NEI Nuclear Notes

What's in the box? Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt. Whoever opens this box will be turned into brimstone and ashes. The head of Medusa. That's what's in the box, and who looks on her will be changed not into stone but into brimstone and ashes. But of course you wouldn't believe me, you'd have to see for yourself, wouldn't you? Listen to me, as if I were Cerberus barking with all his heads at the gates of hell. I will tell you where to take it, but don't - don't open the box! Horror movies are often interpreted as coded messages of dread and loathing of the unknown, whether it be death (Night of the Living Dead), disintegration (The Exorcist, which uses devil possession as a metaphor for disease) or visions of oblivion. In the 50s, nuclear energy might have been a reasonable fear engine, but it was mostly used to grow things really really big: the ants in Them and the spider in Tarantula. These aren't really horror fi...

Next week is National Radiation Protection Professionals Week. Why them? Let's let Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) tell you (warning: pdf): Members of the radiation protection profession make it their life’s work to allow government, medicine, academia, and industry to safely use radiation. By providing the necessary leadership, these professionals protect people from radiation hazards thus enabling society to reap benefits of this remarkable technology. And so it is: we of course think of radiation as a factor in the nuclear business but radiation is everywhere: Small amounts of radioactive materials can be found in our bodies, in products we use daily, in the ground, in building materials, and in outer space. They are a natural part of our everyday life. We commonly find radiation devices such as x-ray machines in a hospital or at the airport. We use radiation mainly for its beneficial purposes such as in medicine to diagnose disease, in industry to generate electr...

We don't share as many negative editorials with you as we used to because a.) there just aren't as many as there used to be and b.) the list of arguments is pretty short and tends to get repeated over and over. That's as tedious for us to keep rehashing as it is for you to read it. So this editorial from the High Country News ("for people who care about the west") did not raise hopes for some original debate: Then there is always the risk of a meltdown if we resume construction of nuclear power plants. Many Americans probably don’t remember or have never read about the meltdown of the Three Mile Island power plant in the 1970s. Its cleanup took from 1979 to 1993, and cost ratepayers, taxpayers and stockholders around $975 million. To paraphrase cowboy poet Wallace McCray, reincarnated nuclear power in this new century “ain’t changed all that much.” Well, you get the picture. But what struck us is the ID for the author: Russ Doty is a co...

Physical Insights and Atomic Insights already beat me to the punch but we'll still do the introduction. Meet Finrod over at Channelling the Strong Force . His About this blog piece is very thought-provoking, make sure to check it out: We exist in a sea of electromagnetic force, and are for the most part utterly subject to its dictates. One other force makes itself blatantly known in the course of our mundane activities, namely gravitation, but electromagnetism packs far more power in its punch. It takes a mass the magnitude of Earth to make us weigh ten Newtons to the kilogram, but with a simple rearrangement in the structure of a vanishingly, ridiculously tiny portion of Earth’s mass, we can override the gravitational force of this entire planet, and stand on two feet (by burning sugar in our cells) … or fly to the other side of it in a 747 (by burning avgas in a jet engine). ... The images of the early nuclear age have a certain amount of baggage which we need to move beyond t...

The Presidential campaign is, after 127 years, winding down and the candidates are essentially making their final pitches - generally dialing back the attacks and amping up the positive messages - city on the hill, the future is bright, that kind of thing. So it's interesting to see that Sarah Palin gave a full speech on energy issues today. This has proven to be one of the brightest lights of the McCain/Palin campaign because it responds in a focused way to an issue of concern. That light has dimmed a bit due to the drop in oil prices and a bit more due to the stock market tsunami, so it strikes us as a good topic on which to wind things down. Even if the short-term concern has drooped away a bit, it's still a concern and worth a hearing. The speech can be found on the campaign Web site here . Here's the take-away on nuclear energy: Another essential means to energy independence is a dramatic expansion in our use of nuclear energy. In a McCain administration, we ...

We occasionally take a look at Greenpeace's Nuclear Reaction blog (subtitle: "Blogging the Meltdown of the Nuclear Industry") so we can see if some interesting new meme is springing up we may want to note. A couple of stories caught our eyes: Business Wire: Areva: Revenue and Data for the First Nine Months of 2008 The group cleared revenue of 9.1 billion euros over the first nine months of 2008, up 12.9% compared with the same period in 2007. and The Deal: Northrop Grumman in $360M nuclear deal with French MNC Defense and technology company Northrop Grumman Corp. said its shipbuilding division is creating a joint venture with France's Areva SA to build a manufacturing and engineering facility in Newport News, Va., to supply the American nuclear energy sector. Nothing says meltdown of the nuclear industry more than profitability and an expanding infrastructure. We cannot say the blog is being unfair with its readership, though, so points for honest...

That's a possibility. Here's the TimesOnline : Ian Poll, Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Cranfield University , and head of technology for the Government-funded Omega project, is calling for a big research programme to help the aviation industry convert from fossil fuels to nuclear energy. ... “If we want to continue to enjoy the benefits of air travel without hindrance from environmental concerns, we need to explore nuclear power. If aviation remains wedded to fossil fuels, it will run into serious trouble,” he said. The article has really generated the comments. The first one is the best: As soon as I started reading this, one picture immediately came to mind: Marty McFly standing next to the Delorean and asking Doctor Emmett Brown, "This thing is NUCLEAR!!??" Yep, whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it will achieve... Hat tip to Eric McErlain . Picture of the DeLorean with Marty and Doc from Back to the Future 2.