know, you like watching impressively large objects move in a precision fashion. This video is a time lapse view of the recent lift at Vogtle unit 3 to set the lower ring. That steel object weighs 950 tons and is 51 feet tall. New skills are being developed…
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is supposed to be an independent regulator with the mission of regulating the use of radioactive materials to adequately protect public safety, promote the common defense and security, and protect the environment. Unfortunately, the Commission has become a political battle ground that makes life difficult for the people appointed to lead…