State public service officials are gathered in Washington, D.C., this week for the winter meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. One of shining stars involved in NARUC is a Georgian named Tim Echols, who hopes to transform America’s system of nuclear waste management. Echols won a statewide election in November 2010 to serve on the Georgia Public Service Commission. Today he leads the commission as its chairman. With nuclear energy making a strong resurgence in Georgia — two new plants are under construction — Echols has taken …
Pyongyang revealed a covert facility for enriching uranium to a visiting U.S. scientist last week. Dr. Siegfried Hecker, former head of the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory, stated he was shown a vast plant containing “hundreds and hundreds” of centrifuges—North Korea claimed 2,000—controlled by an “ultra modern control room.” The discovery affirms a U.N. report released earlier this month that North Korea continues to “use a number of masking techniques in order to circumvent the Security Council measures” to curtail Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs. Although the United States has long …
Iran’s government today announced the successful launching of a research rocket carrying a mouse, two turtles and worms into space. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad trumpeted the launch as a “very big event” and promised on state-controlled television that “The scientific arena is where we could defeat the (West’s) domination.” The launch of the Explorer-3 rocket is part of Iran’s ambitious space program, which concerns many Iran-watchers because the same technology used to launch research rockets and satellites can also be used to deliver warheads in ballistic missiles. Significantly, the launch was …
