Blogs

Will Davis took the lead and tapped his well of colleagues who are nuclear energy professionals to produce a fact filled post for ANS Nuclear Cafe titled ...read more

This video was produced by the World Nuclear Association (WNA). It shows that the predicted health consequences of nuclear accidents are often orders of magnitude greater than the actual, measured health consequences of the accidents that have occurred. Instead of the “worst case scenarios”...

In the past few days, both ad-supported commercial media and the social media universe have been filled with stories about how scientists on the US West coast were able to find traces of radioactive cesium and could conclusively link that cesium to the material released from the Fukushima nuclear power...

Every week, people who write articles about nuclear energy gather their favorites together in a single post called the Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers. We’ve been doing this regularly for more than two years; it is my pleasure to host the 112th issue of the Carnival. Here are our favorite posts...

Arnie Gundersen, the sole engineer of Fairewinds Associates, continues to tell lies about the radiation released from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants. He also continues to lie about the potential effects and seeks to spread fear and uncertainty where neither one are justified. He is a dangerous...

Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, has a well known belief that human society can be powered entirely by wind, water, and sunlight. He was a coauthor with Mark A. Delucchi for a November 2009 Scientific American cover article titled A Path to...

Last week, Professor Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, stepped way outside of his area of expertise by publishing a paper titled Worldwide health effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident that claimed to quantify the number of cancers...

On Monday, August 6, 2012, Chevron’s refinery in Richmond, California erupted in flames, spewing thick black smoke that included a mixture of hydrocarbons, heavy metals, and combustion products high into the atmosphere. A shelter in place order was issued and several hundred people experienced...

A recurring theme on Atomic Insights is that nuclear energy is a disruptive technology that has the potential to reshuffle the wealth and power underpinning what my generation called “The Establishment”, which is essentially the same as what some now call the 1%. Though it may be a bit of...

In December 2009, the editor of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences decided to provide printing services for a small group of people who had a history of pursuing an agenda against the use of nuclear energy. They had translated a book titled Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People...

One of the frequently repeated comments about the way that the ad supported media choses its coverage is that the media tends to focus on “if it bleeds it leads” and on telling dramatic stories. If that was true, why are stories about deadly, dramatic fossil fuel accidents told once and then...

Fukushima ‘crisis’ changed my mind on nuclear power By MICHAEL RADCLIFFE Like millions of other people in Japan, I watched the events of March 2011 unfurl with shock and trepidation. The massive earthquake, the terrible tsunami and then what seemed to be a dreadful nuclear disaster. Yet now...

On September 9, 2010, a little more than two years ago, a San Bruno, California neighborhood was rocked by a huge explosion caused by a rupture in a 30 inch natural gas pipeline. That explosion woke up the natural gas pipeline industry and its regulators and made the public slightly more aware of the...

Tepco has recently released measurements that provide convincing evidence that virtually all of the corium in Fukushima Daiichi unit #1 remains safely stored inside an intact reactor pressure vessel. Despite all claims to the contrary, no substantial quantities of that material have melted through the...

The temperature in the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent fuel pool never exceeded 90 degrees C and the level in the pool never fell below the top of the used fuel that was stored there. The Chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the people who supported his testimony to Congress on the afternoon...

My guess is that this video footage of a dramatic explosion at a Consolidated Edison natural gas fired power station during Superstorm Sandy is destined to be far less famous than the footage of the brief hydrogen explosions at Fukushima Daiichi following the Sendai earthquake and tsunami. Thermal power...

It is way past time to begin the long process of helping people understand how to rationally weigh the risks versus benefits of available power or fuel systems. For far too many years, promoters of immensely profitable products like natural gas have been loudly and frequently telling society about its...

I’ve always been a huge National Geographic fan. I discovered this while looking for something else, and decided it was worth saving and sharing. The post National Geographic tsunami video appeared first on Atomic Insights . ...read more

On December 21, 2012, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) blog posted a letter from Chairman Macfarlane titled A Visit to Japan: Reflections from the Chairman. She has recently returned from a trip to Japan and a visit to the evacuated areas near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. Here...

In the 21 months since three the fuel cores in three nuclear reactors melted at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station, there has been a substantial investment made in learning lessons from the event. Nuclear trained people are members of a learning community, we generally try to make sure that...

An article posted on Wired.co.uk titled Japan’s new government to ‘consider’ more nuclear power indicates that the author is almost surprised to hear that the recently elected Japanese government is considering the construction of new nuclear power plants. While it may be understandable...

Carefully conducted analysis conducted over a multiyear study suggests that expanding evacuation zones around nuclear power plants may increase the risk of latent cancer fatalities (LCF) in the unlikely event of an accident that releases radioactive material. This slightly counterintuitive conclusion...

Before March 11, 2011, “Fukushima” was the name of a relatively unknown prefecture in Japan. Now it is a shorthand reference to an event in which three large nuclear power plants melted and released a small quantity of long lived radioactive material that has not harmed any human being. Here...

Before March 11, 2011, “Fukushima” was the name of a relatively unknown prefecture in Japan. Immediately after a very powerful earthquake and tsunami hit the north east coast of Japan, killing at least 16,000 people and destroying the man made infrastructure over more than 100 miles of the...

Total mass of main isotopes of concern from Fukushima: I-131 – 43 grams Cs-137 – 4 kilograms The Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology Volume 50, Issue 3, 2013 contains a paper titled Source term estimation of atmospheric release due to the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident...