by Jim Hopf

This week's presentation features one of the biggest stars in the world of nuclear energy today: Plant Vogtle's expansion project. You'll see the progress on site first hand, as always presented to us by the affable Joe Washington. Click the link and enjoy this Friday's Nuclear Matinee.

"Technical Area Five" or TA-V at Sandia National Laboratories encompasses a fascinating array of nuclear research activitites, which are detailed in this five-and-a-half minute video.

The development of any competitive technology has always been marked by a headlong rush by competitors in the field to achieve before others. The dash to develop workable nuclear power plants (no matter what their energy was employed to do) certainly saw this phenomenon from the late 1940s onward. In June we celebrate the anniversary of the first commercial power plant to be placed on the grid anywhere. It was not in the United States. It was in the Soviet Union.

The versatile, powerful and unique ATR (Advanced Test Reactor) at Idaho National Laboratory is featured in this video describing it, the history of materials testing reactors that led up to it, and the uses for this amazing facility. Fuel handling and storage are also shown and described.

The only power facility in California that does not use any of the state's precious fresh water is the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo County. It can even produce additional freshwater for the nearby community.

Editors note: On June 11, 2015, Eugene Grecheck became the 2015-2016 president of the American Nuclear Society. The following is his vision for nuclear and ANS.

South Korea's Shin-Kori units 3 and 4 (left pair) and 5 and 6 (right pair.) Preconstruction art courtesy KEPCO.

by Will Davis, reporting from the 2015 ANS Annual Meeting

by Will Davis, reporting from the ANS Annual Meeting in San Antonio

By Jim Conca

I work with people in the nuclear energy industry. My goal is to ensure that everyone I work with ends up being a better member of the industry. Smarter about how things need to be done, or why things should be done. BUT, there's much more to nuclear technology and today, I got a reminder.

The 261st edition of the Nuclear Energy Blog Carnival has posted at Atomic Power Review.

Editor's note: Josep is a 17-year-old high school student in Spain. He is a nuclear energy enthusiast keenly interested in promoting both nuclear energy and renewables in his home country and abroad, for the betterment of man's energy future.

Opinion piece for ANS Nuclear Cafe by Will Davis

by Sophie Prevot

ANS Nuclear Cafe is proud to host the 259th Nuclear Energy Blogger Carnival.  This rotating feature travels around the various pro-nuclear, English-language blogs every week and showcases the top blog posts of those blogs, as submitted by the blog authors or administrators.  Let's get to it!

Yesterday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that its commissioners had approved the award of a Construction and Operating License (COL) for DTE Energy's prospective Fermi Unit 3, to be built on the site of the existing Fermi-2 near Detroit, Mich. The COL will also notably be the first for the GE Hitachi ESBWR, or "Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor," a Gen-III+ nuclear plant with passive safety.

Chai Jing's documentary Under the Dome has been viewed by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, raising global awareness of China's air pollution crisis. Beyond merely stirring up controversy-China has taken steps to censor the film online-Under the Dome is an entry point to a larger discussion regarding China's adoption of "clean" energy, namely its rapid expansion of nuclear power.

Editor's Note: Evan Twarog is a new nuclear enthusiast writer from New Hampshire. We welcome his first article on the ANS Nuclear Cafe.

As I've discussed in many previous ANS Nuclear Cafe posts (see: How Can Nuclear Construction Costs be Reduced & Cost/Benefit Analyses of Nuclear Requirements), my belief is that the primary reasons for the lack of nuclear power's growth/success are the extremely burdensome requirements and regulations. They are vastly more strict than those applied to competing sources, in terms of dollars spent per life saved, or amount of environmental impact avoided. For various (non-scientific) reasons, nuclear is held to standards that are orders of magnitude higher than those applied to competing sources.