This post represents the latest link in an unbroken chain of more than four years of the weekly summaries of the best of the pro-nuclear blogs.

With the recent updated assessment by the IPCC of the outlook for climate change, the leveraging the nuclear energy to mitigate future growth of CO2 emissions comes even more prominently into the public eye.

Want to know what’s going on? Read all about it here. Previous editions of the Carnival have been posted at the blogs cited below and elsewhere.

See the “Blogs We Read” sidebar at the ANS Nuclear Café for a complete list. It is published by the American Nuclear Society. A great site for the industry perspective is the blog and the dynamic blog roll at NEI Nuclear Notes. It cites new blog posts from around the nation as they are published.

For day-to-day breaking news and updates, check out the entries on Twitter list posted on this blog which contains more than 80 pro-nuclear sources. This is a list you can follow.

Carnival 255

• Forbes – Jim Conca

Iranian Nuclear Deal A Win-Win-Win – Negotiators from the P5+1 Group have announced the broad terms of the Iranian nuclear deal in Lausanne, Switzerland. It was better than most expected, and if Iran complies with all of the requirements, the break-out time should be a lot longer than a year. But’s that a big if.

• Hiroshima Syndrome – Les Corrice

Fukushima Accident Chasing – With Japanese attorneys, whether or not their clients actually have a case doesn’t seem to matter. Instead of chasing ambulances, some lawyers in Japan are chasing the Fukushima accident.

• Yes Vermont Yankee – Guy Page, Guest Contributor

Spent nuclear fuel safety at Vermont Yankee – A nuclear fuel expert describes safety measures for dry cask storage of spent nuclear fuel at Vermont Yankee. Vermont has a Citizen’s Advisory Committee about Vermont Yankee decommissioning. Guy Page of the Vermont Energy Partnership writes about Jay Tarzia’s presentation to this committee. Tarzia described how Sandia labs tested dry casks by hitting them with locomotives, and how nature tested dry casks at Fukushima. Under all this testing, dry casks have never leaked.

• Atomic Insights – Rod Adams

Podcast – A nuclear skeptic and a nuclear advocate talk about high burn up fuel at First Energy’s Perry Plant – David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists isn’t the first person nuclear energy advocates would think of when countering the arguments of anti-nuclear activists. However, readers of the Cleveland Plain Dealer for March 26 did just that in an article in which Lochbaum was quoted at length saying the use of high burn-up fuel (U235 5%) is no big deal. Intrigued by this accurate citation, Rod Adams of Atomic Insights invited Lochbaum to talk with him for a podcast.

• Northwest Clean Energy Blog – John Dobken

Update on EN, BPA Demand Response Project – Energy Northwest (EN) is committed to clean, affordable electricity.  However, the abundant hydro resources of the Northwest are “stretched to their limit,” according to a spokesman for Bonneville Power Authority (BPA). In this post, John Dobken describes the DRACS system for Demand Response control. EN developed DRACS, and now  BPA and EN both benefit from this advanced system.

• Nuke Power Talk – Gail Marcus

A memory of Octave Du Temple, first executive director of the American Nuclear Society – At Nuke Power Talk, Gail Marcus sadly reports on the death of Octave Du Temple on March 7.  Octave was the first, and longest-serving Executive Director of the American Nuclear Society, and was a mentor and guide to many young members of the Society. Gail recounts some of her favorite memories “Uncle Octave,” as he was called in her household.  Some of the memories are illustrative of the kind of support and guidance he gave to her and other ANS members.

• Next Big Future – Brian Wang

Fusion Reactors – The cheapest, smallest nuclear fusion reactors will emerge from the so-called magneto-inertial fusion (MIF) parameter space. This physics regime is a hybrid between the low density magnetic confinement and beyond solid density inertial confinement. Many of the smallest proposed fusion propulsion systems are in fact MIF systems, consistent with this recent study. (The Case and Development Path for Fusion Propulsion by Jason Cassibry, Ross Cortez, Milos Stanic)

Molten Salt Reactors –  Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, or CRADA, between ORNL and SINAP focuses on accelerating scientific understanding and technical development of salt-cooled reactors, specifically fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactors, or FHRs. The project will draw on ORNL’s expertise in fuels, materials, instrumentation and controls, design concepts, and modeling and simulation for advanced reactors, as well as the lab’s experience in the design, construction and operation of the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, the only molten salt reactor ever built.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has provided resources for research, technology development, design, and construction of an FHR test reactor in China. This initial test reactor will have a maximum thermal power of 10 megawatts. A second, 100-megawatt test reactor is also planned. Both FHR test reactors will use low-enrichment uranium fuel.

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