58 Comments

  1. By openly stating :

    Nuclear Undone is not pro or against nuclear energy

    She is copycating the UCS. Not a good idea.

  2. She’s just another socialist utopian. “Jobs for everyone on earth”….”Everyone is equal”…

    No wonder shes not pro or against nuclear energy. She doesn’t believe in anything except *someone else* writing her a check.

  3. “Nuclear Undone is not pro or against nuclear energy”

    Typical socialist utopian. We’re all equal. Jobs for everyone on earth. The only thing she believes in is someone else writing her a check.

  4. I don’t know. The ambiguity has worked well for UCS in terms of building a sustainable, reasonably well supported organization.

    I doesn’t hurt to emulate successful models with a twist.

  5. Wait a minute I thought I was the socialist free check loven walmart welfare queen. If you keep calling everyone that I am not going to feel so special.

  6. Of course anything truly impartial or even science based these days is treated like a radical pro nuclear stance after so many years of skewed anti nuclear activism.

    Incidentally, speaking of the anti nukes; I used to enjoy reading the comments over at “ENE News” as fast as I could and in a high pitched voice because it sometimes made me laugh.

    I hadn’t been lately because I thought the insanity would have died down from the lack of any real crisis and, of course, after so many months of totally embarrassing themselves. I see I was quite mistaken.

    Ive learned :

    1. Tokyo needs to be immediately evacuated.
    2. The entire pacific ocean is “dying”
    3. If fuel rods touch they will explode.
    4. If you have been feeling not so good in the last few years -> Fukushima
    5. There is no sign of life in Fukushima exclusion zone – its a “nuclear wasteland” (except for a few birds)
    6. Huge sinister cover up is occurring and only some education professor (aka polymath and nuclear expert) at penn state in the US is onto it.

  7. People don’t kill endangered species birds.

    Solar and Wind do with tacit support from the Federal government in place and the green movement.

  8. OMG you are kidding. Dams eradicate whole species and ecosystems and they are worried about a small plume near the plant. That cooling colossus will do more damage.

    I will have to read up on this one.

  9. Japan Shelves Plan to Slash Emissions, Citing Fukushima

    Under its new goal, Japan, one of the world’s top polluters, would still seek to reduce its current emissions. But it would release 3 percent more greenhouse gases by 2020 compared to levels in 1990. Japan’s previous government had promised before the Fukushima crisis to cut greenhouse emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels, expecting that it could rely on nuclear power to achieve that goal. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/world/asia/japan-shelves-plan-to-slash-emissions-citing-fukushima.html?_r=0 )

    This is incredibly worrisome and came as a shock to the climate change discussion in Copenhagen but I dont think it will be their final answer. Too much is occurring for any one to ignore the consequences of increased GGs.

  10. Bas will show up in a few minutes to remind us how wonderful wind and solar are in Germany. Of course they are a complete joke there in actual generation now:

    German week-ahead peakload power prices at highest since Jan on low wind, cold

    Average wind power generation was forecast to remain at below average levels at 3.4 GW for Saturday, 1.5 GW Sunday and 3.6 GW Monday, according to a source.

    Solar output was seen in a range between 2-3 GW for average peakload hours through to Monday, the source added. ( http://www.platts.com/latest-news/electric-power/london/german-week-ahead-peakload-power-prices-at-highest-21828027 )

    They’ll burn some palletized “renewable” wonder fuel and call it all “green” though. Shhhhhhh! – German Pellet Green is made out of forests!

  11. This is from march but I missed it in all the news fluff and clutter.

    Ministry: Rate of Fukushima thyroid abnormalities roughly normal

    there was no telling if that incidence rate was particularly high or reflected contamination from radioactive iodine released from the nuclear plant because it was the first time high-performance ultrasound devices had been used to test children’s thyroid glands in such a comprehensive study.

    To obtain control data for comparison, the Environment Ministry tested 4,365 children aged between 3 and 18 in three other cities far from Fukushima , using ultrasound devices of the same performance and diagnostic standards.

