On March 30, 2015, I gathered a few of my pro-nuclear blogging friends together for a chat about recent events and activity in three separate areas, the Pacific Northwest, the US Northeast, and the eastern provinces of Canada. We also chatted about recent budget hearings for the DOE and the NRC and the way the…
Pressure groups and interested individuals have been striving for more than two decades to force the U. S. to reduce its occupational worker radiation protection limit from 50 mSv/year to 20 mSv/year. The primary justification for this effort is that in 1991 the International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP) issued publication 60 and provided their…
By Guy Page By 2020, the spent fuel left over from all 42 years of Vermont Yankee’s operation is scheduled to be stored in huge steel “dry casks” on pads at the plant site in Vernon. Just how strong and reliable are Vermont Yankee’s “dry cask” spent nuclear fuel containers? Consider the following dry cask…
I’ve been spending some time watching, rewatching and clipping interesting excerpts from the Senate Appropriations Energy and Water subcommittee hearings on the FY2016 Department of Energy budget. It’s not everyone’s idea of entertainment, but it’s fascinating to me to watch publicly accessible discussions about how our government makes decisions, sets priorities and spends the money…
On Wednesday, March 18, 2015, a sobering LNG market analysis article from RBN Energy, LLC titled A Whole New World-Big Changes Coming to LNG Market concluded with the following prediction. Several industry forecasts suggest that, despite 2014’s pause in demand growth, LNG demand will rise at a healthy annual pace of 4 to 5% over…
I apologize for the acronym soup in the title. Here is what I really wanted to say, but couldn’t fit into the title field. On February 27, 2015, nearly three years after it was submitted, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a letter reporting that the NRC staff had prepared a final Topical Report Safety…
On March 3, 2015, Arjun Makhijani testified in front of a committee of the Minnesota Senate. The committee was conducting an investigation on whether or not it should recommend lifting the state’s current moratorium on building new nuclear reactors. Here is the presentation that he prepared and delivered. During his recorded testimony, Makhijani falsely stated…
The U. S. National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP) held its annual meeting in Bethesda, MD on March 16 and 17. On the second day of the meeting, Jacques Lochard, Vice Chair of the International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP), gave a talk titled The Ethics of Radiation Protection. The slides from that talk are…
South Australian Sen. Sean Edwards sees economic opportunity for his state by taking advantage of other countries’ irrational fear of radioactive materials. He wants to turn what some call “waste” into wealth. He and his staff recognize that there are tens of billions of dollars set aside in government budgets around the world for safe…
A friend who often gets involved in discussions about nuclear energy stories with frightened people in his social media network contacted me to find out what I thought of an article titled Nuclear plant could be a ‘Chernobyl on steroids,’ says expert. Then the same story showed up on one of my daily news feeds….
Later today, March 17, 2015 (St. Patrick’s Day), Californians for Green Nuclear Power will be donning the green and holding a rally at the plaza in front of the San Luis Obispo County building at 1055 Monterey from noon until 1:30 PM (PDT). They want to show that the groups fighting to shut down the…
Tritium, also known as radioactive hydrogen, is an isotope that releases an 18 Kev beta particle. The isotopic half life is about 12 years. Among other possible production mechanisms, it is produced in low quantities and concentrations in any reactor where water is exposed to a neutron flux. The production rate is higher in heavy…