Dan Yurman at Idaho Samizdat asks some good questions about Copenhagen, climate change issues, and nuclear power:

If you want to pursue a strategy of decarbonization, and you don’t want to sacrifice economic development goals, then the nations of the world have only one form of electricity generation for base load demand to use to make that switch in one generation. Nuclear energy is the answer. Need evidence? Take a look at what India and China are doing.
Climate change is a challenge to the survival of the human species. We created this mess and, if we don’t want to turn into crispy critters on the only planet we have, then we have also have to fix it. To use an analogy from the military, you don’t fight a war with the weapons you wish you had, you fight it with the ones you’ve got.

Al Gore can preach all he wants about renewables, but battery storage technologies to support solar and wind aren’t likely to change in the next decade or so. In short, his plan, however popular with the press and green groups, is a sure fire path to reducing economic growth if relied on as a sole strategy to achieve significant change from fossil fuels.

The nuclear energy industry has some serious challenges ahead to explain itself in these terms. On the other hand, the big U.S. utilities are realists who see uprates to nuclear reactors as being competitive responses to combined cycle natural gas plants. None of the nuclear utilities are going to commit to building a new nuclear reactor until the government stops its denial that it has an obligation to leverage the future of the industry with loan guarantees.

It will be interesting to hear what the U.S. delegation says this coming week about nuclear energy. We’re either going to get more political fig leafs or maybe some real straight talk about what it will take to reduce the growth of greenhouse gases. I’ll be listening. I hope you will too.

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!)

The news out of the United Kingdom on Monday was that they’re going to be giving the go-ahead to start the process of building 10 new nuclear power plants in England and Wales.  According to the BBC, most of the new plants will be built on sites where there are already nuclear power plants in operation.  They’re hoping to fast-track the plants so that they’re ready to start operating by 2018.   As a world leader in nuclear energy AREVA’s EPR™ reactor technology is  already under consideration for a number of these new  plants. 

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband says that developing the plants will create 9,000 jobs and be an important part of the UK’s climate-change plans, along with an increased use of renewables and development of clean coal technology.

The UK gets it: Nuclear power has an essential role to play in the world’s CO2-free energy future.  They’ve decided that investing in the nuclear renaissance is a necessary part of combatting climate change and improving the economic situation for thousands of Britons. 
Will the USA be the next nation to announce a big investment in clean, reliable, CO2-free nuclear energy?  As the discussion about the climate change bill heats up on Capitol Hill, we’re hoping that it will.  The economic and environmental benefits of the nuclear renaissance are apparent.

• For more analysis on this move, we highly recommend Dan Yurman’s excellent write-up.

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.

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!

We do appreciate the review of our recent blogger conference call. From Dan Yurman:

Areva North American President Jacques Besnainou is like a starship captain. This past week he went where no reactor vendor CEO has gone before by opening up, unfiltered by corporate PR, to a group of nuclear energy bloggers. The company has claimed it will practice “transparency” in its communication with the public and the press. This week it got a chance to prove it and it did a pretty good job. . . .

Our hour was up so that ended the first “Jacques talk” session with bloggers. The company is making progress from its assessment a year ago that it had a “blind spot” when it comes to nuclear energy bloggers. The firm promised future sessions with Besnainou and he reportedly came away from the session enthusiastic about the vigorous give and take of the conversation. Hopefully, there will be more of it.

And the write up from Steve Aplin:

The conference call, as I mentioned in my May 14 post, is part of Areva’s groundbreaking North American outreach effort. And I say groundbreaking because the company is not shy about going on the record about some pretty controversial issues.

We had a great time, as did Jacques Besnainou, and we’re finding a good date for the next call that he can attend again. Stay tuned. Also, if you’re a blogger and you’d like to be in on our monthly conference calls, let us know in the comments or send us an email.

Good to see nuclear energy bloggers being recognized at the Wall Street Journal for their blog posts on the state of the industry:

Are Finland’s nuclear woes a cautionary tale for the rest of the industry? Don’t bet on it, say Rod Adams and Dan Yurman.

Dan Yurman of Idaho Samizdat did a write-up about our most recent conference call with a group of nuclear energy bloggers. Thanks for the shout-out! In the just over two months since we started this blog, we’ve received a warm welcome from the nuclear energy blogging community. We’re really glad for the opportunity to be part of the community, and very grateful for the independent bloggers’ willingness to engage with us and ask us the tough questions. As always, if you’ve got any questions or thoughts, please don’t hesitate to comment!