    The surveys found cysts measuring up to 2 cm and lumps measuring up to 5 mm in 56.6 percent of the children tested. Larger cysts and lumps were found in 1.0 percent of them, compared with 0.6 percent in the Fukushima children .( http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201303090076 )

    How many times has a supposed increase been repeated in US news with no mention of all this>? I saw it more than a few times last week during the pandora’s promise release. Even on CNN.

  12. Im not going to get over this.

    Most of us that had read the Chernobyl stuff knew, where average internal doses where at least hundreds and hundreds of times higher (if not thousands and thousands), and there were thyroid normalities and cancer[?? general population??] ( http://www.thingsworsethannuclearpower.com/2012/05/things-worse-than-chernobyl.html ) but it showed up much later?

    We knew there was something aims here. ( http://www.japanprobe.com/2012/07/21/more-anti-nuclear-fearmongering-thyroid-growths-in-fukushima/ )

    How is it no one in mass media could be bothered to check the most basic details of the survey? Nevermind mind coastal japan has history of anomalies when it comes to thyroid surveys as well too.

    How could so many miss this and parrot fraudulent anti nuke claims for so long?

  13. blah blah blah about side issues that don’t matter

    bottom line: can’t build a reactor on US soil even if regulations were nil. there is no longer enough manufacturing capability within us borders to ensure quality control. thats why large #’s of SMR’s will never work here. they will outsource manufacture and get in return reactors that quickly fail. then industry gets taken over by this “government” of cronies and you end up with east germany or worse.

    all the blowhard paper governmetn engineers with their innovation for the past 40 years. and what have we got to show for it? a ton of consultants on the dole…and ever shrinking industry.

  14. And the only world superpower with no one else close. Theres that. We invented Solar, wind, nuclear generation too. Climate science as well for that matter. Won both world wars. Outlived communism. Are exploring space nearly alone – soon will be colonizing it.

    They just started intently looking at licensing in 2010 and 2011 for SMRs in the US. Thats 2 human years ago. There are plans to build and permit requests have been submitted in the US. Give it time.

  15. Well Rod, since “(rabidly anti)Nuclear News”‘s Christina Macpherson has come out that you’re a “consummate liar running an industry subsidized propaganda site populated by ignoramuses”, say we openly and civilly invite her to your round table for a little poker with pros? If she backs out that says it all. I love emperors being publicly plucked like chickens!

  16. You mean there is a human that takes credit for phony “Nuclear News” and its posts? Shocking in and of itself.

  17. “consummate liar running an industry subsidized propaganda site populated by ignoramuses”

    I don’t mind that. My beef is “Where are the jobs in nuclear other than cheerleading oops I mean consulting/education?”…

    None in “pro”-nuclear Britain’s *future* it would appear. None here in corruption riddled America either. Nuclear jobs are fast converging toward 0 even in conceptual design. This central planning government simply wants to outsource absolutely everything and the people around here just seem to prefer putting a bag over their head and pretend its not happening.

    There is an absurd obsession with university based innovation as if useless garbage like the internet, various electronic toys, goofy energy schemes such as algae, etc are relevant when in fact they don’t matter one iota to the necessities of quality of life. This has applied to nuclear as well. Even the abomination called nuclear fusion is still widely supported by fission proponents as fine science.

    The mindless drivel I read around here about climate change, lifting all 7 billion to much higher standards, proliferation…etc is from ivory tower types who are simply interested in socking it to the taxpayer suckers with even more burden. They couldn’t care less about the real world.

    I say again, WHERE ARE THE GOOD JOBS in nuclear?…in a bogus state that obsessed with shedding them as fast as possible

  18. Andrew Revkin seems to be toying with the idea of creating a new nuclear related blog. ( http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/ )

    That would be moderated but It would be cool if there was a way on blogs, especially general discussion blogs, to encourage reference particularity higher value scientific/trusted references as opposed to popularity and social media related rating systems that have taken over the Internet.

