April, 2011

Relicensing puts the Ohio reactor in the cross-hairs of its opponents This is my updated coverage published in Fuel Cycle Week V10;N412, April 21, 2011, by International Nuclear Associates, Washington, DC Trouble is coming to the Davis-Besse nuclear power station. The political waves from hydrogen explosions...

Video: Watch an Apple Engineer Recreate a 2,000-Year-Old Computer Using Legos Andrew Carol, an Apple engineer, has created a working model of the Antikythera Mechanism, a 2,000 year old clock work, mechanism which accurately predicts eclipses. At this Fast Company magazine web page , film maker John...

The combined effects of the earthquake and tsunami illustrate the risks of putting all your eggs in one basket The architecture of energy distribution in major industrial nations like Japan, the U.S., France, the U.K. , and Germany is based on very large power plants, often several at a single site,...

Just the facts please In the famous TV drama series " Dragnet ," the lead character is Los Angeles Police Detective Joe Friday. While the actual drama in the show was tame by today's measure, one thing stood out which has met the test of time. It is the line Friday, played by unpretentious...

A review of what went wrong, why, and what should be done in the future Guest Blog Post by: Akira T. Tokuhiro Ph.D * Following a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and as high as ~14 meter tsunami, the Fukushima  Dai-ichi (D1) and Dai-ni (D2) Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs, Units 1-4[U1-4] at D1, U5-6-2 at D2i...

Contrary to what the anti-nuclear crowd would like you to believe, the wheels have not come off the renaissance. The 49th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Blogs is up at Yes Vermont Yankee . The carnival features blog posts from the leading U.S. nuclear bloggers and is a roundup of featured content from them...

Companies building multi-billion dollar facilities don't do things on whims Last week there were a flurry of rumors that Areva might be having second thoughts about the construction of its $2.4 billion uranium enrichment plant at a site located 18 miles west of Idaho Falls, ID. This is the Eagle...

Is AECL worth anything more than its parts? A fluid and confused political environment clouds the future This is an update to my coverage in Fuel Cycle Week V10:N414; March 3, 2011 by International Nuclear Associates, Washington, DC. More than a year after the Canadian government offered its crown corporation...

The firm has applied for a DOE loan of $97 million for a $125 million plant This is my coverage of International Isotopes in Fuel Cycle Week. April 14, 2011, V10:N420; published by International Nuclear Associates, Washington, DC. Efforts to secure equity funding to build a $125 million uranium deconversion...

Four perspectives on the need to change the way the significance of radiation numbers are explained to the public The crisis at the Fukushima nuclear reactor complex in Japan (right), caused by a record earthquake and equally record shattering tsunami, has created a maelstrom of fear, uncertainty, and...

Key financing from Japan unlikely due to Fukushima crisis NRG Energy ( NYSE:NRG ) pulled the plug on its development of twin 1,350 MW ABWR  reactors for the South Texas Project on April 19th.  The firm said in a statement that “multiple uncertainties” regarding investment funding from TEPCO...

It's less than you think The Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade association for the utilities that own and operate the nation's 104 nuclear reactors, has some thoughts on how Fukushima might affect the nuclear renaissance on this country. In an updated briefing paper posted on its website April...

It’s online at ANS Nuclear Cafe This week discontinuous events evolving from the impact of an earthquake and tsunami at Fukushima continue to get focus of the nuclear energy blogsphere. TEPCO reported that post event inspections reveal that the wave breached the seawall at a height of 15 meters. Decommissioning...

Decommissioning plans must wait for stable reactor conditions The world’s biggest nuclear energy firms are lining up with proposals to clean up a historically huge radioactive mess at the Fukushima, Japan, reactor site. There six reactors in various degrees of damaged condition are presenting new engineering...

Guest blog post by Jacques Besnainou, CEO, Areva, Inc I am writing this essay today as a frustrated and fed up reader of nuclear-related stories originated by anti-nuclear organizations. While most recent reporting on the Fukushima reactors has been fair, some quite admirable, the coverage of MOX (mixed...

A one-day meeting to help overcome barriers to the nuclear renaissance On May 26, 2011, a Nuclear Workforce Training Needs Workshop will be held at The Ohio State University (OSU) sponsored by the OSU Nuclear Engineering Program .  The concept for this workshop was developed as a product of activities...

It opens the U.S. market to more Russian uranium This is my coverage published in Fuel Cycle Week V10:N418; 03/31/11, published by International Nuclear Associates, Washington, DC As the 20-year, $8-billion Megatons-to-Megawatts program winds down in 2013, struggling U.S. uranium enricher USEC ( NYSE...

Time to stand up to be counted This is to inform you that “The Economist” is conducting an online debate on nuclear  power – in which online voting is invited. Resolved   This house believes that the world would be better off without nuclear power. WNA’s Ian Hore-Lacy is presenting the pro...

It would make the disaster the most severe since Chernobyl The Kyodo News Service reports that the the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan released a preliminary calculation April 11 saying that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had been releasing up to 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive materials...

The 47th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Blogs is up at Cool Hand Nuke . The carnival features blog posts from the leading U.S. nuclear bloggers and is a roundup of featured content from them. This week discontinuous events at Fukushima continue to get focus of the nuclear energy blogsphere, but there are...

Japan considers wider evacuation zone, but water leak is stopped at reactor site The Wall Street Journal reports that the Japanese government is considering extending the evacuation zone around the devastated Fukushima nuclear reactor complex. According to the newspaper, the government is recalculating...

Getting the water out is the first priority Over at Atomic Insights blog my friend Rod Adams asks whether the radioactive water at the devastated Fukushima nuclear site in Japan is such a big deal. He writes, “ . . . a million gallons of water is a rather modest amount of water.” The basis for this dialog...

It has all the challenges of Three Mile Island plus there are four damaged reactors not just one The effort to contain the nuclear reactor crisis at Fukushima brings to mind the 1933 horror movie King Kong , in which a giant ape, escaped from captivity, and perched at the top of the Empire State Building...

The 15 page document provides recommendations on how to mitigate them The New York Times reports today that a March 26 threat assessment by the Reactor Safety Team of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) warns that the crippled nuclear plant faces fresh threats that could persist indefinitely. The...

Update to Information Sheet Regarding the Tohoku Earthquake The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan (FEPC) Washington DC Office As of 11:30AM (EST), April 5, 2011 Radiation Levels The concentration of radioactive nuclides from the seawater sampled at the screen device (installed to remove...