April, 2009

A group of 17 Senators are puzzled : Over $7.7 billion has been spent researching Yucca Mountain as a potential repository site and neither the NAS, the NWTRB, nor any of our National Labs involved in conducting studies and evaluating data have concluded that there is any evidence to disqualify Yucca...

Why not? He’s much in the news and now that he’s with the majority party, we’d like to know where he tips the balance. As it turns out : I think there is no doubt that we need to develop nuclear energy in America because of the great problems associated with the dependence on foreign oil. The issues...

Activism should be fun, pro- or anti-whatever, since the rewards of activism are often frustration, lost friends, and learning what it is to be called fanatic. So a bow to the unbending squirrel : A French anti-nuclear activist nicknamed the "unbending squirrel" managed to stop a train carrying...

The office of North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue (D) announced today that Toshiba Nuclear will open a project management and engineering center in Charlotte; adding 194 jobs to Mecklenburg County. The jobs will pay average salaries of $122,037 a year. Per The Raleigh News & Observer , Toshiba America...

Congratulations to the wolverines from the University of Michigan Nuclear Engineering Department for outworking the MIT beavers ; being named top graduate school program by U.S. News and World Report . Your 2009 top-10 Best Nuclear Engineering Schools : 1. University of Michigan - Ann Arbor 2. Massachusetts...

If a cap and a price are imposed on carbon dioxide emissions, [nuclear] plants could be among the biggest economic winners in the vast economic shifts that would be created by greenhouse gas regulations. That’s from the New York Times , borrowing a story from Climate Wire, which while noting the nuclear...

Jon Wellinghoff, Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission , made some interesting comments yesterday at a U.S. Energy Association forum . According to the NY Times , Wellinghoff believes that "no new nuclear or coal plants may ever be needed in the United States" and that "renewables...

Wednesday morning, NEI's president and CEO Marv Fertel sat down for a Newsmaker interview with Amanda DeBard, a reporter from The Washington Times . Her article, Nuclear chief says Obama shuns science , is now available online here . (Shameless self-promotion alert: followers of NEI's Twitter...

Below we have a quote from the BBC about nuclear energy and electric/hybrid cars. It almost makes the point we wanted, but not quite, and it’s a little silly about where wind and solar fit into the equation. We poked around to see if someone has addressed this topic and stayed a little more on-point...

We have to just let Earth Day go. This is a day for our wind and solar friends, who of course have a lock on clean energy: On this coming 39th anniversary of Earth Day on Wednesday, Michigan is facing one of the greatest energy challenges in its history, with serious implications for the state's...

Here's some brilliant logic from John Tierney at the NY Times on why using more energy and becoming more wealthy will "save the planet" : 1. There will be no green revolution in energy or anything else. No leader or law or treaty will radically change the energy sources for people and industries...

Among other things (no doubt), House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) sat down with South Carolina Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Otis Rawl and discussed energy and economic issues. This exchange on CEO Corner jumped out, Rawl : Do you think nuclear, in, from a national level, is a viable alternative...

We’ve mentioned here, as the cap-and-trade legislation heats up, that conservatives have had a problems with it despite it being the more conservative carbon emissions reduction method. The more liberal one is a carbon tax, which could conceivably have some kind of progressivity, or become more onerous...

EWeek has up a roundup of electric, hybrid or incredibly fuel efficient cars that will be shown at the 2009 New York Auto Show and, presumably, at many auto shows around the country over the next year. You know what the first one will be : The third-generation Prius hybrid vehicle has more "oomph"...

From Westinghouse : Westinghouse Electric Company, its consortium partner The Shaw Group Inc. , China's State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation (SNPTC) and Sanmen Nuclear Power Company of China National Nuclear Corporation today announced the successful completion, on schedule, of the first pour...

So we understand that issues around cap-and-trade are complex and those trying to wrap their minds around it – we mean legislators – may not have completely coherent positions yet. But climate change, which cap-and-trade means to mitigate, has only two major poles: either humankind is contributing to...

We wonder if industries will have to affix Surgeon General labels on their plants : Having received White House backing, the Environmental Protection Agency declared Friday that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are a significant threat to human health and thus will be listed as pollutants under...

The British Department of Energy and Climate Change (and boy, does that sound up-to-date) has released its list of 11 sites for new nuclear plant deployment. You can guess why they’re doing this : U.K. utilities are vying to build reactors, backed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown as a way to combat climate...

That's according to IAEA's Hans-Holger Rogner : More than 50 nations are in talks with the UN atomic watchdog to build nuclear power plants, a twofold increase over the last four years, a top agency official said in an interview released on Thursday. "The IAEA is talking with 50-60 countries...

We have to admit that we know less than we might about Russian nuclear energy culture. We do know that it is a major player in the international marketplace and is making deals with any country that has even glanced in the direction of nuclear energy. We know the country has 31 units working currently...

Here’s a few tidbits of nuclear news to wonder about and inspire awe: The IAEA says that nuclear energy is an unstoppable runaway freight train kind of thing. Well, not precisely : Deputy Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Yury Sokolov said on Tuesday that the economic...

Bob Geldof (you know, Live Aid organizer , frontman for The Boomtown Rats , and 2006 nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize ) raised a few eyebrows last year when luxury car maker Lexus asked him to participate in a forum about its hybrid vehicles. Per The Guardian , Geldof, as well as talking about hybrid...

As we know, nuclear energy creates electricity by generating heat that boils water that turns turbines – if you want to be really simple about it. But suppose you could get electricity from nuclear energy directly : Now, University of Missouri researchers are developing an energy conversion system that...

I think they mean “We certainly have a right to use atomic energy.'” Wasn’t Sally Field stuck in Iran ? Surely she could have helped on the verbiage. This was taken at Iran’s first National Nuclear Day in 2006. Yesterday was the fourth. Here’s how it went : Addressing the audience, the president...

We generally respect the work done at newspapers – pits of liberal iniquity that they are – because the effort at that first draft of history is important and nothing else has come along to fill that role. Plus, we scurry to add, bias in writing comes out more through detail selection than actual ideological...