    That makes people (including myself) lazy, and encourages a Dunning–Kruger like quantity of sources/agreements over quality approach to truth I believe.

  19. Indeed the number of cases that received further research/intervention that did turn out to become cancer are expected according to cancer expert Professor Geraldine Thomas. Thyroid cancer is a very slow growing cancer that doesn’t arouse attention normally until complications are observed.

  20. You really think companies are going to buy components from manufacturers, foreign or domestic, that have such low quality control standards? That is not how a company stays in business.

    By the way, SMR construction is completely possible using only domestic (US) manufacturers for heavy components.

  21. Have you ever spoken to a PhD researcher at a university or been a researcher at a university? Nuclear engineering departments work closely with industry partners very often. They communicate with each other to design projects that aim to improve safety margins and the overall economics of the plant. Nuclear engineering department research produces a large amount of practical science that the industry uses.

  22. Just dropping some of my reading in here too, as I see they are now hyping screening cases that revealed cancer and you guys will undoubtedly have to deal with this, although the timing is still completely incorrect for these cancers to be related to the fukushima plant issues :

    Revised American Thyroid Association Management
    Guidelines for Patients with Thyroid Nodules
    and Differentiated Thyroid Cancer
    – 2009

    Epidemiologic studies have shown the prevalence of palpa-
    ble thyroid nodules to be approximately 5% in women and 1%
    in men living in iodine-sufficient parts of the world (1,2). In
    contrast, high-resolution ultrasound (US) can detect thyroid
    nodules in 19–67% of randomly selected individuals with
    higher frequencies in women and the elderly
    (3). The clinical
    importance of thyroid nodules rests with the need to exclude
    thyroid cancer which occurs in 5–15%
    depending on age, sex,
    radiation exposure history, family history, and other factors
    ( http://www.thyca.org/download/document/409/DTCguidelines.pdf )

    That pretty much finishes it.

  23. “can’t build a reactor on US soil even if regulations were nil”

    Uhhh… the regulations are certainly a lot more than nil and there are five reactors under construction here in the US.

  24. Wait til Mac F and Monz get their heads to ensuring that plants can withstand asteroids and meteorites.

    Fukushima regulation did not kill the industry, but out of space fears will.

  25. I asked Revkin years ago why his dotEarth blogroll contained only anti and no pro-nuclear environmental organizations.

    I never got a response, but perhaps this suggestion, and similar ones from many others, began to make an impression. His comments as referee between RFK and Robert Stone at the Pandora’s Promise premier indicated that, although he still has a lot of knowledge gaps to fill, he is starting to see the Cherenkov light.

  26. Not the one Mitch mentions but relevant.
    Noel Christina Macpherson Wauchope, who runs the website www.antinuclear.net under the name Christina Macpherson, told BusinessDay she was not in a position to hire lawyers.
    “I think they must have thought AntiNuclear Australia was a big organisation, but it is just me,” she said.
    http://nuclearnewsaustralia.wordpress.com/2012/12/23/global-legal-adviser-to-nuclear-industry-threatens-anti-nuclear-campaigner/

  27. Forget invitations and email. She’s going to have to be dragged into the Atomic Roundtable kicking and screaming. This woman fancies herself off as a Madeline O’Hare of nuclear energy. Question is just why would she (or any top anti-nuke honcho) stick her head and lies into Rod’s guillotine when she makes oodles of bucks off nuke scare books, speaking tours, sponsoring sham petitions and fund-raising for glowing kiddie victims of Fukushima? She should be shut down just for commerce fraud like that, forget over contorting issues and passing FUD for fact. That she has such a wide gullible audience that unquestioningly feeds into her bull, likely far far more than those of all nuclear blogs pooled together, shows just how much work nuclear public education has cut out for it. Again, it’s time for outfits like NEI and ANS to responsibly step up to the plate and take an aggressive anti-FUD stance via hard constant public nuclear education campaign in media and web because U.S. and Western nuclear is losing to totally groundless fear and charlatans. Put all those dues to some practical use! It just might help save a heap of jobs and spare a lot of grief!

