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German Nuclear Power Politics: A Political Football
"We believe that we can show those countries who decide to abandon nuclear power — or not to start using it — how it is possible to achieve growth, creating jobs and economic prosperity while shifting the energy supply toward renewable energies."...
You Suddenly Know What The Picture Is....
The vice chair of the Committee on America’s Climate Choices, William Chameides, spoke recently about the credibility of climate science:“Understanding climate change is really understanding the difference between a house of cards and a jigsaw...
Yo! I'm A Climate Scientist! (Hungry Beast Music Video)
Robyn Williams is the distinguished host of one of the best radio shows that aims to popularize science that exists in the world. Based in Australia, he’s been interviewing climate scientists for more than 30 years. He started and...
How They Came Up With That Fukushima Level 7 Rating
It surprises many that Fukushima has been reclassified as a Level 7 Accident under the guidelines of the International Nuclear and Radiological Event (INES) Scale. I wondered what was going on. It turned out...
Dysfunctional Anti Nuke Waste Strategy Increases Nuclear Risk
Back in the 1970s when he led the anti nuclear movement in the US, Ralph Nader helped conceive the strategy to "constipate" the nuclear industry. The plan was to convince the public that nuclear waste was impossible to dispose of safely, and...
The Fukushima-ing Nuke Industry: Bring it to the Geeks
After Fukushima, it seems obvious that the nuclear industry needs to get a better handle on what can happen in these "unlikely" scenarios. The tactic of professing to have confidence that something is so unlikely you might as well say it can't...
NRC Description of a "Loss of Pool Coolant" Event
I re-read the “Spent Fuel Pool” chapter in the National Research Council 2006 study “Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report” published by the National Academies Press. It is amazing how different it was to read...
Meltdown in Japan: How bad can it get?
An assessment of the consequences of a core meltdown was published in Science, September 20 2002, entitled "Nuclear Power Plants and Their Fuel as Terrorist Targets" which is available online http://www.atomicinsights.com/pdf_files/...
US Energy R&D: can it beat $1 Saudi oil?
I post here a number of charts which helped me put Energy R&D in the US into perspective, as well as some discussion. I conclude by asking a question: “Are the people who say a “moon shot” of energy R&D will produce “...
Big Gas fumbles GAO report on leaking methane....
The Government Accountability Office has weighed in with its own report on methane leaks. Big Gas had a field day minimizing the importance of the report. It must have seemed so easy. In the process they inadvertently...
EPA confirms high Natural Gas leakage rates
The latest EPA study confirms that its original "seminal" study of methane leaks from natural gas use, i.e. "Methane Emissions from the Natural Gas Industry (GRI/EPA 1996) was in error. The GRI/EPA 1996 study was the holy grail. The IPCC...
Radioactivity and Shale Gas: Some Like It Hot?
The shale deposits that have the US gas industry so excited were studied after WWII by the Atomic Energy Commission and declared to be the largest uranium resource in the US. Because the gas industry is now going after gas by...
