Petition to restart the Integral Fast Reactor program
As many readers of this blog probably know, the Integral Fast Reactor project was killed by a very narrow Senate vote in 1994, with the connivance of the Clinton administration.
This was all done very much behind the scenes. The public at large had no knowledge of what was going on (I sure didn't), and what happened was probably driven by a few relatively narrow special interests.
Times have changed.
In an effort to dis-intermediate government a bit, the Obama administration (Energy sec'y: Steven Chu) has a new feature on the White House website called "We The People". It allows people to create petitions asking the White House to examine certain topics. If a petition receives 5000 endorsements, it gets a closer examination. This isn't anything like a guarantee of action, but at least it's something. If nothing else, it forces someone close to the seat of power to get familiar with the issue.
There is currently an active petition to "restart the Integral Fast Reactor nuclear power technology program". As of this posting, it has 465 out of the required 5000 signatures. I recommend that all readers of this blog, who are US citizens, take the following steps to sign the petition:
- Create an account at WH.gov using this page. You will be asked for an e-mail address.
- Read the registration e-mail to get your account information (I am currently waiting for this e-mail; I suspect human intervention is involved).
- Log into the WH.gov site.
- Sign the petition.
5000 signatures are required by October 29. That is about 300 signatures a day. We need to push this. Be part of it.
¶ 10/13/2011 10:12:00 PM 4 comments
Thorium remix
I highly recommend this 2 hour mashup of various LFTR- and nuclear-related video clips, most of it taken from lectures and interviews with Kirk Sorensen. It begins with the "LFTR in 5 minutes" sequence but broadens it with major and up-to-date bits about many matters, including Fukushima Dai'ichi.¶ 10/12/2011 04:28:00 PM 0 comments
