NEI Nuclear Notes

Earlier today, the CNN network crawler put out incorrect information about Iran’s uranium enrichment. The crawler stated that 3.67% is "roughly halfway to weapons grade." That is off by several magnitudes. The cited figure is actually well within the range of reactor grade, magnitudes away from weapons grade. Weapons grade uranium is enriched to at least 85%-90% U235, the fissile element. Quoting the Smithsonian, "U-235, however, is fissile; it can start a nuclear reaction and sustain it. The 0.7% in naturally occurring uranium is not enough to make a bomb or even a nuclear reactor for a power plant. A power plant requires uranium with 3-4% U-235 (this is known as low-enriched or reactor-grade uranium). Most importantly, a nuclear bomb needs uranium with a whopping 90% U-235 (highly enriched uranium)." Here are our tweets reacting to this major error: COMING UP: Our response to @CNN ’s botched reporting on uranium enrichment. — Nuclear Energy Inst. (@NEI)...

Last Wednesday, word leaked out through media channels that President Obama would include a call for further nuclear arms reduction in a speech has was scheduled to deliver in Berlin, Germany at the famous Brandenberg Gate . When Fox News got hold of the story, they figured the best image to twin with a picture of the President would be a shot of a cooling tower at an unnamed nuclear power plant. Now you see the cooling tower ... Needless to say, while I understand why editors and reporters often conflate nuclear weapons and commercial nuclear energy, it doesn't make it any less annoying when it happens. As we've pointed out in the past, generating nuclear electricity actually contributes to a more peaceful world. The best example of why that's true has to be the Megatons to Megawatts program, an effort to downblend former Soviet nuclear warheads into reactor fuel. Right now, about half of the electricity generated by our nation’s nuclear energy facilities is from fu...