Free Republic

Will French nuclear power plants be able to operate for up to 80 years? What will be the cumulative effects of climate change on reactors? What will happen to future radioactive waste? On Tuesday, January 24, senators are expected to adopt the nuclear acceleration bill, which aims to facilitate the start of work on the sites where six new European Pressurized Reactors (EPRs) could be built. Concurrently, the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) has called for a “global and systemic” reflection on safety issues as part of the debate on the future of the energy system.The discussions need to cover...

Japan has announced a major U-turn in its energy policy after the Asian nation adopted a new policy promoting greater use of nuclear energy, effectively ending an 11-year prohibition and phase-out that was triggered by the Fukushima disaster. Under the new policy, Japan will maximize the use of existing nuclear reactors by restarting as many as possible, prolong the operating life of old reactors beyond their 60-year limit and also develop next-generation reactors to replace them.The proposed legislation marks a complete reversal of the nuclear safety measures the country adopted after a powerful tsunami hit caused three of its six...

The U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore Lab (LLL) in Northern California has recently gotten a lot of attention. It was just announced that they finally fused some hydrogen atoms and got more energy out than they put in — a net positive result. Drew Magary, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, throws a little cold water on the event by adding that the lasers causing the fusion reaction were powered by electricity generated at way less than perfect efficiency.hrowing more cold water, I was told by someone who worked on the facility in question that they already had a...

JUST IN - EU Parliament declares nuclear power and gas as "green" energy.

The Biden administration's new top dog at a key nuclear energy agency is an MIT-trained engineer whose sexual fetishes include tying up his partner while he eats dinner and watches Star Trek. Sam Brinton was appointed to serve as deputy assistant secretary of spent fuel and waste disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy at DOE last month after serving a stint at the gay and transgender suicide prevention organization the Trevor Project. Besides working at the Trevor Project, Brinton also holds a master's degree in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and had previously advised former President...

Satan is in the WH.

Power companies run by billionaire friends Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have chosen Wyoming to launch the first Natrium nuclear reactor project on the site of a retiring coal plant. TerraPower, founded by Gates about 15 years ago, and power company PacifiCorp, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, said on Wednesday that the exact site of the Natrium reactor demonstration plant was expected to be announced by the end of the year.... ...The project features a 345 megawatt sodium-cooled fast reactor with molten salt-based energy storage that could boost the system’s power output to 500MW during peak power demand. TerraPower...

TAE Technologies, the world’s largest private fusion company, has announced it will have a commercially viable nuclear fusion power plant by 2030, which puts it years—or even decades—ahead of other fusion technology companies. The California-based company has raised $880 million in funding for its hydrogen-boron reactor. This reactor isn’t a traditional tokamak or stellarator; instead, it uses a confined particle acceleration mechanism that produces and confines plasma. All fusion technology has plasma, which mimics the extreme reactions that power all the stars—it’s what we’re emulating when we make fusion energy experiments. “Plasma is an oozy substance; the challenge of containing...

Nearly 4 million Texans lost power during a historic ice storm last week, a storm that ravaged a broad swath of the country. As PJ Media’s Bryan Preston noted, two highly-touted forms of green energy, wind and solar, took big hits during the blackout. Natural gas energy production increased to compensate for it. Another energy source proved rather reliable during the blackout, however. This energy source does not involve fossil fuel emissions, but climate activists often ignore it. This more reliable energy source is none other than nuclear power. While nuclear power did take a hit during the Texas blackout,...

Now that Texas has experienced the joys of primitive energy, perhaps some are willing to investigate the truth about nuclear energy. The Tokaimura nuclear accident in 1999 was the result of pouring too much fuel into a tank of water and creating an undesired nuclear reactor.But that process — pouring fuel into water to create power, except in controlled amounts — is how simple a perfect reactor can and should be. If our electricity grid were built on perfect reactors, we would never have power outages, our electricity would be cheap, and we could achieve our non–fossil fuel goals much...

Here in the state of Texas, we’re currently experiencing a freak chill with temperatures that dropped well below the southern part of Alaska. Many residents have fled their homes due to not having any power to heat, thanks to the fact that Texas has made around a quarter of its power source “green energy,” mostly in the form of wind farms.As Tucker Carlson pointed out last night, Texas shouldn’t be having an energy problem at all. The state of Texas is the largest source of natural gas in the world. He likened running out of power in Texas to starving...

