Creusot Forge

Vintage postcard of the forging facility now under scrutiny for potential defects and records falsification by the French regulator and EDF as well as other recipients of its products (including the USA). Hope that reactor vessel in the bottom right corner was a good one!

Bugey Nuclear Power Plant site, Ain, France

11th century chapel of Saint-Vulbas with cooling towers at Bugey

Bugey Units 2 and 3 under construction

Up the Rhône toward the plant site

Plant control room

Westinghouse on the rocks

Westinghouse, owned by Toshiba, has filed for bankruptcy largely due to cost overruns and management challenges at construction of its AP1000 nuclear plants in Georgia and South Carolina. It's a rocky patch in its history of development in the nuclear power sector. This 1960s card shows a Westinghouse lab near Pittsburgh.

Three Mile Island anniversary

Yesterday - March 28 - marked the 38th anniversary of the Three Mile Island accident, the event that had a significant impact for the better on nuclear safety in the United States. Here are two contemporary magazine covers: one from Time and the other from the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel. The cover titles are essentially the same for each: Nuclear Nightmare.

Alptraum Atomkraft - Nuclear Nightmare: after the reactor catastrophe in Harrisburg

L'atome pousse!

Not sure I get this one! But the one kid is lots of fun and the other has a great voice.

Triga Reactors - an atomic future

Postcard with first day cancellation of atomic energy conference in Geneva in 1958. Card reproduces poster by Swiss modernist Eric Nitscho for General Dynamics’ Triga reactor: “an inherently safe training, research, isotope production reactor designed and manufactured by the General Atomic Division of the General Dynamics Corporation.”

Back in the Ukraine SSR: Kiev Research Reactor

This research reactor, a10 MW tank type (VVR-M) was commissioned in 1960 at the Institute for Nuclear Research in Kiev. It was converted to LEU fuel in 2008 under the Global Threat Reduction Program.