Carnival of Nuclear Energy 21

1. Nuclear Green has a post that focuses on the Efforts of the Energy from Thorium community to create a Grand Thorium Plan over the last two and a half years. This effort was inspired by an article titled “A Grand Solar Plan,” which appeared in Scientific American in January 2008. Despite notable flaws in the Grand Solar Plan, the EfT planning effort persisted for over 500 comments, even though no plan has emerged to date. It would appear that elements of a plan do exist, and that the EfT community has made significant progress in informing the public of the Thorium energy option.

2. Idaho Samizdat reports that Germany has a bill that saves its nuclear reactors but at what price? The move comes with steep taxes on the reactors and a delusional energy policy.


3. The ANS Nuclear Cafe has a guest contributor Ted Rockwell. Guest contributor Ted Rockwell questions the ‘special status’ accorded to nuclear technologies in regulatory circles and in public perception. Requirements that don’t make a nuclear power plant safer, or cheaper, or better in some way merely add to the cost and saddle the developer with a device or procedure that may bring problems of its own. Adding more and more “safety” requirements does not necessarily make a system safer.

Rockwell outlines the rewards and penalties associated with being special and concludes that there is wisdom in the advice, “Don’t fix what ain’t broke.”

4. Atomic Insights reports that Michael Brune of the Sierra Club discusses actions that the club is taking to reduce the environmental impact of extracting and burning fossil fuels. The actions should make nuclear energy more competitive. If they are not against us, they are for us.

5. The Areva north America blog has an article that Expanding nuclear energy makes sense for Americans

As we consider ways to meet our nation’s energy demands and increase our energy security while reducing our CO2 emissions, building new nuclear power plants makes a lot of sense. Each new nuclear power plant that we build also will create thousands of jobs and spur billions of dollars of investment in local communities. In this economic environment, who wouldn’t welcome new jobs and investment in their community?

6. Yes Vermont Yankee discusses the Energy Education project

The Ethan Allen Institute launched a new Energy Education Project , designed to educate Vermonters about their energy choices without the usual “hot air.”

7. In July 2010, an industry organisation with members such as Toyota, Toshiba and Hitachi, IThEMS unveiled their plans to build the world’s first commercial Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor (Th-MSR)

8. Lawrenceville Plasma Physics is almost halfway to their goals of proving out the viability of their Dense Plasma Fusion approach.

Total commercialization and success would mean energy would be clean and 50 times cheaper than today.

The new schedule is to try to achieve proof of commercial viability in 8 months, which is 5 months longer than the previous Dec, 2010 target. The delay was because they did not expect the need to do work and research on switch problems.

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