April, 2010

It’s funny how nuclear energy can sometimes be sucked into larger geopolitical considerations. Case in point, this week’s proposal by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to create a nuclear power holding company with Ukraine: “We have made massive proposals, referring to generation, nuclear power engineering...

Earlier this week, the National Academy of Sciences held a public meeting to discuss the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's request for a study of cancer risk in populations living near nuclear power plants. According to the NRC's announcement , the purpose of the study is to update a similar 1990...

We were all prepared to pounce on the Kerry-Lieberman-Graham energy bill earlier this week – it should include a very interesting nuclear title, if leaks to the press are accurate – but one of its sponsors, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) bailed out at the eleventh hour due to his concern about moving the...

As covered here on the blog last week, three 8th grade students from McKinley Middle Charter School (Racine, WI) are this year's Grand Prize winners in C-SPAN's StudentCam competition for their video on nuclear energy. The young filmmakers, Madison Richards, Samantha Noll and Lauren Nixon, appeared...

Here’s something we didn’t expect to read: At the meeting, Lowden said she is committed to amending and rewording the Nuclear Waste Policy Act so that it requires Yucca Mountain be prepared not only for the long-term storage of the nuclear waste, but also for reprocessing the waste into usable fuel....

The Washington Post has an excellent, plangent photo gallery of the funeral for the 29 coal miners killed in West Virginia. The Post could really have foregone the ad, though. --- Here is a bit of President Obama’s eulogy: Even as we mourn 29 lives lost, we also remember 29 lives lived. Up at 4:30, 5...

Slashdot ran a story today called “Report Blames NRC For VT Yankee Leak,” and found that the link took us over to Beyond Nuclear. Well, that was that. While some anti-nuclear groups are worth engaging with, Beyond Nuclear is, how shall we say, not. Dishonest and amateurish in its approach, the group...

We wrote about an editorial in The Hill by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) a couple of months ago. Now, Politifact, an invaluable service provided by the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times that weighs comments by politicians for their truthfulness, has decided to see whether Alexander is passing the truth test...

Patrick Moore celebrates the actions taken lately to push out bad nuclear and bring in good nuclear: On this 40th Earth Day I hope people recognize that we are moving in a positive direction by encouraging the peaceful use of nuclear technology and working to reduce the threat of nuclear war and nuclear...

Below is from our rapid response team.  Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report...

Last week, President Obama hosted a Nuclear Security Summit here in D.C. and now that we’ve recovered from the traffic jams, it’s time to take a closer look. At the summit, government leaders from around the world agreed to “join President Obama’s call to secure all vulnerable nuclear material in four...

There are several posts up so far , but one post from UCS written by Mr. Lyman is the only one that’s a bit questionable. A comment section doesn’t exist yet on the blog but I’ve passed along an email suggesting they add it, we’ll see. Welcome to the blogosphere UCS, looking forward to the discussion...

We’ve sometimes said that even if government locks up in its efforts to combat climate change that industry will do so – it can see what is happening in other countries and knows that, while it may be on the trailing edge of government action, that will not always be the case. It has also proven to be...

If you are in a lull at work or have time this afternoon, click here around 2 PM Eastern time to watch an oversight hearing titled “Nuclear Power’s Federal Loan Guarantees: The Next Multi-Billion Dollar Bailout?” The chair of the subcommittee that is holding the hearing is Mr. Kucinich from Ohio. NEI...

Three young ladies from McKinley Middle Charter School in Racine, Wisconsin took the grand prize this year for C-SPAN’s annual documentary competition . Over 1,000 students submitted a video on either a topic about one of the US’ greatest strengths or a challenge the country is facing. The challenge...

Around the world: France has made a deal with Kuwait: An agreement "to develop the peaceful use of nuclear energy" was signed in Paris by Kuwait's Prime Minister, Sheikh Nasser Mohammed al-Ahmad al-Sabah, and French government officials. "This agreement will permit the development...

Where non-proliferation and nuclear energy meet, from China’s Xinhua news service: Nuclear energy is one of the most important energies for humans in the future. The world community can safely control the "double-edged sword" and contribute to the world's enduring peace and common prosperity...

Sometimes, it’s a good idea to take a step back from the news of the day and think more about the larger implications of a subject that interests us. For Nuclear Notes readers, that means nuclear energy. And for me, that means the chance a reactivated industry gives a lot of really smart people to work...

On Tuesday, Rod Adams posted an analysis of a letter to the editor about replacing Indian Point with a natural gas-fired power plant. Rod walks through the calculation of the amount and cost of the gas needed to fuel that alternative. The numbers are huge - by Rod's estimate the fuel costs alone...

We like Alec Baldwin, from his younger days playing both gentle fellows (as in Beetlejuice) or more frequently as a sleazy type (as in Married to the Mob and Malice). He seemed to just miss the boat, almost but not quite graduating to A-list status and the nineties were not kind to him. But he acquired...

There are certain press releases one doesn’t expect to see these days. This one from South Africa’s leading electric utility Eskom would be fairly high on the list: Eskom has begun the process of building a new coal-fired power station, the first of its kind in twenty years. The Medupi Power Station...

Yesterday, SCANA held its Spring 2010 analyst meeting which provided an update on the progress of Summer nuclear units 2 & 3. Among the wealth of new pictures (pdf) and stats, the biggest pieces of news are that the project is slightly under budget and may come in almost $1B less than planned once...

This brought us up short: In Britain, environmentalist patron saint James Lovelock now tells the BBC he suspects climate scientists have "[fudged] the data" and that if the planet is going to be saved, "it will save itself, as it always has done." This comes from an op-ed by Wall...

If the government has decided that Yucca Mountain is no longer a plausible storage facility for used nuclear fuel, then should you – and we mean you specifically - continue to pay into the Nuclear Waste Fund when there is no solution in place? The Nuclear Energy Institute and several of its member companies...

The local news channel, WQAD in Quad Cities Ill., got an exclusive look last week of a refueling outage at Exelon’s Quad Cities station (video below). If you're curious as to what else goes on at refueling outages, the folks at Clean Energy Insight who work at the facilities gave us the scoop last...