Sign up | Login with →

Nuclear Power

Will India Stay the Course on its New Nuclear Build?

May 19, 2012 by Dan Yurman
with 190 views
1

Idaho Samizdat ~ http://djysrv.blogspot.com

The nation continues to chart an independent course  Conceptual drawing of Russian 1000 MW VVERAccording to research compiled by the World Nuclear Association, India expects to have 20 GWe nuclear capacity on line by 2020 and 63 GWe by 2032. It aims to supply 25 percent of electricity from nuclear power by 2050. That’s an... [read more]

Svinicki nomination at the Senate

May 16, 2012 by Dan Yurman
with 183 views
0

The White House finds itself in the role of supporting a Republican for reappointment to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory CommissionThe pretzel politics of life in Washington took on new twists this month. The White House nominated sitting NRC Commissioner Kristine Svinicki for another term over the objections of Senate Majority Leader Harry... [read more]

Supercritical CO2 turbine being developed for SMRs

May 11, 2012 by Dan Yurman
with 687 views
2

A former scientist at Sandia National Lab is bringing the technology to market Temperature / Pressure ranges for supercritical CO2 Image: S. WrightCarbon Dioxide is good for a lot of things like adding fizz to your soft drinking in its gaseous form and keeping food cold in its solid form as “dry ice.”What many people do not know is... [read more]

Replacing nuclear with wind power: Could it be done?

May 10, 2012 by Joseph Koblich
with 902 views
16

SILIAN/Shutterstock

Many people would like it to be theoretically possible to replace nuclear power with wind power, since the wind is a free resource. The way that I would like to approach the topic is to not discuss the source of power, but to discuss this question from the perspective of “intermittency.” Stating the question another way: Can an... [read more]

Japan Without Nuclear Power: What Does it Mean for Them, and For Us?

May 9, 2012 by Christina Nunez
with 394 views
0

Maxx-Studio/Shutterstock

One of our fathers had a sign in his garage: “If you don’t have time now to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”That line comes to mind with the latest energy news from Japan, which is embarking on a massive switch in its energy policy, on the fly.Once the proud operator of 52 commercial nuclear reactors, as of Saturday... [read more]

Overheated rods & rhetoric

May 8, 2012 by Steve Skutnik
with 1,005 views
23

IEEE spectrum

A little knowledge is sometimes a dangerous thing - particularly when fundamentally incomplete technical knowledge is used to make sweeping engineering recommendations. The latest example of this is the concern over the spent fuel storage pools at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4, which has been getting attention from several corners. First,... [read more]

Nuclear fission qualifies as “ultra low carbon” power; natural gas does not

May 7, 2012 by Rod Adams
with 246 views
0

somchai rakin/Shutterstock

 In the power system marketing wars, both nuclear fission and natural gas are currently labeled as “low carbon” sources of electricity. Even though nuclear fission reactors can be clean enough to run inside sealed submarines, the forces who oppose nuclear energy insist that there is enough CO2 produced in the fuel cycle and in the... [read more]

Carbon offsetting of uranium mines?

May 7, 2012 by Barry Brook
with 352 views
1

 ———————South Australia is host to the single largest known deposit of uranium in the world, at Roxby Downs. The recent plans to massively expand production at its Olympic Dam mine will take uranium production from 4,000 tonnes of uranium oxide (tUO2) in 2010-2011 to 19,000 tUO2 by the early 2020s. This enlarged open-cut... [read more]

New twists for UK nuclear new build

May 3, 2012 by Dan Yurman
with 730 views
0

China and Russia seek opportunities after German utilities withdraw from the marketChina's State Nuclear Power Corp., a government owned enterprise, is in talks to fund the Horizon nuclear power project originally organized by German utilities RWE and EON. The Chinese firm is said to be in talks with Toshiba, which owns Westinghouse,... [read more]

Competition heats up for DOE SMR funding

May 1, 2012 by Dan Yurman
with 822 views
0

Westinghouse gets support from Missouri for 225 MW reactorThe race to win $452 million in cost shared funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for licensing and technical support to bring a small modular reactor (SMR) to market by 2022 got a new entry April 19. Westinghouse has partnered with Ameren to submit a proposal based on... [read more]

Jaczko denies everything

April 30, 2012 by Dan Yurman
with 435 views
0

NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko has been in hot water recently over accusations of harassment, erratic behavior, and hair on fire temper tantrums. [read more]

Backfilling Nuclear Shutdowns With Efficiency And Renewables In Japan, Germany And California?

April 30, 2012 by Joseph Romm
with 220 views
0

Electric utilities and policymakers in Japan and Germany have been scrambling for months to find ways to compensate for nuclear power plants shut down in the aftermath of Fukushima.In both instances, fossil fuels are part of the stopgap solution to offset the declines in nuclear generation in the short term, but longer-term energy... [read more]

Argh! Debunking some nuclear nonsense

April 30, 2012 by Dan Yurman
with 428 views
0

Once again it is time to spit on your hands, rub them together, and raise the black flag of contention to respond to deliberate attempts at creating fear, uncertainty, and doubt Critics of nuclear energy can and do raise useful issues that need attention. The lessons learned for the global industry coming out of Fukushima include the... [read more]

The Latest Publication from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development: 'The Energy Mix'

April 28, 2012 by David Hone
with 574 views
0

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) held its annual company delegate conference in Switzerland this week. For the WBCSD Energy and Climate team the event marked the launch of the latest WBCSD publication “The Energy Mix”. This is a document that started life back in the middle of last year, originally as a response to the reaction from a number of governments to the events in Fukushima. The initial aim was to inform policy makers on the implication of sudden changes in energy policy, such as the decision by the German government to rapidly phase out the use of nuclear power. But as the work got going, the document took on a number of additional dimensions. [read more]

ExxonMobil is betting that natural gas will NOT remain cheap

April 19, 2012 by Rod Adams
with 840 views
0

  During my recent low production periods for new posts on Atomic Insights, I received some well intentioned advice from a frequent commenter – he told me that it would be less frustrating for me to maintain Atomic Insights if I focused more on innovations in nuclear energy than on the efforts of competitive energy suppliers to... [read more]