On Tuesday, May 27, 2014, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted to accept its professional staff’s recommendation to leave its current policy regarding spent fuel storage in place. Despite a large amount of public and political pressure, it will not require licensees to expedite the relocation of used nuclear fuel from carefully engineered and seismically qualified…
This interaction between Congressman Shimkus and Secretary Moniz took place during a the Energy and Commerce Committee FY2015 DOE budget hearing on April 3, 2014. It’s too bad that hearings like this have strict time limits imposed on the questioners. There is a good reason why I would be exceedingly reluctant to accept any kind…
A friend of mine is cleaning out his basement in preparation for a move. He’s been in the nuclear industry for many years and actively participated in some of the public battles that activists have initiated to slow or halt new development and seek closure or cancellation of existing projects. He found a legible, but…
The Nuclear Energy Institute is celebrating its victory for consumers, having convinced the DC Circuit Court and the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit Court to set the nuclear waste fee to zero until the federal government implements a new plan for used nuclear fuel. That victory will save each of the people…
On Monday, Feb 24, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) unveiled its Future of Energy advertising campaign with a press conference at the National Press Club. The campaign will stress four major aspects of nuclear energy that are not as well understood as they should be. It will talk about the importance of nuclear energy in…
CNN has investigated and agrees with Atomic Insights regarding the political games that resulted Greg Jaczko being appointed to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with the assignment to kill off the Yucca Mountain project. The following quote from the above video could have come directly off of one of the many articles about Greg Jaczko published…
During the 1970s, the antinuclear movement made a collective decision to use “the waste issue” as a weapon to help force the eventual shutdown of the industry. Though the strategy has not succeeded in forcing any plants in the US to shut down, it has prevented a number of plants from being built. Ralph Nader,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…