NEI Nuclear Notes

The French have lately been plagued by drone aircraft flying over nuclear energy facilities – and a plague it is, too, for a country that has suffered a traumatic terrorist attack recently. We’ll let the French deal with the issue with their usual je ne sais quoi , as we’re sure they will. But the various stories did make me wonder about the American response – not to the French situation, but to the prospect of drones buzzing American facilities. As far as I know, this hasn’t happened – and I think we would know – but it’s fair to say that it would make people very nervous, just as it has done in France. Still, what one can do is maintain a little perspective. I was struck in this regard by comments by British engineer John Large because of its maximalist idiocy: According to Large, of consulting engineers Large & Associates, based in London, who was commissioned by Greenpeace France to evaluate and report on the spate of flyovers, the “unacceptable” risk posed by a te...

Dr. Leslie Dewan Later this morning, the House Science Committee will hold a hearing on the "Future of Nuclear Energy" . Click here to watch the hearing live on UStream at 10:00 a.m. Featured on the witness list is a name that our readers will be familiar with - Dr .Leslie Dewan of Transatomic Power . She was kind enough to pass along a copy of her testimony so we could preview it for you right now. We've gotten to know Dr. Dewan very well over the past year thanks to her role in NEI's Future of Energy campaign . Transatomic is developing a new reactor that's designed to burn used nuclear fuel . It's an incredibly promising new technology, but one that Dr. Dewan is concerned won't come to market first in the U.S. because of regulatory hurdles. It was just those sort of challenges that led the Bill Gates nuclear startup Terrapower to decide to build their first prototype in China : The commercial nuclear regulatory structure in the United State...