In addition to building nuclear power plants, a robust nuclear energy infrastructure requires a means to store and recycle spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and other high level nuclear waste (HLW) products.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 and Amendments of 1987 established a national policy and schedule for developing geologic repositories for the disposal of SNF and HLW. Those deadlines have come and gone; the cancellation of Yucca Mountain was only the latest failed attempt to make this policy a reality.
Nuclear fuel reprocessing traces its roots to work started in 1943 but the development work was suspended in the mid-1970s after several failed projects. The task of finding a new long-term storage location has now been assigned to yet another committee and SNF reprocessing remains in limbo in the U.S.…
Continue Reading“Many European countries are waking up to the disaster of extravagant subsidies to renewable energy. But Britain isn’t. The lesson for Americans is simply that throwing money at renewable energy is a huge economic mistake, but politicians can keep the racket going regardless. It will take robust opposition to stop the United States repeating Europe’s mistakes.”
Renewable energy has proved an expensive and unreliable source of energy everywhere it has been tried on a significant scale. And now there is a big divide among the major European economies that have enthusiastically adopted wind, solar and the other renewables.
While the UK ploughs ahead by throwing good money after bad, Italy, Spain and Germany are cutting back on their taxpayer/ratepayer-funded generosity toward politically correct energies. France, meanwhile, with its abundant nuclear power, has smartly stayed out of the game.…
Continue ReadingLast week, an advance copy of a paper to appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) was released which reported that a collection of “experts” suggests that climate tipping points (codename for something bad but we don’t know exactly what) would be knocked over by 2200 if we stay on our current greenhouse gas emissions pathway (for about the next 200 years). Underlying these views is the experts’ opinions as to what the earth’s equilibrium climate sensitivity—the rise in global temperatures resulting from a doubling of the earth carbon dioxide concentration—likely is.
But do the experts opinions actually reflect the scientific knowledge on these subjects?
The answer is no.
In fact, the experts’ opinions tended towards the extreme, despite recent science which should have reeled them in.…
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