On September 10, 2013, the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Allison Macfarlane and the Department of Energy’s Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy, Peter Lyons, spent almost two hours testifying in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. They had been invited to the hearing room to tell the committee what their organizations were […]
Nuclear Waste
Chairman Macfarlane refuses to recuse herself, saying she is impartial about Yucca Mountain
Nye County, NV, the local community that would host the Yucca Mountain used nuclear fuel repository if is completed, really wants the facility to be built. The leaders of the county and the people that continue to select them as their representatives recognize that the facility would generate hundreds of well-paying jobs without imposing an […]
Moniz attempts to credit Obama Administration with supporting nuclear energy
The House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy held a hearing on July 31, 2013 titled Oversight of DOE’s Strategy for the Management and Disposal of Used Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste. It has taken me a couple of days of intermittent watching to work my way through […]
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 […]
Atomic Show #201 – Better Way to Clean Up Hanford Tanks
Darryl Siemer is a professional chemist who spent his career in nuclear waste remediation at the Idaho National Laboratory. While there, he developed a reputation as someone who will not go along to get along and apparently made quite a few waves by suggesting improvements in processes or technical decisions that might have resulted in […]
Too Hot to Touch – Matt Wald’s review of new book on nuclear waste issue
Matt Wald of the New York Times recently reviewed a new book on America’s nuclear waste storage saga titled Too Hot to Touch: The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste. Aside: Sadly, Matt’s post was one of the last posts ever published on Green, which just announced its demise due to budget constraints. It’s a crying […]
Atomic Show #194 – What do you do with the waste?
The first Atomic Show of 2013 is a geeky, chemistry laden discussion aimed at helping to answer the question that many people who fight nuclear energy try to use as their trump card “What do you do with the waste.” It often makes their head spin or makes them put their fingers into their ears […]
Transcript of Atomic Show #61 – Allison Macfarlane, Atomic Agnostic (June 15, 2007)
On June 13, 2012, Allison Macfarlane will be a witness in her confirmation hearing as a new commissioner and the prospective Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Commissioner Kristine Svinicki will also be a witness in her quest to be confirmed for a second term as a commissioner. In June 2007, I had the opportunity […]
TEDx New England – Nuclear entrepreneurs aiming to use waste for fuel
Two young graduate students describe their plans to develop something called the Waste Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor (WAMSR). The biggest applause line in the talk was the following: Right now in the world there are about 270,000 metric tons of high level waste that exists. We can take that waste, put it into our reactors […]
What do you do with the waste? – Kirk Sorensen’s answers
Gordon McDowell, the film maker who produced Thorium Remix, has released some additional mixes of material gathered for that production effort. One in particular is aimed at those people whose main concern about using nuclear energy is the often repeated question “What do you do with the waste.” Many people who ask that question think […]
Fast reactor advocates throw down gauntlet to MIT authors
Near the end of 2010, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a summary of a report titled The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle as part of its MIT Energy Initiative. The complete report was released a few months ago. The conclusions published that report initiated a virtual firestorm of reaction among the members of […]
House committee report sharply critical of passive aggressive “decision” on Yucca
The US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology has released a report of its findings on the politically motivated budgetary maneuvers that NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko employed to starve his own staff of the funds required to complete their legally mandated review of the DOE Yucca Mountain repository application. He took that […]
