ANS Nuclear Cafe

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

The governor of Vermont last year established the "Energy Generation Siting Policy Commission" after citizens protested  a proposed wind farm (meanwhile, the legislature proposed a wind farm moratorium bill). The main purpose of the governor's initiative was to evaluate how much local input should be required in energy siting decisions.

As I discussed last fall, a federal appeals court ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to perform more thorough evaluations in support of its new Waste Confidence Rule, particularly with respect to the potential impacts of long-term storage of spent fuel at plant sites. While those evaluations are being performed, the NRC has suspended all new plant licensing and plant license renewals.

The 160th Carnival of Nuclear Energy is up at Meredith Angwin's "Yes Vermont Yankee" blog.  You can click here to access this latest edition in a long-running tradition (over three years now!) that showcases the best pro-nuclear blogs each week.

By Will Davis

Company Will Continue Its Work with State Agencies on Electric Grid Reliability

Meet Tim Lucas, Ph.D., a nuclear engineer who is piloting his sailboat around the world, spreading the news of nuclear technology - and many other rather amazing activities. Why is circumnavigating the globe a perfect job for a nuclear engineer? Watch and find out!

The Breakthrough Institute recently compiled some of the tough questions it is frequently asked about nuclear power by fellow environmentalists. The answers (originally published at BTI's Energy and Climate) illustrate that if we're serious about climate change and alleviating global poverty, we need nuclear power on a large scale. 

As a nuclear engineer by education and someone whose family has worked in the nuclear energy field, I've never doubted the safe and environmentally-friendly electricity that nuclear energy provides. For those of us who have been advocates our entire lives, it is often difficult, however, to see why some people are afraid of and opposed to nuclear energy.

The 159th Carnival of Nuclear Energy is up right now at Next Big Future.  You can click here to get to this latest edition of the nuclear blogosphere's flagship promotion.

Last week at the ANS Nuclear Cafe Matinee we caught up with the latest milestones in nuclear construction going on at the V.C. Summer site in South Carolina.  Now, let's take a look at history in the making at Plant Vogtle in Burke County, Georgia, where construction of two new AP1000 reactors is quickly moving onward and upward.  How in the world do you make a nuclear power plant?  Watch, and find out.

The June 2013 edition of the research journal Nuclear Science and Engineering is available both electronically and in hard copy for American Nuclear Society member subscribers and others.

City people sometimes move to a farming community and then are somewhat shocked that the beautiful fields are actually not just for looking at and painting. A farmer's fields are a sort of factory. The fields produce stuff. They take inputs of raw materials, such as seeds, fertilizer, water, pesticides, and so forth. With these inputs, they produce food. Some farms are organic, and they use non-chemical fertilizer and more "natural" methods of pest control, but the goal is the same. A farmer's fields are supposed to produce food. That's the goal of farming.

The 158^th Carnival of Nuclear Energy is up at Atomic Power Review.  You can click here to access the latest edition of this long-running weekly compilation of top posts from the internet's nuclear blogs.

The 2013 Conference on Nuclear Training and Education took place on February 3-6 in Jacksonville, Florida. More than 300 participants and 26 exhibitors contributed to make this conference a success. Trainers and educators from industry and higher education covered a range of topics, from operator fundamentals to leadership strategies in the nuclear industry.

America's first new commercial nuclear energy reactors in 30 years are under construction at the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station in Fairfield County, South Carolina, and the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Burke County, Georgia.

The news has finally come out on a long-awaited subject: the first determination by Japan's new Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) that a nuclear plant in Japan lies on a seismic fault determined to be active.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Mark your calendar to attend the Young Professionals Congress sessions this November in Washington, DC!