    James Greenidge
    Queens NY

  28. 100% of the sourcing for the Westinghouse SMR can be done domestically. That was a goal from day one. You are incorrect.

  29. unless…. you like me are thinking, jesus h if thats true, thats a lot of cancer in the general population!! so one last thing (dont get mad rod), and its quite incredible, im ashamed I didn’t know about it:

    Papillary Thyroid Cancer Overdiagnosed; Therapy Unnecessary

    “We need to recognize that subcentimeter papillary thyroid cancers are probably a normal finding, based on extensive data from autopsy series, showing that 5% to 30% of patients have a small occult papillary thyroid cancer in their thyroid glands when they die of other causes,” said lead author Luc G.T. Morris, MD, from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center’s Head and Neck Service in New York. ( http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/808401 )

    Id look again at any cancer incidence statistical study that involves/is dependent on thyroid cancer after this. Likely it has been skewed.

  30. John – In addition, the rate of occurrence of these occult cancers varies among populations, researchers still don’t understand why. For example, they occur more frequently in the populations of Japan and Finland. The Japanese are much closer to the 30% than the 5%.

    Increased screening for thyroid problems detects these harmless cancers that otherwise would have gone unnoticed because they do not cause any symptoms. Thus, just looking for it causes the “cancer rate” to go up.

  31. Well I had not been keeping up with current research and that pretty much floored me Brain. Especially how the screening process could influence such a simple study so drastically.

    Not ONE of the mass media stories on the matter referenced current knowledge except in a vague and crude attempt to advance a perceived cover up perhaps.

  32. This is the same Westinghouse that has been doing technology transfers with China for many years now.

  33. Do you realize that the DOE has completely outscourced conceptual design of nuclear reactors to china? Thats how asleep you people are.

  34. Your point being? Technology transfer was a condition of the sale. Areva had to do the same thing with the EPR. Guess what? It wasn’t the first time either. We effectively started Areva, Mitsubishi Nuclear, and KEPCO too.

  35. @starvinglion

    Since I know quite a few Americans who are employed in the task of conceptual design of nuclear reactors, I have to challenge your false assertion that “DOE has completely outsourced conceptual design of nuclear reactors to China.” Please stop making bold, incorrect, and unreferenced statements. Otherwise you will be blocked from commenting.

  36. That’s interesting, I didn’t know I worked in China. I thought I worked in Pittsburgh. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure 100% of the people working on the conceptual design of Westinghouse SMR either live here, Columbia, SC, Newington, NH, Windsor, CT, St. Louis, MO, or Kansas City, MO. Are any of those places in China? My geography may be a bit rusty.

  37. Read it and weep:

    “The US Department of Energy (DOE) started a multi-university research programme in January 2012 and US experts have been participating in a design review of the Chinese FHR design. US and Chinese research teams plan to independently develop predictive models to understand the behaviour of the Chinese design. There are also plans for US research students to work in China on the FHR programme.”

    Now, what part of “Chinese design” do you utopians not understand?

  38. What part of US expert participation and “independently develop predictive models” do you fail to understand? In addition, this quote appears to be discussing a specific design effort; your initial comment implied that all of the various design efforts in progress today have been outsourced to the Chinese.

  39. “…discussing a specific design effort”

    Supported by the DOE. Do you really think the DOE will support any other design?

  40. I was doing some basic searches and found this thread where Rod attempted to engage with “Christina Mac” in 2008.

    http://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2008/05/toxic-waste-fatal-flaw-of-nuclear-power.html

    Hit the ‘End’ key on your keyboard to see the last comment, her comment, hanging in the wind. I don’t so much care about her getting what appears to be the last word — but the answers to those questions could (or have) been addressed in some posts here and on other rational nuclear sites. Seeing them addressed in one place could make for a powerful document, though we’re likely still only talking milliwatts..

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