On May 17, 2012, I participated in a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) public meeting in Tarrytown, NY, which was apparently one of a series of occasional meetings to receive input from the public. The purpose of this meeting was described as:
Discuss the NRC’s…
(Source: allthingsnuclear)
U.S. approves first new nuclear power plant in a generation
There are plans to build the first new nuclear plant in 30 years in spite of safety concerns stemming from Japan’s Fukushima disaster.
1829
Jons Berzelius discovers a new element, thorium, in samples sent to him by the Reverend Hans Esmark. Thorium will later be found to be somewhat abundant in the Earth’s crust.
1896
Henri Becquerel discovers that pitchblende, an ore containing uranium, causes a photographic plate to darken.
1897
J.J. Thomson discovers the first subatomic particle, the negatively-charged electron. This is the first indication that atoms have internal structure. He later proposes the “plum-pudding” model of the atom, with electrons dispersed in diffuse positive matter. This simplistic model explains why atoms can have no net charge even though they are composed of charged materials.
1898
Marie Curie and G.C.Schmidt independently discovered that thorium and its compounds are radioactive. M. Curie found higher than expected activity in some minerals containing uranium and thorium.
Pierre and Marie Curie isolate polonium and radium from pitchblende. Both are later found to be products from the decay of uranium.
1902
November 17. Eugene Paul Wigner is born in Budapest, Hungary.
1905
Albert Einstein describes the equivalence of mass and energy through his equation E = mc2
My whole life I have been for nuclear power. The main reason being it has been the field my father has worked in for nearly 30 years and it paid our families bills, put clothes on our backs and has given us a nice life. Many want to argue that nuclear power is unsafe and is bad for the…
My father was an engineer, and when I was a child, he told me the story of Prometheus, a famous Greek myth in which Zeus grows angry at Prometheus for giving humans the wisdom of fire, knowledge capable of bringing on disaster. As punishment, Zeus chains Prometheus to a rock, where an eagle pecks incessantly at his liver. Today, I cannot help but remember that story when I think about the development of nuclear technology, a modern-day incarnation of the wisdom of fire.
In college, I studied science and technology, and ever since, I have had a great admiration for the Pugwash conferences, a forum dedicated to the elimination of nuclear weapons (the group won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993). That is because nuclear weapons, which have the power to kill large numbers of people indiscriminately, are fundamentally at odds with the purpose of science, which is to contribute to people’s well-being. To put it another way: Nuclear weapons contradict the very nature of humanity. In fact, this concern was the major reason why I aspired to be a political leader.
What if, instead of relying on more foreign oil, however close (Canada and the Keystone line) we used this funny thing called Nuclear Power.
It’s SUPER efficient and VERY clean (as long as people decide not to be assholes, but that’s always true, even with wind and solar) and if we can build a…
America has 104 nuclear power plants at 65 sites. The nation is divided into 4 nuclear regions. The first has 25 plants, second has 35 plants, third has 24, and the fourth has 20. All these plants only produce about 20% of the electricity for America. The youngest is 16 years while the oldest is 43 years old.
The data is from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission website.
