Get ready for a righteous fight over plutonium in the UK. The World Nuclear News reports that the UK government is thinking seriously about recycling the country’s civilian plutonium for electric power generation. It has launched consultations on the question of whether to do that, or entrain the stuff permanently in glass logs and dispose…
Global Nuclear Energy Partnership
Lock and burn: a clean, peaceful way to prevent terrorists from stealing nuclear weapons
There is a lot of talk of nuclear terrorists these days, and it might be useful to walk through the scenarios in which terrorists might acquire nuclear weapons. Let’s start with the ones we can quickly rule out. At the top of the list is theft of used nuclear fuel from civilian power reactor sites.…
Industrial strategy and cheap energy: why China is eating, and will keep eating, our lunch
Future historians may look at the early 21st Century as the time when China and India emerged as the third and fourth of the great continental powers of the post–Second World War era. The first two are of course the U.S.A and Soviet (and to a lesser extent, post-Soviet) Russia. What made these powers great…
Filthy lucre and nuclear non-proliferation: what keeps them apart
Review the literature on nuclear anti-proliferation, and you get the impression that used fuel from civilian power reactors is a major proliferation threat. Henry Sokolski, a prominent anti-proliferation expert, recently told Nucleonics Week that U.S. loan guarantees for nuclear plants are subsidies that could increase proliferation risks. Why? Because French and Russian companies are potential…
Jobs now, and a giant step to the low-carbon future
A pall of worry and uncertainty hangs over North America. Two years into the Great Recession, unemployment in the U.S. was 9.6 percent in August; in Canada, 8.1 percent. The problem has become politically crucial. There are congressional mid-terms in the U.S. in November and a minority government in Canada that could fall at any time. You…
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