Climate change

  • PBS Need to Know – The Nuclear Option. Damning with faint praise

    As a pronuclear advocate who majored in English as an undergraduate, I could not help but notice the frustratingly effective use of slanted language in the above video segment to damn nuclear energy with faint praise. From the very pregnant pause after President Obama says “if it’s safe…..”, to Dr. Lester’s multiply negative statement saying…

  • Natural gas suppliers have no doubts about climate change

    After receiving an email asking me to participate in a poll for the American Nuclear Society, I asked the following question of my Twitter followers. Would the American Natural Gas Society poll its members to find out if they should stop marketing the “low-carbon” aspect of their product? — Rod Adams (@Atomicrod) August 8, 2013…

  • Importance of nuclear energy to modern society

    This video from the International Atomic Energy Agency includes many enlightening facts and images that should help people to understand why nuclear energy is a valuable, long-term investment.

  • Cooper’s criticism may awaken nuclear competitive spirit

    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…

  • Pandora’s Promise and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – What we missed

    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…

  • Demonizing existing nuclear technology is a poor communications tool

    A good friend shared a link to a blog titled Taking physics to new audiences: a realisation. It is a wonderful story about a particle physicist who has a twin sister who is a professional historian. Following a conversation about nuclear energy, the physicist has avoided talking to her sister about what she does at…

  • President Obama: We have emission free fuels available NOW.

    President Obama has announced that he will be giving a speech on Tuesday, June 25, 2013 at Georgetown University that will describe his administration’s plan to address climate change. Here is the video version of the announcement: Nuclear energy is conspicuously missing from both the sound track and the visual imagery. It is hard to…

  • Defy Joe Romm’s advice and watch Pandora’s Promise

    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…

  • B&W’s Jim Ferland describes company’s global business outlook

    Jim Ferland, the CEO of The Babcock & Wilcox Company, was recently interviewed by Bill Loveless of Platts Energy Week about the company’s global business outlook. During the interview, Ferland discussed the B&W mPowerTM reactor, one of the leading small modular reactor development projects; FutureGen 2.0, a carbon capture and storage demonstration project; the impact…

  • Replace price of carbon with price on carbon

    While browsing AdWeek, I came across a video titled The Price of Carbon and thought it would be worth sharing as a conversation starter. It’s a pretty concise way to encourage the continuation of a complex discussion about a topic with immediate and long term impact on human existence on Earth. Instead of charging polluters…

  • Green Nuclear Junk – reposted from DecarboniseSA

    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…