Carnival of Nuclear Energy 167

The Carnival of Nuclear Energy 167 is up at Yes Vermont Yankee

Canadian Energy Issues – NRDC feigns outrage over 1.2 billion tons of carbon from oil sands in Canada; supports 50 times as much carbon from gas-fired generation in America posted by Steve Aplin at Canadian Energy Issues

Atomic Insights – Galen Winsor was a hands-on nuclear expert in the fullest sense of the phrase. Before irrational radiation protection rules were imposed, he and his colleagues directly handled used fuel. They limiting their exposure time and depended on just one of the “time, distance and shielding” trifecta of radiation protection. According to his story, Winsor and his colleagues knew enough about the material that they were handling to prevent most skin burns, but they had a job to do and did not allow a desire to lower doses below the level of immediate risk to impede their successful accomplishment.

Throughout Winsor’s talk, he points out the physical value of the irradiated material that some people insist on calling high level waste. He asks the final important questions – “Who owns the plutonium?” and “How much is it worth?” He recognizes that using it beneficially threatens a number of powerful interests.

Unfortunately, Winsor’s message did not receive widespread attention in the 1980s when he gave his talks. He did not live in the internet era and did not have access to tools like blogs and YouTube. Fortunately for us, someone saved video tapes of his talks and converted them to a digital format. A couple of days ago, an Atomic Insights reader sent me a link to a longer, 1.5 hour compilation video hosted by Liberty in Our Time. That video has been on the web for a year and has been seen by just 25,000 people; that number needs to grow rapidly.

Nextbigfuture – The EIA has a new energy forecast out to 2040.

They forecast world energy to go up about 56% but
* world electricity will go up 93%
* non-OECD will go up 90%
* nuclear energy will more than double

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