Yesterday at the Platts 12th Annual Nuclear Energy Conference, Darious Dixon of Politico asked NRC Commissioner William Ostendorff if he had decided whether or not he would be willing to remain of the Commission for a third term if the President chooses to nominate him again. After expressing his deep respect for the agency and…
Forbes has recently published a commentary by Dr. Marshall Shepard titled How Weather And An ‘Interstate of Renewable Energy’ Could Save The Climate By 2030. Dr. Shepard is a past president of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). The basis for his article was the same NOAA study that we discussed here a couple of weeks…
A recent article titled U-Battery – Micronuclear power with intriguing business model inspired a commenter with the pseudonyum of Nick P. to share some visionary power system ideas. There are plenty of other people who offer hazy visions of what our future energy system might include. The difference between Nick P.’s fission-enabled future and the…
Here’s an example of how Internet tools pose a challenge for nefarious government officials who want to make inconvenient information from programs initiated by predecessors “go away.” Low Dose Radiation Research Program Accomplishments Several months ago, I wrote some articles describing how the Department of Energy’s Low Dose Radiation Research program was systematically defunded and…
It’s not often that the Atomic Show has the chance to be a source of breaking news, but this show includes a timely report from Ben Heard in Adelaide, South Australia. Just an hour before our show began, the South Australia Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission issued the tentative findings from the investigative effort begun…
U-Battery was one of the more intriguing presenters at the Advanced Reactor Technical Summit (ARTSIII) held at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory last week. Even though this was a technical summit, the segments of the presentation that captured my attention were the business model and the funding source. However, certain technical choices are vital to…
Tim Dickinson wrote a lengthy piece for Rolling Stone titled The Koch Brothers’ Dirty War on Solar Power: All over the country, the Kochs and utilities have been blocking solar initiatives — but nowhere more so than in Florida. Though the Koch Brothers got top billing in the headline for fairly obvious reasons, the real…
On February 10-11, 2016, the U.S. Nuclear Infrastructure Council (USNIC) sponsored the 3rd annual Advanced Reactor Technical Summit. Oak Ridge National Laboratory provided the venue for the event. Though he wasn’t the first speaker, I’d like to begin my reports from the event with Jeffery Merrifield’s stage setting talk. Merrifield is a man with a…
Sometime between June 24, 2015 and January 21, 2016, a building remodeling project in Steamboat Springs, CO resulted in the loss of 7.5 curies of tritium. A reasonable guess is that the container holding the tritium was tossed into a construction debris dumpster and carted off to a local landfill. The incident was reported to…
California has one of the most confusing energy policies in the country. Though it loudly proclaims itself as an environmental leader, with some of the most strict air and water pollution regulations in the world, it has a state law that prevents consideration of new nuclear power plants. It has forced the early closure of…
By Bill Sacks This is in response to Rosie Romero’s article in the January 27 issue of the GV News (p. B8), What you need to know about radon. It is wrong, just plain wrong. In the low concentrations encountered in homes, radon is not a cause of lung cancer, let alone “the second leading…
During the Advanced Nuclear Summit and Showcase, there was a terrific conversation about a growing level of excitement among university students who are studying nuclear engineering, among more established members of the nuclear community and among other people who are passionate about helping to save the world. Some of that enthusiasm stems from the fact…