• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About
  • Podcast
  • Archives

Atomic Insights

Atomic energy technology, politics, and perceptions from a nuclear energy insider who served as a US nuclear submarine engineer officer

Nuclear professionals

Atomic Show #292 – Andrew Crabtree, Founder, “Get Into Nuclear”

November 11, 2021 By Rod Adams 17 Comments

Andrew Crabtree is a former professional rugby player and banker who decided to transition to the nuclear industry in 2007. He had recognized that the banking industry was going to be in for a rough time. In other words, he was able to read the handwriting on the wall just before the financial crisis that everyone else began to notice by mid 2008.

Andrew tells us about his choice to get into nuclear, skills he brought from banking and professional rugby and about his recognition of the professionally welcoming nature of the nuclear technology profession.

He describes what motivated him to create Get Into Nuclear, initially as a web site but now a growing and vibrant community that provides visitors with abundant information and employers with ways to reach prospective employees.

As a UK-based nuclear project manager who has also spent a good deal of time working in other European countries, Andrew has seen a number of different nuclear programs. He is happy to be working in a country that has an active program for building new reactors, event though his personal career path has involved more decommissioning support work than work in supporting new nuclear power stations.

He praises the work of young generation groups, the Nuclear Skills Strategy Group (NSSG), the Nuclear Industry Association – UK (NIAUK) and individuals who are investing time, energy and money into telling others about nuclear energy and the benefits it brings to people, regions, countries and humanity.

We hope you enjoy this show. It’s been far too long since the last Atomic Show. As always, your comments are appreciated. We wouldn’t bother to do this show if we thought that no one was listening.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/AtomicShowFiles/atomic_20211011_292.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:57 — 66.7MB)

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS

Filed Under: Nuclear professionals, Nuclear workforce, Podcast

Labor and Business perspectives from White House Summit on Nuclear Energy – Liz Shuler (AFL-CIO) and Danny Roderick (Westinghouse)

November 7, 2015 By Rod Adams 32 Comments

On November 6, 2015, a Friday afternoon, the White House hosted a Summit on Nuclear Energy. The seats in the conference room had been filled before much information about the event had been released, but the organizers provided a live stream on the web. That turned out to have been at least as informative as being there. There was only one short break, which would have provided little time for meeting and greeting the distinguished invited audience.

It was also better for the climate and the Atomic Insights LLC budget to be able to watch from home instead of driving a couple of hundred miles each way. Having experienced the joy — too many times — of leaving Washington, DC after 5:00 pm on a Friday afternoon, I was happy to be able to grill a meal, dine with my wife, and clean up the kitchen before I would have been able to even reach the parking lot that is also known as I-66.

I’m hunting for some additional information about the summit, like an attendee list and an agenda, but while I wait for my sources to come through, I’d like to share a couple of highlights.

My primary take away from the event is that responsible people in the Administration recognize the importance of nuclear fission in our nation’s energy supply mix. They understand it provides clean, reliable heat that is not limited to producing electricity, that the material often mislabeled as “waste” can be a valuable future fuel resource, and that it is impossible to achieve stated energy security and climate goals without a growing contribution from nuclear energy.

Those responsible people also recognize that the current trends are in the wrong direction and they are looking for answers regarding actions needed to reverse the trends.

I captured nearly all of the summit stream and will be processing it into digestible clips.

There were several excellent briefs given, but my initial favorites were the ones by Liz Shuler of the AFL-CIO and Danny Roderick of Westinghouse.

Though Atomic Insights has a pretty extensive library of articles that mention Danny Roderick’s leadership and impact on the nuclear industry, this is the first time I’ve mentioned Liz Shuler. She has an impressive resume. One notable achievement was her involvement in a campaign in Oregon to resist efforts by Enron to push an electricity deregulation bill modeled after the disastrous California legislation. She is an engaging speaker, a quality that is almost expected of a successful organizer.

Yesterday, she provided both inspirational words and penetrating “tough love” honesty about the challenges her organization sees in achieving the lofty energy and climate goals that politicians say they want to reach.

It was interesting to note that Ms. Shuler celebrated the recent achievement by Curtiss-Wright, with the help of IBEW local 1914, of producing qualified reactor coolant pumps for the AP1000.

There are a lot of very good reasons for the nuclear industry to recognize and embrace the fact that they have a strong partner in organized labor. Unions provide well-respected craft training programs, have implemented codes of excellence that provide people who are proud of their workmanship and promise to put in a hard day’s work for a full day’s pay.

