I returned last night from a short vacation to Washington, DC. I am such an atomic geek that my idea of a vacation is to spend a couple of days at the Nuclear Energy Assembly (NEA) in a dim hotel conference room surrounded by a crowd of business leaders, many in dark suits who qualify…
A couple of days ago, Andrew, an Atomic Insights contributor pointed me to Dr. Peter Sandman, a man who built a career out of helping large organizations improve their ability to communicate about risk. I want to thank Andrew for helping me to put a name to a topic that I’ve been wanting to study…
After deliberating for a period of time approaching a decade, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a new draft Protective Action Manual that includes Protective Action Guides (PAG) for people responsible for responding to radioactive material releases that might come from one of the following sources: a fire in a major facility such…
At The Energy Collective, there is an active comment thread on a post titled Is Bill McKibben Really Serious About Climate Change? that has been sustained since March 8, 2013. Recently there was a comment that provided an opportunity to address a frequently expressed meme that is often used by people who oppose the use…
On March 9, 2006, Shane Brown and I recorded the first episode of The Atomic Show. We formatted the show as a couple of geeks chatting about atomic energy and published it on Cameron Reilly’s The Podcast Network. On March 17, 2013, I hosted and recorded Atomic Show #200 as a roundtable discussion that included…
A colleagues who used to work in the oil and gas industry pointed me to an article from the November 2012 issue of the Journal of Petroleum Technology titled Switch: The New Documentary on Energy’s Future. The article describes a video research project undertaken by Scott Tinker, a former oil and gas company geologist who…
A few days ago, Steve Aplin wrote an inspiring post on Canadian Energy Issues titled The electric grid: the greatest invention of all time expanded after women won the vote. That post described how important electricity was to the effort to free women from household chores so that they could choose to pursue more interesting…
Fission, FAST! My creative juices were inspired this morning by an article titled Climate is not a mass movement. The piece comes from Randy Olson, the filmmaker turned scientist who is most famous among my pro-nuclear communication friends as the author of Don’t Be Such a Scientist. Aside: I wonder how many of the people…
On January 18, I joined Carl and Richard, the hosts of Dot Net Rocks, for an hour long conversation about nuclear energy. We spanned a number of topics including current light water reactors, breeder reactors, accidents, safety records, SL-1, NR-1, Mars Rover, pebble beds, IFR, and traveling wave reactors. Please go visit and listen.
Robert Stone calls Pandora’s Promise his most important work because it discusses our biggest collective challenge – how do we supply a growing world population with the reliable power it needs without slowing choking the Earth’s ability to support our civilization and all of its existing infrastructure. He and the people whose conversions he describes…
One of the benefits of being “out there” in the social media world – which includes old fashioned email lists – is the opportunity to meet like minded souls without being limited to people who happen to be in your neighborhood or your physical social circle. I recently saw an exceptional commentary about Pandora’s Promise…
One of the more frequent inquiries I have received during my years operating Atomic Insights is “What happened to the NS (nuclear ship) Savannah?”. I just learned about a recently completed documentary film by Thomas Michael Conner, a former member of the ship’s crew, that is designed to answer that question in detail using sea…
This site uses a cookie for Google Analytics. Accept or decline — your choice.