Margaret Harding, Kelly Taylor, John Wheeler from This Week in Nuclear, Dan Yurman from Idaho Samizdat and I talked for about an hour about our cautious optimism. The optimism is hard to overcome; the caution comes from the understanding that there is a lot of hard work left to do.

Between us, we have more than 100 years of professional experience with the technology; none of us believe that it is easy or “cheap”. We do believe that it is far better than all other competitors and that it is less expensive – if done correctly – than any other alternative when all costs are considered.

We also talked about the potential of smaller nuclear power plants to overcome some of the well known limitations of the “extra-large” plants that some utility companies and established nuclear plant vendors believe are the only way to make the technology “economical”. That view is a fallacy, perhaps engendered by the fact that large companies have to do large things in order to move the needle. They like instilling the belief that only large organizations can move forward with nuclear energy – even if they move with the agility of dinosaurs.

But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.

On January 31, 2010, I gathered a large group of active bloggers and nuclear industry professionals to find out what they thought of the statement and its impact on the deployment of new nuclear power plants. My guests were:

• Kelly Taylor, a 24 year nuclear industry professional and frequent Atomic Show guest.
• Meredith Angwin, a physical chemist and small businessperson who has recently started publishing a blog titled Yes, Vermont Yankee.
• Charles Barton, who blogs at Nuclear Green and Energy from Thorium.
• David Bradish, a statistician and blogger at NEI Nuclear Notes.
• Dan Yurman, who blogs at Idaho Samidat, writes for Fuel Cycle Week and is the blogger with the highest readership at The Energy Collective.
• Robert Margolis, a 24 year nuclear engineer who has supported reactors on 3 continents and is currently working in Florida.

In addition to the State of the Union statement, we discussed the increase in the loan guarantee program, and the formation of the blue ribbon commission about used nuclear fuel policy.

We also spent quite a bit of time talking about Vermont Yankee and the incredibly tiny quantity of tritium that has people demanding a full investigation and possibly a plant shutdown because someone found 0.000000029 curies/liter of tritium, an amount that would have a mass of just 0.0000000000029 grams distributed in 1000 grams of water.

This is the largest panel yet invited to an Atomic Show, but I think that the guests did a fine job of taking turns and sharing information. It was a lot of fun to produce.

Your comments are always welcome.

I made contact with Rick Turk, the engineering project manager for the effort to obtain a US Nuclear Regulatory Commission design certification for the Combustion Engineering System 80+, which is an ancestor of the current APR-1400. On December 29, 2009, Rick Turk, Dan Yurman and I chatted about the evolution of the APR-1400 and the way that South Korea has worked to develop its capacity as a nuclear power plant supplier capable of winning a competitively bid $20-40 billion project.

Lisa Stiles, Margaret Harding, John Wheeler and Dan Yurman together have nearly 100 years of experience in various aspects of nuclear technology and the nuclear power industry. Add in my 28+ years and you get a pretty experienced group sharing their impressions about one of the more positive and exciting ANS meetings for quite some time.

Watching the Nuclear Renaissance over the past half dozen years or so may have been about as exciting as watching grass grow. However, like growing grass, the natural progression of people recognizing that nuclear fission has serious advantages is happening steadily enough so that if you do not pay attention you will find that the process can overwhelm any attempts to mow it down.

During our conversation we talked about the technology opportunity that brings the group together. They have a vision for a world with abundant, emission free energy supplied by thorium reactors that fully fission a material that is not even in high commercial demand, leaving only relatively short lived fission products behind as a byproduct.

If you want to learn more about the meeting or about the Thorium Energy Alliance, please visit http://www.thoriumenergyalliance.com

We discussed a recent Moody’s special report on companies considering new nuclear power plants – not very positive, TVA nuclear plans, small reactors, the DOE semi-decision on a loan guarantee for The American Centrifuge Project proposed by USEC, and Russian energy deals in Turkey.

The topics we discussed included the following:

• History of PBMR as a stand alone company
• Change in technical direction
• Customer focused design efforts
• Licensing challenges for unfamiliar nuclear technology
• Potential for process heat supply market
• Interest from petrochemical industry
• Interest from American company talking about unit volumes in the thousands
• PBMR as a national technical asset for South Africa

Hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. PBMR has a unique role in the nuclear industry and might be pointing the way to new sources of revenues and new customers that have never before considered using atomic fission as their heat source.

People at the table included:
John Wheeler – This Week In Nuclear
Kirk Sorensen – Energy from Thorium
Nick Touran – What is Nuclear?
Rod Adams – The Atomic Show and Atomic Insights
Jess Gehin – Oak Ridge National Laboratory – Nuclear Science and Technology Division

Note: Upon further reflection and discussion, we have decided to produce a new conversation based show at a different meal. This time we are going to try to ensure that Dan Yurman (Idaho Samizdat) will be there. We are targeting tomorrow evening for a better performance.

Warning – this podcast is the longest Atomic Show yet at about 105 minutes.

He asked a lot of good, probing questions with an open attitude. Topics include Adams Atomic Engines, Inc., small nuclear power plants, the nuclear renaissance, French nuclear power experiences, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, nuclear waste, hazards of other energy sources, my thoughts on large scale renewable energy systems, and the importance of understanding commercial energy competition.

During the interview I mentioned a local natural gas explosion that injured 8 firefighters and one employee of the Washington Gas Company. Here is a link to more information about that accident – which had more serious effects on the public health than the far more widely publicized Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident.

Explosion a good reminder there are no ‘routine’ calls

It is well known that much of the opposition to nuclear power in the US, Europe, and Australia comes from people who are normally considered to be on the political left. David Walters, a self confessed socialist and long time labor activist has a different point of view. He believes, like I do, that abundant, clean, reliable, atomic energy is a boon for the working class.

Power plants provide good, stable jobs, often at union wage scales. They enable a vibrant local economy and good public infrastructure based on the plant’s addition to the property tax base and the salaries of the workers that get spent in local establishments. They allow generational employment with opportunities for young people to keep living and working in the towns where they grow up if they want to.

Comments always welcome. Please visit The TPN Pledge Drive if you would like to support the network that allows this show to remain independent and not beholden to corporate views.

Here are some links to articles or podcasts discussed during the show.

Democracy Now! Thursday April 9, 2009 With High Unemployment, Carolinas Reel from Economic Crisis. This segment is the entire interview with Chris Kromm of the Institute for Southern Studies.

Atomic Insights – Hard to Believe Story About TMI.

We Support Lee – Al Gore, Sr., Alvin Weinberg, Climate, and Al Gore, Jr.

It is important to understand – the president’s call is for a world free from nuclear weapons, not a nuclear-free world. There is an important difference.

However, it was a learning experience where every single person involved walked away – no one died or was even injured as a result of the event. There was a bankruptcy and a lot of financial distress in the industry as a number of plants under construction had to undergo numerous design changes and as a number of operating plants had to prove themselves all over again.

In this episode, I discuss some of my thoughts about what TMI meant to the industry and I get into another virtual debate with a man who insists that there were deaths, though he cannot point to any bodies or name any names. In the fantasy world of Harvey Wasserman, repetition, denial and insistence on ignoring countless studies and considered legal opinions is enough to overcome reality.

You get to decide for yourself, but I hope that this show will point out some of the important items to think about.

Here are the promised links:

NRC Fact Sheet on Three Mile Island

PBS: Frontline The Judge’s Decision

American Council on Science and Health Report – Nuclear Energy and Health, And the Benefits of Low-Dose Radiation Hormesis

A Review of the Source Term and Dose Estimation for the Three Mile Island Accident

I will add some more notes to this post later today, but now it is time to get ready for my day job.

