May 10, 2008

Free online class - Rethinking Nuclear Power

Online course from Dartmouth titled Rethinking Nuclear Power, considers various energy policy issues and advises students how to look into the economic efficiency of various energy subsidies, assess the effective use of carbon taxes, and to understand the important role of government funded energy R&D for energy technologies of all kinds, not just nuclear. He reviews how the issue of nuclear energy is playing in the presidential races and electoral politics.

Free online class materials - The class materials remain online. Each class includes the original PowerPoint slides, PDF versions of the slides, and recorded audio from the classes. Note the PowerPoint files are quite large so download them first before opening.

The website also includes an excellent descriptive bibliography of current books on nuclear energy including technical, economic, and political perspectives both pro-and-con.

Bob's background . . . AB Mathematics Dartmouth College, PhD physics Brown University, taught math and computer science at Dartmouth. Now retired after a second career in the private sector in the area of information technologies. He is also the publisher of the nuclear energy blog Pebble Bed Reactor which is an excellent resource on this subject.