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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...

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...

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...

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...

I keep hearing people talk about how much new natural gas supply horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has provided to the US energy market. They keep telling me that is the reason that US gas prices have stubbornly remained at levels about 1/6th to 1/3 the levels in Europe, Japan and India. The...

Donald Hoffman is one of the few entrepreneurs in the nuclear industry. His company, Excel Services, has been a profitable professional services provider to the nuclear industry for more than 25 years. Don is a leader who is willing to take calculated risks and also willing to recycle his profits back...

THE SKY IS PINK by Josh Fox and the GASLAND Team from JFOX on Vimeo. I am unapologetic about my support for developing more nuclear energy so that we can use less fossil fuel. Methane is a valuable, naturally occurring, fuel source, but extracting it at the rate that oil and gas marketers desire is ...

Intelligence Squared US, an Oxford style debate program modeled after a London program of the same name, recently chose to discuss the following motion – No Fracking Way: The Natural Gas Boom is Doing More Harm Than Good. In between trips to the Children’s Museum of Richmond, across Southside...

North Dakota recently passed Alaska as the second leading oil producing state in the United States. It boasts one of the lowest unemployment totals in the nation, a fact that is driven by the state’s small population and very large job of building the infrastructure required to extract oil from...

During my recent low production periods for new posts on Atomic Insights, I received some well intentioned advice from a frequent commenter – he told me that it would be less frustrating for me to maintain Atomic Insights if I focused more on innovations in nuclear energy than on the efforts of...

Both John Rowe, the retired chief executive at Exelon, and Aubrey McClendon, the current chief executive at Chesapeake Energy, would love to create a situation where “everyone” believed that cheap natural gas is going to last for a long time. My assertion is that “cheap” natural...

Nature, one of the world’s most prestigious science publications, has published an article that should give natural gas promoters in the environmental community an enormous dose of indigestion. It provides scientific evidence supported by hard data measurements that the act of extracting and “producing”...

On January 9, 2012, The Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University held a hydrofracking workshop. The organizers invited a number of speakers from both industry and academia to discuss a contentious, but important energy issue from a variety of perspectives. You can read about the workshop...

Natural Gas Watch has published a fascinating interview with Josh Fox, the creator of the often mentioned documentary about the impacts of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) titled Gasland. Fox is well into the production cycle for a sequel titled Gasland II; he described the difference between filming...

My discussion with Robert Bradley at Master Resource regarding the relative value of investments in natural gas generation versus nuclear generation continues to result in some interesting exchanges worth additional visibility and comment. Here are some of the recent posts: Robert Bradley { 12.03.11...

On November 22, 2011, I spoke to the student ANS chapter at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. It was a fairly compact, but enthusiastic gathering of bright individuals who have recently decided to make a career in nuclear technology. Some are interested in nuclear medicine, some in the...

The Bakken Shale formation near Williston, North Dakota is fueling a rapid oil boom and change in lifestyle for the residents. Oil production in North Dakota is nearing a half a million barrels of oil per day (in a nation that consumes roughly 19 million barrels of oil per day during a recession and...

I learned something new and useful while watching Energy Now’s July 24, 2011 show titled The Promise and Problems of Shale Gas. If I want to attempt to get an honest answer from natural gas industry promoters about the potential hazards of extracting natural gas from unconventional formations like...

I am getting increasingly frustrated by the cowering and covering attitude of the people in leadership positions within what is sometimes called “the nuclear industry.” Please understand that I am NOT talking about covering up in the sense of hiding bad information, I am talking about the...

CNBC’s Jim Cramer invited Aubrey McClendon, the CEO of Chesapeake Energy, onto his Mad Money show on June 28, 2011 to talk about the recent Ian Urbina articles (June 26, June 27, and June 28) in the New York Times. Cramer wanted to give McClendon a chance to tell the natural gas story from a.....

The oil and gas industry public relations organizations are spinning up in response to the New York Times pieces on the long term viability of natural gas produced by hydraulic fracturing. (See Behind Veneer, Doubt on Future of Natural Gas and S.E.C. Shift Leads to Worries of Overestimation of Reserves...

The New York Times published an article on Sunday, June 26, 2011 titled Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush. The article quotes a number of emails from natural gas industry insiders, financial analysts that cover the gas industry and skeptical geologists to produce a number of questions about...

I favor David and Goliath stories, especially when Goliath is a dangerous, selfish and greedy force that puts short term profits in front of health and safety issues that may affect generations. Though I have not yet had the opportunity to watch the movie, I have learned enough about Gasland and the...

On January 30. 2011, Bill Loveless of Platts Energy Week interviewed Kevin Book of Clearview Energy Partners and Matthew Armstrong of Bracewell and Giuliani to get their reaction to the recent announcement that Josh Fox's Gasland had received an Oscar nomination for best documentary film. The interview...

On November 30, 2010, The Ecologist published the above video in association with a story titled US natural gas drilling boom linked to pollution and social strife . Please take the time to watch it and think about the implications of a vastly expanded effort to frack our way into the future. This often...