The forcing function for holding the debate on that date was the fact that the Senate has included an additional authorization for $50 billion in loan guarantees for clean energy as part of the stimulus package. Though all forms of low emission energy can qualify, the fear among the virulent anti-nukes like Harvey Wasserman and the O’Connor family sponsored Texans for a Sound Energy Policy Alliance is that the vast majority of the loan guarantee authority will be captured by the nuclear power industry.

That is a reasonable evaluation of the current situation. After all, utility companies interested in building new nuclear power plants already have $122 Billion in shovel ready projects waiting in line for loan guarantees. The project applications were turned in several months ago and are being ranked and evaluated by the Department of Energy.

During the debate, Wasserman focused on telling lies about nuclear power plant insurance, about the risk of living and working near a plant, and about the expense associated with recycling used nuclear fuel. He also attempted to attract some strange bedfellows from conservative groups like Cato by focusing on what he called the market failure of nuclear power.

Moore admitted that he had been totally wrong in his youth by not recognizing the difference between nuclear weapons and beneficial uses of nuclear technology. He talked about the benefits of clean, reliable nuclear power that can reduce the need to burn coal, about the myth that we do not know what to do with the waste, and also wondered why Wasserman, a man with no history of love for the free market, is so certain that government should not be involved in electricity supply enterprises.

Of course, you can view the full debate uninterrupted at the Democracy Now! web site: Should the Economic Stimulus Bill Include Billions in Loan Guarantees? but I think this interrupted version adds some entertainment and informational value. I hope you agree and come to the site to share your thoughts.

In addition, please do make the effort to contact your senator and congressman to let them know how you feel about loan guarantees. (If you do not like them, that’s okay. I would be interested in hearing why or why not.)

One more thing – Harvey Wasserman is still an idiot.

This week I spent a several hours listening to the first hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of the current congressional session. Former Vice President Al Gore, the founder of an organization called Alliance for Climate Protection was the only witness during the 2 hour and 50 minute hearing. Watching that hearing, no one would ever know that the former VP is also a partner in Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers a Silicon Valley venture capital firm with significant financial interests in the very topic of conversation – non-nuclear alternatives to fossil fuel energy power production.

This is a matter of collegial privilege offered to a very few.

After watching the hearing and producing a rather extensive blog post about the hearing for Atomic Insights, I happened to choose to listen to NPR Environment Podcast for January 29, 2009. There was an amusing juxtaposition of stories; the first one talked about Gore’s visit to Capitol Hill, the second one was an interview with Ray Lane, also a partner in KPCB, about the need for federal assistance to the alternative energy industry in the fact of the global economic crisis.

None of the NPR correspondents made the connection between Gore and Lane.

It was also amusing to hear Gore explaining to Senator Corker and Senator Isakson, two strong nuclear advocates and former independent businessmen, why he talks down the potential for nuclear power as a tool in the fight to save human civilization against the twin threats of climate change and fossil fuel addiction.

I know that this might sound like I am picking on the former VP, but if I am, it is not because I am on a different political team. I happen to agree with some of the things that he says and stands for.

I just think that he should be more open about his financial interests in ensuring that climate change is recognized as a crisis big enough to force the taxpayers to subsidize the very companies into which he is putting his “private risk capital”. At the same time, I think he needs to do a better job of explaining why the crisis is not big enough to allow the expansion of a proven technology that supplies massive quantities of emission free power already.

His claim is that fission either costs too much or presents too big of a risk of “proliferation” means that he puts those factors higher on the priority list than saving human society from choking on deadly fossil fuel waste.

My interpretation is that fission simply presents too big of a risk to the success of his investments in alternative forms of energy production. None of the projects that KPCB is financing in alternative energy could compete without both a direct boost from the government and unreasonable handcuffs on competitive energy source from that same government.

Update posted Feb 2, 2009 at 0641: Ausra is one of the companies that KPCB has funded. During the hearing, John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee specifically mentioned that company, its Las Vegas, NV location and its expansion plans, stating that it was “the future”. I just ran across an article about the company in the San Jose Mercury News dated January 29, 2009, the day after the hearing took place. Here is a quote:

Today, the Palo Alto company says it has responded to the financial crisis by downsizing its goals and now plans to make smaller energy-generation plants and to sell its technology and equipment to utilities and other companies. Ausra’s chief executive said he now doubts the viability of the large-scale solar-thermal segment.

“What a lot of people thought when they went out and signed 500- or 900-megawatt power-purchase agreements was that it was easy to go from a 1-megawatt demo plant to a 900-megawatt project,” said Robert Fishman, Ausra’s chairman, president and CEO. “That’s simply not reality. The finance market will not support it.”

You can also read more about the hearing over at Atomic Insights.

On January 20, 2009 Rod Adams spoke with Alexandra Prokopenko to get a local view of the effects on Eastern Europe of the Ukraine/Russia natural gas supply dispute. Alexandra is a citizen of Belarus who currently lives and works in Sweden. Her husband is living in Kiev, Ukraine and she speaks to him each day. Alexandra is a journalism instructor, writes an energy focused blog and learned to speak Swedish during her multi-year evacuation from the Chernobyl area as a 4 year old.

In other words, she has a very interesting perspective that I find fascinating.

During this discussion, we talked about Russian gas price ambitions, explanations for the EU’s policy on nuclear power plants owned by former members of the “Eastern Bloc”, energy supply security, the thirst for independence and even a bit about the European reaction to the inauguration of a new US president – since our discussion took place just hours after President Obama took office.

I will apologize in advance if some of the conversation sounds a bit disjointed. I once again forgot my nuke training and neglected to use a checklist when setting up to record our discussion. I forgot to tell WireTap to record both the system audio and the incoming mike, so I had a great recording of what Alexandra said to me, but dead silence on what I said to her to cause her responses.

Oh well – sometimes it is hard to get good help.

I have a great deal of respect for Dr. Chu and for his ordered way of thinking, but I do have some concerns that he is too focused on a scientific approach to problem solving rather than an engineering one.

Let me explain. Though many people mentally link science and engineering, there is a fundamental difference in philosophy between the practitioners of the two important fields. Scientists like to study and find answers to questions that no one has yet solved. Engineers like to design and make things using the knowledge they can find in textbooks, graphs and reference material along with the practical knowledge that they can gain from actually engaging in their craft.

They know that they do not have a perfect knowledge of the universe, but they also know that their knowledge is good enough to create many amazing things. If they find a hard roadblock during the creation process, they are reasonably confident that they will find a way around the obstacle. Both science and engineering are important disciplines, but there is a time and a place for each to have primary influence. When it comes to addressing the world’s energy, climate and water supply challenges, there is no doubt that it is mainly an engineering problem, not a science project.

Unfortunately, Dr. Chu’s approach to the problem seems more influenced by his scientific bent than informed by a strong understanding of what is possible TODAY. His comments during the hearing lead me to believe that he does not yet have a good grasp of the approach needed to empower the people who ALREADY know how to reduce pollution, make energy available and affordable, and who know how to use that energy to reduce supply challenges for other important commodities like water and food.

As you listen to the Senators’ questions, Dr. Chu’s response and my interspersed commentary, you will realize just why I have more concerns about the department’s priorities and initial actions than does the Nuclear Energy Institute. There are a number of things we could be doing now, that do not necessarily involve a great deal of expenditure by the American taxpayers to simply encourage and enable proceeding with due haste to building and operating a new generation of devices that use fission instead of chemical combustion to provide an almost unlimited amount of emission free, reliable, energy.

