Atomic Insights

Every once in a while, I feel the need to step away from politics and detailed technical considerations about the existing machinery designs for systems that can use nuclear heat to remind myself why fission has fascinated so many people for so long. The bottom line is that it is a clean, immensely dense...

As a currently serving military officer, I am not allowed to campaign for a particular candidate or political party. I am part of an organization that is subordinate to the authority of civilian leaders and required to follow their orders. I am also required to be respectful of those in my chain of command...

Though most of us suffer when energy prices increase, there are some who benefit greatly. Conversely, when energy prices fall precipitously, there are some who suffer massive losses of wealth and power. The part that is unfair is that the people who benefit from high energy prices have designated representatives...

I have done some reformatting of the graph of non combustion energy sources in the US during the period of 1949-2006. Following the suggestion of Kirk Sorensen, I put wind, solarPV and geothermal on the bottom of the chart in an attempt to better illustrate their growth. Feedback is welcome. Source of...

This is a time compressed post whose major purpose is personal - I need to work a bit on my graphing skills and on my use of the Blogger software that enables Atomic Insights. Quite a while ago, I promised to find some graphs that would show the real energy path that the US has taken to show the contrast...

In the past week, retirement has been a big topic on my mind. I served as a sideboy and flag passer for a colleague, I dig some digging into the cost of a flag officer retirement, and I attended a surprise retirement party for a man who had worked for the DC Metro system since he was 16 years old, starting...

Apparently there really is a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that applies to all major federal decisions with the potential to "significantly affect the quality of the human environment". In accordance with that law, the Bureau of Land Management has placed a freeze on approving applications...

I've got a hot tip for you. According to an article in Seattlepi.com titled What's next for Gates? Anything he can dream up , Gates is taking an active interest in a nuclear power project. He has been talking about all kinds of ideas with Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer at...

I have been watching a lot of Washington DC area buses recently. For a variety of reasons, the ones that are painted in green jungle motifs or displaying large signs indicating "This Bus Running On Clean Natural Gas" fascinate me. Today I noticed a bus that had an even more obvious advertisement...

S. David Freeman, one of the most damaging energy policy makers of the 20th century is trying to make a comeback. For those of you who are not energy geeks, S. David Freeman served on the predecessor to the FERC under President Kennedy and worked on energy policies for both Lyndon Johnson and Richard...

On Tuesday, June 17, 2008, I had an opportunity to take a few hours off from my day job to attend a CASEnergy Coalition sponsored press conference announcing the release of a new white paper titled Job Creation In the Nuclear Renaissance (4.8 MB PDF). If you are interested in just the Executive Summary...

You learn something new every day. One of my Google Alerts brought me a letter-to-the-editor from David Hollein, who indicated that he was once the "Westinghouse senior engineer assigned for all the Commonwealth Edison Company nuclear reactor sites". His letter, published on June 15, 2008 by...

David Bradish at NEI Nuclear Notes has produced an insightful series of blogs about Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion. The posts enter into a rather detailed analysis of some of the assumptions, deceptions, fuzzy mathematics and ill-founded conclusions reached by my least favorite energy prognosticator...

On the June 10, 2008 episode of the Daily Source Code, Atomic Rod (that's me) payed a visit to rant about the fact that we have been conditioned to consider nuclear waste as an unsolvable problem while we have also been conditioned to simply accept and deal with the deadly waste products that spew...

Switzerland has one of the cleanest electrical power systems in the world. It produces and consumes about 58 billion kilowatt-hours per year. Its five nuclear reactors (four power stations, one has two reactors) supply about 22 billion kilowatt-hours (38%), nearby French nuclear plants supply about 7...

I noticed a short article on Page B2 of the June 10, 2008 issue of the Wall Street Journal titled Edison Unit Cancels Suzlon Order . Something tells me that you will not hear Amory Lovins or Joseph Romm mentioning the technical issue discussed in the article. A quick Google search leads me to believe...

There has been a strong shift in the talk about nuclear power in the European Union, driven by concerns about global climate change, energy prices and increasing dependence on Russian oil and natural gas. Until recently, Germany's official position has been that it would continue with its plan to...

The U. S. arm of Areva has announced a plan to invest $25 million for additional space at its Lynchburg, VA engineering/nuclear services site. The additional space will be needed as the company hires the 500 new employees that it intends to add during the next 3 years. These new employees will be assisting...

A couple of days ago, I mentioned Jack Spencer's analysis of the need for nuclear power if there is going to be a real effort to change the amount of CO2 entering the atmosphere. Yesterday, FoxNews published an opinion piece titled Heritage Foundation: Road to Clean Air Runs Through Yucca Mountain...

Joseph Romm recently published an article at Salon.com titled Nuclear Bomb that attempted to prove that nuclear fission power plants were too expensive to consider building without massive government subsidies. He has apparently failed to understand or acknowledge what is happening in the electrical...

India is the world's largest democracy. It is a country that has been growing and developing its economy at an impressive rate. As a former British colony that worked hard to get rid of its colonizers, it is also endowed with fierce pride and an independent streak. I like that in a country - I live...

Jack Spencer at the Heritage Foundation is one of the more thoughtful analysts that I know when it comes to nuclear power's place in the world's energy mix. He recently wrote a must read piece titled Nuclear Power Needed to Minimize Lieberman-Warner's Economic Impact that dug deep into the...

I read a lot of business publications. Recently I have decided to begin collecting a selection of the advertisements that I believe support my contention that the effective opposition to nuclear power comes not from the vocal anti-nuclear organizations but from the more subtle activities of the non nuclear...

I began my nuclear career as a submarine officer in the US Navy, so I have never really understood why a substantial body of people believe that all nuclear power plants have to be steady state behemoths producing at least several hundred megawatts of power. Ever since I got interested in taking some...

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...