November, 2008

Despite our pre-Thanksgiving prep-for-bloat kind of lethargic mood, we thought we point you to a couple of interesting videos. Here's one from the BBC about the disassembly of the Sellafield Cumbrian plant. This isn't a nuclear power plant, but a plant at which plutonium was produced for bombs...

Watching Australia come to grips with nuclear energy is like watching Mr. Hyde fighting not to become Dr. Jekyll - the struggle is intense but perhaps not wise. Let Ziggy Switkowski  (and doesn't that seem like a name right out of Laverne and Shirley!),  chairman of the Australian Nuclear...

Over at The Huffington Post , Greenpeace 's Jim Riccio offers up some red meat in his provocatively titled guest post, President Obama and Nuclear Power's Spin Campaign . Riccio accuses NEI of mischaracterizing President-elect Obama's support for nuclear power and dismisses the work done...

Interestingly, Kentucky's Governor Steve Beshear pursued an energy policy during his campaign but was notably silent about nuclear energy being a part of that policy - you can see his campaign manifesto on energy issues here . But, boy, when he comes around, he comes around big. "We must begin...

In looking for videos to include on NEI's newly created YouTube channel ( NEI Network ), we came across an excellent online resource there this week: Third Wave Digital . Third Wave is an advertising company that has created over 50 high quality animated clips that explain how a nuclear plant works...

Dr. Joe Bonometti, with the help of thorium expert Kirk Sorensen , gave about an hour long "tech talk" at Google discussing liquid fluoride thorium reactors. Here's the video: Slowly but surely thorium is gaining greater and greater interest in the country. Atomic Insights has some thoughts...

Romania has pulled together a pretty impressive group of energy suppiers - including ArcelorMittal, CEZ, GDF Suez, Enel, Iberdrola and RWE Power - in order to knock together two new nuclear units to join the units at the Canadian built Cernavoda. Romanian Finance Minister Varujan Vosganian said the project...

The internet, as you may have heard, is jam packed with pages that purport to determine your perfect mate , your personality , your life span (based, I guess, on your intake of Omega-3 and asbestos). Typalizor says it will tell you your personality type by analyzing your blog and judging, well, we'd...

The Wolf Creek nuclear plant in Kansas just became the 50th reactor unit to receive a 20 year license renewal from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission . The plant is now licensed to operate until March 11, 2045. Congratulations to everyone involved! Only 54 units left to go . ...read more

Arizona's Fox News must have read my previous post . ;-) Here's a link to the video clip of the news channel discussing how the Palo Verde nuclear plant in Arizona uses waste-water to cool their reactors . ...read more

Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has emerged victorious from the Cannon Caucus Room this morning, defeating John Dingell (D-MI) in a 137-122 secret ballot vote, to gain chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee . More details to come. ...read more

Annette Carey does a good job in the TriCity Herald of covering a  public meeting that occurred there covering the possibility of recycling used nuclear fuel. Sponsored by the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) in Pasco, Washington - the tri-cities also include Kennewick and Richland - the...

Some interesting comments coming from President-elect Obama in his address to the bipartisan Governors' Global Climate Summit , scheduled to begin later this morning. It would appear that, despite the global financial crisis, cap-and-trade is still front and center. From the prepared remarks, In...

You don't get a very good result: Power suppliers are turning back the clock to use coal-fired plants as their main source of electricity in a bid to avert potential shortages this winter. Latest figures from the National Grid show that the fuel accounted for 42.5% of all power generation, overtaking...

My interview with journalist and author of Terrestrial Energy , William Tucker, is now up on NEI's YouTube Channel . Part one can be seen here . Part two, here . Favorite Q&A? Q. Have you ever convinced any friends to become supporters of nuclear energy? A. Ahhh! In fact of I have. I actually...

If you're ready to think deeply and able to absorb a lot of info on a Monday morning, check out Luke Weston on "clean" coal at Physical Insights . Luke's first post debunks the Australian coal industry's latest "clean" coal ad and his second post looks critically at how...

There's been a veritable flood of good press on nuclear energy coming out of Wisconsin. The goal, of course, is to get the state's ban on new plants overturned. Now, a few good editorials don't make a Spring or even bring the swallows back to Capistrano, but we were interested to see this...

We're still waiting on a copy of the transcript, but Katie Fehrenbacher over at earth2tech is reporting on an interesting exchange between former U.S. Energy Secretaries from Day One at the Forbes Energy Conference . While [James] Edwards and [John] Herrington were riled up over cap and trade, [Spencer...

That's according to Black & Veatch's latest annual survey to electric utilities (pdf). Here are the highlights: Continuing the survey trend from past years, utility personnel believe strongly that nuclear energy is the best investment to meet environmental requirements. Nuclear demonstrated...

In a November 7 posting , the Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog provides an excellent summary of the various "messages" observers believe voters sent about their desires on energy policy during this election. While some clean energy advocates believe the voters expressed...

Wisconsin has been rethinking its ban on new nuclear energy plants for awhile now : Wisconsin's 24-year-old moratorium on nuclear power plant construction is wrong. The foundation for removing the moratorium has already been laid. Earlier this year, the Governor's Global Warming Task Force recommended...

One of the dangers of snooping around the internet for interesting stories is that we have to hope the reporting is accurate. That's tough, because journalistic standards differ between countries and the press elsewhere often has a different role in society than what we're used to. Usually, the...

One thing you can say about nuclear power plants - or any industrial structure - is that they are not inspiring pieces of architecture. Obviously, the message they want to project is one of functionality, not aestheticism. But people actually do work at plants and many more see them from their cars and...

Forbes magazine editor-in chief and publisher, Steve Forbes, a former presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000 , looks at the future Obama administration in this week's issue . The pull quote: Though an Obama Administration won’t try to lift the ban on drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic National...

The Department of Energy is funding the University of Idaho with $732K to prove the feasibility of using highly magnetic nanoparticles to reprocess used nuclear fuel . If successful, scientists at the University of Idaho will kill three birds with one nanoparticle by recovering usable nuclear fuel, making...