No one knows where Japan’s ongoing nuclear disaster will end. The current signs are ominous. We can only hope that the spent-fuel ponds can be prevented from boiling off. In the meantime, we can try to draw out some of the implications of the event. I’ve attempted that in my latest Bulletin column. The first …
Zirconium Cladding Fire Resources
by | 2011-03-15 | 6 Comments
A bibliography regarding zirconium cladding fires or, a discourse on the folly of man in the face of the wrath of nature. After the jump.
New FEPC Statement
by | 2011-03-15 | 21 Comments
Update | 4:32 pm It looks like there is some confusion about the source of the fire, which the IAEA reported was “at the spent fuel storage pond.” Keith Bradsher and Hiroko Tabuchi in the New York Times quote an “American official” saying the “fire there may have been caused by machine oil in a …
The Age of Extremes
by | 2011-03-15 | 9 Comments
Over the eons, Planet Earth has been profoundly marked by violent collisions, including perhaps five that prompted great extinctions. The playground now known as the Chesapeake Bay was created thirty-five million years ago by an asteroid three to five kilometers in diameter. The Himalayas, about an hour away from sea level, as the crow flies, …
