May, 2008

Strange blog post title today. I have been having some difficulty juggling a number of activities recently, and I find that I have missed commenting on a several recent events and updates associated with the NuClear renaissance. One of my activities has been a continuing conversation with Adam Curry...

There is nothing like high retail gasoline prices to get Americans talking about energy issues. Even some of the American aristocracy - members of the Rockefeller family -are taking advantage of the current interest to try to gain more support for a shareholder initiative suggesting a change in ExxonMobil's...

Wired Magazine's Spencer Reiss has long been a supporter of new nuclear power plants. In a recent series of short articles all under the heading of 10 GREEN HERESIES that environmentalists must overcome to succeed in a battle against global climate change, Spencer's contribution is titled EMBRACE...

One of the myths of the first Atomic Age was that safety fears following Three Mile Island halted new development. A more careful reading of history shows that the new development had already stopped well before April of 1979; the first major wave of order cancellations happened soon after the Arab Oil...

As regular readers of Atomic Insights know, Adam Curry, one of the founders of the "new media" company called Mevio.com - formerly known as Podshow - has been asking his Daily Source Code (DSC) listeners to think about ways to rebrand nuclear energy. Today, while on a long bike ride taking...

Recent events in the world of politics made me do some thinking about the difficulty of entering into a negotiation with the supplier of a product that you really need. I generally prefer a more equal footing where the supplier is at least as motivated as I am to strike an equitable deal. If you want...

One of the big reasons that I favor the expanded use of atomic fission power is that it is the cleanest source of reliable power available. As part of my effort to share that knowledge with people that might not have heard it yet, I have begun writing for CleanTechnica.com, which is part of the Green...

In an interesting editorial in the Tri-City Herald (serving Kennewick, Pasco and Richland Washington) titled Slow resurrection of nuclear power the paper's editorial board bemoans the fact that there does not seem to be much progress visible in the Nuclear Renaissance. Of course, we all know that...

In a shocking development, (tongue firmly planted in cheek there) the Wall Street Journal has published a lengthy article by Rebecca Smith discussing the potential that the Nuclear Renaissance might be derailed because of rapidly escalating cost estimates for new nuclear power plants. You can find the...

Kiera Butler has produced a post on Mother Jones titled Power Q&A: Stewart Brand: The Long Now futurist and founder of the Whole Earth Catalog talks about why it's time to rebrand nukes . I read the posted interview twice and did not see any real discussion or mention of rebranding nuclear power...

On Atomic Show 093 I produced an answer show to a series of discussions about atomic energy that has been taking place on episodes 753, 754, and 755 of The Daily Source Code (DSC) (Warning, the DSC is not a family oriented show and carries the iTunes "Explicit" tag.) One goal of my efforts...

On Tuesday, May 6, 2008, I had the opportunity to attend a couple of sessions at Electric Power 2008 , held at the Baltimore Convention Center. The opening session included a talk by Pat Wood, former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and a very informative and engaging roundtable discussion...

Chuck DeVore is a rare breed. He is a retired LtCol in the US Army Reserve, spent about 13 years in the aerospace industry and is now a California State Assemblyman working on overturning the state's de facto ban on new nuclear power plants. Chuck and I met up via phone on May 5, 2008 and recorded...

Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley (D) made some very useful comments in a recent article in the Washington Post titled 'It Is a Moral Imperative' "It is a huge moral challenge and it is a moral imperative given what massive new burning of coal will do to the planet if we don't develop...

One of the things that I like about being working with nukes is the fact that they plan ahead. Sometimes that characteristic is frustrating to people that are a bit more impatient and who want instantaneous results. As companies continue to prepare for the second Atomic Age, they are making investments...

I finally am beginning to understand why I have such a different world view from Amory Lovins, the "Chief Scientist" of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI). We simply have completely different life experiences. In his 1977 book titled Soft Energy Paths on page 55, Lovins wrote, "In an electrical...

Over the past week, I have been spending quite a bit of free time participating in another debate about nuclear power. I have mentioned it a few times on this blog, but here is the link one more time Pro-Nuke? Anti-Nuke? Talk About It With the Experts . Mother Jones , the hosting publication, invited...

It is always frustrating to try to have a conversation with someone who insists that wind and solar energy is all we really need. The creative people on What is Nuclear? have a published an article titled What kind of scale are we dealing with? that includes a dramatic illustration that might be useful...