I’m a progressive liberal who frequently listens to Democracy Now! That makes me a bit of an oddity because I am also fiercely pro-nuclear energy. It has numerous capabilities that should appeal to progressive thinkers; it is abundant, affordable, compact, reliable, and emission-free. Unfortunately, the catechism taught to hereditary or geographical liberals includes such talking…
In April, the Columbia University Coalition for Sustainable Development organized an evening event titled “Next Generation Nuclear Power: The Solution to Climate Change.” The event included a screening of Pandora’s Promise and a panel discussion about nuclear energy moderated by Andy Revkin, a well-known environmental columnist from the New York Times. The panel included Robert…
On September 8, 2015, the NRC announced that it would stop funding the National Academy of Sciences’s (NAS) five-year-long, multimillion dollar effort to create a method that could be used to study whether or not populations that are exposed to radiation doses that are a tiny fraction of average background radiation related to proximity to…
During the joint DOE-NRC workshop on advanced non-light water reactors held last week (Sep 1-2, 2015), John Adams of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation gave a presentation on reactor license classification terminology. It made me squirm in my chair with the desire to interrupt. Probably because he has read and…
Cara Santa Maria is an Emmy award-winning journalist who studied and taught neuroscience and psychology before deciding that her primary interest was in communicating about science. She was born and raised in Texas, but now lives in Los Angeles. She told me that she has found a terrific community of scientists, communicators, and other creative…
Sunniva Rose is a nuclear engineer working on her PhD at the University of Oslo. She is also a talented public speaker who likes to capture her audience’s attention, partially by choosing colors like pink and green to highlight facts about nuclear energy, deaths per terawatt hour, and growth in human population. In Nov 2013,…
On September 1-2 2015, the US DOE and US NRC jointly sponsored a workshop on advanced non-LWR [light water reactors]. Your intrepid reporter from Atomic Insights attended and managed to ask a few questions. The presentations are available here. One of the highlights of the first day of the workshop came during the question and…