Fission is not just an option, it is an imperative that has the potential to dramatically improve the lives of everyone on the planet – except those who have been unable to read the handwriting on the wall and continue to depend on selling fossil fuels at elevated prices to enable them to remain powerful and secure.

I know this is a minority view that would not be popular in the Senate committee with all of its competing interests – that is why I am a writer, a podcaster and an analyst, not a politician.

As a progressive thinker who cares deeply about human suffering and looks for ways to raise the living standards of the underdog, I frequently feel the need to wave my hands to try to tell the established “Progressives” that they need to reevaluate their biases about the future of nuclear power. Democracy Now! is one of the more thought provoking shows available on a number of topics, but the producers, guests and host have a blind spot when it comes to nuclear energy applications.

Last week, Amy Goodman asked Andrew Revkin who writes the Dot Earth blog for the New York Times, for his opinion about President-elect Obama’s choice of Steven Chu as his nominee for the Secretary of Energy. Andrew had some favorable comments, but was not able or willing to discuss Dr. Chu’s long time stance favoring the continued use and development of nuclear energy.

Amy also talked with Bill McKibben, who has been writing about environmental and progressive topics for more than 25 years. McKibben praised James Hansen as the greatest climate scientist in the US. Bill either is unaware or simply prefers to ignore the fact that James Hansen has recently written an open letter to President-elect Obama describing a plan for responding to the hazard of climate change through technical measures that include a large portion of nuclear power, especially 4th generation nuclear power plants that enable fuel recycle.

I added my thoughts and knowledge about the pro-nuclear positions of both scientists, just in case there are any Progressives that listen to both Democracy Now! and The Atomic Show. My hope is to open dialog and conversation that can overcome established bias. People like Goodman, Revkin and McKibben pride themselves on their critical thinking skills; it is time to challenge them in an area that might make them uncomfortable. They would be excellent spokesmen if, after full discussion and expanded thinking they recognized that they had been misled or misinformed over the years.

Clinton Bastin is an atomic pioneer who worked on used fuel recycling for most of his 42 year career. He recently published We Need to Reprocess Spent Nuclear Fuel, and We Can Do It Safely, At Reasonable Cost (924 kB PDF). After I read that detailed opinion piece, with its critique of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) and its comparisons between projects that have worked consistently with those that have not, I got in touch and began an email dialog.

After several exchanges, I had to get Clinton on the show to share some of his vast knowledge. It is a true privilege to be able to talk with a pioneer in an industry that has been as important to the world as atomic fission; especially in an specialized area that has gained considerable political attention.

As a teaser, I want to share an recent op-ed that Clinton wrote and submitted to the New York Times. It was not published there, but these days being overlooked by the major media does not mean that the voice or the opinion is silenced.

As a long-time reader of The New York Times, chemical engineer and nuclear scientist for the Department of Energy and its predecessors for 42 years, and President of a DOE Headquarters Employees’ Union from 1983 through 1996, I am dismayed that The Times never explains to its readers that the DOE:

● has spent about one trillion dollars and failed to address the energy challenges that were the reason for its creation;

● lost the ability to produce nuclear materials needed for medicine, space exploration, defense, industry, and research;

● suppressed information that should have been used to correct false allegations of dangers of radioactive waste stored at DOE sites in order to obtain many billions of dollars for so-called “cleanup” of the wastes which has been simply to remove it from where it is safely stored to other locations which resulted in much more danger and radiation exposure to humans than if nothing had been done;

● helped maintain a 34-year moratorium on new nuclear power plants, our safest, least polluting and potentially most abundant energy source;

● failed to provide full and accurate information to Americans about energy and nuclear technology;

● ignores the laws of thermodynamics, which is the science concerned with the relationship and conversion of heat to mechanical (usable) energy or work, in its development of usable energy with low-temperature energy sources such as geothermal, solar, tidal and wind;

● continues to fund expensive experiments for development of controlled nuclear fusion on Earth, for which there is no scientific basis;

● exaggerates threats of nuclear weapons proliferation from fully safeguarded nuclear power programs in other nations;

● interacts with its national laboratories in a manner virtually identical to that of the former Soviet Union Ministry of Atomic Energy with its Institutes; and

● has (with the help of The Times) dismissed all of the competent, experienced corporations that managed safe and successful nuclear programs for the Manhattan Project and Atomic Energy Commission.

During the Administration of President Bill Clinton, my major effort as union president was to work as partner with Energy Secretary :Hazel O’Leary, Deputy Secretary Bill White and other DOE leaders for major downsizing of the DOE in a manner that would minimize adverse impact on employees.

The downsizing, planned and projected to extend well into this century, was reversed by the Administration of President George W. Bush.

Clinton Bastin
Avondale Estates, GA

During our interview, Clinton stated that during the 20 years that he worked at the Department of Energy (formed in 1978 from the rubble of the Energy Research and Development Agency), the organization did not accomplish anything of real value.

More and more people who are sincerely concerned about the impact that human activity is making on the planet are recognizing that nuclear fission has a role to play in our future energy supplies. Some even believe that it has reached a state of art where it can save the planet.

Steve Kirsch, an entrepreneur, philanthropist and respected member of the business and social community in Silicon Valley was sure that the US could get by without nuclear fission power. In August 2008, he learned about the Integral Fast Reactor and has immersed himself in learning more.

Last week, he published an op-ed in the San Jose Mercury News titled How a 24-year-old technology can save the planet. Now, it is certainly possible for experts in the field to take issue with some of the technical details in Steve’s commentary, but just remember, he only started really studying the field a few months ago.

In my opinion, he has progressed rather well. That MIT education (Bachelor’s and Master’s in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) has come in handy. With friends like Steve Kirsch, fission advocates can make some real progress.

Joe Shuster has founded or co-founded 8 companies in his 50 year career in engineering, consulting and manufacturing. His retirement project is to share what he has learned during a focused research effort to figure out how to solve the world’s energy, climate and water challenges.

His book, Beyond Fossil Fools: Roadmap to Energy Independence by 2040, is a clear eyed analytical approach to computing the scale of the problem, the possible approaches for solving the problem and his computation of the best way to minimize all of the challenges associated with continuing to enable an abundant lifestyle for human beings.

He has pledged that any proceeds from the book will be invested into energy research, he is spending 3-5 days per week talking with groups, schools, and conferences, and he is writing additional op-ed pieces in order to share his conclusion that the world needs to develop and expand the use of nuclear fission energy NOW. He believes that wind and solar have a role to play, but that they are destined to be bit players in the unfolding drama.

Ted Rockwell is a nuclear industry pioneer. He served as Admiral Rickover’s Technical Director during the formative years of the Navy Nuclear Power Program. He wrote the book on reactor shielding design and has continued to write and speak ever since.

The cover of the November 2008 issue of Nuclear News, the monthly publication from the American Nuclear Society, featured Ted’s opinion piece titled “Nuclear energy: Not a Faustian bargain, but a near-perfect providential gift”. In that article, Ted tells nuclear professionals that they are not so special after all – their industry is much safer than almost any other industry. The materials that they handle do not pose unique hazards, they are simply materials that can cause harm if not properly handled.

If that information leaks out, it could put a number of researchers at risk of losing their grants; after all, even the generous US government might begin to wonder why they are spending so much to “solve” a problem that may not exist in the first place.

Kelly Taylor and Robert Margolis, two long time nuclear professionals join in the conversation. I think you will find a lot of food for thought here.