As the United States faces several key challenges simultaneously - COVID-19, the economic crisis, social injustice and the rising threat of climate change - the federal government is looking for solutions that help address multiple issues at once. Recent commitments by President Biden are encouraging: by tying the post-pandemic economic recovery to investments in clean energy, we can tackle all four existential crises at the same time. During his campaign, Biden ran on a sweeping clean energy plan, pledging to achieve a carbon-free electricity sector by 2035 with net zero emissions economy-wide by 2050 as part of his "all of...

There are a hundred reasons why nuclear energy can play a massive role in the future of American power and prosperity.It creates high-paying jobs better than any other energy source. Its fuel sources are abundant. It fuels NASA’s most innovative projects. It offers a solution to conservation concerns without devastating the economy. And despite its sensationalist image, it is far safer than fossil fuels, and about the same in safety as solar and wind.“Nuclear provides 55% of our country’s clean energy, and about 20% of our power, and it’s one of the most reliable generators that we have on the...

The world is facing a time of great uncertainty. Amidst a pandemic, a global recession, and immense civil unrest, we are seeing global democracy also come under attack. China is using the current state of the world as an opportunity to continue their imperialist prospects by cracking down on the formerly autonomous city of Hong Kong and creeping into India.  The EU has been reluctant to condemn China for its actions in Hong Kong and its role in allowing COVID-19 spread. This leaves the United States with great responsibility, standing as the lone maverick against despotism. The question now becomes: what...

When John Barrasso, a Republican from oil and uranium-rich Wyoming who has spent years blocking climate change legislation, introduced a bill this year to promote nuclear energy, he added a twist: a desire to tackle global warming. Mr. Barrasso’s remarks — “If we are serious about climate change, we must be serious about expanding our use of nuclear energy” — were hardly a clarion call to action. Still they were highly unusual for the lawmaker who, despite decades of support for nuclear power and other policies that would reduce planet-warming emissions, has until recently avoided talking about them in the...

<p>Don’t let HBO’s acclaimed five-part series Chernobyl (HBO, IMDb, Wikipedia) demonize all nuclear power in your mind. It made this kid eager to read Mac MacDowell’s important June 3 article here at American Thinker. In “Rare Earth Minerals and Thorium,” MacDowell explains a different type of nuclear reactor that would do more than just help us produce clean energy. “Global Warmists” would do well to read it.</p>

I believe the future of energy is nuclear. Many others do, too.Despite the unfounded fears surrounding their safety, almost all major economies in the world have embraced nuclear technology with both arms.Here is a look at the current nuclear energy scenario and recent developments that offer a hope of a bright and secure energy future.  Nuclear Energy: Standing Tall and StrongIn 2017, nuclear plants supplied 2,487 Terra Watt-hours (TWh) of electricity, constituting nearly 11 percent of all electricity generated globally. More than 50 countries (with a total of 450 operable reactors) are currently using nuclear energy.In some developed countries, the...

President Trump recently said that he expects to ride to re-election on the back of the Green New Deal offered by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The New York Democrat’s plan calls for the U.S. to engage in a “10-year national mobilization” that would require “meeting 100 percent of the energy demand in America through clean, renewable, and zero-emissions power sources.” If that’s the goal the Democrats embrace, then they’re going to need a heck of a lot of nuclear plants. The Green New Deal doesn’t mention nuclear. But Troy Singleton does. Singleton is a Democratic state senator from Burlington County...

01/18/2018 NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy successfully performed their initial tests on a miniature nuclear power system, and will try a more developed test in March. Reuters reports: Months-long testing began in November at the energy department’s Nevada National Security Site, with an eye toward providing energy for future astronaut and robotic missions in space and on the surface of Mars, the moon or other solar system destinations. You may remember that human astronauts walked on the moon only a handful of times back in the 1960s and 1970s, and never for longer than three consecutive days. Longer...

TOKYO - U.S. nuclear developer Westinghouse Electric Co plans to seek bankruptcy protection from creditors on Thursday as it struggles to limit losses that have thrown its Japanese parent Toshiba Corp into crisis, people familiar with Toshiba's thinking said. Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse, crippled by cost overruns at two U.S. power plant projects in Georgia and South Carolina, will file for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, the people told Reuters on Thursday. One of the sources has direct knowledge of the decision and one has been briefed on the matter. Toshiba media representatives could not immediately be reached...