Two More Bloggers for Nuclear Energy

Although I am not pursuing nuclear physics as a formal field of research, I have always been an avid hobbyist of nuclear technology as well as other topics of scientific study. After following the blogs of several prominent nuclear advocates such as Kirk Sorensen and Rod Adams, I have decided to create a blog of my own in order to keep track of the upcoming developments in nuclear energy...

Welcome! I guess I should humbly acknowledge that I was beaten to the punch once again by Rod Adams and Dan Yurman. You guys are getting too good!

Also, another blogger to meet is Chuck Muth at Yucca Facts. He's deep into the debate surrounding Yucca Mountain and definitely writes some hard-hitting posts.

The purpose of this website is to provide factual and scientific information on the proposed nuclear waste repository being built at Yucca Mountain in southern Nevada.
The authors of the site are not advocates for the project; however, we believe that much of the information the public has received in the past is disingenuous and often deals with hypothetical scenarios - such as a rail car being blown up in downtown Reno with a shoulder-launched rocket by an illegal alien from the roof of the Silver Legacy shouting “Allāhu Akbar!”
...
We hope that by better understanding the advantages and disadvantages the state might receive by hosting the repository, as well as safety assurances the state must continue to insist upon, combined with the progress being made in the area of reprocessing, that the state’s elected officials will consider changing to a neutral position on Yucca Mountain and allow an unbiased assessment of the project.

Welcome to the both of you!

Comments

Jim Muckerheide said…

See also:

Angela Saini - "Nothing Shocks Me: I'm a Scientist"

How the greens went nuclear.

November 4, 2008 at 12:50 PM

How Nanomaterials Can Make Nuclear Reactors Safer and More Efficient

The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior communications advisor at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald.

From the batteries in our cell phones to the clothes on our backs, "nanomaterials" that are designed molecule by molecule are working their way into our economy and our lives. Now there’s some promising work on new materials for nuclear reactors.

Reactors are a tough environment. The sub atomic particles that sustain the chain reaction, neutrons, are great for splitting additional uranium atoms, but not all of them hit a uranium atom; some of them end up in various metal components of the reactor. The metal is usually a crystalline structure, meaning it is as orderly as a ladder or a sheet of graph paper, but the neutrons rearrange the atoms, leaving some infinitesimal voids in the structure and some areas of extra density. The components literally grow, getting longer and thicker. The phenomenon is well understood and designers compensate for it with a …

Why America Needs the MOX Facility

If Isaiah had been a nuclear engineer, he’d have loved this project. And the Trump Administration should too, despite the proposal to eliminate it in the FY 2018 budget.

The project is a massive factory near Aiken, S.C., that will take plutonium from the government’s arsenal and turn it into fuel for civilian power reactors. The plutonium, made by the United States during the Cold War in a competition with the Soviet Union, is now surplus, and the United States and the Russian Federation jointly agreed to reduce their stocks, to reduce the chance of its use in weapons. Over two thousand construction workers, technicians and engineers are at work to enable the transformation.

Carrying Isaiah’s “swords into plowshares” vision into the nuclear field did not originate with plutonium. In 1993, the United States and Russia began a 20-year program to take weapons-grade uranium out of the Russian inventory, dilute it to levels appropriate for civilian power plants, and then use it to produce…

Missing the Point about Pennsylvania’s Nuclear Plants

A group that includes oil and gas companies in Pennsylvania released a study on Monday that argues that twenty years ago, planners underestimated the value of nuclear plants in the electricity market. According to the group, that means the state should now let the plants close.

Huh?

The question confronting the state now isn’t what the companies that owned the reactors at the time of de-regulation got or didn’t get. It’s not a question of whether they were profitable in the '80s, '90s and '00s. It’s about now. Business works by looking at the present and making projections about the future.

Is losing the nuclear plants what’s best for the state going forward?

Pennsylvania needs clean air. It needs jobs. And it needs protection against over-reliance on a single fuel source.

What the reactors need is recognition of all the value they provide. The electricity market is depressed, and if electricity is treated as a simple commodity, with no regard for its benefit to clean air o…

NEI Nuclear Notes

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