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!

The American Nuclear Society has a new website up! It’s still a bit rough around the edges – Rod Adams over at Atomic Insights says they’re looking for volunteers to work on the site – but they’ve got some good basic information up there for members of the public who want to learn more about nuclear power, as well as some great links to information about education, research, and careers in nuclear power.

Check the site out!

Thanks again to Rod Adams for the tip!

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.

While we’re glad the newspapers are sitting up and taking notice of nuclear power’s place in our 21st-century energy mix, we’ve also seen a lot of attention on the new Piketon project from the nuclear energy blogging and news community. We’re proud to present a round-up of some quick reactions to the news from the nuclear energy bloggers and news sources… and we’re looking forward to more in-depth coverage and analysis from our friends in the community in the coming weeks and months!

Rod Adams at Atomic Insights:

At the risk of overloading you with new posts from Atomic Insights – three in one day is a bit much – I have to share one more story that kind of caught me by surprise. Apparently there is going to be a major announcement staged at Piketon, Ohio, the site of a former enrichment facility, on Thursday, June 18. When I first saw the link to the story in my Google Alert, I thought there must have been a misunderstanding by the journalist at the Columbus Dispatch. That does not appear to be the case . . .

All of the publications have pointed to the importance of creating as many as 4,000 new construction jobs in southern Ohio, a region that has been hit hard by the economic recession since it was already having challenges before our current crisis began.

Dan Yurman at Idaho Samizdat:

If you want to know how serious Areva takes this project, consider the fact that Anne Lauvergeon, the CEO of Areva, was in Ohio for the announcement. She said in a telephone interview with the NYT that nuclear power was the only choice for reliable, low-carbon energy.

From World Nuclear News

A new energy project was launched today based around a new nuclear power reactor on the site of the former uranium enrichment plant at Piketon, Ohio.

The plant is being proposed by a group dubbed the Southern Ohio Clean Energy Park Alliance which consists of site owner USEC, the utility Duke Energy, Areva and UniStar Nuclear Energy.

Thanks for the notice, folks!