Shane and I discuss our understanding of human activity’s effects on global climate. As two geeks not trained in climate science, but comfortable with complex systems, our approach is unique. Unless you live under a rock, you have an opinion about whether or not man’s activity is causing a coming global catastrophe. Two recent films…
We’re back after a couple of weeks off. The atomic geeks chat about uranium, which has an interesting history in politics, discovery and economics. Uranium is as common as tin and can be found in measurable quantities almost anywhere in the world. Its price often varies by several hundred percent over short periods of time,…
Professor Wade Allison recently gave a lecture to his Oxford colleagues titled “How dangerous is ionizing radiation”. He has concluded that excessively restrictive rules are more dangerous than the radiation. On Wednesday, 27 December, I woke up bright and early so that I could have a chat with Professor Wade Allison, who teaches physics at…
George Stanford talks about sodium cooled fast reactors George Stanford earned his PhD in experimental nuclear physics from Yale University and then spent his professional career doing nuclear reactor safety research at the Argonne National Laboratory. One of his special interest was the sodium cooled fast reactor program. He worked on the Experimental Breeder Reactor…
Several months ago, I interviewed Ruth Sponsler, an amateur mineral collector. Ruth also runs a blog titled We Support Lee, which is named for a proposed new nuclear power station in Ruth’s home state of North Carolina, located in the southeast section of the United States. Ruth recently wrote a rather detailed post titled The…
Making Deserts Bloom – Nuclear Power in the Middle East Shane and I chatted about recent announcements by Morocco, Algeria, UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia that they have been talking with the International Atomic Energy Agency about developing nuclear power programs. All of the countries have indicated that they are interested in using nuclear…
Chat with a uranium mineral collector and nuclear power supporter Ruth Sponsler is an amateur mineral collector, a resident of the beautiful mountains of North Carolina and an active supporter of the use of nuclear energy. She blogs at We Support Lee. Shane and I invited her onto the show to talk about her unusual…
As I talk with other “nukes” at conferences, on the web and in other social circumstances, I often get into political discussions. I know – you are supposed to avoid politics, religion and sex in social circumstances, but I guess I never really accepted the idea that one should avoid all interesting topics as a…
George Chapman, an entrepreneur, developer, cattle rancher and former nuclear power plant welder is building a formidable team to help him build one of the first new nuclear plants in the United States in more than a decade. The most recent of several stories about the project was written by Karen Welch Smith and published…
This week Shane and I talked about recent nuclear developments in Canada, about the Ontario energy plan, and about technical choices and opportunities in the nuclear energy business in Canada. We discuss the potential use of CANDU technology for tar sands oil production and the potential use of SLOWPOKE reactors for district heating systems. During…
Shane and I decided to try to stick our American noses into Australia’s growing conversation about whether or not to enter into the nuclear power business as more than just a supplier of 25% of the world’s yellowcake uranium, the raw material that is refined and manufactured into fuel elements for nuclear power plants. We…
Shane and Rod provide a different take on a current debate regarding the use of enriched uranium. There is a notion among a certain kind of politically educated person that the only valid use of enriched uranium is to produce weapons that can be used to assure mutual destruction. Rod and Shane explain that enriched…