Donald Hoffman is one of the few entrepreneurs in the nuclear industry. His company, Excel Services, has been a profitable professional services provider to the nuclear industry for more than 25 years. Don is a leader who is willing to take calculated risks and also willing to recycle his profits back into his industry. Most…
My friends and family recognize that I am an odd bird. I often wake up in the middle of the night as a result of thinking about things that few others worry about. Tonight was a great example; my eyes failed open at midnight as I thought really hard about how to spread the word…
On Sunday, August 12, 2012, I wrote a brief commentary about how the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) had managed to produce a week long series about the changing landscape of energy production in America without a single mention of the ‘N’ word – nuclear. Daniel, an Atomic Insights regular, was interested enough in finding out…
This past week, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) ran a series of shows focusing on energy development in the United States. The above video is well moderated debate about the topics described in the shows featuring Robert Bryce, a senior fellow from the Manhattan Institute and the author of Power Hungry: The Myth of Green…
Richard Muller has a lot in common with Amory Lovins. They both received MacArthur Foundation Fellowships (aka “Genius Grants”) several decades ago – Muller in 1982 and Lovins in 1993. They both get a lot of attention from the commercial media and from elected politicians. They both were active members of large environmental groups early…
There has been a flurry of commentary on the web and on Atomic Insights as a result of a recent Financial Times interview of Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE, that ran under the headline of GE Chief: Nuclear ‘hard to justify’. The article provides an informative insight into the motive for Immelt’s dismissal of…
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 SKY IS PINK by Josh Fox and the GASLAND Team from JFOX on Vimeo. I am unapologetic about my support for developing more nuclear energy so that we can use less fossil fuel. Methane is a valuable, naturally occurring, fuel source, but extracting it at the rate that oil and gas marketers desire is…
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…
Every week, people who write articles about nuclear energy gather their favorites together in a single post called the Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers. We’ve been doing this regularly for more than two years; it is my pleasure to host the 112th issue of the Carnival. Here are our favorite posts from the first week…
Intelligence Squared US, an Oxford style debate program modeled after a London program of the same name, recently chose to discuss the following motion – No Fracking Way: The Natural Gas Boom is Doing More Harm Than Good. Here is a link to the archived video of the debate. It was fascinating for an energy…
Natural gas prices are volatile. Their price pattern can generate large fortunes. The volatile pattern can also generate painful bankruptcies for those on the wrong side of the bet. People who bet on those prices need to recognize the risk. Most people assume that power generators who are planning to meet demand in the next…