I wrote a post recently on nuclear energy and how its advocates tend to denigrate wind and solar. Commenting on it, my colleague Mario Gottfried offers a note about nuclear reactors’ lasting 100 years.
100 years? Obviously, neither Mario nor I will be here to verify this, but I can’t imagine that Earth’s civilization of the year 2114 (if it exists at all) will have the vaguest resemblance to the world of today. (more…)
A reader notes: “Fossil fuels (and nuclear fuels) provide energy storage. To replace them with renewable energy sources like wind we’ll need to incorporate a means of storing the energy.”
This isn’t completely incorrect, but it’s misleading, and it provides me an opportunity to clarify, in a summary fashion, the whole issue of energy generation, storage and consumption.
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Here’s a good article on wave energy, i.e., the conversion of the mechanical energy from ocean waves into electricity. For what it’s worth, I’m hoping that this arena will one day succeed, and I agree that if it does, this “Pelamis” technology will most likely be the thing that gets it there. In fact, one of these devices is on our list of “renewable energy investment opportunities” for anyone who wants to get behind what I think is the “best in class” of this form of hydrokinetic energy. (more…)
“It is not enough to succeed; one’s best friends must fail.”
– variously attributed to Gore Vidal, La Rochefoucauld, Somerset Maugham, Genghis Khan (pictured), and Larry Ellison
People who think this way must have very sorry lives. Personally, I’ll be very happy to succeed and take as many people as possible with me–especially my friends. But sadly, many advocates for nuclear energy seem insistent that other forms of low-carbon energy fail–at least insofar as a great number are so profoundly and irrationally anti-wind and anti-solar.
Here’s another in a series of discussions on this subject, this one with a very intelligent (though misinformed) gentleman: (more…)
Our civilization’s words imply that we value peace. I mention that today, as it’s the 42nd anniversary of the last appearance of a human being on the moon, during which Commander Eugene Cernan and crew member Harrison Schmitt unveiled a plaque which read: “Here man completed his first explorations of the Moon, December 1972. May the spirit of peace in which we came be reflected in the lives of all mankind.” (more…)
Briquetting machine manufacturers are finding an alternate solution to fulfill the shortage of fuels and that is briquetting machine. Briquetting machines is the agricultural recycling machinery that can recycle biomass waste or agricultural waste without any binder and turn them into useful briquettes and how is it possible that is described here. (more…)
A friend sent me this article on Zero Point Energy, the theory that even empty space contains a non-zero amount of energy. This is ultimately a result of the fact that exactly zero energy would violate the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
Personally, I’m always skeptical of any mention of quantum physics as it might apply to human good, especially “zero point energy,” because (more…)
In response to my post on wind’s energy return on energy investment (EROI), the same reader writes:
I am very, very skeptical about numbers you quoted for wind (15:1 to 30:1). Lots of really bright people are wrong about some things. (more…)
I wrote a post earlier in which I pointed out that solar and wind are valid energy resources even though they are variable. In response, a reader writes:
Craig, have you ever looked into the CO2 burden that wind has before any blades have turned once? I mean the CO2 produced when all the steel and concrete is made for wind turbines! Also, I am talking about the CO2 made putting in roads and the transmission lines too.
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Here’s a note I sent earlier to a very senior scientist who leads a group of people whose purpose is to re-invigorate the nuclear industry here and around the world. He rests his position on a point with which I totally agree: the imperative to reduce carbon emissions is far greater than the danger that is represented by nuclear—even in its current incarnation, the world should be promoting, not suppressing, new nuclear designs.
The problem I have is that he likes to belittle solar and wind in order to strengthen his argument for nuclear. Here’s what I sent him and his team of 80 – 100 earlier today:
Sorry, Alex, I have a great deal of respect for you, but this concept that variable sources of energy like solar and wind have little, zero, or even negative value is not correct. (more…)
