15th Carnival of Nuclear Energy at NextBigFuture

Brian Wang has been the driving force behind the Nuclear Energy Carnival. Brian hosts the 15th Carnival of Nuclear Energy at his home blog. Here is an excerpt:

2. From Dan Yurma (Idaho Samizdat) NEI seeks consensus on licensing small reactors

Nuclear industry group leads efforts to overcome regulatory barriers to commercial success. In an exclusive interview with this blog, Paul Genoa, Director of Policy Development at NEI, emphasized the serious nature of the work.

"This isn't a forum for people to trade marketing slides," he said. "We are looking for ways to meet the NRC's requirements, but in new or innovative ways that don't impose unnecessary costs on small reactors."

What NEI hopes to do, according to Genoa, "is to create a new regulatory paradigm for small reactors," and to do it in the next 18 months.

6. Power industry Trend has nuclear computers systems are complex but complex computer systems have been done before.Summary: NRC and other regulators are concerned about the complexity and independence of computer systems for new reactor designs. Such concern is not unexpected. It seems that the NRC and the nuclear industry is facing some of the same computer system issues encountered by the FDA and regulated Biotech and Pharmaceutical manufacturing.

7. Nuclear Green's Charles Barton has NUCLEAR ENERGY: A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE

It was written by three Oak Ridge scientists, including my father, 33 years ago. It looks at the health and safety consequences of choosing coal rather than nuclear power as an energy source. They write, "great concern has been expressed by scientists that the projected release of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion may lead to severe changes in global climate by the end of this century or shortly thereafter. On the other hand, the nuclear fuel cycle may release significant quantities of radioactive gases to the atmosphere and radioactive liquids to the hydrosphere. However, technology is available to contain most of these gases if it becomes necessary, and the potential effects of these radioactive gases and liquids are minimal in comparison to the biological harm associated with emissions from burning coal (variously estimated to be 3 to 125 excess deaths per year from a 1000-MWe coal burning plant)." If anything they underestimated the problems they foresaw.

8. Charles Barton and nucleargreen also wrote a two part post about Australian climate scientist and pro, nuclear blogger, Barry Brook:Barry Brook Charts the Path to the Future

and

Barry Brook has Reason to Celebrate

Barry who became a convert to the nuclear solution less than 2 years ago, and has become a major voice for nuclear power.

9. From Nextbigfuture, China plans to bring the capital cost CPR-1000 reactors to $1225 per KW by getting the cost of the 50th unit down by 30% from todays cost and meanwhile the USA has projects for nuclear fusion and 4th generation reactors which partial funding and commitment that might result in breakthroughs that are still more expensive in 20 years_NextBigFuture

Plus: Are billionaires feeling a strange attraction to nuclear power?

The nuclear renaissance will involve a rush to new mineral resources -- including uranium and thorium, and the auxiliary materials necessary for the new reactor designs. New mines, new factories, new transportation infrastructure will all be needed. Opportunities for investing will explode if Obama's NRC provides the slightest opening to nuclear enterprise -- particularly new, safe, cheap, small, scalable, factory-built, modular nuclear reactors.