July, 2009

We generally think protests and protesting are good things. They are ways of getting a message out and trying to bring attention to issues. We don’t even mind when a nuclear power plant is protested – after all, it’s a great opportunity to educate the protesters and even try a counter-protest. Seems...

Below is the last video of four videos NEI has released over the past month highlighting top industry practices. Hope everyone has found these videos as informative and intriguing as I have. This video, “Robotic Inspectors,” highlights new inspection devices developed at the Vermont Yankee nuclear energy...

Uvdiv, the author, writes some quality stuff . Never thought I'd see someone take a unit of measure and turn it into a blog but he's done it and he's done it well. Make sure to stop by! ...read more

Senate's Clean Energy Deployment Plan: A Nuclear Slush Fund in the Making? That’s the title of an article on Solve Climate.com. It makes the somewhat juvenile mistake of imagining that something that works against their narrow band of interests is malignant, in this case further metastasized by evil...

…but all fouled up at USEC, the company that enriches a lot of the uranium in the United States. The Department of Energy has turned down USEC’s loan guarantee application, making it difficult-to-impossible, says USEC, for it to acquire funding to finish its American Centrifuge project. This has led...

For those who may not remember, Jarret used to write with us last year until he began at Areva. Now he's traveling it up and spreading Areva's good words ! ...read more

A couple of weeks ago the Foundation for Nuclear Studies hosted a debate on the Hill between NEI’s Leslie Kass and Colorado’s Craig Severance (author of a recent controversial study on new nuclear plant economics ). Mr. Severance summed up the event nicely in a post he published last week : It was a...

Today was picture perfect for Newman Wachs Racing at the Harrah’s Autobahn Grand Prix Presented by Mazda. Atlantic Championship drivers John Edwards and Jonathan Summerton finished 1-2 for the first of two races this weekend at the Autobahn Country Club, which is just a short distance from the team’s...

Some Monday nuclear tastiness: Well, we don’t know : The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is willing to support Kenya in exploiting nuclear power as a source of energy. IAEA Director General, Dr. Mohammed El Baradei, said Friday that in order for Kenya to achieve rapid industrialization there...

Here’s Greenpeace’s Executive Director John Sauven on the British energy plant: "If this plan becomes a reality, it will create hundreds of thousands of green jobs and make Britain a safer and more prosperous country. This will be good for the British economy and, in the long-run, save householders...

Great Britain released last week its analogue of the Obama administration’s energy bill, called the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan. It’s goal is to cut carbon emissions 34% by 2020, using 1990 levels as a baseline. That’s more ambitious than the American plan, but starts from a different place economically...

Over the last two weeks NEI has released two videos out of four highlighting the top industry practice awards that were given out at our annual nuclear conference back in May. Here's our third video installment of the series : “The Secret Is Plastic,” highlights new applications of plastic piping...

Bloomberg reports on the growing realization in Australia that its ambitious carbon emission reduction goals may be hard to achieve without nuclear energy. Well, those with a horse in the race definitely think so : “As more and more Australians get involved in the whole climate change debate, as they...

And we really mean a little more, as a new set of flowcharts from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory suggest that folks used more renewable energy and a little more nuclear energy in 2008 than 2007. Science Daily reports : Nuclear energy also saw a slight increase from 8.41 quads [quadrillion...

Or maybe pusillanimous. --- Gizmodo takes a quick look at 1979: the Year We Wussed Out of Nuclear: The timing of the movie coming out tying in with Three Mile Island may have been lucky for the producers, who suddenly had a huge blockbuster hit on their hands, but it was less lucky for boosters of safe...

The author of one of my favorite nuclear blogs, Rod Adams , found a new and compelling document explaining the beneficial health effects of low doses of radiation . The document has generated quite the number of comments at his site and I could see why. Here are some good quotes and background info from...

The Sierra Club, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, the Tennessee Environmental Council, the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League and We the People Inc. on Wednesday asked the NRC for permission to intervene against TVA's bid for an operating license at the Rhea County site [a.k.a. the Watts...

As we’re sure you know from Schoolhouse Rock, when a bill goes through committee, members can propose amendments to enhance this aspect or that of the given legislation. In the House, amendments are sent to the Rules Committee and accepted or rejected there, not in committee or on the floor. The Senate...

Last week, NEI released the first of four videos highlighting the top industry practice awards that were given out at our annual nuclear conference back in May. This week we have a new video to show : The second video, “Global Ties Boost Nuclear Plant Performance,” recognizes Exelon Nuclear employees...

To give a sense of the impact of Sen. Lamar Alexander’s (R-Tenn.)insistence on nuclear energy, as noted below, consider the response of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in our Twitter feed to your right. Here’s the whole quote – it ran longer than 140 characters: You are suggesting a command and control...

"The CBI's report is a very good piece of work," said Steve Holliday, the National Grid chief executive. "There is no difference in the cost of implementing its model, but its carbon reduction is greater and there's a better energy mix." That comes from the Telegraph , reporting...

Yesterday, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) announced at the National Press Club a document he entitled Blueprint for 100 New Nuclear Power Plants in 20 Years. It’s as full an explication of Alexander’s ideas as you could want to see. Here’s the gist of it : Republican United States Senators offer a different...

Politico is running a package of energy related articles in their current print edition and also on its Web site. While the articles as a group are a bit lumpy – there are chats with Barbra Streisand and Carole King, two singers whose, um, records we respect – there are also a fair number of policymakers...

Answer: Kirk Sorensen. Kirk just got back from England where he gave a successful and compelling presentation on liquid fluoride thorium reactors at the Manchester Town Hall . I should have known right from the moment I walked in the building that this was going to go well. Right inside the main door...

A British wind utility, Ecotricity , and French nuclear company EDF are fighting for the rights to a “green” union jack to use at the 2012 London Olympics – EDF is the “sustainability partner” for the Olympics, so that’s pretty green all the way around. (EDF is the majority stakeholder in British Energy...