In our “Weird Recycling” podcast, Nathan Myhrvold talks about TerraPower, the nuclear-power firm that he and Bill Gates are promoting, which would use depleted uranium (castoff waste from traditional nuclear plants) as fuel. TerraPower has impressive plans but has yet to build its first plant.
It was a long interview, only a sliver of which made it into the podcast. One leftover part concerned the U.S.’s skittishness about nuclear power:
Is it the end for offshore drilling?
Coal and nuclear power provide the vast majority of our electricity. Coal brings environmental and health hazards with it every step of the way, from mine to smoke stack. Nuclear energy, with all of its benefits, comes with its own risks (as ill-perceived as they may be). So which is the least bad solution? Seed magazine asked a panel of experts and came up with this interesting quorum.
William Tucker, author of the forthcoming book Terrestrial Energy, blogged here earlier this week about nuclear power. This is his last of three guest posts here on the subject. When I was in college I took a course on the great political philosophers. Soon I had them all lined up with their respective eras: Hobbes and the 18th-century monarchies, Locke . . .
William Tucker, author of the forthcoming book Terrestrial Energy, blogged here earlier this week about nuclear power. This is his second of three guest posts here on the subject. A year ago, Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt wrote a New York Times Magazine column entitled “The Jane Fonda Effect,” in which they argued that Fonda’s efforts in the movie The . . .
Three Mile Island, Control Room 1. Well, someone has come right out and said it: “Sen. John McCain called Wednesday for the construction of 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030.” That’s according to an A.P. article by David Espo, well worth reading in its entirety. We have written quite a few times about the likelihood of a return to nuclear . . .
We wrote earlier about how concern over climate change may lead to a nuclear-power revival in the U.S., despite longtime opposition and fear on many fronts. The issue is unfolding similarly in Europe. Here’s a fascinating short article from Spiegel, via BusinessWeek: Italy on Thursday said it would join a growing number of European countries returning to nuclear power in . . .
Is nuclear energy seeing a resurgence worldwide? (HT: Daniel Lippman) How much does it cost to raise kids in the U.S.? (Earlier) What factors lower the dropout rate the most? (Earlier) Investing firm tries their luck with celebrity memorabilia (HT: Amit Ghosh)
We’ve written quite a few times about the helter-skelter path that nuclear power has taken in this country; see this Times column, this supporting evidence, and this blog post for a quick summary. Here, from today’s Times, is an assessment of nuclear power that has a good deal in common with ours: “All careful analysis confirms that the risk of . . .
There’s been a good bit of back-and-forthing on this blog about nuclear power, most notably regarding a Times Magazine column we wrote recently about the past and future of the nuclear industry. In a nutshell, we posited that the U.S. anti-nuke revolt in the 1960s and 1970s may look misguided in retrospect since it helped thwart the proliferation of nuclear . . .
GodTube.com picks up steam (Earlier) “No Nukes” campaigns, updated for the new millennium (Earlier) Would hiring only legal nannies hurt New York’s economy? (Earlier) Philadelphia residents named “least attractive” people in the U.S.
Seth Schiesel wrote a fascinating piece in the Times about a new collaboration between game maker Electronic Arts and the energy company BP in designing the latest version of E.A.’s SimCity computer game. In case you don’t know, SimCity “focuses on building and managing a modern metropolis.” As Schiesel tells us, “coping with environmental pollution has long been part of . . .
We wrote recently about nuclear energy in the U.S. — how, after much early promise, the industry faltered badly but now seems poised for a renaissance. (Here is some supporting evidence for the column.) Two related stories broke yesterday, one of which is good news for the nuclear industry. The other is probably — hopefully — not very consequential in . . .
Video We’ve got a new column in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine about the past, present, and future of nuclear energy. The column is called “The Jane Fonda Effect” — any guesses why? — and the research took me down to the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pa. (That’s why my family and I got to spend . . .