More about Ted:

Ted Rockwell was honored twice during the fall of 2008 for his contributions to technology and to literature. On September 4, 2008, in London, the World Nuclear Association (WNA) gave him a Pioneer’s Award for “Distinguished Contribution to the Peaceful Worldwide Use of Nuclear Energy.” Former Ambassador John Ritch, Director General of the WNA, praised Rockwell’s “immensely valuable role in building the foundations and future of nuclear power.”

On October 20, Rockwell’s book, “The Virtual Librarian: A Tale of Alternative Realities,” was chosen as an award-winning finalist in the Visionary Fiction category of the National Best Books 2008 Awards, sponsored by USA Book News. Publishers competing for this award ran the gamut from mainstreamers like Simon & Schuster, Tarcher/Penguin, HarperCollins, Hyperion, St. Martin’s, McGraw-Hill and John Wiley, to hundreds of independents.

Dan Yurman and I had a great time on November 21 talking about a number of different nuclear news items including a large new power plant deal in India for Russian reactors, Dan’s first hand report of a GNEP meeting held in Idaho Falls, Kentucky’s energy plan that includes nuclear power and coal to liquids, RWE’s interest in new nuclear plants for the Baltic states and Eastern Europe, and Vermont Yankee controversies.

Here are some links that you might find useful if you want to do more research on the topics covered:

• Lithuania nuclear shutdown information
• Gerhard Schroeder’s Sellout
• Gerhard Schroeder wikipedia page
• Gerhard Schroeder’s Answers.com biography
• Old King Coal’s Comeback in Scotland
• RWE nuclear expansion projects
• Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear’s energy plans
• LiquidCoal
• International Herald Tribune – NRG rejects Exelon takeover bid
• Vermont Yankee Protest clears Public Service Board offices
• Feasibility study for new nuclear power plant in New Brunswick

Please consider carefully the TPN pledge drive and give generously to help support continued availability of independent media.

Kelly Taylor and I got together for a Sunday evening chat to discuss President-elect Obama’s nuclear energy policies and their implications for the nuclear industry’s growth and development. We also talked about the joint venture to manufacture large nuclear power plant components between Areva and Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding, and about the long term implications of Warren Buffett’s purchase of Constellation Energy.

Hope you enjoy the show. Comments are always welcome, though getting more and more rare. Go ahead, step up and make a liar out of me. :-)

William Tucker has been writing about energy issues for decades. He first started following the nuclear energy controversy in the mid 1970s when he reviewed Amory Lovins’s book about Soft Energy.

He has now written his own book to explain why he believes that Lovins, Al Gore and other mainstream environmentalists are dead wrong to dismiss or minimize the potential of nuclear energy to meet their desire for a cleaner, less carbon intensive world.

We chatted about his book, responses he has received during his efforts to promote the book, and about America’s energy future. Hope you enjoy the conversation.

You can find Terrestrial Energy on Amazon.com.

Dan Yurman, who produces the excellent blog titled Idaho Samizdat visited the Atomic Show for a discussion about the exciting world of nuclear power developments. We talked for well over an hour and covered projects in locations ranging from Florida to Idaho, Vermont to India, Utah to Brazil, and Finland to Texas. Dan is a great source of detailed information that is difficult to find if you are not fully engaged in the industry.

Stick it through to the very end and you will find out just what Samizdat means.

Dan is going to be participating in a web seminar with some heavy hitters – Jim Rogers of Duke Energy and Aston Poole from Morgan Stanley – in a couple of weeks. If you can possibly fit it into your schedule, I highly recommend listening in.

If you want to learn more about nuclear energy careers, a great place to start is to visit Entergy at nuclearenergycareers.com

Here is the mission of Energize America as found on the organization’s web site:

EnergizeAmerica is a comprehensive and compelling 20-point plan developed by informed citizen activists to wean the U.S. from its fossil fuel addiction and provide the U.S. with Energy Security by 2020, and Energy Freedom by 2040.

Energize America seeks to Make the Right Choice the Easy Choice as we move toward an Energy Smart culture.

One of the components of the proposed energy plan left me wondering a bit about the real goals and missions – here is what the plan says about nuclear power:

Nuclear
Nuclear power is experiencing a political resurgence of sorts, and several new plants are in various
stages of planning. However, the nuclear industry enjoys huge subsidies that shield the industry from nuclear disaster liability. The nuclear industry and our government have also failed for decades to solve the nuclear waste problem. These issues must be addressed before nuclear power is more widely used.

I think you will find the discussion lively, challenging and worth the effort it takes to listen. Kelly did a bang up job of asking probing questions.

I would be interested in your responses.

On September 29, 2008 the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) hosted the 4th International Topical Meeting on High Temperature Reactor Technology. Following the plenary session, there was a press conference attended by a grand total of three members of the press plus some additional interested meeting attendees.

Though the press was lightly represented, there were three high level leaders in the high temperature gas reactor field ready and willing to answer questions. Regis Matzie is a Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Westinghouse Electric Company and also served as the co-chairman of the HTR 2008 conference. Linden Blue is the vice chairman of General Atomics, and John Grossenbacher is the Director of the Idaho National Laboratory, the leading federal integrator for the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) project.

I had the opportunity to ask some probing questions and to listen to others in the press ask additional questions about markets, licensing challenges and building plans. Please let me know what you think about the format and the content of this episode of The Atomic Show since it is a bit different from most of the rest.

If you want to find out more about jobs in the nuclear field, you can start by visiting nuclearenergycareers.com. That visit might also help keep The Atomic Show coming to you on our current nearly regular basis.

You can find more information about Idaho National Laboratory’s projects at http://www.inl.gov

INL also has a YouTube site at http://www.youtube.com/user/IdahoNationalLab. Here is one of the videos that you can find there:

More information about NGNP is available at http://www.nextgenerationnuclearplant.com/

I recently posted a blog on Atomic Insights about nuclear fuel recycling that broke a record for the number of comments received. Normally, the people that hang out at Atomic Insights are a select few who have accepted the notion that nuclear fission has useful capabilities, but there were plenty of naysayers involved in that conversation.

Apparently, discussing the possibility of nuclear fuel recycling operations stirs up the opposition. Of course, their preferred term is “reprocessing” and they continue to point to characteristics of processes that were developed in the 1950s to explain their opposition. From a purely technological point of view, that is like saying you do not favor the use of computers because the Motorola 6809 is not very reliable. (For the non-geeks in the crowd, the Motorola 6809 was the brains behind the TRS-80, one of the very first personal computers in the mass market.)

During this episode of The Atomic Show, NNadir and I talk about the incredible energy store that is already mined and above ground in the form of used nuclear fuel and the tailings from uranium enrichment operations. We also talk about the other valuable materials – outside of fissile and fertile isotopes – that are found in used nuclear fuel.

Materials like the noble metals of ruthenium, rhodium, and palladium are extremely rare in the natural world, but they could be extracted in ton quantities from the residues of nuclear fission. Isotopes like strontium and cesium have proven uses in nuclear batteries and as irradiation sources. Gold, silver and platinum are famously valuable and are also produced in the amazing alchemy called fission.

Have a listen.

If you want to learn more about careers in nuclear energy, please visit nuclearenergycareers.com.

Kelly Taylor, Joe Montague and I meet to chat about PBMR, nuclear events and nuclear industry history. Hope you enjoy the show.

If you want to find out more about careers in the nuclear industry, please visit nuclearenergycareers.com.

Kelly Taylor, Robert Margolis and I got together on August 17, 2008 to discuss the events of the week in nuclear energy. Kelly and Robert had been involved in an interesting discussion with people from itsgettinghotinhere.org regarding the expansion of Dominion Power’s North Anna facility.

I reported on my recent trip to Calvert County where Unistar Nuclear is planning Calvert Cliffs Unit III, and we talked about some of the benefits that result to local communities when a “costly” nuclear plant gets constructed in their backyard.

