Dawn Stover | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Your money or your life?

Dawn Stover — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 20:25:19 -0400

When I moved to a neighborhood known as the "murder capital" of New York City, I figured it was only a matter of time before someone held a knife to my throat and demanded my wallet. I would hand it over, of course. It's only money, right? But it didn't happen like I thought it would. I left a Christmas party late one night and heard someone running behind me as I approached a subway entrance. When I whirled to look, I was struck with a heavy object. I tumbled down the staircase and scrambled to my feet -- still in possession of 30 cents and two subway tokens.

Reality check

Dawn Stover — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 01:52:58 -0500

In January the World Wildlife Fund released a report asserting that Indonesia, Madagascar, Mexico, Morocco, South Africa, Turkey, and the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh could meet 100 percent of their projected electricity needs in 2050 by installing solar photovoltaic power plants on less than one percent of their total land area. Which would be excellent news if all anyone needed to make electricity was land and sunshine.

Crossing the climate "red line"

Dawn Stover — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 09:40:12 -0500

"At this late hour, there is only one way to peacefully prevent Iran from getting atomic bombs," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his remarks at the United Nations last September. "That's by placing a clear red line on Iran's nuclear program." Holding up a cartoon of a bomb -- the image looked like something Wile E.

Fired up

Dawn Stover — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 17:34:56 -0400

-- White Salmon, Washington

"I smell smoke," I told my husband.

"Me too."

We ran outside and saw gray clouds billowing over the ridge to our west. Smoke was already visible in the air around us. We knew in an instant that it was a wildfire, and the wind was blowing it straight toward us.

Treading water

Dawn Stover — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 19:16:13 -0400

In 1954, Lewis Strauss, then chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, gave a speech in which he famously predicted that "our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter." Whether he was talking about fission reactors or a secret fusion project is unclear, but he was wrong in either case. What did turn out to be too cheap to meter, however, was water.

Informed consent: Getting from NIMBY to yes

Dawn Stover — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 08:27:19 -0400

"Not in my backyard." I don't know whether anyone has actually uttered those words at a hearing or town-hall meeting, but I've heard plenty of energy developers and permit processors speak dismissively of local opponents as NIMBYs. Somehow the pejorative sticks: If you're concerned about noise, stink, ugliness, dirty air and water, diminished property values, endangered wildlife, climate change, or threats to public health and safety, you're a self-interested elitist and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

Climate MADness

Dawn Stover — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 15:14:14 -0400

In The Butter Battle Book by Dr. Seuss, the Yooks and the Zooks go to war over whether bread should be eaten with the buttered side up or down. The battle escalates from slingshots to guns to goo-spewing war machines, and eventually both the Yooks and the Zooks acquire a tiny but extremely destructive bomb called the Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo. Neither side has any defense against the bomb, and both sides are left wondering who will drop it first.

Radiation: It's just what the doctor ordered

Dawn Stover — Thu, 24 May 2012 18:21:00 -0400

He's an expert on nuclear security. His wife edits articles for the Bulletin. She was home with their two-month-old baby when the doorbell rang, the dog went nuts, and the baby -- too young to roll over on his own, and protected by a pillow on the couch -- somehow ended up wailing on the floor, with the crosshatched pattern of a rattan rug imprinted on his little head. (The incident remains under investigation, but circumstantial evidence points to psycho-dog.)

"The new retirement" for nuclear power plants

Dawn Stover — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:44:59 -0400

America's senior citizens once dreamed of moving to a beach house in Florida or touring the nation's parks in a motor home when they turned 65. But the global financial crisis has taken a heavy toll on retirement plans. During the past four years, many seniors have watched helplessly as their homes plummeted in value and their 401(k) savings plans became 201(k)s.

3/11 and 9/11: Codes for tragedy

Dawn Stover — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:41:15 -0500

For most Americans, 3/11 has no particular significance. (Hint: it's not that rock band from Omaha.) Some Europeans associate it with the Madrid train bombings of March 11, 2004. But, in Japan, 3/11 is universally recognized as shorthand for the events of March 11, 2011, when a huge offshore earthquake triggered a tsunami that devastated the country's northeastern coast and swamped emergency cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

In hot water: The "other" global warming

Dawn Stover — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:32:18 -0500

On January 20, a state engineer with the Utah Division of Water Rights approved two applications that would allow Blue Castle Holdings to take a total of 53,600 acre-feet of water from the Green River annually for a proposed nuclear power plant. That's more than 17 billion gallons a year, enough for a city of 100,000 households.

Energy.gov: Where information goes to die

Dawn Stover — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:38:34 -0500

We live in an Information Age. Never before have we had so much data at our fingertips, thanks to digitization and the Internet. But information is only useful if it is accessible, searchable, and intelligible.

Climate change in 2050: Where's the beef?

Dawn Stover — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:41:37 -0500

"What will a day in the life of a Californian be like in 40 years? If the state cuts greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 -- a target mandated by a state executive order -- a person could wake up in a net-zero energy home, commute to work in a battery-powered car, work in an office with smart windows and solar panels, then return home and plug in her car to a carbon-free grid."

The myth of renewable energy

Dawn Stover — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 18:29:21 -0500

"Clean." "Green." What do those words mean? When President Obama talks about "clean energy," some people think of "clean coal" and low-carbon nuclear power, while others envision shiny solar panels and wind turbines. And when politicians tout "green jobs," they might just as easily be talking about employment at General Motors as at Greenpeace. "Clean" and "green" are wide open to interpretation and misappropriation; that's why they're so often mentioned in quotation marks.

The "scientization" of Yucca Mountain

Dawn Stover — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 19:53:54 -0400

When I first stood atop Nevada's Yucca Mountain more than 16 years ago, the Energy Department was spending about $1 million a day to assess the feasibility of safely storing spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste there. A steel-toothed tunneling machine had already begun chewing its way into the ridge, and some 300 scientists were on-site studying the area's underground trickles, its porous rock, its lumbering desert tortoises, and a few reddish-black cinder cones that dotted the landscape below -- the ominous tombstones of ancient volcanic eruptions.

\ˈsāf\: America's nuclear power plants?

Dawn Stover — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 21:16:23 -0400

When the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission released its task force's recommendations for enhancing reactor safety in response to the Fukushima Daiichi accident, an editorial in the Washington Post summarized the findings this way: "America's plants are safe. But they could be safer."

Rising water, falling journalism

Dawn Stover — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 13:08:05 -0400

Every evening, my father climbs the levee along the Missouri River in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and peers down into the black water that swallows the road. The water is rising, and the Army Corps of Engineers says the levee has never faced such a test. Dad, a retired professor, is packing his books and papers. If the levee doesn't hold, his one-story house could be underwater for months.