October, 2008

What's in the box? Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt. Whoever opens this box will be turned into brimstone and ashes. The head of Medusa. That's what's in the box, and who looks on her will be changed not into stone but into brimstone and ashes. But of course you wouldn't...

Next week is National Radiation Protection Professionals Week. Why them? Let's let Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) tell you (warning: pdf): Members of the radiation protection profession make it their life’s work to allow government, medicine, academia, and industry to safely use radiation....

We don't share as many negative editorials with you as we used to because a.) there just aren't as many as there used to be and b.) the list of arguments is pretty short and tends to get repeated over and over. That's as tedious for us to keep rehashing as it is for you to read it. So this...

The Presidential campaign is, after 127 years, winding down and the candidates are essentially making their final pitches - generally dialing back the attacks and amping up the positive messages - city on the hill, the future is bright, that kind of thing. So it's interesting to see that Sarah Palin...

We occasionally take a look at Greenpeace's Nuclear Reaction blog (subtitle: "Blogging the Meltdown of the Nuclear Industry") so we can see if some interesting new meme is springing up we may want to note. A couple of stories caught our eyes: Business Wire: Areva: Revenue and Data for the...

That's a possibility. Here's the TimesOnline : Ian Poll, Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Cranfield University , and head of technology for the Government-funded Omega project, is calling for a big research programme to help the aviation industry convert from fossil fuels to nuclear energy...

With Election Day just one week away, NEI Nuclear Notes is here to provide readers with a handy voter scorecard on nuclear energy. We sent a survey to all 69 Democratic and Republican candidates running for the U.S. Senate ( Mark Pryor [D-AR] is running unopposed) and asked these three questions: 1....

With the predominance of knowledge industries, financial instruments, and labor-intensive services in our economy and news this political season, one might forget about the asset-intensive businesses that drive the heartland. We do not. Our membership is drawn from across the industrial spectrum and...

Yes I mean real pigeons - the ones that have wings and fly. This is hilarious : Iranian security forces have arrested two "spy pigeons" near the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, the Etemad Melli newspaper reported. One of the pigeons, which had some metal rings and "invisible"...

Yesterday's announced deal between AREVA and Northrop Grumman to build a $363 million nuclear reactor manufacturing plant in Newport News, VA is getting a whole lot of media attention. The New York Times says Nuclear Power May Be in Early Stages of a Revival . ...Not since 1973 had anybody in the...

One thing you have to give anti-groups, they'll pull every rabbit out of the hat in order to have their way. This differs from advocacy groups, because being zealously against something comes far more naturally to the human animal than being zealously for something (Presidential elections aside,...

A rich discussion on nuclear energy and energy independence appeared on the Reason Foundation web site earlier this week. At last look, the dialogue continues, with the three authors exchanging perspectives on nuclear energy's role in achieving energy independence, federal energy subsidies, and the...

One thing we've mentioned here a few times is that a nuclear renaissance is going to require some oomph from the steel industry if the parts necessary to build a plant are going to be built in the United States. Well, here it comes , via the, ahem, French: France's Areva SA said it is forming...

Further to KB's post below, the reason sometimes given for politicians (and others, of course) to turn nuclear to nucular - from Eisenhower to Palin (we think Jimmy Carter had a variant pronunciation, too, though different than "nucular") - is to sound down home, the way that Palin likes...

From the yet to be published New York Times Magazine cover story on the McCain campaign, we find this nuclear nugget: "in the hours after Palin’s stunningly self-assured acceptance speech at the G.O.P. convention": “ n elegant … woman sat alone at the far end of the bar. She wore beige slacks...

We're reminded of that reality by this story in the Des Moines Register, which looks at the candidates energy proposals from the point of view of Iowans. The focus is on cap-and-trade, which favors low carbon-emitting energy sources by making them the beneficiary of carbon "credits" which...

Next week I'll be interviewing journalist William Tucker and seek the assistance of Notes readers: any suggested questions I should ask the author of T errestrial Energy ? You can leave your questions for Mr. Tucker in the comments or email them here . Thanks for your help. ...read more

The best takedown of the Swiss we know - because why would anyone want to take down the Swiss, after all? - comes from Orson Welles in The Third Man: Don't be so gloomy. After all, it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder...

  A group called Nuclear Energy for Texans (NET) is protesting the actions of another group, Texans for a Sound Energy Policy Alliance (TSEPA), who, according to NET, are up to mischief : "It is outrageous that this small anti-nuclear activist group would travel across the country to try and...

Or was it the 564th? Well, it was the last one anyway. Here are the nuclear quotes and we should note, this is three-for-three in which there were nuclear shout outs. Granted, all eyes are on the economy and associated pocket book issues, so we expected much less about energy policy this time out. First...

That's according to the Nuclear Energy Agency's latest Nuclear Energy Outlook study. Here's a summary (pdf): The security of energy supply from nuclear power is more reliable than that for oil or gas, according to the authors of the first ‘Nuclear Energy Outlook’ launched today by the Organisation...

Well done! : AmerenUE’s Callaway Nuclear Plant has achieved its first so-called "breaker-to-breaker run" after operating for 520 days without going out of service, according to a statement released by the St. Louis-based utility. A breaker-to-breaker run is when a plant operates from one refueling...

And by an impressively wide margin, too. A new poll from Bisconti Research for NEI interviewed 1000 voters to determine the support for nuclear energy depending on which candidate they were leaning towards - we've always liked the idea, much used by pollsters, of the "leaning" voter. You...

Hat tip to Pro Nuclear Democrats . ...read more

Your must-see TV tonight (assuming watching Warren Sapp and Susan Lucci cut the rug doesn't float your boat): CNBC premieres its 60-minute special," The Nuclear Option ," at 9:00 ET. From the programming notes, Power consumption in the United States has never been greater. Currently the...