The Atomic Show

Dr. James Hansen is one of the world’s leading climatologists. He recently wrote a book titled “Storms of My Grandchildren” explaining the need to take effective action to reduce the potential danger of building up CO2 in the atmosphere. He is opposed to international agreements for capping and trading emissions and offsets and instead recommends [...] Read More...

On Sunday, February 21, I gathered a group of well experienced nuclear professionals to talk about the impact of President Obama’s February 16, 2010 speech announcing loan guarantees for Southern Company to build two additional units at its Vogtle Nuclear Station. Margaret Harding, Kelly Taylor, John Wheeler from This Week in Nuclear, Dan Yurman from [...] Read More...

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. On January [...] Read More...

During the State of the Union address on January 27, 2010, President Barack Obama stressed the importance of energy innovation investments in his discussion about leading an economic recovery through infrastructure construction. Here is what he said at the very top of his list: “But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need [...] Read More...

On January 21, 2010, I caught up with Forrest Rudin and TJ Trapp of Hyperion Power Generation. Forrest is Hyperion’s Chief of Staff; TJ is the Vice President of Engineering. They were on the road meeting with various stakeholders to explain more about their product. They took the time out of their schedule to provide [...] Read More...

John Wheeler, the host of This Week in Nuclear and I got together for a chat about recent developments in nuclear energy. We also talked a bit about a very old, completely decommissioned reactor called BONUS on the west coast of Puerto Rico. Topics discussed during our chat include the development of South Korea as [...] Read More...

The United Arab Emirates has recently selected a consortium that includes Korea Electric Power Corp., Westinghouse Electric, Hyundai Engineering and Construction, Samsung C&T Corp and Doosan Heavy Industries to supply it with 5.6 gigawatts of electrical power capacity. The order includes four APR-1400 nuclear reactor power plants and all associated secondary equipment. I made contact with [.....

On December 4, 2009, I spoke with Dr. Madeline Feltus, the Department of Energy technical program manager assigned the responsibility of coordinating the efforts of a team of scientists and engineers working on the refinement and testing of TRISO fuel particles for high temperature gas cooled reactors. During the interview, Dr. Feltus mentioned a few web [...] Read More...

On November 22, 2009, flush with good feelings about the recent American Nuclear Society (ANS) Winter Meeting, I invited four others who attended the meeting to get together for a conference call to talk about what we heard and learned. The show is a bit longer than average, but it is worth every minute! Lisa [...] Read More...

Some of you have graciously let me know that you are impatiently awaiting the next episode of the Atomic Show after a long period of silence. Please rest assured, there will be a new show soon. My goal is to get it produced and posted by Tuesday morning – US east coast time. Read More...

John Kutsch is one of the key organizers for the Thorium Energy Alliance and is heading up preparations for the organization’s first face to face meeting in Washington on October 19 and 20. During our conversation we talked about the technology opportunity that brings the group together. They have a vision for a world with [...] Read More...

Tom Sanders is an advocate of building right sized reactor power systems to meet human needs. He is a leader of a team working on that technology at Sandia National Laboratory. He is also the President of the American Nuclear Society. He has been doing a lot of traveling lately, answering questions about his vision [...] Read More...

Robert Hargraves, Charles Barton and Rod Adams talk about the Thorium Energy Alliance Conference and other miscellaneous atomic topics. The conversation ranged from thorium, to uranium supplies, to chemistry versus engineering, to the history of Oak Ridge, to the unreality of energy solutions that require continuous cash transfers from the public to the developer. For more [...] Read More...

Robert Margolis and Rod Adams engage in a panel of two (August is a slow month for news and a tough month to find guests) discussion about the 150 year anniversary of the first oil well in America, nuclear energy development plans in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, the responsibilities of a start up [...] Read More...

It has been more than a month since the last show. Many apologies. Dan Yurman and Charles Barton agreed to help me get back into the rhythm by chatting for a while about current atomic events. We discussed a recent Moody’s special report on companies considering new nuclear power plants – not very positive, TVA nuclear [...] Read More...