Nuclear regulations

  • Radiation Doses – As Low As UnReasonably Achievable (ALAURA)

    A friend tweeted a link to a terrific satire titled Roentgen Shrugged that was published in the March 2011 issue of Health Physics News. The piece describes what might happen to modern medical care in the foreseeable future if the radiation protection guild keeps ratcheting down allowable radiation dose exposure levels to an ever more…

  • Senator Carper advises Chairman Jaczko to follow the golden rule

    Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) is a retired US Navy Commander and a former governor of the state of Delaware. In the below clip taken from the December 15, 2011 hearing held by the Senate committee on Environment and Public Works, he offers some sage advice to the inexperienced and poorly trained Chairman of the Nuclear…

  • Jaczko apologizes for distraction and implies he has been the victim of a coup

    On December 15, 2011, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing titled “Review of the NRC’s Near-Term Task Force Recommendations for Enhancing Reactor Safety in the 21st Century”. Instead of remaining on that topic, the hearing turned into a story where he said ‘A’, another guy said ‘A’, a woman said ‘A’, and a…

  • Hearing on Jaczko’s leadership at Nuclear Regulatory Commission

    I have spent the past several hours viewing and clipping highlights from an extraordinary hearing conducted yesterday by the House Oversight Committed on “Leadership at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission”. If you want a similar experience, you can find the complete hearing video – of both panels – at http://youtu.be/qEduKirfpTY. In the next several days, I…

  • Jaczko must go

    My professional work habits and standards were formed by 33 years in the US naval service, an organization with a proud tradition of developing independent decision makers who could be entrusted with billions of dollars worth of national assets and thousands of lives. Our tradition includes demanding training, strong mentoring programs, regular competitive evaluations and…

  • Please sign petition at Change.org to ask President Obama to remove Gregory Jaczko from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

    John Wheeler who blogs at This Week in Nuclear started a petition on Change.org titled President Barack Obama: Remove Gregory Jaczko from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Here is the description from the “why this is important” tab on the petition page. Gregory Jaczko, the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has lost the confidence of…

  • Examples of regulatory costs for nuclear energy development

    This exchange with Robert Bradley, who is a self-described free market advocate, focuses on my frustration with the inability of his “community” to acknowledge the imposed costs of excessive regulation on nuclear energy projects. Robert blogs at Master Resource, the same place where I have encountered Jerry Taylor, who shares some of the same ideas….

  • Audit the NRC

    Businessweek published an article titled Nuclear Reactor License Renewals May Be Slowed, Jaczko Says that made my heart race and made me (silently) string together a whole bunch of 4-letter words that I learned from my sailors. One of my favorite candidates has made a lot of headway in his presidential bid by proposing that…

  • The need for more rational radiation protection standards

    A frequent commenter on Atomic Insights is a very experienced nuclear professional who often keeps me on my toes by sharing thoughts that are fairly common in our community. I have recently been posting quite a number of blogs on the need to revise radiation protection standards to base them on a more accurate model…

  • Reducing nuclear operational and capital costs by improved technology

    I received a link from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) to a fascinating video about their recent efforts to develop CoSecTM, a new resin technology that is more effective at capturing cobalt-60. Most of the radiation doses that nuclear workers receive come from this single isotope. One possible cost savings aspect of this technology…

  • What are radiation protection standards protecting us from?

    By Ted Rockwell How are Permissible Radiation Limits Set? How Much is Science, How Much “Prudence”? U.S. Regulatory Report NCRP-136 examined the question of establishing permissible radiation limits. After looking at the data, it concluded that most people who get a small dose of nuclear radiation are not harmed by it, and in fact are…