Concerns and Then There Are Concerns

And the Premier of New Brunswick, Canada doesn't have any:

The premier of New Brunswick says he has no concerns about resuming nuclear power generation in his province, despite the nuclear crisis in Japan.

And why might this be?

Premier David Alward said Monday he knows the incident in Japan has caused some concern over his province's nuclear facility.

"I'm concerned about confidence that could be undermined because of that," he said.

"What I can assure the people of New Brunswick is the work that's being done at Lepreau is with full regulatory process, full transparency and in a very safe way."

Lepreau has been offline for awhile for refurbishment (so it can stay in operation another 30 years), and work continues to return it to service in 2012. Read the rest of the story - they're well aware of concerns, but apparently, the plant is not vulnerable to the problems experienced in Japan.

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And Simone di Silvestro, race car driver, seems well able to fields concerns as well as questions:

“I got questioned about Japan over the weekend but mostly about my new car, new chief engineer and my new sponsor, Entergy. I couldn’t be more proud to represent Entergy and this industry since I am a personal advocate for clean and safe nuclear power,” noted De Silvestro after her successful sponsor debut on Sunday. “I have been inside a nuclear power plant and seen first-hand the security and precision of operations at Entergy’s Grand Gulf Nuclear Station. I’ve been very happy to talk about that,” she concluded.

Entergy is sponsoring the Newman Wachs-sponsored car (NEI had it in some previous years), which just started its season at the St. Petersburg Grand Prix in Florida. Di Simone finished fourth. I liked this detail, though:

Driver Takuma Sato, sponsored by Panasonic, replaced his sponsor logo with a map and a message for Japan, his home country. He placed fifth.

Good for Sato (that's him glaring at you above). Vroom!

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A Design Team Pictures the Future of Nuclear Energy

For more than 100 years, the shape and location of human settlements has been defined in large part by energy and water. Cities grew up near natural resources like hydropower, and near water for agricultural, industrial and household use.

So what would the world look like with a new generation of small nuclear reactors that could provide abundant, clean energy for electricity, water pumping and desalination and industrial processes?

Hard to say with precision, but Third Way, the non-partisan think tank, asked the design team at the Washington, D.C. office of Gensler & Associates, an architecture and interior design firm that specializes in sustainable projects like a complex that houses the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. The talented designers saw a blooming desert and a cozy arctic village, an old urban mill re-purposed as an energy producer, a data center that integrates solar panels on its sprawling flat roofs, a naval base and a humming transit hub.

In the converted mill, high temperat…

New Home for Our Blog: Join Us on NEI.org

On February 27, NEI launched the new NEI.org. We overhauled the public site, framing all of our content around the National Nuclear Energy Strategy.

So, what's changed?

Our top priority was to put you, the user, first. Now you can quickly get the information you need. You'll enjoy visiting the site with its intuitive navigation, social media integration and compelling and shareable visuals. We've added a feature called Nuclear Now, which showcases the latest industry news and resources like fact sheets and reports. It's one of the first sections you'll see on our home page and it can be accessed anywhere throughout the site by clicking on the atom symbol in the top right corner of the page.
Most importantly for you, our loyal NEI Nuclear Notes readers, is that we've migrated the blog to the new site. Moving forward, all blog posts will be published in the News section, along with our press releases, Nuclear Energy Overview stories and more. Just look for the &qu…

Sneak Peek

There's an invisible force powering and propelling our way of life.
It's all around us. You can't feel it. Smell it. Or taste it.
But it's there all the same. And if you look close enough, you can see all the amazing and wondrous things it does.
It not only powers our cities and towns.
And all the high-tech things we love.
It gives us the power to invent.
To explore.
To discover.
To create advanced technologies.
This invisible force creates jobs out of thin air.
It adds billions to our economy.
It's on even when we're not.
And stays on no matter what Mother Nature throws at it.
This invisible force takes us to the outer reaches of outer space.
And to the very depths of our oceans.
It brings us together. And it makes us better.
And most importantly, it has the power to do all this in our lifetime while barely leaving a trace.
Some people might say it's kind of unbelievable.
They wonder, what is this new power that does all these extraordinary things?

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