219th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers

Jul 27, 2014 | Fukushima Commentary

July 27, 2014

The Hiroshima Syndrome’s Fukushima Commentary is proudly hosting the 219th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers. This week’s edition includes articles by Brian Wang, Dr. Jim Conca, Rod Adams, Eric McErlain, and Meredith Angwin, just to name a few.

Here’s the Fact or Fiction (?) quiz for this week… The phrase used for a fast, automatic reactor shutdown is “SCRAM”. It is the acronym for Safety Control Rod Axe Man, first used with the Chicago Pile reactor in 1942.

Now…for this week’s Blogs. To read the full articles, please click on the individual links. Blog topics for this edition include Russia’s next generation nukes, the nuclear/renewable mix, selfish motives behind the Linear/No Threshold assumption, nuclear plant reliability…and much more.

From Next Big Future (2) –

Russia will be building 1200 MWe fast neutron reactors as the core of its next generation nuclear fleet

http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/07/russia-will-be-building-1200-mwe-fast.html

And…

BRICS countries are building about75%of the world’s new nuclear reactors and are forming a new BRICS energy association

http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/07/brics-countries-are-building-about-75.html

From Jim Conca –

Nuclear-Renewable Mix Is Just What The EPA Ordered

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2014/07/23/nuclear-renewable-mix-is-just-what-the-epa-ordered/

From Atomic Insights –

Selfish motives for LNT assumption by geneticists on NAS BEAR I

 http://atomicinsights.com/selfish-motives-for-lnt-assumption-by-geneticists-on-nas-bear-i/

From Nuclear Diner –

How did Russia Build the Next Generation Fast Reactor while US Stalls on Deploying Advanced Prototype by 2021?

http://www.nucleardiner.com/archive/item/russian-nuclear-success-strategic-planning

From ANS Nuclear Café –

Research Reactor License Renewal Challenges by Rod Adams

http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2014/07/23/research-reactor-license-renewal-challenges

From NEI Nuclear Notes (3) –

Why the CERES Study on Clean Energy is Fatally Flawed

http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2014/07/why-the-ceres-study-clean-energy-is-fatally-flawed.html

And…

Energy Scalability and Carbon Reduction

http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2014/07/energy-scalability-and-carbon-reduction.html

Plus…

Nuclear Energy’s Unmatched Reliability

http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2014/07/nuclear-energys-unmatched-reliability.html

From Yes Vermont Yankee –

Carbon Emission Confusion

 http://vtdigger.org/2014/07/09/meredith-angwin-carbon-emission-confusion/

From Nuke Power Talk –

NRC Commissioner Nominees

http://nukepowertalk.blogspot.com/2014/07/nrc-commissioner-nominees.html

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Fact or Fiction (?) answer – Fiction.

Oak Ridge Associated Universities reports the term appears to have been coined by Volney Wilson at the University of Chicago. Wilson was in charge of the instrumentation at Chicago Pile (CP-1). Wilson directed the construction of the pile’s control rods. Leona Marshall Libby, the only woman present during CP-1’s start-up, says, “The safety rods were coated with cadmium foil, and this metal absorbed so many neutrons that the chain reaction was stopped. Volney Wilson called these ‘scram’ rods. He said that the pile had ‘scrammed’ [when] the rods had ‘scrammed’ into the pile.”Scram is often said to be an acronym for “safety control rod axe man, but the word “reactor” was not in use at the time of CP-1’s initial criticality. The “axe man” being referred-to was Norman Hilberry who stood by with an axe ready to cut an emergency control rod’s rope tied to the railing of the balcony overlooking the pile. There is no record that the term “scram” was used with reference to Hilberry at the time of CP-1’s initial operation. https://www.orau.org/ptp/articlesstories/names.htm#scram