Dr. Mark Cooper is strongly opposed to the use of nuclear energy, but on July 18, 2013, he issued a report sponsored by the Vermont Law School titled Renaissance in Reverse: Competition Pushes Aging U.S. Nuclear Reactors to the Brink of Economic Abandonment that may inadvertently spur action to create a more competitive industry. If…
This post originated as a comment buried deep in a thread that already includes more than 100 comments. It clearly explains why nuclear energy professionals can become rather abrupt when engaging in conversations about energy with people opposed to nuclear energy that claim to be energy policy experts. That is especially true in cases where…
By Paul Lorenzini Mr. Benjamin Sovacool claims my earlier article misrepresents his works and contains factual errors. Let me respond. He states: First, and most important: Paul has misstated the actual conclusion from my original study. It never advances the conclusion, as he claims, that “nuclear power causes more bird kills than wind.” Au contraire….
Author blurb: Paul Lorenzini earned his PhD in Nuclear Engineering from Oregon State University and later earned a JD. He had a distinguished career in the electric utility business and was the Chief Executive Officer for NuScale Power for its first five years. He is now retired and sharing some of his thoughts about energy…
Editorial note: I received an interesting note in my inbox from Dr. Benjamin Sovacool. Hi Rod/Atomic Insights, I believe you already know me as I see multiple posts attacking my research. One of the most recent ones is from Paul Lorenzini. Given that this post has a number of factual errors in it (and it…
I did not understand the enthusiasm with which some of my nuclear energy colleagues greeted the selection and appointment of Ernest Moniz as the new Secretary of Energy. He is a natural gas advocate who professes undue conservatism about the potential value of nuclear energy. Read and compare the MIT reports produced under his direction,…
Joe Romm, the lead thinker at Climate Progress, has once again exposed the fact that he is not terribly serious about fighting climate change. In fact, he is so casual about the effort that he wants everyone to dismiss nuclear energy out of hand as being too expensive to matter, without even thinking about trying…
I had an experience this weekend that reinforced my growing understanding that pronuclear advocates have been distracted by the wrong target. Instead of focusing our fire against the people — both outside and inside the industry — who have successfully driven up the cost of nuclear energy to a point at which it is unable…
Correction: (Posted at 6:43 on 6/16/2013) I made a boneheaded error in the below computation and dropped an important prefix in my units. That error resulted in my final number being off by a factor of 1000; I wrote 0.001 mrem when it should have been 0.001 rem. I apologize for the math error. I…
If Robert Stone’s primary purpose in creating Pandora’s Promise was to generate discussion about nuclear energy, it appears that he has succeeded. If his underlying purpose was to generate heated and uncomfortable reactions from people who have invested their entire career identity into being a go-to person for a negative comment about nuclear energy for…
On May 22, I republished a post written by Ben Heard and Geoff Russell for DecarboniseSA titled Green Nuclear Junk. In my introduction to the post, I made the following statement: My goal is to add just a little more pressure on Jim Green — the national antinuclear campaigner for Friends of the Earth, Australia…
Ben Heard and Geoff Russell collaborated on a post for DecarboniseSA titled Green Nuclear Junk that takes careful aim at an antinuclear meme that is mostly based on a series of false assumptions that include a table of mortality figures made incorrect by dividing by 8.76 instead of multiplying by that same number. With Ben’s…