When a utility or generating company pays billions of dollars to build a new nuclear plant the money goes somewhere; much of it goes into the paychecks of the people constructing and later operating the plant. When the plant begins producing power, that displaces power generated by burning fossil fuels. Not only are fossil fuels dirtier than fission, but the money spent to buy them generally goes someplace far from where the fuel gets burned and the emissions get released.

Since fossil fuel companies have pared down their work forces, a lot of the money ends up concentrating in the hands of a small number of wealthy individuals.

As usual, our conversation veered into several tangentially related topics. Hope you enjoy the show. Remember, if you want to learn more about opportunities offered by Energy, a sponsor of The Atomic Show, please visit them at nuclearenergycareers.com.

Show 101 is a bit longer than normal, but I think you will want to listen carefully to every word. I invited some innovative thinkers and observers of the nuclear scene to discuss small nuclear power plants and their potential impact on the energy market.

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.

Our conversation ranged over a number of topics including the NuScale Power 45 MWe reactor, Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors, licensing issues, waste handling constructs, Dale Klein’s recent speech including his comments on small reactors, and radiation health effects.

Here are some links to articles or papers discussed:

Dan Keuter, Entergy Nuclear – The NGNP in Perspective
UPPU – Fifty Years of Plutonium Exposure to the Manhattan Project Plutonium Workers: An Update – Abstract.

If you want to find out more about nuclear energy career opportunities at Entergy Nuclear, visit nuclearenergycareers.com. The Atomic Show thanks Entergy Nuclear for its support of the show and for its forward leaning participation in new media endeavors.

I was recently offered the opportunity to read a review copy of Profit from the Peak by Brian Hicks and Chris Nelder. The book, despite its attention grabbing title, is really a thoughtful work that digs deeply into the challenges that the world faces in the near future in providing the plentiful energy that has made the modern economy possible.

The authors and I agree on many of the symptoms of trouble and even on the diagnosis that the people on the earth are running headlong off of a cliff if they do not take action to change direction. When it comes to the prescription for the cure, however, we have a rather substantial difference in perspective.

Chris Nelder agreed to come on the show and discuss his book, his analysis of the energy situation and his prescription.

Chris is a former software engineer and technical writer who developed a deep interest in energy topics. I am a former nuclear submarine engineer officer who also has developed a deep and wide interest in energy topics.

I think you will enjoy the discussion.

During my 27 years of association with atomic technology, I have engaged in a number of conversations with people on the topic of “why don’t people like us?” There is little doubt that choosing to be a nuke is NOT the way to gain immense popularity; there are few technologies that have inspired so much visceral dislike despite having some very useful properties.

Within the nuclear field and number of theories have been offered, some not well thought through. Here are some of the more common completions to sentences in water cooler conversations that start with “People do not like nuclear power because”:

• the media has misinformed them.
• the bomb scares them.
• Ralph Nader and the environmentalists have scared them.
• they do not want to take the time to learn the necessary math and science to allow them to understand.

I think all of the above are weak answers that need to be overcome, but it will take some concerted effort. One of the ways that I have been working on the list is to engage in conversations with influencers in the media, with a lot of focus on “the new media” of podcasts, blogs and other on-line publications.

For more than 2 years, I have had a running, intermittent conversation going with Adam Curry, the host of one of the most popular podcasts on the web. In the past week, the conversation has expanded with responses by a number of other listeners who have comments and questions about the technology. One of Adam’s thoughts is that nuclear power or atomic fission needs a new “brand”.

Since Adam has a big show to run that covers a lot of topics, there simply is not enough time available on his show for me to properly respond to all of the commentary, so I figured I would put together an old fashioned “answer show”. That way, any audience members that we share who want to focus a little more on the specifics of the fission discussion can get my thoughts and perhaps even get motivated to submit some of their own comments to Adam.

As a dedicated nuke who believes deep down that the world needs more fission and needs it now, I cannot allow a comment like “the media does not like us” without working to change the equation.

Link to previous episodes of The Daily Source Code. Warning – Adam’s show is aimed at adults and his demographic base tends to be educated males between the ages of 24 and 50. If you get embarrassed by “four letter words” or casual discussions with adult themes, you might not want to listen.

Chuck DeVore is a California State Assemblyman representing the 70th Assembly District. Among a number of other issues, he has recognized that the state desperately needs more energy and believes that it is past time to overturn the state’s de facto ban on new nuclear power plants.

He is an eloquent speaker with a good grasp of the technical details of why nuclear power plants should be built in California to serve the current and growing needs of the state’s large population base.

You can find out more about Chuck by visiting his personal web site at ChuckDeVore.com

To learn more about his efforts regarding power and energy, visit his web site titled PowerForCalifornia.com

This show truly demonstrates the individual power and freedom provided to the world by the Internet. While we talked via Skype video conferencing (without additional charges above our internet connection fees) Alexandra was in Kiev, Ukraine celebrating the Orthodox Easter holiday while I was in Annapolis, Maryland on drizzly Sunday afternoon. Disregarding the two hard drops of our Skype connection, it sounds like we are in the same room or at least in the same town talking over a very clean phone line.

I recently “met” Alexandra online through the introduction of a mutual friend. She is a young woman who was a four year old in Belarus at the time that the operators of the Chernobyl power plant decided to perform an undocumented test procedure and ignored all warning signs to the point where they blew up the reactor.

Alexandra, like many of her contemporaries, has an enlarged thyroid and a few other medical problems that she attributes to the effects of the materials released during the subsequent fire, but instead of becoming a bitter victim, she chose to become an inquisitive journalist and fact seeker.

We talked about a number of different topics including the accident, energy supplies in Eastern Europe, the Ignalina reactor in Lithuania, Sweden’s current plans regarding its nuclear future, Russia’s recently announced plan to build a large power station in Kaliningrad for the electricity export market, and the business practices that she observed as a translator working for Gazprom.

Alexandra is a fascinating person, an experienced print, radio and television journalist, a linguist (she speaks excellent English, Russian, Swedish, Belarusian, and can get by in Polish, German, French and Japanese), and a world citizen with a questioning attitude.

Please listen carefully to this interview and share it with your friends. I am sure you will not be disappointed and may even be energized – like I am – to find out that there are people like Alexandra in the business of informing the world about what they know and what they can find out.

Please forgive the background noises. Just think of having a conversation in a coffee shop.

For this show, John Wheeler (This Week In Nuclear), Kelly Taylor, Michael Stuart and I talked about coal versus nuclear generation, CO2 capture challenges, Michael’s birthday present of a zero gravity experience, space nuclear power (a natural progression from the zero gravity discussion), storage systems that might enable renewable energy to flourish, hydrogen production, battery technology, and plug-in hybrid vehicles.

Here are some links to sources for some of the discussion.

The Space Show interview with Dr. James Dewar, author of To The End of the Solar System: The Story of the Nuclear Rocket

Senator Harry Reid’s testimony about Yucca Mountain and nuclear power

John Wheeler, Lisa Stiles and I talked about our passion for nuclear technologies. We also talked about job opportunities in the nuclear business, the need for large infrastructure investments in electricity generation and delivery, the competition between nuclear and LNG projects, and the fact that we need large new sources of energy in order to maintain our current prosperity.

We also touched on the fact that maintaining our own prosperity is simply not enough when there are so many people who have no access at all to the quantities of energy consumed by the average American.

