One of the best things about nuclear energy is that the fuel is cheap and densely concentrated. That characteristic enables facilities to be hardened against external events, and has the potential to reduce the vulnerability of nuclear energy facilities to infrastructure damage that happens outside of the facility. The low cost fuel also enables a…
During the past week or so, I have been spending quite a bit of time following a discussion about nuclear energy between Theo Simon and George Monbiot. It is a deeply philosophical engagement between two literate and concerned people who view nuclear energy through different lenses and have, so far, reached different conclusions about its…
A recurring theme on Atomic Insights is that nuclear energy is a disruptive technology that has the potential to reshuffle the wealth and power underpinning what my generation called “The Establishment”, which is essentially the same as what some now call the 1%. Though it may be a bit of an exaggeration or over simplification,…
James Hansen has been warning the world since the 1980s about the risks we are imposing on ourselves. Unfortunately, not enough people have listened so we are continuing to increase the rate at which we are dumping CO2 into the only atmosphere we have. In the above video [no longer available], Hansen uses clear, unemotional…
Ben Heard of Decarbonise SA shared a teaser video clip from a recent Big Ideas debate titled We’ve seen the future and it’s nuclear. In this clip, Ben spends his allotted 9 minutes telling people how he became convinced that the only path to an abundant, reliable future energy supply system that minimizes CO2 and…
On the evening of July 29, 2012, Suzy Hobbs-Baker, Director of the Nuclear Literacy Project and founder of PopAtomic Studios, Dan Yurman, who blogs at Idaho Samizdat and writes for Fuel Cycle Week and the ANS Nuclear Cafe, Margaret Harding, an independent nuclear energy consultant who blogs at 4 Factor Consulting, and Cal Abel, a…
The European Energy Review (free subscription required) recently published an interview with Arne Mogren, Director of the Power Programme of the European Climate Foundation (ECF) titled Everyone agrees on where we need to be in 2050, but not on how to get there. The ECF is billed as one of the more influential climate lobby…
I like the above video, though I would make a few changes if I could draw. For example, I would more carefully choose dimensions in the scene that shows the earth surrounded by what is apparently supposed to be the atmosphere. The earth’s diameter is roughly 8,000 miles, but its atmosphere is only a few…
A good friend sent me a link to an article by Brian Dockstader titled The Coal Industry Wants You In The Dark that does a reasonably good job of deconstructing the messages in the following 30 second television ad, which was paid for by a coal industry lobby group called “American Coalition for Clean Coal…
Mark Lynas has published a remarkable interview with Mike Childs, the head of policy, science and research for Friends of the Earth UK. The article includes a full transcript of the audio interview so that people cannot claim that Lynas has taken Mr. Childs’s views out of context. The bottom line is that FOE UK…
With a hat tip to Ben Heard at Decarbonize SA, I thought it might inspire you to see two videos side by side. These videos were created in geographic locations that are about as far apart as you can get and still be on Earth. As far as I can tell, neither creative team knew…
In the power system marketing wars, both nuclear fission and natural gas are currently labeled as “low carbon” sources of electricity. Even though nuclear fission reactors can be clean enough to run inside sealed submarines, the forces who oppose nuclear energy insist that there is enough CO2 produced in the fuel cycle and in the…