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On Saturday, May 11, 2013, the Tampa Bay Times published a lengthy piece by Ivan Penn titled Levy nuclear plant more costly than a natural gas facility that uses a detailed analysis with substantial “error bars” around cost estimates to show that under nearly all scenarios considered, the...

If I lived in New York City, I would be campaigning against the installation of large, high pressure gas pipelines and for the continued operation of the well-built and well-maintained Indian Point Nuclear Power Station. I would also campaign for the construction of additional nuclear plants. In my opinion...

On May 7, 2013, the Kewaunee Nuclear Power Station is scheduled to stop generating emission free electricity for the last time. The plant is one of the better run and maintained facilities in the US, it has an operating license that is effective until December 2013, and it generates electricity for an...

Gail Marcus at Nuclear Power Talk recently published a post titled Natural Gas: A Flash in the Pan? in which she points to two recent articles (Rise of natural gas may mean fall of alternative energy and Is Natural Gas the Next Bubble ? Has Fracking Promised More Than It Can Deliver?) that describe our...

I stumbled across the above video from DNews. Here is how DNews describes itself: DNews is dedicated to satisfying your curiosity and to bringing you mind-bending stories and perspectives you won’t find anywhere else. New videos, twice daily at youtube.com/dnews Though there are some points that...

Salon.com published an article on Monday, April 1, 2013 titled Fracking: The next bubble?. The article includes an intriguing section that almost qualifies as a smoking gun in a somewhat convoluted way. The article suggest that the low natural gas prices that have prevailed in North America during the...

Dieter Helm has generously shared an April 2013 article written for Prospect Magazine titled Stumbling towards crisis. In that article Helm points to US energy decision making as a good example that serves as a contrast to UK energy policy making. He sees chosen path in the UK as almost guaranteeing...

At The Energy Collective, there is an active comment thread on a post titled Is Bill McKibben Really Serious About Climate Change? that has been sustained since March 8, 2013. Recently there was a comment that provided an opportunity to address a frequently expressed meme that is often used by people...

Utility companies that operate both coal and nuclear power plants rarely use the important communications techniques of comparison and contrast to help people understand the benefits of nuclear energy. There is some business logic behind that policy. I have a different set of interests and am not constrained...

Last night I drove to Lexington, VA where the sustainability program was hosting a screening of Switch (to a smarter future). There was a decent crowd; perhaps 100 or more students, faculty and townspeople. It is an impressive documentary, with inside views of facilities that people rarely see. It also...

After a number of discussions with people in positions close to the decision to destroy the Kewaunee nuclear power station, I am now about 98% sure that it will be shut down as currently scheduled in May of 2013. I am also about 95% sure that the decision will cost electricity customers in the Midwest...

In a recent paper, Mark Cooper and Peter Bradford advocate expanded use of natural gas, even if that expansion requires using hydraulic fracturing. They believe that fossil fuel plants should continue dumping vast quantities of combustion waste into our shared atmosphere, even after new nuclear energy...

The Washington Post Wonkblog recently published an article with the following headline Can the world fight climate change and energy poverty at the same time? There is a straightforward answer to that question that involves some hard work and some paradigm busting, but at least it is a path that offers...

A colleagues who used to work in the oil and gas industry pointed me to an article from the November 2012 issue of the Journal of Petroleum Technology titled Switch: The New Documentary on Energy’s Future. The article describes a video research project undertaken by Scott Tinker, a former oil and...

Warning – these ads from Bruce Power might offend those who make their living by selling coal, financing coal, transporting coal, burning coal, mining coal, or selling systems that attempt to make coal cleaner. The general theme of the series is: We’re proud to be nukes! Supplying clean,...

During President Obama’s February 12, 2013 State of the Union address, he spoke for six and a half minutes about the importance of energy to the American economy and the importance of being a world leading supplier of clean energy technology. As a proud contributor at an American clean energy company...

While participating in a discussion thread associated with my recent appearance on Dot Net Rocks, I remembered I’ve been meaning to write a post recommending that the the electricity production industry change its attitude about electricity conservation. For many complex reasons, the power business...

Robert Stone calls Pandora’s Promise his most important work because it discusses our biggest collective challenge – how do we supply a growing world population with the reliable power it needs without slowing choking the Earth’s ability to support our civilization and all of its existing...

Rebecca Smith asked an interesting question in a recent Wall Street Journal article titled Can Gas Undo Nuclear Power? She describes how financial analysts are wondering whether or not certain nuclear plants are at risk of being shuttered as being uneconomical in an era of cheap natural gas. It is a...

Matt Wald at the New York Times published an article titled Nuclear Opponents Invoke Solyndra that alerted me to a new tactic by the forces arrayed against the beneficial use of nuclear energy in the battle against hydrocarbon addiction and climate change. The new meme is a smear on nuclear energy by...

Sami Mäkeläinen and I agree that the world’s economy is barreling forward on a course that will result in a great deal of pain and suffering as we collide with the limitations on the available supply of hydrocarbons paired with the negative environmental effects of continuing to increase the rate...

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has just published an open letter to President Obama that offers opinions on how to solve various pressing problems. I’d like to riff on that letter and suggest that we should be pursuing ways to use one problem to solve another one. According to the BAS, there...

From XKCD: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. Hat tip to Dr. Brian Mays, one of the more prolific contributors to the Atomic Insights comment threads. The post Friday funny – Logarithmic Scales are for Quitters Without Enough Paper appeared first on Atomic Insights . ...read more

This morning I found an article titled Builders pessimistic about new nuclear plants published in the Tampa Bay Times, one of my former hometown newspapers. (As a retired naval officer, I have about a dozen former hometowns.) The author built his case about pessimism for new nuclear plant construction...

I ran across an end of the year post about energy worth sharing Counting Down Top 12 Energy Facts of 2012: 3, 2 & 1. It appears on a blog titled John Hanger’s Facts of the Day. Mr. Hanger claims to be “an expert on energy, environment, green economy, competitive electric markets, and...