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 […]
Politics of Nuclear Energy
The Atomic Show #161 – Shoreham Documentary Project
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 […]
Independence Day Letter to President Obama – Re: Nuclear Energy Summit
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: […]
Miscommunications Are Frequent in Human Discourse – Sometimes They Become Intentional Weapons
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 […]
Atomic Show #149 – Pro Nuclear Bloggers Reaction to SOTU Address
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. […]
Two interpretations of the fight against the plutonium economy
What were the reasons for opposition to fuel reprocessing 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 […]
Atomic Show 78 – Armond Cohen, Clean Air Task Force talks about carbon and nuclear neutrality
On Wednesday, January 9, I posted Atomic Show number 78, a chat with Armond Cohen, the Executive Director of the Boston-based nationally active environmental group called the Clean Air Task Force (CATF). Here is how the group describes its focus: Founded in 1996, the Clean Air Task Force (CATF) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to […]
The Atomic Show #061 – Allison MacFarlane, Atomic Agnostic
Dr. Allison MacFarlane is an Associate Professor of Environment Science and Policy at George Mason University. She is also a self proclaimed nuclear agnostic who is not sure that nuclear power can grow much. About a month ago a friend sent me a link to an interesting panel discussion that was held at MIT on […]
Ask Atomic: What was your point regarding the 760 million mile per gallon carburetor?
Patrick asked: In “The 760 Million Mile Per Gallon Carburetor” what was your point? Are you claiming that the fossil fuel industry and car manufacturers are NOT working together to make cars that use more fossil fuel? In sales you can do three things to increase profitability: Increase the number of people who use your […]
How I developed my atomic insights
I have spent the past 25 years studying and operating various kinds of energy production and consumption systems. My experience includes ocean sailing trips dependent on wind, batteries and and auxiliary diesel, backpacking trips dependent on biomass and auxiliary propane stoves, twelve 90-day patrols on a submarine in engineering jobs including chief engineer, 9 semester […]
Fusion versus Fission – Difficult versus Easy
Yesterday morning (3 March 2005) I heard a story on National Public Radio (NPR) that reminded me why I chose an engineering focused career instead of one focused on science. (Aside: I carefully avoid calling myself an engineer, though I served as one in the Navy for a couple of decades. My undergraduate degree is […]
Saying the ‘N’ word Nuclear – in polite company
The ‘n’ word is definitely back in fashion. There are at least five large partnerships in the United States that are preparing to build new nuclear power plants, though all of them are keeping a rather low profile. The five identified efforts include a consortium led by Excelon that is investigating an early site permit […]
