Skip to main content

Another Blogger Considers Nuclear Energy

By Eric McErlain
The blogger behind AustinPermie is in the midst of making up her mind about nuclear energy. Here's something she wrote recently about Patrick Moore that I think every supporter of nuclear energy ought to keep in mind:
As a poli sci person, I have to say that all the negative sites I've seen on Moore's position, makes it seem like a big campaign angry at the 'defection' of one of its champions. Laden with editorial venom is unfortunately not conducive for a real debate.
Interesting. Stop by and be sure to offer your thoughts, but, as always, please be polite. For Part I of her post, click here.
Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
Dear Eric,
Australia has had a major policy reversal on uranium mining and nuclear this weekend. Would you please consider an article about their "Nuclear Phase-In"?

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/australia-end-ban-nuclear-power/story.aspx?guid=%7BA42310F3%2D3EB7%2D4667%2D9D57%2D9902CD543C66%7D

Thanks,
Bill Vidalin
April 30, 2007 at 3:03 PM
Anonymous said…
Hi Bill -

There's a summary of what happened in Australia here.

Also, Nuclear Australia has been doing extensive coverage of the issues Down Under.

It's been a terrific weekend!!

Best Wishes!
April 30, 2007 at 5:22 PM
Ingrid said…
Thanks for the referral guys. I come from a line of family where people are expected to agree to disagree. I grew up with heated political discussions during birthday visits, until someone would say..time out (the dutch equivalent of it) and say, you, would you like another beer, another sherry for you? And then people would move onto something else. I did not realize the wealth of pro-nuclear blogs. Of course, other people would consider this a worthy venue to look into. And that comes with the ability to look for 'truth', no matter if it might do away with all your preconceived notions. I need to do a whole lot more reading before I can honestly take a stand one way or another..
thanks again and now I'll have to make sure to catch up on reading some of 'ya'll's (yes, the ya'll here comes in plural lol) posts!
Ingrid
April 30, 2007 at 7:53 PM
Randal Leavitt said…
Canada also seems to be changing:

http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20070507_105095_105095

By the way, it is really difficult to feed leads such as the above article to NEI Nuclear Notes. How are we supposed to do it?
May 1, 2007 at 12:15 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

By
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 on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...
23 comments
Read more

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

By
Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...
7 comments
Read more

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

By
You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...
6 comments
Read more