This morning I published my first post as a contributor to Forbes.com. It’s titled Addressing Economic Challenges Facing Nuclear Power Plants.
The post is a quick summary of the DOE GAIN program summit titled Improving the Economics of America’s Nuclear Power Plants held yesterday.
The new venue on Forbes will provide an increased reach into audiences that have not yet found Atomic Insights. I have no intention of slacking off here; the knowledge I develop through interactions with Atomic Insights readers is invaluable.
Even at a time when far too many operating reactors are being shut down without any prospect of being replaced by new nuclear units, there is progress being made. Many more people are realizing that it is okay to come out as a pro-nuclear thinker, activist or politician.
No longer is a pro-nuclear position the “third rail of politics.” Supporting voices are overcoming the false notion that is often expressed as “I support nuclear, but my neighbors don’t.” Doing so gives political leaders the safe space to voice what they probably already think about the value of nuclear generated electricity.
There is a major need to alter the prevailing narrative that nuclear plant construction is inevitably expensive. There is an even more immediate need to head off the newly developing narrative that operating nuclear plants is inevitably more expensive than competitive generating options.
There are actions that can be taken to correct both challenges. Some of those actions is as simple as calling or writing your Congressman and Senators to tell them that you want to see more support for nuclear energy.
Some actions are already underway, but there is a lot of work — translated, good, creative jobs — remaining. In my opinion, the evolutionary effort to keep increasing performance, reducing inefficiencies and exorcising busy work will never be complete.
As a writer, I’m not involved in the daily grind of turning ideas into actions, but, with your help, I can continue to identify potential work reduction efforts that other might be reluctant to voice. Being able to share those ideas on a larger stage might make them slightly more effective.
It’s probably redundant to say this, but please follow me on Forbes.com and join in the discussions that I hope to stimulate there.
Congratulations!
Congratulations, but unfortunately since Forbes routinely blocks those users that utilize adblockers since they consider blocking their third-party ads as theft (it isn’t but that’s a debate for somewhere else) I doubt I will ever see your content at Forbes as I will not “deactivate” my blocking file.
Oh, and the funny thing is? The minute that users deactivated their adblocking software they were served up a dose of malware. Go figure
http://www.extremetech.com/internet/220696-forbes-forces-readers-to-turn-off-ad-blockers-promptly-serves-malware
So again, congratulations. Too bad I won’t be seeing your content though. 🙁
I have problems getting into Forbes .com. It tells me to turn off my ad blocker (Ad Block Plus) before letting me in. So I turn off the ad blocker, but Forbes still won’t let me in. I have done everything I can to disable the ad blocker for Forbes, but no joy. If I really want in, I can use another browser on my machine, but that is a bit of a hassle, so I find myself not reading as much Forbes content as I used to. James Conca is great. Adding Rod to the contributor staff is also a great move.
Hey, I am doing a research project on nuclear energy. I was wondering if you could share some information with me or we could exchange some information so I can write a decent research paper. If possible.
@Will
There are about 3500 articles on this site with a pretty fair search engine plus a system of categories. Feel free to find what you need for a “decent research paper.”
There is an archive of posts going back over 20 years, Will. Many posts are tagged, so you can browse them by category. Search engines will help you find specifics on most subjects.
Note, avoid “environmentalist” and anti-nuclear activist cites like UCSUSA, ENENews and Cleantechica. You’ll eventually learn to distinguish them by their lack of facts and borderline-hysterical tone, but until then it’s best to avoid them. world-nuclear.org is a good place for straight information.
Hey thanks guys. Congrats on the forbes section by the way.
Want to second E-P’s take:
World Nuclear Associations’s Information Library is the most comprehensive and best indexed resource out there. But Atomic Insights — follow “More->Archives” at top of this page — has the better search engine by a pretty fair margin.
Some dismiss WNA as an industry propaganda organ. Others of us, more interested in accuracy and depth, recognize nuclear power ain’t exactly rocket science simple, and see some benefit in professional research and information.
Related but more topical, is World Nuclear News.
Les Corrice hosts Hiroshima Syndrome, dedicated to radiation and health issues.
Prof David MacKay’s Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air is an invaluable educational resource, emphasizing basic concepts, sizes, scopes, and magnitudes of the problems at hand.
Good advice, Engineer-Poet, especially about Clean Technica.
I just addressed a comment made by the Clean Technica moderator over on Forbes, but because their server appears to be down, I addressed it here:
http://biodiversivist.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-does-nuclear-really-help.html
Congratulations, Rod.
Unfortunately, the Forbes comment field is one of the worst I’ve ever tried to navigate. The site does not allow ad blocker, and there are so many that they just kill your computer speed. One mis-click of the mouse and you find yourself on another article. The server is also often down, like right now. Robert Rapier also posts there and it’s like going to the dentist to make a comment. Hopefully they’ll get the message and find a way to fix that. Even though there’s a lot of great writing there, I avoid Forbes for this reason.
Forbes used to be a decent site for comments. Then they threw everything into tiny sidebars, made permalinks utterly useless for bringing up comments, and otherwise made it all as insignificant as they could without eliminating it entirely. I do not follow comment threads there any more, and barely contribute.
@E-P
I will share comments collected here to my assigned producer and editor at Forbes.
Congrats for graduating to Forbes!
Sci-Am next! 😀
James Greenidge
Queens NY
Not sure just who graduated to what, but do share your Sci-Am sentiment.
That would be a step down.
The archive archive of post going back over 20 years that Engineer-Poet reference shows that you truly are a Champion of Nuclear Power. Add my congratulations on being a contributor to Forbes.com!
I agree with the comments with respect to the Forbes.com site. Very difficult to effectively navigate without being inadvertently shuffled off to some unrelated topic, let alone trying to read or comment in that section. I do though suffer through when I see an article by James Conca and will do so for your contributions going forward. Great to see that James Conca commented so quickly to your first post!