Nice to see a description from Idaho Samizdat’s Dan Yurman of the blogger event last week. Here’s a snippet:

While the mainstream news media panel was dissecting their coverage of the nuclear energy industry, a group of 45 people met Tuesday Nov 17 to discuss how social media is making an impact.  One of the themes of the evening round table discussion is how nuclear bloggers are taking myths out of the debate. 

…Areva is the only major nuclear energy firm in the U.S. that has paid any attention to social media in terms of people outside the firm who develop independent content.

The blogger meeting was organized by Rod Adams, Atomic Insights; Dave Bradish, NEI; John Wheeler, ThisWeekInNuclear, and Dan Yurman, Idaho Samizdat.  Corporate support for the conference room and refreshments was provided by Areva and CoolHandNuke.

There’s a lot more detail in the full post… go read the whole thing!

As we’ve mentioned before, the American Nuclear Society’s Winter Meeting is going to be held right here in Washington, DC, just a stone’s throw away from AREVA North America’s offices in Bethesda, Maryland. We’re pleased to join Cool Hand Nuke in hosting an informal dialogue on Social Media and Nuclear Energy, talking with bloggers and industry representatives about how nuclear energy is represented in the blogosphere and what we can all do together to improve the conversation.

The meetup will be held this coming Tuesday night, November 17, from 6:30-8:30pm at the OMNI Shoreham Hotel on Calvert St NW. We’ll be providing some refreshments. We’re looking forward to meeting in person a lot of people we’ve only known through our blog interactions and on our monthly blogger conference calls. If you’re going to be at the ANS Winter Meetings, please be sure to stop by! All are welcome!

(Thanks to Dan Yurman of Idaho Samizdat for starting the ball rolling on this!)

Dan Yurman of Idaho Samizdat is putting together an informal social event on Tuesday, November 17th for nuclear energy bloggers attending the winter meeting of the American Nuclear Society. This winter’s meeting is right in our backyard (AREVA’s North America headquarters is in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington DC). You can read all the details over at Idaho Samizdat. Thanks for putting this together, Dan!

We missed this last week because of the excitement of the Ohio announcement, but we wanted to make sure we highlighted a panel discussion of nuclear bloggers at the American Nuclear Society meeting in Atlanta that happened last week. Several of our colleagues in the nuclear energy blogging community participated: Rod Adams (Atomic Insights), John Wheeler (This Week in Nuclear), Kirk Sorensen (Energy from Thorium), and Dan Yurman (Idaho Samizdat).

From Dan Yurman’s write-up on the panel discussion at The Energy Collective, an excellent summary of how nuclear energy bloggers are changing the nuclear energy news landscape:

There are not many serious bloggers in the U.S. who cover the nuclear industry on a full time basis. There are perhaps fewer than a dozen who do blog frequently about the topic. The difference for this group is a commitment to consistent high quality content and in-depth analysis despite not being part of the nuclear trade press. That doesn’t mean we’re not capable of heavy lifting when it comes to explaining the key issues of the nuclear industry. . . .

What has happened with nuclear energy and the new media is that substantive news and analysis, often with industry thought and opinion leaders, is now available online without having to come up with the equivalent of several months of car payments. This means that some of the news and the “so what” analysis is now reaching an audience composed of mostly of the general public. What’s interesting is that according to Google Analytics, most of the same utilities and EPC firms are also reading the blogs.

The rest of the write-up includes some very interesting thoughts on the differences between nuclear energy bloggers and the future of nuclear energy blogging… but we couldn’t pass up a favorable mention of this blog by John Wheeler:

Wheeler noted that Areva’s recent forays into outreach to bloggers may cause other large nuclear firms to take a look at their efforts toward public transparency. According to Wheeler, these firms may decide they don’t need to talk to bloggers and are perfectly satisfied with how they are interacting with the public.

We’re glad our efforts in reaching out to the blogging community are being recognized, and we’re especially glad to be part of the nuclear energy blogging community. You can read the rest of Dan Yurman’s write-up on the panel here.