As a fourth year nursing student working in Chicago area hospitals, I deal with nuclear medicine quite often. The term "nuclear medicine" can sound disconcerting, but when you are familiar with it, I assure you, it's not. Just think of it as a bunch of necessary medical tools with a little radiation thrown in. I know what you are thinking. Radiation? What? Relax. It's fine. You already know it, and either you, or someone you know, has been exposed to this specific area of medicine via certain procedures.

This week is National Nuclear Science Week - an exciting week of learning, teaching and interacting on all things nuclear-related.  (You can read about the history of National Nuclear Science Week, or NNSW, by following this link.)

On Episode 12 of RadioNuclear, we discuss how fear-mongering stories about nuclear power plants in the path of a hurricane are irrelevant, the Oyster Creek Shutdown, and lastly, how nuclear power should be used geopolitically.

WHEREAS, Nuclear Science Week recognizes the contributions of the nuclear science industry and those who work in it every day; and

Most of you are well aware that Entergy recently announced it will permanently close its Vermont Yankee (VY) nuclear plant. The primary reasons given were continued low natural gas prices, the cost of post-Fukushima upgrades, and "flaws" in the local wholesale electricity market that suppress prices and harm the profitability of baseload facilities like VY. VY was close to breaking even this year, as well as the last few years, but was projected to become unprofitable in the future-over the next few years, anyway.

The ANS Nuclear Cafe Matinee today visits the Switch Energy Project and its impressive array of interviews with world-class energy experts.

On August 27, Entergy announced that it plans to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in the fall of 2014, when the plant's current fuel is depleted. Entergy plans to decommission the plant using the SAFSTOR option, which consists of defueling, mothballing the plant for a period, then dismantling it by the end of 60 years. Entergy said that it is closing the plant because it is no longer projected to make money, considering the estimated future natural gas prices. Electric power generated by gas is now over 50 percent of the ISO-New England grid.

City people sometimes move to a farming community and then are somewhat shocked that the beautiful fields are actually not just for looking at and painting. A farmer's fields are a sort of factory. The fields produce stuff. They take inputs of raw materials, such as seeds, fertilizer, water, pesticides, and so forth. With these inputs, they produce food. Some farms are organic, and they use non-chemical fertilizer and more "natural" methods of pest control, but the goal is the same. A farmer's fields are supposed to produce food. That's the goal of farming.

The news has finally come out on a long-awaited subject: the first determination by Japan's new Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) that a nuclear plant in Japan lies on a seismic fault determined to be active.

The May 2013 edition of the technical journal Nuclear Technology (NT) is available electronically and in hard copy for American Nuclear Society member subscribers and others.

Refueling optimism

In Vermont, the Holiday Season did not slow the wave of actions and interest about energy in general and the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in particular. Vermont Yankee continues to run very well, and there have not been even any routine events for opponents to "crow" about.

The woman on the moral high ground

The nuclear energy industry is the only large-scale energy producer responsible for managing and storing (and paying for) all the wastes generated by the process [in contrast to, for example... dumping wastes into the atmosphere].

How to avoid information overload on the Internet

The December 2012 issue of ANS's Nuclear Technology journal is available electronically and in hard copy for American Nuclear Society member subscribers and others. Non-subscribers click here to  subscribe to NT and other ANS titles.