Jon Talton of the Seattle Times published a piece in reaction to the recent kerfuffle about a structural collapse at an old, wooden beam-reinforced tunnel roof at the Hanford site in eastern Washington. The tunnel has been the storage location for equipment and obsolete components that were used several decades ago when the site was…
NEWS FLASH: Radiation levels measured inside the containment and shielding of a damaged nuclear reactor are HIGH. That is about as unexpected as finding out that the temperatures inside a coal-fired furnace are high enough to cause instant death to any unprotected living creature, including human beings. There is absolutely no reason for the public…
It’s time for another weekly roundup of the best of the pronuclear blogs. Last week included the fifth anniversary of the March 11, 2011 twin natural disaster that included a 9.0 earthquake and a 15 meter tall tsunami. Those two closely linked forces of nature resulted in widespread infrastructure devastation over a 150 km long…
Despite the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars that have been spent by governments and nuclear plant operators in the wake of three core melt events at the six-unit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, the most useful lessons available from the experience remain unlearned. At Fukushima Daiichi, the robust, defense-in-depth approach used in nuclear…
Earlier today, I found a link in one of my news feeds to a December 14, 2015 MarketPlace story titled A Natural Gas Leak With Seemingly No End. It describes an event near a community called Porter Ranch in Los Angeles county, California that has been in progress since October 23, 2015. Here is the…
An important message that has been discussed often by web publications like Hiroshima Syndrome, Yes Vermont Yankee, Canadian Energy Issues, Nuke Power Talk, Neutron Bytes, Atomic Power Review, and ANS Nuclear Cafe has jumped to the mainstream press in the form of a New York Times article by George Johnson titled When Radiation Isn’t the…
A friend pointed me to a heart-rending piece in the New York Review of Books titled Fukushima: The Price of Nuclear Power by Michael Ignatieff. The piece is a first hand account of a visit to Japan’s Fukushima prefecture; it includes vivid descriptions of the devastation caused by the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck…
Gerry Thomas, Professor of Molecular Pathology of the Imperial College of London, has a subspecialty in the study of the health effects of radiation. She strongly believes that “public involvement and information is a key part of academic research,” and she is “actively involved in the public communication of research, particularly with respect to radiation…
On December 7, 2014, 60 Minutes, the venerable investigative reporting television show that has been on the air since 1968, aired a segment about Duke Energy’s Dan River coal ash spill, which occurred on February 2, 2014. That large release of coal waste was a big topic in local newspapers and television shows in my…
On November 23, 2014, 60 minutes, the venerable CBS News Sunday evening program that has been on the air since its launch in 1968, aired a segment titled Chernobyl: The Catastrophe That Never Ended. The show is full of fascinating contrasts between what the cameras show to the audience and what the narrator tells the…
This is a reprint of an article published in HP News, an official publication of the Health Physics Society (www.hps.org). Neither the Health Physics Society nor the author of the article have any affiliation with Atomic Insights. Barbara Hamrick, CHP, JD, HPS Fellow At 2:46 p.m. Japan Standard Time (JST) on 11 March 2011, the…
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…