With this first Global Power Shift convention, the Climate Movement has mastered the logistical, organizational, and political skills developed in the various local movements to bring together climate activists in an important global forum. Please accept my congratulations on this special occasion. It is also a time for reflection on how far the Climate Movement has come as well as the paths forward.

How often do you get the chance to go see an acclaimed nuclear energy documentary at your local theater? We're talking real movie theater popcorn here, folks, not that microwave kind.

As I discussed last fall, a federal appeals court ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to perform more thorough evaluations in support of its new Waste Confidence Rule, particularly with respect to the potential impacts of long-term storage of spent fuel at plant sites. While those evaluations are being performed, the NRC has suspended all new plant licensing and plant license renewals.

The Breakthrough Institute recently compiled some of the tough questions it is frequently asked about nuclear power by fellow environmentalists. The answers (originally published at BTI's Energy and Climate) illustrate that if we're serious about climate change and alleviating global poverty, we need nuclear power on a large scale. 

As a nuclear engineer by education and someone whose family has worked in the nuclear energy field, I've never doubted the safe and environmentally-friendly electricity that nuclear energy provides. For those of us who have been advocates our entire lives, it is often difficult, however, to see why some people are afraid of and opposed to nuclear energy.

City people sometimes move to a farming community and then are somewhat shocked that the beautiful fields are actually not just for looking at and painting. A farmer's fields are a sort of factory. The fields produce stuff. They take inputs of raw materials, such as seeds, fertilizer, water, pesticides, and so forth. With these inputs, they produce food. Some farms are organic, and they use non-chemical fertilizer and more "natural" methods of pest control, but the goal is the same. A farmer's fields are supposed to produce food. That's the goal of farming.

NASA scientist Dr. Pushker Kharecha and Dr. James Hansen (the leading climate scientist in the US) recently authored a study which conservatively estimates nuclear power has saved 1.8 million lives, which otherwise would have been lost due to fossil fuel pollution and associated causes, since 1971.

On Sunday, March 31, 2013, just a few months before his 91st birthday, Ted Rockwell passed away quietly in his sleep. His passing has stimulated a profound sense of loss among nuclear energy professionals.

There are many benefits to living in Lynchburg, Virginia. Not only is it a scenically beautiful place with a diverse and growing economy that has continued its steady progress, even during the Great Recession, but it is also a place full of people who appreciate the value of nuclear energy technology.

Owners of the (556 MW) Kewaunee nuclear plant in Wisconsin recently announced that they will be closing the plant, because it was losing money and they were unable to find another company willing to buy it.

Environmentalist Stewart Brand, one of the principal founders of the green movement in the United States, speaks on environmentalism and nuclear energy.  Take a look and have a listen!

by Will Davis

Microsoft founder and extraordinary philanthropist Bill Gates is also a nuclear energy enthusiast.

The nuclear energy industry is the only large-scale energy producer responsible for managing and storing (and paying for) all the wastes generated by the process [in contrast to, for example... dumping wastes into the atmosphere].

The 800 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity produced by the 104 nuclear reactors in the United States each year -- all while emitting no greenhouse gases -- is by far America's biggest source of green energy.  And this abundant energy source can become even greener by recycling used nuclear fuel.

On November 7, an important hearing about the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant was held before the Vermont Public Service Board. Howard Shaffer has an excellent post on this hearing at ANS Nuclear Cafe.

In my September post at the ANS Nuclear Cafe, I discussed the Democratic and Republican party platforms, along with their potential impacts on nuclear energy. With the 2012 U.S. elections now behind us, this post provides a post-election follow up, and discusses the impacts of the election results on nuclear's prospects over the near- to mid-term.

As I discussed in a June 20 ANS Nuclear Cafe post, a federal appeals court rejected the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's new nuclear Waste Confidence rule, and ordered the NRC to perform a more thorough evaluation that addresses potential risks and health and environmental impacts of very long term storage of nuclear waste at nuclear sites (until a final disposal option is developed).

The weekly Carnival is the collective voice of blogs by many of the Internet's foremost nuclear experts and advocates, who continue each week to tell the story of nuclear energy around the World Wide Web.