Geology guest lecture next Monday...

by Dr. Frannie Skomurski from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on nuclear waste management.  The presentation is scheduled for Monday, 14 November, at 10 am in SCI 118.  Frannie will also be available at 9 am in SCI 115 to meet with students about summer internship opportunities at PNNL.

Ranger Able detonates...

60 years ago today, an air-dropped 0.5 kiloton device, marking the beginning of decades of nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site.

Here's a link to the satellite image of the remote area, showing a blistered topography dominated by subsidence craters, the result of countless underground tests.  Be sure to scroll out and pan around the image to see the full extent of the test site.  Sedan Crater (pan north in the linked image) is quite impressive, and was produced by the Storax Sedan test.

Not likely a good solution...

Can We Dispose of Radioactive Waste in Volcanoes?

You can't have it both ways...

Good: Obama to announce financing for two nuclear reactors.

Bad: DOE to withdraw application for Yucca Mountain and Obama's nuclear power push faces obstacle: Waste.

The myth...

of clean coal. You can't claim to be an environmentalist if you don't acknowledge the benefits of nuclear energy.

Here comes the Sun...

in a prototype laser fusion reactor at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Exciting stuff:

"The National Ignition Facility will focus 192 laser beams on a hydrogen pellet the size of a bead, heating it to incredible temperatures in an attempt to recreate the power of the sun. Nuclear fusion would create huge amounts of energy from tiny amounts of fuel. It would produce far less radioactive waste than conventional nuclear reactors. But it takes huge amounts of energy to trigger, and so far humans have managed to do so only by detonating atomic bombs."

It's literally a star factory. Faster, please.

Image courtesy Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

North Korean nuke test...

on Monday was detected by the USGS at an estimated M4.7.