Platts Energy Week recently interviewed Mike Rencheck, the CEO of Areva Inc., about the company’s outlook on the US nuclear energy market. During the interview, Rencheck talked about Areva’s business serving the operational needs of the existing fleet of nuclear power plants, its involvement with plant uprates, the Mixed Oxide (MOX) project at the Savannah…
Elaine Grossman has published a piece on Nextgov.com titled Former Defense Brass Object to ‘More Restrictive’ Nuclear Trade Policies that is critical of an effort led by John Hamre to question recent deliberations by the Obama Administration. The end result of the talks has the potential to complicate rules for US based organizations that want…
On May 15, 2013, I had the opportunity to attend a session at the Nuclear Energy Assembly titled Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: Supplying the Nuclear Energy Industry in the 21st Century. The panel discussion was moderated by John Hamre, President and CEO of Center for Strategic and International Studies. Participants included E. James Ferland, President…
Attempting to transition away from fossil fuels to an “all renewable” energy system is fraught with cost and reliability challenges. Germany is running into substantial challenges and is burned 5% more lignite – brown coal – in 2012 than it did in 2011. Recently completed studies that including a range of scenarios in Australia and…
Before March 11, 2011, “Fukushima” was the name of a relatively unknown prefecture in Japan. Now it is a shorthand reference to an event in which three large nuclear power plants melted and released a small quantity of long lived radioactive material that has not harmed any human being. Here is a brief synopsis of…
An article posted on Wired.co.uk titled Japan’s new government to ‘consider’ more nuclear power indicates that the author is almost surprised to hear that the recently elected Japanese government is considering the construction of new nuclear power plants. While it may be understandable for the Japanese people to turn against nuclear power, there are several…
Dieter Helm’s The Carbon Crunch: How We’re Getting Climate Change Wrong–and How to Fix It has the potential to be an influential energy policy book, not just for the UK but for the rest of Europe and the United States. Helm has been making the rounds to promote the book and recently gave a concise…
One of my sources posted a link to this brief video clip from Russia Today titled Fukushima Legacy: Nuclear phase-out hits Germans with high energy prices regarding Germany’s Energiewende, a well-publicized effort sold to the German public as a replacement of nuclear energy with renewable energy. According to this and many other stories, the reality…
Suzy Hobbs Baker at Pop Atomic Studios shared a link to an excellent thought piece titled Science and the Greens that is posted on Skepteco: An Ecopragmatist examines the environmental movement. Near the end of the piece, however, there is a section that needed some feedback. Many analysts who warn against the dangers of rapidly…
Tepco has recently released measurements that provide convincing evidence that virtually all of the corium in Fukushima Daiichi unit #1 remains safely stored inside an intact reactor pressure vessel. Despite all claims to the contrary, no substantial quantities of that material have melted through the pressure vessel to fall onto the concrete floor of the…
Fukushima ‘crisis’ changed my mind on nuclear power By MICHAEL RADCLIFFE Like millions of other people in Japan, I watched the events of March 2011 unfurl with shock and trepidation. The massive earthquake, the terrible tsunami and then what seemed to be a dreadful nuclear disaster. Yet now I wonder at my naivety, because the…
It is easier to design and build compact nuclear reactors with uranium that has a higher fraction of U-235. The higher the U-235 content, the easier it is to overcome the effects of impurities in the coolant and cladding and the easier it is to overcome the inevitable effects of fission products that absorb neutrons….