NEI Nuclear Notes

A Greenpeace initiative that’s actually kind of interesting is its drive to get large scale data centers – such as those run by Google, Facebook and Apple – to use more renewable energy to run them. They call it Clicking Clean . Greenpeace operates in an area where the practical -  which, after all, is what electricity is – intersects with the idealistic, if one defines idealism fairly narrowly, i.e., as what Greenpeace favors. That’s where data centers come in. There’s a cluster of them in North Carolina, which, in part, has to do with the state’s efforts to foster high-tech development. I’ve had a couple of friends migrate to the Research Triangle (Raleigh-Durham) to pursue their careers, so it’s having an impact on the east coast at least. But it likely also has something to do with plentiful electricity But here’s the problem for Greenpeace. Greenpeace says Duke’s Green Source Rider, proposed in 2013 at the urging of Google and Facebook as a way to sell green...

NEI held a friendly Facebook contest last week to see who could tell the best nuclear energy-related joke. With more than a dozen people submitting entries and many others voting on their favorite jokes, NEI revealed late Friday afternoon that the winning entry came from Mark Reed, a research and teaching assistant from MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering . His joke: What do you call a group of nuclear engineers doing sit-ups and crunches? The core development team. Congratulations to Mark Reed who has won a nuclear energy water bottle! Also, thank you to everyone else who participated in the contest. We are always happy to see the hidden talent that lies within the nuclear energy industry. To read all of the other joke entries and to stay up-to-date on the latest nuclear energy news, visit NEI’s Facebook page . Image credits: Felix the cat from SodaHead.com .

Since I came to the nuclear industry five years ago, I have heard my fair share of nuclear energy-related jokes (I used to keep a running tally to see how many I’d hear in a day!). Inspired by a joke we saw by NRC Commissioner Kristine Svinicki, posted in today’s Environment & Energy Daily , we decided we’d launch a friendly Facebook contest to see who could tell the best joke. Here are the contest’s terms: To enter and/or vote on the submissions, please visit NEI’s Facebook page . While there, don’t forget to ‘like’ us. We know there is a lot of great hidden talent out there (as proven in our haiku contest from April ), so we are eager to see what people submit this time! And, since I know you are waiting on the edge of your seat to hear Commissioner Svinicki’s joke, here’s the passage from the article that made us chuckle: "A neutron walks into a bar, and the bartender says, 'What'll you have?'" the 45-year-old Nuclear Regulatory Commission ...

Did you know that yesterday, April 17, was National Haiku Poetry Day ? Well, we sure did—and to have a little fun, we decided to launch a contest on our Facebook page to see who could write the best nuclear energy-related haiku. Not sure how the contest would go over with our fans, I was surprised to see that people came out of the woodwork to share some of the most creative haikus I have ever seen, making this the start of more fun contests to come on our page! To select a winner, we asked our Facebook friends and Twitter followers to ‘like’ their favorite haiku. This morning, we announced that the winning entry came from Southern Co.’s Leah Burch: Energy we need, for society to feed, Nuclear indeed. She won a “Nuclear. Clean Air Energy” water bottle, which I will be putting in the mail to her later this afternoon. Now, if you recall from your 9th grade English classes, haikus follow a 5-7-5 format , meaning five syllables on the first and third lines, and seven ...