You are going to enjoy this show! Jill Buck is an energetic community leader with a vision for a cleaner world and she has been working for a number of years to make that vision a reality. As the founder of the Go Green Initiative she is having a measurable effect on the lives of thousands of school children in more than 30 states and 10 countries outside the US. By some measures, it is the world’s largest environmental education organization. Here is what her organization believes:

• People care about protecting children’s health and safety through environmental stewardship.
• People will do the right thing when given trustworthy information, expert training and simple tools.
• People appreciate a program like the Go Green Initiative, which provides a framework for success, many options and the freedom to choose the options that work best for them.
• People want a panoramic, three-dimensional approach to environmental education, which will equip young people with the skills necessary to manage the environmental impact inherent in all activities.

I found Jill’s organization because her blog had an entry that caught the attention of my Google alert on “new nuclear power plants”. Here is the entry that caught my attention:

Electricity: While I saw many remaining coal-fired electricity plants, I saw numerous nuclear power plants as I peered out the tour bus window. Coal is abundant and inexpensive in China, but contributes to poor air quality. More nuclear power plants will create a clean energy source that will fuel China’s growing economy without depleting natural resources, or creating air pollution. According to Chinese sources, in Nov. 2007, the State Council approved the National Medium- and Long-term Nuclear Development Plan (2005-2020) submitted by National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). The plan sets clear goals for nuclear power development as follows: by 2020, the installed capacity of nuclear power will reach 40 million kilowatts and the capacity under construction in 2020 will reach 18 million kilowatts. The percentage of electricity generated by nuclear power will increase from less than 2% today to 4% in 2020, with the annual amount of electricity reaching 260-280 billion kilowatts.

I decided right then that I needed to try to get Jill on as a guest of The Atomic Show.

During our chat we spent a lot of time talking about her trip to China and about the overall benefits that a renewed focus on nuclear power development could bring to the US and to the world. I think you are going to like this show.

You might even end up doing what I did after learning more about Go Green Initiative – visit the organization’s donation page and provide a few dollars to support its mission.

Virtual round table discussion with four guests whose total nuclear experience is more than 100 years.
John Wheeler – host of This Week in Nuclear Podcast
Kirk Sorensen – publisher of Energy from Thorium
Kelly Taylor – work at home mom and 20+ year veteran of the nuclear power industry
Robert Margolis – reactor engineer and 20+ year veteran of the nuclear power industry

During the discussion, we covered a variety of topics including the move back to gas for new electric power plants, the pressure against coal, an economic analysis from an independent group on the cost of shutting down Indian Point Nuclear Station, and ways to improve the speed to market for new nuclear power plants.

Charles Ferguson, Fellow for Science and Technology – Council on Foreign Relations paid a visit to The Atomic Show. We engaged in a wide ranging discussion. We started with some of Charles’s impressions of the views of Indian colleagues following his recent visit to the world’s largest democracy. Other topics included Japan’s Monju reactor, highly enriched uranium, using special nuclear material for small reactors, long term protection of distributed reactors, commerce in HEU and plutonium, South African views on HEU, Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Plowshares and probably a lot more.

Hope you enjoy.

Here are some links that you might find useful after listening to the show:

Plowshare Project video from Atomic Energy Commission

Executive Summary: Plowshare Program

Robert Bryce, the Managing Editor of Energy Tribune is an energy journalist who likes to do math. I like this guy A LOT.

A November 2007 article titled Guru or Fakir? Amory Lovins is America’s favorite green energy advocate. Does his rhetoric match reality? really caught my eye. In about 400 words, Robert discusses a number of different predictions that Mr. Lovins has made during his 30+ years as an energy writer and prescriber of energy solutions and traces how each of those predictions or prescriptions has turned out.

We also discussed ethanol and its history as an important farm program and provider of profits for ADM – while not making much impact on America’s thirst for fossil fuel.

As we talked, I tried to gradually slip in my theory that there is a reason that Lovins and biofuels are often supported by well heeled environmental groups – each of them are actually quite beneficial to the interests of established fossil fuel suppliers.

Though he has supported a number of oil alternatives during his career, including coal, natural gas, wind, solar, biomass and, most famously, conservation, Lovins has consistently opposed nuclear power. By doing so, he has fought against the only technology that has ever taken significant markets away from coal, oil and natural gas.

Biofuel consumption also does not hurt the fossil fuel suppliers – it is an energy intensive business itself and generally only produces a modest amount of excess energy compared to the amount needed to produce it.

I think you will enjoy the interview. If you do, you might also want to read some or all of the books that Robert has written about energy:

• Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America’s Superstate (Hardcover)
• Pipe Dreams: Greed Ego and the Death of Enron

On New Year’s Eve morning, John Wheeler, Kelly Taylor and I got together for a chat about the nuclear industry’s prospects for 2008. We agreed that the year would be an interesting one for nuclear power, with additional license applications, more attention from discussions during the US Presidential campaign, and increasing opportunities for employment for people who want to work in a safe, clean, challenging, high tech environment.

We all agreed that the industry is one where errors are not overlooked, where talented young people can find rewarding work, and where people who have left the industry during its challenging times of the late 1980s and 1990s may find new opportunities.

We made a few predictions, talked about the potential applications for smaller plants, and generally agreed that now is a great time to be a nuke.

John also posted a version of the conversation as Episode 54 – Happy Nuke Year!!.

Anyone who listens to both and can point out the difference wins a $20 iTunes gift certificate!

Hope you all have a happy healthy and prosperous Nuke Year!

Brian Paxton and I talked for about 50 minutes about a wide range of topics related to Africa and energy developments. Brian knows a lot about both topics and shares some valuable insights into markets, developments and attitudes.

We talked about hydropower, alternatives sources of light and heat, oil and gas, and the potential for moderately sized nuclear plants. At the very end of the interview we briefly talked about the strengthening of ties between Algeria and Russia and the implications that development has for European power markets.

Hope you enjoy the show. Sorry for the long silence.

Dr. Jeremy Whitlock is a second generation nuclear profession who lives with his family in Deep River, a town he describes as an Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) company town. Others have talked about Deep River as the Canadian equivalent of Los Alamos.

Jeremy was one of the first nukes to recognize that the web was a powerful communications tool, especially for people whose voice is often not heard. As a nuclear professional living in a town full of PhD’s who like to sprinkle their conversation with terms like neutron and resonance absorption region, he did not feel that the general public was well informed about the technology that he has spent his life studying.

Topics in the conversation include Energy Alberta, DUPIC, Remembrance Day, ANS Winter Meeting (Washington DC November 10-15), used fuel plans in Canada, recycling, economics, atomic energy entrepreneurs, and several others.

I hope you enjoy the conversation.

He invited me on to his show for an interview the other day – you can find the resulting discussion at The Cranky Middle Manager #105 Nuclear Leadership- Rod Adams. (Truth be told, I have been begging Wayne for months to get me on the show and he finally relented. Perhaps he was just tired of my persistence.)

Please go over and have a listen. I think you might find it useful.

(MP3 – 16.3 MB – 47:05 M)

[audio:http://atomic.thepodcastnetwork.com/audio/tpn_atomic_20070731_066.mp3]

Listen to Atomic Show #066 Here!

Among nuclear advocates, it is commonly believed that “the media” is one of the reasons for the end of the first Atomic Age. If I have heard it once, I have heard it 1,000 times – “the media does not like us.”

In that view of the world, the fact that the media sensationalizes minor events and provides confusing, scary stories is one of the main reasons that people banded together to oppose new nuclear power plants.

I have a different opinion, but even so, I agree that the mainstream media has not done a good job of explaining nuclear power technology. That is not surprising; most journalists have never taken physics, math, or engineering courses. They are pretty quick studies, however, and have done a pretty fair job of repeating what they have been told.

