25th Carnival of Nuclear Energy at Yes Vermont Yankee

The 25th Nuclear Energy Carnival is hosted at pro-Vermont Yankee blog, Yes Vermont Yankee. Here is an excerpt:

In Dr. Furakura's Vision (Nuclear Green Blog) Charles Barton describes the early development of Molten Salt Reactors, which was followed by squashed hopes. Dr. Furakara is old now (85) but he is trying to launch the Fuji reactor project. Dr. Furukawa believes that by 2050-2060 as many as 10,000 billion-watt Fuji reactors could be powering the global energy economy. Why do we believe the next generation of reactors will be developed in this country, or in France? We should not be ignoring the visions of the future from Japan. In a related post, Charles analyses the MIT David J Rose Lecture in which John Holdren lays out Obama Administration thinking. Apparently, they think that a thorium molten salt reactor is impossible. The video of the Rose lecture is embedded in the blog.

Just in case you think that if it's an MIT lecture, it must be right, Brian Wang has a blog post describing the negotiations between Japan and Korea to build mini-Fuji reactors for ships. The companies see this as a competitive move vis-a-vis Chinese nuclear-powered ships. Where is the U.S. in all this ferment of new reactors?

What About the Sun? What About Fossil?

At Yes Vermont Yankee, Willem Post has an excellent guest blog on Photovoltaic Feed In Tariffs and Germany and this country. A very interesting post, with tons of data and links. Did you think solar helps a lot with peaking power? Well, not much, actually.

Similarly, also at Yes Vermont Yankee, I have a post The Inconvenient Truth About Vermont Yankee. Without It, Vermont Would Use Fossil. The general statement is obvious, but the back-up facts are interesting. New England, as a whole, has 60% of its installed electrical capacity in gas and oil. Vermont has 9%. The chart of energy use during refueling outages is also worth a look. _YesVermontYankee

Nuclear energy -- both fission and fusion -- will be key to advancing the human enterprise into the indefinite future.

Dieoff.orgiasts in high public office want to shut down all viable energy sources. That is why the Obama administration has worked so hard to shut down coal, oil, shale gas, oil sands . . . and has been so neglectful of safe, reliable, new designs for molten salt reactors and small modular reactors.

But dieoff.orgiasts die, and get voted out of office or otherwise removed from power. The starkness of the choice between energy starvation and an abundant future will eventually grow clear to the voting public.