Carnival of Nuclear Energy #27 at NextBigFuture

Brian Wang hosts the 27th incarnation of his creation, the Blog Carnival of Nuclear Energy. Here is a short excerpt:

2. Nuclear green has Charles Forsberg's views on Generation IV nuclear costs." At the beginning of the 21st century, Charles Forsberg of ORNL and MIT proposed a hybrid molten salt cooled reactor that borrowed features from gas cooled reactors. The resultant reactor, Forsberg argued, would have a significantly lower cost than other Generation IV reactor designs.

3. Rod Adams at Atomic Insights has What keeps you up late at night? For me, tonight, it is the unholy alliance of natural gas, environmentalists and renewable energy advocates that are working hard to capture more market share from nuclear energy. They have lowered prices enough - for a while - to convince high level decision makers to slow down their nuclear ambitions.

This post provides a host of links that tie together a rather strange set of bedfellows who are excited about the often repeated story of a new abundance in natural gas. One aspect of the story of cheap gas prices into the distant future is often overlooked - Exxon Mobil and Chevron are investing tens of billions to purchase large blocks of natural gas production capacity. Do they know something about supply and demand?

4. A new twice a month energy blog about the making of PANDORA'S PROMISE has been launched on National Geographic. The first piece is on the IFR (Integral fast reactor).


5. Yes Vermont Yankee has Without Vermont Yankee, ISO-NE Predicts Possible Transmission Line Melting


The grid operator for New England earlier announced that "Vermont Yankee must stay in the 2013 forward energy auction." They recently translated this into English:the results of a recent study show transmission lines would be badly overloaded without Vermont Yankee. _NBF

Follow the link above for more carnival plus links to original articles.

Meanwhile in India, one of the country's top scientists declared that cold fusion is the best way to produce electrical power.

He will have the opportunity to prove his assertion over the next several years, no doubt. In science and industry -- unlike in politics, environmentalism, philosophy, and most of academia -- assertions are either proven or disproven by reality, eventually.