Skip to main content

Why Nuclear Energy's Loss is Warren Buffet's Gain

By Eric McErlain
David Bradish
Over the 10 years that NEI Nuclear Notes has been in business, we've seen a lot of bloggers come and go, but today, I'd like to note the departure of one of our earliest contributors, NEI's David Bradish.

It's impossible to overestimate the impact that Dave has had on our blog and NEI's digital properties over the 11 years he's worked here. The son of a nuclear plant employee, Dave came to NEI out of Graceland University in Iowa (Dave is generally acknowledged to be the school's most famous graduate next to former Olympic decathlete Bruce Jenner - wink) to work as an economist in our Policy Division. If Dave had done nothing more than simply do his job, he would have been seen as an important contributor. Whenever you read an NEI economic benefits study or study some the industry performance statistics we publish, you're enjoying Dave's handiwork. He's been responsible for the care and feeding of a significant portion of the content on NEI.org, including many of our most popular web pages. Over the years, our media team has come to rely on Dave to help extract real information from reams of industry financial and performance data, as well as more than a few interviews with the press.

Dave and one of his dangerous charts.
But what I'm most grateful for was the work he did here on the pages of NEI Nuclear Notes, where he regularly crossed swords with some of the nuclear energy industry's most vocal critics. Of course, the difference between Dave and folks like Amory Lovins, Helen Caldicott & Michael Mariotte, was that Dave came ready to fight with a calculator in one hand and an Excel spreadsheet in the other. It wasn't long after he arrived at NEI that Dave discovered that most anti-nuclear activists weren't very good at math, something he used to his, and NEI's advantage on these pages 177 times since 2008.

As good as that run was, it ends today, as Dave is packing his bags, wife, son and daughter to head back to Iowa where his kids can be closer to their grandparents. It's the sort of decision that tells you all you need to know about Dave and what's important to him. He'll be working in Des Moines for Wells Fargo (hence the Warren Buffet reference), doing big data analytics for their mortgage division. And while we'll miss him, we can't help but be happy for a friend that's doing what's best for him and his family. Bravo Zulu, Dave. Fair winds and following seas.
Labels:

Comments

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