Friday, January 1, 2016

Happy New Year! Industry Beginnings and Some Blog Accomplishments

Dawn
Industry Beginnings

Let's start by referencing Brian Wang's post at Next Big Future: Ten new nuclear reactors were connected to the grid in 2015. Wang lists the new reactors (mostly, but not all, in China). Then he lists fifteen more reactors that should be connected to the grid in 2016 and another fifteen in 2017. Yes. That's a new nuclear plant approximately every month, from 2015 through 2017.

Another post about new nuclear, this one by Will Davis at Atomic Power Review: SEVMORPUT Completes Trials after overhaul: Signs for the Future. The Russians decided to overhaul a nuclear icebreaker rather than scrapping it.  Russia and China are building more nuclear ships, some of which are designed to provide power to neighboring land.  These ships are the traditional Small Modular Reactors. This type of reactor is having its own renaissance.

And there seem to be more and more blog posts like this one, about forward progress on new types of reactors and improved fabrication of all kinds.  This particular post, at the Areva blog,  describes cooperation between Areva and Washington State University students toward building a cart that can transfer uranium pellets between Areva buildings in Richland Washington. WSU Tri-Cities Senior Project Team Achieves Next Design Stage.

Blog Accomplishments

Six years of the Yes Vermont Yankee blog.  This year marks the sixth year of the Yes Vermont Yankee blog.  I started it in 2010 as a New Year's resolution. (I decided to blog because I was tired of writing lengthy emails to my friends.)  The blog was immediately welcomed by the blogging community, for which I am grateful.

Northwest Clean Energy Blog  I am proud to be an occasional blogger at the Northwest Clean Energy blog of Energy Northwest. It's a relatively new blog, but its Year In Review report by Wordpress showed some great  2015 accomplishments. These included 26,000 views, with viewers all over the world.   Here's the Northwest Clean Energy post on 2015 in Review.

Looking Forward

If we look at the Northeast (which I plan to do in the next few days), the nuclear view can get depressing. However, when we take a longer, broader view of nuclear, we can see significant new plants coming on-line in non-European areas, and many new initiatives in the Southeast and Northwest of this country.  Furthermore, pro-nuclear bloggers continue to grow in number, strength and influence.

I look forward to this year with some hope.  Especially when I look past the Northeast and into the bigger world. 

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