Peer review is a failure
Methane rising
The Trolley Problem has multicultural answers
Heating with Nukes
Nuclear Energy
The last several years have even given skeptics reasons to consider reducing our fossil fuel use and replacing it with something else. The problem is that so many of the “something else” alternatives can’t be counted on to keep our cities powered up (try using solar energy at night), and we currently don’t have the technology to store excess energy for a (literal) rainy or windless day. Sure, lithium-ion batteries are growing in capacity, but they’re not yet city-sized and tend to catch fire from time to time. We need a stable, safe, reliable source of power that doesn’t rely on burning fuel – something like nuclear energy.
The built environment can heat and cool us, human error, debunking the latke, and who is really anti-nuclear power?
I was taking out the trash and recycling the other day, and as I was dumping things into the cans-and-bottles bin and the paper-and-cardboard bin, I started thinking about radioactive waste. Because who doesn’t, right? And in particular, I was wondering yet again why the US disposes of our spent fuel rather than trying to get every bit of utility out of it. We used to – we just stopped. Odd.
While developments will emerge, right now there’s not much information available about apparent problems at the Taishan nuclear power plant. Let's review what is known, and also consider its background, so we have a fuller context. And here are some educated guesses as to what might happen next.
Over the years, I’ve generated tens of thousands of cubic feet of radioactive waste, managing the radioactive waste program at a large Midwestern university, and as the Radiation Safety Officer at a mid-sized university in the Northeast. None of this was glowing – in any color – and none of it looked much different from any of the other laboratory, medical, or remediation waste produced in so many places around the world every year.
Some of my best memories are of the times I spent hiking and camping with my family as a child, Boy Scout, and on leave from the Navy. I have great memories of swimming in rivers, lakes, and ponds; running for the park rangers when bears invaded our campsite, of watching the sunset over the ocean (or rise over the rim of a canyon).
What bothers me is that today, so many of these things can no longer be enjoyed.
The downside of gift-giving, nuclear power redesigned, and a look at one of our first "industrial" foods.
The anti-nuclear crowd uses an assortment of scare tactics to turn public opinion against the use of nuclear power. One of them is highlighting the risk of a serious accident, that might occur when spent nuclear fuel is transported to a disposal site. Is there any validity to this? A visit to the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History in Albuquerque, NM tells us there is not. (It's actually very safe.)
Many homeowners and those buying property are concerned about potential radon-related health issues, specifically having to do with radiation exposure as a cause of cancer. A new publication by Dr. Jerry Cuttler, an advisor at the American Council, dispels that concern using science.
Anti-nuclear activists demand that California s last electricity-generating nuclear reactor the Diablo Canyon plant be shut down based on a host of illusory concerns. But do their claims about the risks to human health and the environment really hold water?
An op-ed in Forbes.com by James Conca notes the benefits of nuclear power in helping to ameliorate, to some extent, the disastrous drought now gripping California (and to a lesser extent, Oregon and Washington). Specifically, he notes the nuclear reactor at Diablo