June, 2007

A couple of days ago, Marc Fisher, who operates a blog titled Raw Fisher at the Washington Post, published a commentary titled Mixed greens: How nuclear power splits environmentalists . This post has attracted a significant string of well-reasoned (and...

Sometimes I forget just how many people have recognized that there is a potential market for smaller nuclear power plants. A friend of mine sent me a link recently to an excellent summary of the publicly available information about a myriad of projects...

I ran across another commentary on the sale of Westinghouse AP-1000 reactors to China at humanevents.com in the form of an article by Timothy P. Carney titled Administration Poised to Subsidize China’s Nuclear Industry . (Amusingly enough, the banner...

Nevada Solar One, a 64 MWe capacity solar thermal energy plant, started up yesterday - Wednesday June 6, 2007. The plant cost its developers $250 million and it is projected to produce 124 million kilowatt-hours per year. The plant covers approximately...

One of the most interesting observers that I have found about nuclear energy is a diarist on The Daily Kos who uses the pen name of NNadir . He is a very progressively minded chemist who calls himself an Eleanor Roosevelt liberal. He believes that prosperity...

It is summertime in Washington and the leaders of the Senate are engaging in a seemingly annual exercise of creating a new energy bill. Yesterday, there was apparently an interesting skirmish between the two senators from New Mexico, who are both members of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee...

Last night I had an interesting chat with Dr. Allison MacFarlane . She is an Associate Professor of Environment Science and Policy at George Mason University and a research associate of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs' Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard University. She also...

One of the profit centers in the nuclear business is in supplying manufactured fuel elements. Though fuel costs are a much smaller portion of the overall costs of generating power in a nuclear plant than they are in a fossil fuel plant, there is still...

I have some trouble explaining my reluctance to do business with China. Perhaps it is just stubbornness or my inability to move on from my long established Cold War mentality, but I simply do not trust the dictatorial Communist Party government that still...

I have a number of readers that are a bit shy about posting comments on the blog, so we engage in off line discussions that can become quite useful. If possible, I obtain permission from the correspondent to share those discussions with you. Here is a recent one that I thought you might enjoy. (The reader...

I have recently made a new friend via the Internet. He is a Czech Republic citizen who is living and working in the United States. One of the great things about having friends from other countries is that you get the opportunity to view your own country through different lenses and experiences. It provides...

Last night I joined several hundred Washington DC residents at a bar at 1223 Connecticut Ave, paid my $15 donation, and listened to John Edwards explain his plan for leading America. I have a reasonable quality recording of the event that I plan to process and share via The Atomic Show feed, but that...

InsideBayArea.com has published an important article by Sarah Jane Tribble titled A dark horse for alternative energy that gives a good overview of the current discussion that is starting to occur in California about future energy supplies. I highly recommend that you visit the article and enter into...

Father's Day has been bittersweet for me for the past 20 years. I love the ways that my daughters remember the day, but I often find myself wishing that I could give my dad a huge hug and thank him for all of the ways that he influenced me as a person and as a father. Dad grew up under difficult circumstances;...

As many nukes know, there is a certain amount of uranium and thorium present in most coal. The China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) is taking a look techniques for treating coal ash piles to release the uranium that should be concentrated there, since uranium oxide is not combustible. (See, for...

A friend of mine recently sent me a clipping that included an opinion piece from the June 2007 issue of Foreign Policy . In case you are not familiar with the publication, here is how they introduce themselves in their About the Magazine page: Founded in 1970 by Samuel Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel...

I have been talking for quite some time about the economic benefits of nuclear power and how it provides some great jobs for technically minded people, even if they do not want or need a college education. You can find out what some of the potential beneficiaries think by reading through the forum at...

On June 19, I attended a John Edwards for President campaign event in Washington. I mentioned the event a couple of days ago and announced that I would post an Atomic Show podcast with the recorded speech and some comments about it. If you have any interest in American politics, you can find the show...