Comments for ANS Nuclear Cafe

Comment on A young girl and high technology by Will Davis

Will Davis — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:16:13 +0000

A great article! Nice to know that this event exists and is getting some promotion. I will add the nuclear category link at “Cafe LeClair” to the Atomic Power Review link list right away; looking forward to your blog posts there. The blog looks great. Thanks to ANS Nuclear Cafe for posting this article and pointing up another new blog.

Comment on Nuclear energy: The moral choice by Duane Twining

Duane Twining — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 01:48:46 +0000

To paraphrase from a great movie; A Few Good Men:
You don’t have to wear a “ring” to have “ethics”.

Comment on Nuclear energy: The moral choice by KATHY WALTERS

KATHY WALTERS — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:45:55 +0000

So glad there are people out there like you. Really liked your article and nice to see you take your job with honor and pride, that a rare thing in today world.

Comment on ANS’s Loewen visits local sections by J. Ram

J. Ram — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:00:59 +0000

Thanks for all you work in promoting the advantage of Nuclear Energy.

Comment on Let’s find another word for safety – Entergy v. Vermont in plain English by Engineer-Poet

Engineer-Poet — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:41:44 +0000

They simply want an old nuclear plant to adhere to it’s use by date before it kills a bunch of people.

Nice scare-mongering, but the NRC already verified that the plant is safe. A legislature lobbied by a bunch of professional activists financed by the plant’s competition is not in a better position to judge safety than a board of specialists employed by the one Federal agency with nuclear safety as its charter.

Comment on Let’s find another word for safety – Entergy v. Vermont in plain English by 92nd Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers | ANS Nuclear Cafe

92nd Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers | ANS Nuclear Cafe — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 02:33:28 +0000

[...] Cerafici has a plain English review of the legal ins-and-outs of the Federal court ruling. It is worth your time to step through the [...]

Comment on Let’s find another word for safety – Entergy v. Vermont in plain English by Albert Rogers

Albert Rogers — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 19:06:39 +0000

Dear Luke,
The residents of Fukushima are far less threatened by the failure of the nuclear plants than they would have been if the tsunami and earthquake had hit an equivalent amount of coal waste. When hurricane Andrew hit a nuclear power plant, it survived and the only casualty was the smokestack of the coal burning plant that shared the site. This, in spite of the fact that the thermal power released around the eye was at least a thousand times the combined power of the reactors and the coal burner. Which explains why, until we can tame hurricanes for power, we’ll have to make do with nuclear.

Comment on Let’s find another word for safety – Entergy v. Vermont in plain English by Albert Rogers

Albert Rogers — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 19:00:43 +0000

The Federal government, I believe, still operates the hydroelectric facilities in the Columbia River watershed, under the Bonneville Power Authority. The USA get an appreciable amount of highly dispatchable power from these facilities.
The problems we have with nuclear power in the USA are in part aggravated by their being owned by private corporations. France’s enormously successful Electricite de France it should have acute accents was built by the government, for the people. Energy companies in the EU, finding they couldn’t compete, bullied France into privatising it, but so far the only ill effect seems to be that they’ve added a wind energy branch.

Comment on Reflections on the Cedar Creek Room by 92nd Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers | ANS Nuclear Cafe

92nd Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers | ANS Nuclear Cafe — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 16:11:13 +0000

[...] regarding the continued operation of its Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. Howard Shaffer examines the political milieu of the Vermont Yankee court decision in light of states rights issues, shared authority among Federal and State regulators, and the [...]

Comment on Reflections on the Cedar Creek Room by G. Murphy

G. Murphy — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:46:22 +0000

What I take away from this is newfound wisdom about how local political opportunists trade public good for their own election.

(Was the whiskey rebellion REALLY a good idea?)

Comment on Lise Meitner’s fantastic explanation: nuclear fission by Bill Woods

Bill Woods — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 03:01:22 +0000

“Instead of a Nobel Prize, Meitner has been honored with an even more enduring legacy: Element 109 is named meitnerium in her honor.”

With a half-life of 8 seconds, I’m not sure “enduring” is quite the right word….

From Frisch’s account of the discovery of fission:

[Hahn had reported finding barium in a sample of uranium bombarded with neutrons.] Was it a mistake? No, said Lise Meitner; Hahn was too good a chemist for that. But how could barium be formed from uranium? No larger fragments than protons or helium nuclei (alpha particles) had ever been chipped away from nuclei, and to chip off a large number not nearly enough energy was available.
…
But there was another problem. After separation, the two drops would be driven apart by their mutual electric repulsion and would acquire high speed and hence a very large energy, about 200 MeV in all; where could that energy come from? …Lise Meitner… worked out that the two nuclei formed by the division of a uranium nucleus together would be lighter than the original uranium nucleus by about one-fifth the mass of a proton. Now whenever mass disappears energy is created, according to Einstein’s formula E=mc2, and one-fifth of a proton mass was just equivalent to 200MeV. So here was the source for that energy; it all fitted!

Comment on Wind power to nuclear power infographic comparison by lscheele

lscheele — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:04:15 +0000

@BigJon – the shaded rectangle in the top middle (you can see it on the thumbnail) has the following comparison of heights:
Statue of Liberty – 93 m
wind turbine – 124 m
nuclear power plant – 60 m

Comment on NOW CASTING: Discovery Channel’s Top Engineer! by donb

donb — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:14:14 +0000

My bet is that the ‘top engineer’ will be someone who designs a glitzy gadget (think iPad or Android phone), or someone who does something that is visually spectacular, like imploding a multi-storey building to clear a building site. Don’t expect to see someone who designs a nuclear power plant that generates a gigawatt of electricity (yawn), quietly with minimal emissions (snore). No bling factor there.

Comment on Lise Meitner’s fantastic explanation: nuclear fission by Frank Jablonski

Frank Jablonski — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:09:43 +0000

Thanks so much for filling in another gap in my nuclear history education. Very well written.

Comment on Lise Meitner’s fantastic explanation: nuclear fission by Joseph Talnagi

Joseph Talnagi — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:18:22 +0000

Interesting that two female scientists were involved in the initial discovery of fission. Recall that it was chemist Ida Noddack who first suggested that Fermi’s neutron irradiation experiments might have led to fission of uranium, and that he should look at elements lighter than lead as possibilities for the observed radioactivity. As a physicist Meitner had the mathematical chops to figure out the theory. But its a reminder that genius pays no mind to gender