The Virginia Chapter of the American Nuclear Society will be holding its monthly meeting on January 21 at the Dominion Innsbrook Technology Center in Glenn Allen, VA. That meeting will be the annual joint meeting with the local chapter of the Health Physics Society. Schedule: Social Hour – 5:30 p.m. Dinner – 6:00 p.m. Presentation…
Atomic Insights is proud to be hosting the 295th weekly addition of the Carnival of Nuclear Blogs. Here are some of the highlight posts produced during the first full week of 2016. From Yes Vermont Yankee: Vermont Yankee was replaced by natural gas: Doing the numbers By: Meredith Angwin and The replacement for Vermont Yankee…
Joe Romm, an energy industry and climate change pundit who was once mentored by Amory Lovins at the Rocky Mountain Institute, recently sat down at his keyboard to produce a piece providing the basis for his opinion that James Hansen, Ken Caldeira, Tom Wigley and Kerry Emanuel — and hundreds to thousands of other nuclear…
On Wednesday, Jan 6, 2015, the Lake Gaston Association (LGA) monthly meeting featured a presentation from Tom Leahy, director of the Virginia Beach Public Utilities Department. The announced topic was an update on uranium mining and coal ash control. I saw an opportunity to combine some exploration of Virginia backroads with the chance to meet…
Christina Nunez wrote a piece for National Geographic titled As Sea Levels Rise, Are Coastal Nuclear Plants Ready?. It is a journalistically balanced piece that poses a worrying question about nuclear plant vulnerability. It begins by describing reasons to support nuclear energy along with reasons why some oppose and fear it. It includes critical commentary…
I’m opposed to subsidies that encourage the cultivation of plants and trees for the sole purpose of converting them into heat or electricity. Often sold under the “renewable energy” brand, such programs can result in substantial harm by paying people to bulldoze rain forests to plant soy or palms for their oil content or by…
As a former federal agency bureaucrat, I should have thought of this long ago. When agencies disagree over matters with significant budgetary impact, one way to arbitrate the dispute is to involve the people in Congress who are responsible for funding the agencies and the programs affected by their differing points of view. One possible…
Three members of Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information (SARI)–Jeffry A. Siegel, Charles W. Pennington and Bill Sacks –successfully submitted a letter to the Reader’s Forum section of Physics Today titled Low-dose radiation exposure should not be feared. The letter has a powerful conclusion. Many people, though they admit the absence of evidence, nevertheless believe that…
I came across an advertisement in the April 1956 issue of Scientific American that I simply had to share. Does anyone recognize the basic concept described by the Ford Instrument Company (a division of Sperry Rand Corporation) almost exactly 60 years ago?