Welcome to New Blog: Atoms for California

 Another Local Pro-Nuclear Blogger!

Welcome to the blog Atoms for California!

Okay, Meredith, I can just hear my readers say---California is not "local" to Vermont.   What are you talking about with "another local pro-nuclear blogger"?

California is indeed across the country from Vermont, but I want to welcome another locally-focused blog.  Every pro-nuclear blogger has his or her own area of interest and expertise--our blogs are not interchangeable. My blog list includes an amazing group of powerful pro-nuclear voices.  We need all these voices.

That said, I believe that locally-focused blogs can be particularly strong and effective. Local people know the history, background, issues, and chief players of their own locality.  For example, I am authoritative about what happens (and is likely to happen) at the Statehouse in Montpelier.  It would be hard for me to know very much about which type of reactor the Czech Republic is most likely to buy.

Atoms for California

Atoms for California is very impressive pro-nuclear blog, written by a man who truly knows the situation in California.  In the Author Disclaimer section of the blog, we learn that the blog author's father works as a senior nuclear engineer at San Onofre, and he himself works for the California Energy Commission.  The blogger makes it very clear that this is his personal blog, and has nothing to do with the Commission.

The Table of Contents provides a wealth of material, including a history of the Electric Program Investment Plan (EPIC) in California.   The "Objectives of this site" page is not a quick mission statement, but a nine-point program with statements such as Challenging the exclusion of nuclear power from California’s Loading Order.

This is a blog to read!

Advantages of Local Blogging

Local bloggers can grow local followings. Local bloggers can be well-enough known to be interviewed repeatedly by the local press.  I have often thought that every locality with a nuclear facility needs a local pro-nuclear blogger.  Every such locality has at least one anti-nuclear group with a web presence.  The reporters know where to find the anti-nuclear quotes.  We need to give the reporters a place to find the pro-nuclear quotes.

(The facilities themselves are like any big business--the press releases go through a LOT of review.  Which means the press releases are often dry, evasive and late to the party.  Bloggers have more fun, are usually more readable, and can give reporters a straight story in snappy sound bites.)

So--hats off to the local pro-nuclear bloggers! Hats off to Atoms for California,  Steve Aplin at Canadian Energy Issues, and Ben Heard at DecarboniseSA.  These blogs are not strictly local--after all the world is interconnected.  But they start with their local issues, and they have powerful local impacts. 

Think globally, act locally.  I hope more people will start blogging.

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Update: I rearranged this post a little in order to do a better job of featuring the Atoms for California blog.

And a hat-tip to Rod Adams for his welcome to Atoms for California. Rod got his post up first, as he often does.

I don't know where any of us pro-nuclear bloggers would be without Rod!