Unfortunately, they have been talked to far more often by people that oppose nuclear power than by people who understand its intricacies and can explain them in a way that makes sense to people with liberal arts educations.

One of the really exciting things about the Internet and the tools that have been build to make use of the internet is that it is now possible for technologists to have a better chance of explaining complex subjects to a wider audience. No longer are we limited to sound bites that are distributed by enormous companies who need to please their audiences (and advertisers.) Instead we now have the power to create and distribute our own message.

Of course, as Cameron points out, the availability of new tools does not automatically change the calculus. Pro nuclear activists need to learn to use the tools effectively to communicate in a manner that reaches people and makes their message something that is worth sharing.

We also spent quite a bit of time on the topic of “following the money” to determine who is really behind the anti nuclear activist organizations.

Hope you enjoy the show.

(MP3 – 20.6 MB – 59:39 M)

[audio:http://atomic.thepodcastnetwork.com/audio/tpn_atomic_20070321_052.mp3]

Listen to Atomic Show #052 Here!

Unless you live under a rock, you have an opinion about whether or not man’s activity is causing a coming global catastrophe. Two recent films – Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and The Great Global Warming Swindle have sparked a increasing number of heated discussions.

Shane and I wade headlong into the complex and often confusing subject and have our own kind of geeky discussion.

As you may remember, I am an atomic entrepreneur who is very interested in developing and selling atomic engines in the world market. It might appear that I have a vested interest in emphasizing the dangers of continuing to put CO2 into the atmosphere. My favorite source of power does very little of that. (I put a couple of links to a detailed studies below that attempt to show the emissions levels from a variety of energy sources including all construction, fuel production, and eventual decommissioning.)

However, I am interested in understanding and not willing to accept anyone’s “belief” system without question. Some of what is passing for climate science today has more in common with religious dogma than with facts, figures, and research. Any time people begin to be shouted down and subjected to ad hominem attacks for the simple affront of asking for data, I begin to get skeptical in reaction.

• VATTENFALL’S ELECTRICITY PRODUCTION SYSTEM -A QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE STUDY OF EMISSIONS OF GREENHOUSE GASES THROUGHOUT THE LIFE-CYCLE
• ExternE – Externalities of energy production, a study by the European Commission
• Energy subsidies and external costs

We would like to hear from you – what do you think about the controversy, its implications for near term policy changes, and its potential for significant disruption of the world’s economic power balance?

(MP3 – 19.3 MB – 56 M)

[audio:http://atomic.thepodcastnetwork.com/audio/tpn_atomic_20070314_051.mp3]

Listen to Atomic Show #051 Here!

Uranium is as common as tin and can be found in measurable quantities almost anywhere in the world. Its price often varies by several hundred percent over short periods of time, often encouraging booms, busts and much speculation.

Each kilogram of the material contains as much potential energy as 2 MILLION kilograms of oil or three MILLION kilograms of coal, but we use only a tiny portion of that potential energy in currently operating nuclear plants.

Have a listen. We hope you find our conversation interesting and thought provoking.

(MP3 – 13 MB – 38 min)

[audio:http://atomic.thepodcastnetwork.com/audio/tpn_atomic_20061227_043.mp3]

Listen to Atomic Show #043 Here!

On Wednesday, 27 December, I woke up bright and early so that I could have a chat with Professor Wade Allison, who teaches physics at Oxford University. I contacted Professor Allison because of a recent lecture that he gave to his colleagues titled “How dangerous is ionizing radiation?”

We had a great chat, even though it had to start at 4:15 am in order to allow our schedules to mesh with the five hour Atlantic time zone difference between Annapolis and Oxford.

Please have a listen to hear why Professor Allison, like many other people that are outside of the Radiation Protection industry (see, for example, Radiation, Science and Health) have determined that the linear, no threshold (LNT) model of radiation hazards has no basis in science and should be abandoned for more accurate models.

The key statement made during the conversation is that radiation safety, as it is currently practiced, is more dangerous than the radiation itself.

(MP3 – 14.3MB – 42 min)

[audio:http://atomic.thepodcastnetwork.com/audio/tpn_atomic_20061121_38.mp3]

Listen to Atomic Show #038 Here!

George Stanford earned his PhD in experimental nuclear physics from Yale University and then spent his professional career doing nuclear reactor safety research at the Argonne National Laboratory. One of his special interest was the sodium cooled fast reactor program. He worked on the Experimental Breeder Reactor II which was the technical prototype for a future reactor proposal known as the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR)

George and I talked about various fuel cycles, their perceived advantages and disadvantages, and some of the politics associated with the IFR. We talked a bit about the passive safety experiments conducted on the EBR II, pyroprocessing of fast reactor fuel, and the uranium use efficiency possible with fast reactor fuel recycling.

We also spoke a bit about the 10 MWe Toshiba 4S sodium cooled reactor, which has been proposed as an alternative electrical power generator for remote areas. The first proposed location for this reactor is Galena Alaska, a small village on the Yukon River that currently depends completely on diesel fuel and kerosene for its energy supplies.

Here are a few related links that might be useful in helping to better understand our discussion.

• Argonne National Laboratory – State of the Laboratory 1992
• Argonne National Laboratory – State of the Laboratory 1993
• Argonne National Laboratory – State of the Laboratory 1994
• DOE’s Nuclear Energy Research Programs Threaten National Security

Ruth recently wrote a rather detailed post titled The Ziggy Switkowski Report: Is Nuclear in Australia’s Futureabout the various sides of the nuclear debate in Australia. Not only did she discuss the soon to be released Report, but she also pointed readers to a new anti-nuclear web site titled energyscience.org.au.

She included a discussion about the efforts of the fossil fuel industry and its political supporters to try to blunt any optimism about the prospects that Australia’s entry into nuclear power would bring increased prosperity. According to many in that industry, efforts that encourage nuclear power or try to make the fossil fuel industry pay for its damage to the environment would be harmful for Australian businesses.

(MP3 – 15.6MB – 45 min)

[audio:http://atomic.thepodcastnetwork.com/audio/tpn_atomic_20061107_37.mp3]

Listen to Atomic Show #037 Here!

Shane and I chatted about recent announcements by Morocco, Algeria, UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia that they have been talking with the International Atomic Energy Agency about developing nuclear power programs. All of the countries have indicated that they are interested in using nuclear power in cogeneration plants that produce useful products like fresh water in addition to electricity.

One of the key factors to consider is that oil producing countries currently have large reserves of cash, a key ingredient for a successful nuclear power plant development project. In addition, as energy producers, these countries have a base of people that understand the geopolitical importance of the industry, the importance of working carefully around high energy systems, and the impact that the energy industry can have on prosperity.

We talked about desalting plants, production of uranium from sea water, creating fertilizer from atmospheric nitrogen, and history of nuclear programs in the Middle Eastern area.

Here are a few links containing information that might enhance your understanding of the show.

ORNL Review – Chapter 5: Balancing Act

Iran’s quest for power has deep roots

(MP3 – 17.9MB – 52 min)

[audio:http://atomic.thepodcastnetwork.com/audio/tpn_atomic_20061010_32.mp3]

Listen to Atomic Show #032 Here!

Ruth Sponsler is an amateur mineral collector, a resident of the beautiful mountains of North Carolina and an active supporter of the use of nuclear energy. She blogs at We Support Lee.

Shane and I invited her onto the show to talk about her unusual hobby and find out how she goes about finding minerals, particularly those that contain uranium and thorium.

In addition to talking about mineral collecting, we spoke about local (to North Carolina) nuclear politics, European role models for energy production, and a bit of nuclear family history – Ruth’s mother knew people like Enrico Fermi and Leo Szliard.

