The overreaction and stoked fears about the events at Fukushima continues. One month ago today, I wrote an article titled Nuclear plant issues in Japan are the least of their worries that exposed my ignorance of the differences between various kinds of containment designs and was a bit too optimistic about the eventual releases of…
On April 8, 2011, Alan Nogee, Director of Climate & Energy Strategy and Policy for the UCS posted the following on Twitter. Cato’s Jerry Taylor takes #nuclear power 2 the free market woodshed. Ouch! Forbes. He repeated that tweet with a better link and called Taylor’s opinion piece a “must read”. The article that Alan…
The US House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing on April 6, 2011 billed as “The U.S. Government Response to the Nuclear Power Plant Incident in Japan”. During the hearing, Dr. Edwin Lyman of the UCS and some of his allies in Congress made a point of discussing some internal emails from regulators at…
With each passing day, I gain a greater measure of respect for the hard headed rationality with which George Monbiot approaches controversial topics. He was a long time opponent of the use of nuclear energy, but began a personal journey of discovery several years ago as a result of his search for real solutions to…
A few days ago, I published the text of a speech given by Murray Miles to The Keese School of Continuing Education. At the time I published that speech, I had not been able to contact Mr. Miles to obtain his permission. Since that time, I have made contact and begun what I hope will…
The New York Times published a story titled Certainties of 1970s Energy Crisis Have Fallen Away that caused me to fire up my keyboard to send a note back to the author. Following my personal mantra of “reduce, reuse, and recycle”, I thought I would share that note with you. Ms. Galbraith: Your article titled…
During the period from August 19-22, 2010, AREDAY hosted the 7th Annual American Renewable Energy Day in Aspen Co. CSPAN published a series of videos of the speeches and presentations, including one panel that is of particular interest to Atomic Insights readers titled Is Nuclear Renewable?. That panel included talks by four people, Mr. Tom…
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8CqdECzklI In early 2009 a recently graduated film student and a journalist who grew up on Long Island got together to produce a film about the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant fiasco. Originally planned as a 10 minute YouTube video, the project grew to what might be a documentary lasting 100 minutes. Rod Adams and Gwyneth…
A group of distinguished and dedicated energy experts has composed and signed a letter to President Obama in support of a recent call by a group of eleven US Senators to convene a Nuclear Energy Summit. Here is the full text of the July 4, 2010 letter along with the initial list of signatories. (Note:…
Morgan Lewis & Bockius has produced a report that concluded that Entergy employees did not lie or intend to mislead investigators. Several employees have been punished anyway and there is a chance that a reliable plant that produces more than $100 million worth of electricity per year without any greenhouse gas emissions will be shutdown…
During the 2010 State of the Union Address, President Obama took the handcuffs off of the nuclear industry revival when he said: But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country….
Why does anyone oppose nuclear fuel recycling and breeder reactors? The vocal arguments against recycling nuclear fuel focused on weapons and the concept of nuclear nonproliferation. It was a major topic in the mid 1970s with a large political impact. Part of the stimulus that brought the issue center stage was a test conducted in…