Circumstances sometimes create some rather strange alliances. This week, despite being a proud liberal who proudly supports public education, comes from a family of union school teachers, appreciates the value of being covered by a single payer medical plan and voted for President Obama, I find myself cheering for a group of representatives who are […]
Politics of Nuclear Energy
Why does anyone trust Robert Alvarez’s opinions about nuclear energy?
The Energy Collective, is an aggregation site that provides a wide variety of views about energy. It is often a place with high quality discussions, but it can also be a site where article placement decisions completely baffle me. Yesterday, I visited The Energy Collective and found out that the best, most visible spot on […]
Another hurdle that Jaczko is erecting in front of the Nuclear Renaissance
I realize that my topic selection during the past couple of days might have given the mistaken impression that NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko’s action to derail the Yucca Mountain project is the main reason that I think that the man is a hazard to the prosperity of my grandchildren. People who have been reading Atomic […]
Commercial media, bloggers and congressmen agree – Jaczko abused his position to further patron’s agenda
Dr. Gregory Jaczko has successfully elevated the office of Chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission into a position of far higher visibility than the often obscure office has received in a very long time – at least since it was an office called the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and inhabited by David […]
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 […]
NRC wavering on AP1000 decision under pressure by FOE
On May 10, 2011, the Friends of the Earth, a group that has professionally opposed nuclear energy since the late 1960s, issued a press release that challenged the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s refusal to extend the public comment period for the AP1000. Here is a quote from the press release describing how the group organized […]
If wind energy does not reduce CO2 emissions, why bother?
Peter Lang has published an intriguing guest post at Brave New Climate titled CO2 avoidance cost with wind energy in Australia and carbon price implications. It has attracted about 125 lengthy, mostly well-referenced comments and repeat visits from Michael Goggin of the American Wind Energy Association. I think renewable energy mythology is a clever distraction […]
McConnell asks DOE to keep using 60 year old enrichment plant to save jobs
On May 18, 2011, Senator Mitch McConnell exercised the privilege of being the senate minority leader to visit the Senate Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Energy and Water while the committee was holding a hearing on the fiscal year 2012 budget for the Department of Energy. He asked Secretary Chu a number of pointed questions about […]
Scientific American editors demand perfection from nuclear while letting competitors selling coal, gas, and oil off the hook
The editors of Scientific American published an op-ed titled Coming Clean about Nuclear Power: Regulators and industry have one precious moment to recapture the public’s trust that holds nuclear energy to an unobtainably high standard of guaranteed safety, absolutely secure operations, and complete transparency. Now the toughest regulator in the federal government has to be […]
If nuclear energy has “friends” like this, it does not need any enemies
Philip Sharp and Ernie Moniz are both members of the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future and are ostensibly in favor of the use of nuclear energy. Richard Lester “runs the nuclear engineering department” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the premier engineering institutions in the country. I was taken aback, […]
Nuclear fission can help solve George Monbiot’s environmentalist dilemma
George Monbiot has recently published some thought provoking articles about the dilemmas facing people who are focused on protecting the natural environment. Those articles have made me think hard about trying to share my own thoughts on the matter, perhaps offering a way of overcoming at least some of the challenges. One of my favorite […]
Jaczko decided to halt Yucca review by February 2010, not October 2010
Chairman Gregory Jaczko testified recently that the NRC decided to begin closing down the agency’s effort to review the Yucca Mountain license application in early October, 2010. Some of his fellow commissioners testified that they did not agree with the decision and they do not agree that the commission has made the policy decision to […]
