All SONE articles


All articles and newsletters, most recent first

SONE Newsletter 268 - August 2021

UK Government policy — Raw materials and raw principles — Another big lithium ion battery fire — Resilience, the question people need to ask — The jury — Hydroelectricity and climate change.


SONE Newsletter 267 – July 2021

Natural Science and ignorance by Carl Sagan — High temperature reactors: a comment and a reply — The Nuclear Institute — The danger and inadequacy of lithium storage batteries — From the Dalton Nuclear Institute, Manchester.


SONE Newsletter 266 – June 2021

SONE website rebuilt — News from ‘Penultimate Power’ (UK) Ltd — Nuclear and NetZero — Glasgow declined! — You don’t have to be a scientist to trust nuclear energy — ‘Core Power’ at SONE AGM.


SONE Newsletter 265 – May 2021

How to get the nuclear message through to people. What is successful on social media, for instance? Here are some examples that did better than most. — A word from Bill Gates. — The Windjammers, a fanciful story for our time. — Core Power, less fanciful nuclear news for shipping.


SONE Newsletter 264 – April 2021

EU ruling on ‘taxonomy’. — Losses and hopes in the USA. — Hualong One and Two. — ‘Energy and Life with NetZero: Lessons from Covid-19’. — ‘Shorting the Grid’ by Meredith Angwin.


SONE Newsletter 263 – March 2021

SONE at COP26, Glasgow, 1-12 November 2021. — Oh, not the story of Renewables again! — The decline of the nuclear fleet. — Burial sites for wind turbines. — Discussing climate change with doubters. — The case for nuclear power in Japan and South Korea.


February Newsletter No262

Wise words from SONE’s Patron, James Lovelock. He may be right in saying that, after giving up fossil fuels, the world will go on messing about with renewables before giving them up for nuclear. But is there enough time? Also, Fukushima: a tragedy of misunderstanding ten years on


January Newsletter No261

This month the world turned upside down and as a result this Newsletter is late. A poor excuse, perhaps, but I hope that Members will find the items below stimulating and in some cases encouraging. Of course the choice is personal, but includes important points of view not readily found elsewhere.


December Newsletter No260

A very Happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year to all SONE members and their families Wise words from Professor Sarah Gilbert, developer of the Oxford/Astra­Zeneca Vaccine, echoing the sound advice of Marie Curie, long ago... “Don’t dismiss science, because science does so much for us.If you feel uneasy about science, go and understand the science. Go and find out what’s going on”.


November Newsletter No259

The good news – Sizewell C. “Boris Johnson is close to giving Sizewell nuclear power plant in Suffolk the go-ahead” we were told on November 5th. Sizewell C will provide 3.2 GW of electricity for 60 to 80 years – and 5.8 GW of waste heat in addition.


October Newsletter No258

We will not be able to hold the AGM in person at the Institute of Civil Engineers as we had hoped. Nevertheless, the Meeting will go ahead on 26 October at 2pm, but in a different form. It will be in two parts, both online and open to Members. In a lighter vein, Marie Zabell has drawn a cartoon strip about the differing effects of nuclear and renewables on Nature.


August Newsletter No257

Last month Neville Chamberlain wrote to the Prime Minister, as reported in Newsletter 256. The reply that came back from the Ministry repeats what is already in the public sphere. — Nuclear Phobia was born 75 years ago this month.


July Newsletter No256

Everybody is waiting for the Government to announce its energy policy. Whether it is the Government or the Civil Service that is in disarray, it is clear that feet are being dragged and that plans for a viable energy future are still gathering dust in Whitehall. A letter to the Prime Minister. A comment on Solar Panels. Nuclear radiation is not like a virus.


June Newsletter No255

The cacophony that currently fills the news columns obstructs rational communication. The noise is almost exclusively on the subject of COVID-19 and health, of course. It makes spreading sensible discussion on the need for nuclear energy that much harder. Improving the ratio of signal to noise requires getting the message signal right – but understanding how the noise is received, too.


May Newsletter No254

At last! Admittedly dwelling on emotion rather than evidence, a full-length video, “Planet of the Humans”, made by environmentalists, that condemns “Renewables” for the confidence trick that they are.


April Newsletter No253

What was once the National Nuclear Corporation (NNC), based in Knutsford and which might be regarded as the last UK specialist nuclear engineering organisation, is now in US ownership, having been bought by Jacobs Engineering for a reported £250million.