Union screening programs can help ensure that people have the proper training and clearances before the show up to a site; which adds to their value. In addition, unions have standing with the often nuclear-skeptical Democratic Party.

There is little doubt that progress forward with nuclear energy will only be effective with bipartisan support. The technology requires patience and long term investments that cannot be subjected to the whims of the election cycle. Since the Republican Party traditionally has planks in its platform that support nuclear energy development, yesterday’s summit provides reasons to believe that bipartisan support is achievable.

Immediately following Ms. Shuler’s effective talk, Danny Roderick, CEO of Westinghouse, provided a complimentary perspective from the business point of view. He highlighted the current progress his company is making in creating a manufacturing supply chain for nuclear plant components and a nucleus of experienced construction workers with the new plant builds in Georgia, South Carolina and China. He also sounded a note of caution, reminding policy makers that nuclear is a long term business that cannot be switched on and off.

Stay tuned for more about the conference later today and perhaps into next week. It takes time to process, clip and summarize video. I wanted, however, to provide some initial coverage as quickly as possible.

As far as I can tell, there aren’t many writers rushing to describe yesterday’s summit. The only report I can find so far is an article on E&E News titled NUCLEAR: White House summit boosts industry’s sagging spirits. I also found a dismissive pre-event mention in Politico:

LOOKING FOR LOVE IN ALL THE RAD PLACES: The White House is putting on a summit this afternoon designed to promote the Obama administration’s “commitment to nuclear energy as a clean energy and climate mitigation solution.” Translation: This is another line in the preamble to the Paris climate talks to show that every tool in the proverbial toolbox will get whipped out. The nuclear crowd is certainly excited for the attention and the summit will also let them feel like part of Team Climate, given the industry’s sense of being the unloved stepchild of the whole enterprise. Nuclear wonks shed tears when Congress nixed cap-and-trade in the president’s first term and the EPA’s Clean Power Plan feels a bit too little too late while reactors permanently unplug from the grid.

Perhaps energy reporters are more interested in the finally announced decision to disapprove the Keystone XL pipeline — after the applying company had already asked for the review to be suspended due to changing economics. It might also be that news of the late Friday afternoon event fell of the radar screen as is almost always the case for events with that timing.

It is worth noting the position that the press release describing yesterday’s event has on the White House list of press releases this morning. It was also interesting to find that the video titled White House Summit on Nuclear Energy posted on the White House YouTube channel contains just the first panel. It includes just 58 minutes out of a four hour summit. Maybe there will be others posted later and the first one will be renamed with a “Part 1 of..” in the title.

Update: A friend provided a link to the full version of the streamed event https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aKsOc9yeIs End Update:

In this era of focused, independent media outlets, we have the capacity to overcome the traditional political ploy of burying news by releasing it late Friday afternoon. The summit was far too important for nuclear energy to be ignored or submerged. As far as I am concerned, the Administration gave us a powerful tool by providing impossible to refute evidence of its public support. It is up to us to make sure that the news gains the traction it deserves.

Filed Under: Atomic Advocacy, Atomic politics, Business of atomic energy, Climate change, New Nuclear, Nuclear Communications, Nuclear professionals

Atomic Show #229 – Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie, Transatomic Power

December 2, 2014 By Rod Adams

On December 1, 2014, I talked with Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie, the co-founders of Transatomic Power, a tiny nuclear reactor design company started up less than 3 years ago. Several weeks ago, I published an article here titled Transatomic Power – Anatomy of Next. That article, as expected, generated a healthy discussion thread. At […]

Filed Under: Advanced Atomic Technologies, Atomic Entrepreneurs, Nuclear professionals, Podcast

Corvallis to Richland and back

October 28, 2014 By Rod Adams

After an informative tour of the NuScale facilities in Corvallis, OR on October 20, I continued my quick visit to the Pacific Northwest. I had originally arranged my travel plans to fly into Portland, OR instead Richland, WA — which was my ultimate destination — for a variety of reasons. It enabled the visit to […]

Filed Under: Advanced Atomic Technologies, Nuclear Communications, Nuclear professionals, Nuclear workforce

Atomic Show #222 – How Proposed EPA Clean Power Plan Rewards States for Replacing Nuclear With Gas

August 28, 2014 By Rod Adams

On August 20, 2014, Remy DeVoe, a graduate student in nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee, published an earthshaking piece on ANS Nuclear Cafe titled Unintended Anti-Nuclear Consequences Lurking in the EPA Clean Power Plan. Unfortunately, there has been a bit of a delayed reaction; so far, only the most carefully tuned instruments have […]

