Atomic Insights

After reading Nick Loris's comment about nuclear waste, I decided to read some more of his observations. I don't know about you, but I find it very useful when a site has an author link that leads to a page with an archive of other work by that same author. One of the recent blogs that Nick wrote was titled Don’t Be Fooled Again by the Anti-Nuclear Crowd . With a title like that, how could...

Heritage Foundation blogger Nick Loris produced a blog entry dated August 5, 2008 and titled Nuclear Energy’s Great, But What about the Waste? that includes several passages that might have been influenced by the same thinking that has resulted in my used nuclear fuel strategy. For example, Nick wrote: Let’s start with some basics. What is nuclear waste? The Nuclear Regulatory Commission defines high...

On Monday, August 4, 2008 I joined a large and generally supportive crowd attending the first of three evening public hearings on the matter of Unistar Nuclear, LLC's application for a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity to construct a third nuclear power plant at the Calvert Cliff's site in Lusby, Calvert County Maryland. I did not do a head count, but would guess that there were...

On Saturday, August 2, I gathered a group of well informed bloggers to talk about the growing interest in small nuclear power plants. Kirk Sorensen blogs at Energy from Thorium and is nearly finished with his MS in Nuclear Engineering. Charles Barton blogs at Energy from Thorium and Nuclear Green . Dan Yurman blogs at Idaho Samizdat: Nuke Notes and also writes for Fuel Cycle Week. Go and listen to...

NuScale Power has been the topic of several recent Atomic Insights posts and also has been mentioned on Idaho Samizdat and on CleanTechnica.com . IMHO this company is big news - it is a venture-funded company with a small nuclear plant design that just may be able begin operating in the commercial market in less than 5 years. (That is my estimate, not the company's.) To give our coverage of this...

Amory Lovins likes to deny the fact that private money is very interested in nuclear technology, while Al Gore is convinced that reactors only come in one size - extra large. Two companies have recently formed that put a lie to both of those theories. NuScale Power and Hyperion Power Generation are both venture funded companies with exciting products in the pipeline. NuScale Power is developing a 45...

A couple of days ago I mentioned that the Maryland Public Service Commission would be holding a series of meetings in southern Maryland for people interested Unistar's proposal to build a third nuclear power plant at Calvert Cliffs. Here are the details for the time and place of those meetings: What: Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC) When: August 4, 11 & 19 at 7:00p.m. Where: Holiday...

Apparently my meeting radar was off recently and I missed learning about the Global Nuclear Renaissance Summit in Alexandria, Virginia on 24 July until it was too late. I would have taken time from my day job, especially if I would have known that Dale Klein was going to spend some time talking about the potential for small reactors. Fortunately, one of you - thanks R. - sent me a link to an article...

I have a Google Alert set to inform me whenever there is a news article that includes the string PBMR - which is a unique string that means someone is talking about Pebble Bed Modular Reactors. For the last couple of days, I have been frustrated by the fact that all of the articles returned to me in that daily search have been written in a language that I cannot understand. Here are the links. If you...

One of the big reasons that I continued to be fascinated by coated particle (TRISO) in graphite matrix fuel is the fact that it is possible to adjust the fuel to moderator ratios to obtain a variety of neutron spectra. By choosing to add less moderator, it is possible to harden the available neutron spectrum to provide high conversion ratios and the ability to convert nearly all transuranic isotopes...

I have mentioned NuScale's small light water reactor project several times in the past few months. Growing buzz about small reactors that can be built in series production schemes Cookie cutter plants may reduce initial costs of new nuclear power Endurance and resilience - key attributes of an atomic power system Now, the company is getting some real attention from the mainstream media and the...

I have forgotten to mention an article in World Nuclear News from June 2008 that you might want to keep handy as a reference. It is titled Exploration drives uranium resources up 17% . Here is the lede from that article: Current economic uranium resources will last for over 100 years at current consumption rates, while it is expected there is twice that amount awaiting discovery. With reprocessing...

Mark J. Perry is a professor of finance and economics at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. He recently published an opinion piece titled Should Congress OK new nuclear power plants? Yes: We must replace natural gas that I found on Bradenton.com. (Bradenton is a city on the west coast of Florida between Tampa and Sarasota.) Professor Perry makes a compelling argument that increased use...

After Amy Goodman interviewed Amory Lovins for Democracy Now, she wrote a blog post on TruthDig.com titled Don’t Drink the Nuclear Kool-Aid . I do not think that Amy is one of those bloggers who notices when others have something to say about their posts; she apparently is not even one who participates in the discussion that her post generates. However, on the off chance that she might occasionally...

I am off to my day job now, but I need to point out that Amy Goodman at DemocracyNow.org interviewed Amory Lovins on July 16. He was once again introduced as the "Chief Scientist" of Rocky Mountain Instituted and he once again went through his standard litany of deceptions including a denial that nuclear can reduce oil consumption, a description of micro power that ignores the fact that most...