May, 2010

Meredith Angwin at Yes Vermont Yankee posted this three year old classic on her site today. Just remember that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. ...read more

As a "served engineer" on a nuclear powered submarine, I learned a long time ago that things go wrong, even with the very best technology. The recognition of inevitable "problems" should not deter technical development and should not make people afraid to develop new products and...

Graham Jesmer of RenewableEnergyWorld.com interviewed Amory Lovins at Solar 2010 about the prospects for the renewable energy business in general and solar in particular. Lovins could not resist the opportunity to make his usual pronouncements about the superior value of distributed, but unreliable power...

I often suspect that the raison d'etre for the nuclear weapons non-proliferation community is to add barriers that restrict the beneficial use of nuclear energy. Many prominent spokespeople from that community can be counted on to make proclamations of worry for any innovation in the fuel cycle that...

A friend who has heard me discuss my theories about the relationships between mainstream Environmental groups and fossil fuel extraction and marketing companies sent me a link to an article titled Polluted by profit: Johann Hari on the real Climategate . He included a rather amusing subject line on the...

Platts published an article dated May 24, 2010 describing a request by the Obama Administration to include an additional $10 billion in loan guarantee authority for nuclear and renewable energy programs as part of the supplemental appropriation bill that is normally used for military war related expenditures...

There is an informative article in the business section of the San Diego Tribune's online publication titled Renewables need helping hand from gas . The article describes how combined cycle gas turbine plants work, with gas turbine exhausts feeding steam plant bottoming systems. It talks about air...

On May 25, 2010, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Army Corps of Engineers held a joint public meeting/hearing to present their initial recommendation and solicit public comments following their release of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement on a proposed Calvert Cliffs Unit 3. The EIS project...

A friend shared a link to an EBay auction for a vintage advertisement from General Electric describing its efforts to help the world move past its dependence on burning coal. This ad appeared in 1972, just a couple of years before Ralph Nader successfully gathered a large group of organizations that...

Senator Lamar Alexander is one of the more energy literate members of the United States Senate. He was recently quoted in a Knoxnews.com article titled Alexander calls Mass. offshore wind farm 'a taxpayer rip-off' as saying the following about the Jim Gordon led project to build a 130 turbine...

The Pacific Northwest is an area of the country where the electrical power supply has some common attributes with the power supply system serving the Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway). There is a large installed base of hydroelectric power, a small amount of nuclear power, and some variable...

A story titled GOP House candidate Bill Flores backtracks on loans for nuclear power plants caught my eye this morning. It tells the story of Bill Flores, who is running for congress in the Texas district that includes the Comanche Peak nuclear power station. Luminant, one of the owners of the units...

As part of its Nuclear Option Special Section, MarketWatch included a video interview with Aude Lagorce asking Ben Ayliffe of Greenpeace for his opinion about whether or not nuclear energy is "green". Not surprisingly, Ayliffe strongly disagreed with the characterization of nuclear energy as...

The above embedded video comes from a Canadian show called The Agenda with Steve Paikin on Friday, May 21, 2010 . For this episode, Steve interviewed Trevor Findlay, a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. Mr. Findlay was the lead for the production of a new report titled...

When the business publications start paying close attention to nuclear energy, it shows how close we are getting to a true recovery of the large and growing enterprise that was the source of so much promise when was in high school and making career decisions. Perhaps that is one reason why the professional...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy I came across the above video on a post at The Energy Collective titled A Month after the Oil Disaster, We Need Obama to Lead . As I watched it, I could not help but nod in agreement with some of the points while wanting to...

For most of the past thirty years, there has been little incentive to develop nuclear energy systems that release more than a tiny portion of the potential energy found in uranium. The same lack of market incentive has nearly completely kept thorium out of the energy supply market. The perception was...

There is an interesting discussion taking place on ScienceBlogs.com on a post titled The myopia of energy production: "Nothing will go wrong" . The post is quite short, consisting mainly of a cartoon that plays on the world's intense concern about the continuing uncontrolled gusher deep...

If you happen to be near Stanford University this afternoon - May 18, 2010 - and have some free time between 4:15 and 5:15, visit building 420, room 40 to hear the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission give a talk titled Nuclear Regulation In An Era of Growth And Change . Here is a summary...

It is consistently frustrating to engage in rational discussion with people who cannot see the inconsistencies in their own positions. People who express great worry about climate change and then dismiss nuclear energy as unnecessary indicate either an amazing ability for self-delusion or an inability...

On Monday, May 17, 2010, Bloomberg Businessweek published an article by Jeremy van Loon and Alex Morales titled Fridge-Sized Nuclear Reactors to Tap $135 Billion Power Market . The article focuses on John Deal, CEO of Hyperion and his effort to build sealed units that can operate in remote locations...

There is a detectable effort by people who are opposed to the development of nuclear energy to try to link environmental concerns related to the Deepwater Horizon off-shore oil well explosion and continued large scale Gulf of Mexico pollution with the effects of well publicized nuclear energy related...

This article originally appeared in issue number 358 of Fuel Cycle Week dated January 6, 2010. It is reprinted here with permission. By Rod Adams, Special to Fuel Cycle Week To Americans the trade name for the China Ocean Shipping Co. sounds like the big-box competitor to Sam’s Club. But COSCO...

Power Magazine has published an important, information rich article titled U. S. Spent Nuclear Fuel Policy: Road to Nowhere that provides the best available summary of the numerous dead-end paths that have been attempted in a supposed effort to provide a permanent storage location for used nuclear fuel...

I have recently been visiting a blog published by the American Gas Association . It is both a learning experience and a bit of Sun Tzu motivated research . It is obvious from the blog posts that the utility segment of the natural gas industry wants to take advantage of concern about climate change and...