Filed Under: Atomic politics, Climate change, Fossil fuel competition, Nuclear professionals, Podcast

Grand Opening of the Apprentice School at Newport News Shipbuilding

December 7, 2013 By Rod Adams

Yesterday, on an unusually warm December day, I attended the grand opening of the new Apprentice School building in downtown Newport News, Virginia. It was an event that made me proud to be an American, proud to be a Virginian and proud to be a veteran of the US Navy. I was a member of […]

Filed Under: Atomic ships, Nuclear professionals, Nuclear Ships, Nuclear workforce

Atomic Show #210 – Leadership by Navy nukes

December 2, 2013 By Rod Adams

This show was inspired by a post on Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Healthiness titled Why I’m Not Afraid of Fukushima. That post was written by a guest blogger named Jeremiah Scott; he is an electrical engineering student who is attending college in the Pacific Northwest with the help of the GI bill. He […]

Filed Under: Atomic history, Health Effects, Nuclear Communications, Nuclear professionals, Podcast

First hand report from trained US Navy radiation worker about experience associated with Fukushima

October 15, 2013 By Rod Adams

The below first appeared in the comment thread of an article by Dr. Kelvin Kemm titled Physicist: There was no Fukushima nuclear disaster. I highly recommend going and reading the full article. However, I believe that this comment thread extract deserves more attention that it would normally receive by being buried within a lengthy thread […]

Filed Under: Accidents, Contamination, Health Effects, Nuclear professionals, Radiation

Atomic Show #208 – Communicating about nuclear energy

September 23, 2013 By Rod Adams

On the evening of September 22, 2013, I gathered a group of friends who are also pronuclear communicators. We spoke for nearly 90 minutes about some of the challenges that we face in helping people to understand the enormous benefits provided by atomic energy and the vast array of good things we are giving up […]

Filed Under: Nuclear Communications, Nuclear professionals, Podcast

Nuclear professional explains why he strongly reacts to antinuclear statements

July 16, 2013 By Guest Author

This post originated as a comment buried deep in a thread that already includes more than 100 comments. It clearly explains why nuclear energy professionals can become rather abrupt when engaging in conversations about energy with people opposed to nuclear energy that claim to be energy policy experts. That is especially true in cases where […]

Filed Under: Antinuclear activist, Atomic Advocacy, Nuclear Communications, Nuclear professionals

Is an employee buyout a win-win-win solution for Kewaunee Nuclear Power Station?

March 10, 2013 By Rod Adams

Dominion’s October 2012 announcement that it is closing the Kewaunee Nuclear Power Plant took the nuclear industry by almost complete surprise. My friends who write about nuclear topics on a regular basis had no clue about the possibility before it was announced. None of the contacts that I have developed over the past few decades […]

Filed Under: Atomic Advocacy, Atomic Entrepreneurs, Nuclear professionals, Nuclear workforce

Atomic Show #198 – Women are empowered by reliable energy

March 4, 2013 By Rod Adams

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 […]

Filed Under: Energy density, Nuclear Communications, Nuclear professionals, Podcast

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Categories

Join Rod’s pronuclear network

Join Rod's pronuclear network by completing this form. Let us know what your specific interests are.

Recent Comments

  • Roger Clifton on Atomic Show #297 – Krusty – The Kilopower reactor that worked
  • Chris Aoki on Atomic Show #296 – Julia Pyke, Director of Finance Sizewell C
  • Michael Scarangella on Catching Oklo — a rising star!
  • Gary Nicholls on Atomic Show #297 – Krusty – The Kilopower reactor that worked
  • Jon Grams on Atomic Show #297 – Krusty – The Kilopower reactor that worked

Follow Atomic Insights

The Atomic Show

Atomic Insights

Recent Posts

Atomic Show #297 – Krusty – The Kilopower reactor that worked

Nuclear energy growth prospects and secure uranium supplies

Nucleation Capital’s Earth Day in Atherton

Atomic Show #296 – Julia Pyke, Director of Finance Sizewell C

Solar’s dirty secrets: How solar power hurts people and the planet

  • Home
  • About Atomic Insights
  • Atomic Show
  • Contact
  • Links

Search Atomic Insights

Archives

Copyright © 2022 · Atomic Insights

Terms and Conditions - Privacy Policy