Disneyland 3-14 – Our Friend, The Atom

On Sunday, January 23, 1957, a large American audience gathered around their television sets to watch the weekly episode of Disneyland, a popular show created and hosted by Walt Disney in return for an investment from ABC that he used to build Disneyland. On that evening, the audience was treated to a compressed course in…

Paterson’s plan for CO2 emission reductions

Paterson’s plan for CO2 emission reductions

Owen Paterson, who served as the UK’s environment secretary until a cabinet realignment during the summer of 2014, is planning to begin advocating a dramatic course change for his country’s energy policy. Instead of the wind-heavy plan that was developed by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) in order to attempt to implement…

FOE’s manipulative legal strategy for closing nuclear reactors

During a recent discussion on James Conca’s article titled Are California’s Carbon Goals Kaput?, Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear accused Conca of trying to revise history. Gunter’s comment includes a lengthy interpretation of the events surrounding the closure of San Onofre from the point of view of a man who has been a professional antinuclear…

The Canadians are coming

Hugh MacDiarmid, the Chairman of the Board for Terrestrial Energy, Inc., gave a talk to the Economic Club of Canada on September 24, 2014. That talk included a brief description of TEI’s integral molten salt reactor technology, but most of the talk was visionary in nature and aimed at exciting his Canadian audience about the…

Reusable fuel is an asset for future generations

It’s time to stop talking about the material removed from commercial reactors as “nuclear waste” and to stop looking at the inventory as a burden on future generations. That labeling and that characterization of the material is a costly legacy imposed on us by people who do not like abundant, emission free nuclear energy and…

Inside a German Lignite Mine

The BBC made a visit to a German lignite (brown coal) mine. I’d like the people who favor the EnergieWende to explain how they can like this energy source better than nuclear power.

Confident response might have saved San Onofre

Confident response might have saved San Onofre

The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station never threatened public health and safety. Unit 2 could have been started as soon as its scheduled outage was completed in February of 2012. Unit 3 could have been restarted by mid-March 2012. The total cost of the repairs, including purchased replacement power, should have been less than $50…

Antinuclear activists are too modest

Jim Conca has published a couple of recent posts on Forbes.com about the premature closure of nuclear power plants in the United States. One titled Are California’s Carbon Goals Kaput? focuses on some of the environmental aspects of the San Onofre debacle; the other, titled Closing Vermont Nuclear Bad Business for Everyone focuses on the…

Nuclear energy getting attention on No Agenda podcast

No Agenda, staring Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak bills itself as “The Best Podcast in the Universe.” It is the best, most entertaining, most thought-provoking, and most professionally-produced podcast I listen to, so I cannot argue with the frequently repeated claim. On Episode 656, recorded and released on September 28, Curry and Dvorak chatted…

Purposeful price pumping by constraining supply

James Conca recently published a commentary on Forbes titled Closing Vermont Nuclear Bad Business For Everyone. A major thrust of Conca’s initial post was highlighting the rapidly rising prices of electricity in New England that are being driven by an increasing reliance on natural gas as reliable power generators like the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant…

Antinuclear activists don’t like continued storage rule

Several of the usual suspects — including Dr. Mark Cooper, Dr. Arjun Makhijani, and Diane Curran — have banded together to assert their opinion that the NRC’s recently issued NUREG-2157, Generic Environmental Impact Statement for Continued Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel, violates the following provision of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. In connection with…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. disavows need for individuals to change behavior

During the march held in New York City on September 21, PJTV reporter Michelle Fields spoke with Robert F. Kennedy about his plans to change his personal consumption habits. The good news is that RFK Jr. has absolved all of us of having to make any changes in our personal choices; the bad news is…