We also discussed high mileage automobiles – Ruth drives a hybrid Prius while I have been driving a VW Jetta TDI (Turbo Diesel Injected) since 2001. Shane mentioned something about VW’s diesel production for the US – here is a link that provides a bit more detail VW and TDI for the future

The show concludes with a special guest appearance by some of Ruth’s minerals.

Following the show, you will hear a short promo for Hobo Radio, part of The Podcast Network line up of independently produced podcasts. I think I recognized the tune being whistled in the background as “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” by Bobby McFerrin. Of course, the snippets are too short to violate any copyright laws!

We hope you enjoyed this episode, especially hearing a new voice with a different perspective on nuclear matters. We plan to bring you more of those kinds of interviews – in fact, if you are interested or know someone that we should talk to, please do not hesitate to make a comment or suggestion.

For a variety of reasons, a large portion of the nuclear people that I know tend towards being conservative Republicans who believe that “Environmentalists” share much of the blame for the difficulties that their favorite technology has had in the marketplace and in public perception.

I challenge that belief and ask them to reason a little more deeply. Though there are some vocal opponents to nuclear power that are liberal Democrats, there are also many who are conservative Republicans. Though there are people that claim to be Environmentalists that oppose nuclear energy developments, there are also some very prominent people in the environmental movement that favor nuclear energy – and there always have been. James Lovelock and Patrick Moore are only the most recent. In the 1950s, some very prominent and powerful Democrats – including Al Gore Sr, Henry “Scoop” Jackson, and John F. Kennedy – were big nuclear power supporters.

On numerous occasions, I have also asked people to ask themselves a few tough, logically based questions.

1) Which party has supporters that like the status quo more than radical change?
2) Why would someone who is really concerned about clean air and water, uncluttered landscapes, and global climate change actively oppose a technology clean enough and compact enough to run inside sealed submarines?
3) Which party should favor large projects that employ thousands of people, many of whom are union members?

Then I ask them to tell me again why they believe that the Republicans are on their side and the environmental movement is not.

One particular prominent Democrat that gets misunderstood by many nukes is Al Gore, Jr. For many years, he has been identified with the environmental movement. Through his writing, (Earth in the Balance – 1992 and An Inconvenient Truth – 2006) film making and speaking he has made a consistent plea for people to take better care of the Earth and its natural resources, including its people.

In his climate change wake up messages, he occasionally mentions nuclear power and expresses doubt that it can solve the problems that he sees, but his statements are never what I would consider to be antinuclear. As I understand and interpret his words, he is simply expressing his view of the industry and its ability to get things done based on prior history. Here is an example statement from a recent speech:(Note: you can find more of the context of the speech and a discussion about it at Al Gore’s Speech)

While I am not opposed to nuclear power and expect to see some modest increased use of nuclear reactors, I doubt that they will play a significant role in most countries as a new source of electricity.

Read that sentence carefully and remember that there are hundreds of countries in the world, only a handful of which are seriously considering massive new nuclear power projects. Remember also that the nuclear industry, for all its operational successes, has not been very successful in getting new plants financed, politically approved and constructed.

One of the reasons why I believe that Al Gore is telling the truth when he says he does not oppose nuclear power is that I remember reading about how much his father favored the technology. Senator Al Gore, Sr. was a member of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and once proposed legislation to allow the Atomic Energy Commission to build a number of nuclear power plants to feed its own facilities as a way to encourage the development of a commercial nuclear power industry. He saw the technology as one way for public power to help improve people’s lives. As a Senator from Tennessee he was also influential in getting approvals for the Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear power projects.

Most people who admire their parents gain much of their insight and attitudes from them. It would seem a long stretch to believe that Al Gore, a man who chose the same profession as his father, would decide that he was wrong about such an important issue.

In case you are wondering, I am a registered Republican, but I have not voted for that party in national elections for at least a dozen years.

The Amarillo Globe News, a local paper with a well organized web site, is telling this story for the world to see. Though many of us in the podcasting a blogging world recognize the power of the internet and call it a new media, we do not have a monopoly on bits and electrons. There are many people in traditional media that also get the fact that there is a new way to share information with the world.

I think it is very interesting that a small paper – reported max circulation of less than 63,000 in a moderately sized town like Amarillo, Texas – which had a population of about 174,000 people as of the last census in 2000 – is taking advantage of its local access to report on a major story that is being overlooked in many larger newspapers. Soon, there will be major papers and journalists that get interested in the story, but they will find themselves scooped by the Globe News which has already been able to begin telling the story to the whole world.

We definitely live in a new era.

View from Australia: Uranium policy shift is roiling Australians by Raymond Bonner International Herald Tribune

For a view from the anti-nuclear establishment, you might want to read PM’s nuclear dreaming: enriching Australia? by Jim Green in the Green-Left Weekly

With all due humility, I think I fielded them pretty well. Please check out the show and let Cam and us know what you thought.

[audio:http://atomic.thepodcastnetwork.com/audio/tpn_atomic_20060620_019.mp3]

Listen to Atomic Show #019 Here!

This week Shane and I talked about recent nuclear developments in Canada, about the Ontario energy plan, and about technical choices and opportunities in the nuclear energy business in Canada.

We discuss the potential use of CANDU technology for tar sands oil production and the potential use of SLOWPOKE reactors for district heating systems.

During the show we promised a link to the recent Living on Earth segment on new nuclear power plants. You can find it under the title of Living on Earth: New Nukes for North America.

We welcome your comments. As a matter of fact, the topic for this show was a direct result of a request by one of our listeners following last week’s show about nuclear power in Europe.

[audio:http://atomic.thepodcastnetwork.com/audio/tpn_atomic_20060530_017.mp3]

Listen to Atomic Show #017 Here!

Shane and I decided to try to stick our American noses into Australia’s growing conversation about whether or not to enter into the nuclear power business as more than just a supplier of 25% of the world’s yellowcake uranium, the raw material that is refined and manufactured into fuel elements for nuclear power plants.

We discuss the fact that Australia has about 41% of the world’s proven uranium reserves within its borders, the fact that the country has not yet built any nuclear power stations (it does have some well respected research reactor facilities) and the fact that the nuclear power industry faces some competition for markets by the coal industry.

We mention the following information sources – here are the links so that you can get to the original material yourself and verify if we know what we are talking about. Please be a critical thinker when learning about this controversial topic.

Nuclear Energy Prospects in Australia

Let’s talk about nuclear power and other energy sources

Sharing the vision for a nuclear future

Shane and Rod provide a different take on a current debate regarding the use of enriched uranium. There is a notion among a certain kind of politically educated person that the only valid use of enriched uranium is to produce weapons that can be used to assure mutual destruction. Rod and Shane explain that enriched uranium is merely uranium where a major portion of the U-238 had been removed leaving U-235, which is the isotope that fissions most easily.

This process not only enables the production of bombs by a team of people with sufficient engineering and mechanical skills, but it also enables the construction of very small and safe research reactors and small power reactors. These small reactors without a lot of neutron absorbing U-238 can be used for experiments, education, and power production in remote areas. In other words, they are something that is quite useful for a countries that have massive commercial nuclear power plants and for countries that do not need massive commercial power plants but want to learn more about nuclear technology or have distributed power needs that can best be served by small power plants.

Shane and Rod then shift gears completely to a discussion of energy efficiency and talk a little about Amory Lovins, who has been one of the gurus of the energy efficiency community for the past 30 years. Listen carefully, you might learn a little known tidbit about Mr. Lovins early academic career.