March, 2009

Just a couple of days ago, I broke one of my normal blogging rules and published a press release in its entirety . It was a good one that contained important information about low dose radiation that is useful to Atomic Insights readers, so I figured it was not a matter of me just being lazy and filling...

The Boston Globe has a tightly written opinion piece by Jeff Jacoby titled The Coming Nuclear Renaissance . Here is a small sample from that article to encourage you to go and read it. The problems with nuclear energy have not vanished. To build a nuclear plant is an expensive undertaking, the disposal...

I have been getting more and more press releases as organizations begin to figure out that bloggers are valid media contacts. Normally, I do not simply take those releases and republish them, but occasionally I will make an exception. On this date, March 28, 2009, thirty years to the day after the events...

The Energy Collective has an article titled Why We Must Make Clean Energy Cheap that has generated a thoughtful discussion. I encourage you to read through the comments and perhaps add your own contribution to the exchange. ...read more

Here is another excellent product that reinforces my belief that we can learn something from our past. When you watch the first few minutes of this video please think for several moments about some of the commentary that you might have heard recently about the New Deal. According to some pundits, the...

A good friend sent me the link to this well produced video that makes some excellent points. I am fully aware that the source of this video may call into question its veracity, but I have been doing a lot of research for the past year or so and have come to the conclusion that FUD (fear, uncertainty...

The Center for Media and Democracy - PRwatch.org has a well-researched piece about the nuclear industry's public relations actions partially aimed at overturning the outright ban on new nuclear power plants in Wisconsin. It warms my heart to realize that there are some serious efforts underway to...

The fusion press release machine is still in business after all these years. I just completed reading an article in Forbes titled Reinventing Nuclear Power that provides some amazing details about the fusion experiments that will be taking place at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore...

The old "smoking" industries are not the only ones who have a direct financial incentive in shutting out the nuclear competition. Here is a quote from a March 6, 2009 article on Energy Daily titled Analysis: Nuclear vs. renewable in Germany : In 2020 renewables are to satisfy 47 percent of...

Sometimes, I plow my way through material that almost turns my stomach or makes me laugh outright in order to keep tabs on just how far some people will go in their efforts to deny the use of atomic fission energy. It is now very close to the 30th anniversary of the accident at Three Mile Island near...

Nuclearstreet.com has a good news story about a recent Gallup Poll that shows that 59% of Americans favor the use of nuclear energy, including a 27% segment that "strongly favor" its use. One piece of the survey results that I want to discuss is the following comment about gender differences...

A commenter here on Atomic Insights pointed to a couple of interesting articles published by The Economist , a well respected publication that has never been much of a fission fanzine. One of the articles, published on March 19, 2009, was titled The critical issue of safety . Here is a quote from that...

One of the memes continually repeated by the forces of opposition to nuclear power is that "Wall Street does not like nuclear power." The most recent time I have run across that quote was in an article titled Out of the Shadows: Can Japan's Nuclear Power Renaissance Reduce Global Emissions...

There is an article in the Chicago Tribune titled Chicago's 'green' promise fades: Chicago taxpayers on hook for carbon credits that do little to fight global warming that tells the story of the city purchasing carbon offsets from a plant burning wood waste from the forest products industry...

A friend reminded me that I need to keep an eye on the activities of Better Place - an electric car company with some intriguing ideas and growing momentum. They appear to be signing up additional industrial, financial and government partners for their idea of building and deploying electric cars by...

One of the big ideas in promoting a large industry dedicated to producing solar panels and wind turbines is the "feed in tariff". As practiced in Germany, this concept guarantees that any supplier of power using approved methods can sell the power at a price high enough to provide a rate of...

Arstechnica has a story titled Nuclear power? Yes please! inspired by a session titled Keeping the Lights on: The Revival of Nuclear Energy for Our Future held on February 14, 2009 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Chicago. Apparently the writer has been mulling...

A friend sent me a link to the video for a hearing held yesterday, March 18, 2009 by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Nuclear Power . There were three witnesses testifying at various times; Dale Klein, the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by himself, and then a tiny panel...

The more I have read about the discussions surrounding Vermont Yankee's license extension, the more I have become convinced that the underlying major issue is the fact that its customers are trying to establish a strong negotiation position. Not only is the plant up for an operating license extension...

Nancy Thorner of Lake Bluff has written a letter to the editor of the Daily Herald to tell them she would rather have a restarted Zion Nuclear Plant in her backyard than accept several proposed wind turbines that would produce just a tiny fraction of the power - if the wind blows from the right direction...

One of the weapons that the anti-nuclear movement used against nuclear power in the first Nuclear Age was the testimony of disgruntled workers who often had legitimate concerns about the way that their particular slice of the industry was being managed. In some cases, the specific workers became so disillusioned...

The Utah legislature has added nuclear power to a list of energy sources defined as "renewable". You can read about it at Renewable Energy Incentive Includes Nuclear Power and Utah governor, Legislature at odds over climate change . It is not clear yet whether or not the governor will sign...

I have always tried to be clear when I talk about how fossil fuel interests have been responsible for much of the success of the organized anti-nuclear movement. Many people in various discussion forums have misinterpreted my words "fossil fuel interests" as meaning just major oil companies...

(Like all parts in this series, the reference book is Light Water: How the Nuclear Dream Dissolved written by Irvin C. Bupp and Jean-Claude Derian and published in January 1978 by Basic Books, Inc. of New York.) One of the primary themes running through Light Water is the fact that the economic predictions...

The Wall Street Journal has published an editorial by William (Bill) Tucker, author of Terrestrial Energy , titled There Is No Such Thing As Nuclear Waste . Of course, we all know that headline is a bit of an oversimplification designed to capture attention, but the sentiments are in the right place...