Brilliantly written. I get the sense that even on left leaning voters, the opinion regarding nuclear is slightly shifting and they are increasingly welcoming the idea.
I'm learning to trust you on, oh, I don't know, *everything,* but I still want to know how we safely and permanently store nuclear waste and all that glowing water from the cooling pools.
I don't know. We could try chelating materials to solidify the bad stuff, pack it into cheap dumb rockets and send it to the sun. If we can accurately hit the sun, we're good. Put the entire Biden clan on a billion dollar per month payoff, then turn this one over to VP Harris. She's smart, just self-involved and lazy.
Now back to the serious stuff. While I'm greatly cheered that the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is now the largest nature reserve in Europe, a lot of kids got thyroid cancer on the way to that paradise, and I'm still haunted by Voices from Chernobyl and how those men died.
So anyone touting nuclear needs to look not just up the road, as guys are wont to do, but around all the corners too.
We agree. At the beginning of his talk about Space Aliens cause Global Warming, Crichton says he began research for a novel by looking for a major disaster and started in Chernobyl. He was shocked to discover that after the deaths in the explosion, fewer people died each year than died in UK from falling out of bed.
That sounds like a really sneaky way on Crichton's part of avoiding difficult questions. "[d]ied each year" ignores the potential for long-term development of radiation-related disease and a greatly-extended timeline of suffering and eventual death.
I'm sure (being anything but an expert though) that the technology exists or can be fairly easily developed to reduce/scrub emission from coal plants and to ensure safer extraction of oil. And reasonable compromises can be devised, prohibiting oil exploration/drilling in the most fragile environments while better exploiting known fields.
I was fascinated to see, in operation, a wood-pellet burning furnace used to heat an entire house. Would be great to see more of that and on a commercial-building scale. Whaddaya think?
Wood pellets emit CO2 when they are burned, because they contain primarily organic matter, which means linked-chains of carbon atoms. Peat moss too. Technology was developed about 15 years ago to scrub most emissions from coal burning plants, including both CO2 and acid rain-producing chemicals. The result was what was called "clean coal."
It was shut down by the Anthropogenic Global Warming Enthusiasts, notI because they were afraid it wouldn't work, but because they were afraid it would. That would disprove the central tenet of the virtue signaling, that there can be no compromise.
I support immediate limitations on use of fossil fuels and conversion as quickly as possible to other technologies. My reasoning is simple: fossil fuels are not infinite, and we know they create harmful emissions, such as acid rain-producing sulfur. Never have to mention CO2, or polar bears. By the way, the Department of the Interior does a survey of polar bears, at least it used to, through the Trump administration. Every year set a new high record. The best glaciologists in the world are in (where else) Iceland. They report that the total mass of glaciers is unchanged from year to year. This was ordered taken down from the internet by Obama, because it was inconvenient to his narrative of wealth transfer.
Also BTW, the point man in the Clinton Administration for countering the original declaration of principles in favor of transferring wealth between countries (I believe these were the Kyoto Principles) was Al Gore. After losing in 2000, he switched sides to follow the money.
Follow the money. We've spent trillions trying to do away with fossil fuels without understanding what we were doing. The most complex of all complex systems in which humans are involved is the global climate. No one has identified the 1,000 most powerful actors in that system, yet we are "certain" that human-produced CO2 is the culprit. Gimme a break.
I was reading up recently on the settlement of Greenland. Turned out the Vikings took advantage of a brief--in the scheme of things--window of climate warming to establish farms, and began leaving when things started to get cold again and the cattle and sheep began to starve. History's a useful subject...
- In addition to the fact that electric vehicles *do* have a carbon footprint, as you note, their purchase price/cost of entry is substantially higher. The working poor -- those of them who can afford a vehicle -- drive gas-burning cars, typically older and less fuel-efficient ones. Tax credits for purchasing electric cars only benefit the already wealthy. In my view, proposals to increase taxes on both petroleum fuel and gas-driven vehicles are a redistributive policy meant to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich; champagne socialism at its finest.
- I recently succumbed to telephonic solicitation and had a solar company give me an estimate for installing panels on my house. (I live south of I-70; solar actually makes sense here.) I ran the numbers and found out that the solar system would actually cost me more per month than my average electric bill via the local utility. I don't make enough money for the federal tax credit to be an inducement. I passed.
I note that my electric usage is comparatively low because I strive to keep it that way -- e.g. I use an evaporative cooler and don't have central air conditioning -- so solar might make financial sense for a household that uses significantly more energy than mine. I'm ready to admit that my situation might be an outlier, but I doubt it's unique.
Thanks. I've got a couple other columns in the works, one on energy. I'll get back to you privately. If I don't have the ability to link your user name to your e-mail, can you write privately to me at billheath@substack.com? Thanks again.
i really enjoyed https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/price-of-gasoline-too-high-buy-an?s=r as he looks at the economics. I admit not to go through the analysis in detail, but it seems a reasonable argument. At some point we will be able to develop the technology to mine hydrogen at reasonable costs and master storage. Those H2 vehicles will then be an economical solution to more expensive future fossil fuels.
If not for the insanity of the greenies we would be much closer to modular mini-reactors suited well for neighborhoods. The shift from centralized power production to modular grids enables that technology. Rooftop solar with advanced battery storage (not Li-ion) may also be viable neighborhood solutions. The mini-reactor generally fails in $/kWh but gains in long term sustainability costs.
But the notion we are going to be able to have mass use of EVs based on Li-ion is nonsense and those who promote it are simply deluded.
Storage is the immediate problem. The Biden administration views this as one set of constituencies against another special interest group, and Ron Klain (half of the real President). Chief of Staff, is a Nancy Pelosi clone with a penis. He cannot think beyond electing Democrats. No matter who is President, Klain has to go first.
Well as long as the policos can divide us between believers and deniers, we get little done. The real work requires commitment and support for inventors and investors. I thought the Energy Dept DARPA-like operation might work, but it seems like little has been done. I did participate in a crowd funded Vandanium flow battery venture but such efforts shouldn't need crowd funding. But R&D efforts have been declining for years. Look at the demise of the great industrial labs - Bell, Xerox, Eastman, RCA all gone in the pursuit of short term gain.
I looked at the Georgia power website. A lot of power in Georgia is hydro--https://www.georgiapower.com/company/energy-industry/energy-sources/hydropower.html
That is marvelous. The only wrinkle is that Georgia's power may purchased by the 800 pound elephant, the TVA, and Georgia is being supplied by dirty coal plants just across the border in Florida. This stuff is very hard to untangle; requires reading through company annual reports, especially 10-K and 10-Q, because people can claim whatever they wish on a website, but if you lie on a 10-K/Q you go to jail. Ask Martha Stewart.
If you think untangling the TVA is a mess, have a look at what goes on in New York state. State, county and private operators with more than 300 stations.
New York is a quagmire. I'm a classic liberal, and a lower-case L libertarian. I live in flyover country, and eagerly await the secession of the Woke states on the upper east coast and the left coast to form Wokelandia. After six months the petitions to rejoin the Union will be thunderous.
My only requirement for readmission is to hold democratic elections to throw out of office all authoritarians. They can demand international observers from China, Russia, Sudan, etc. I want observers from the Vatican, the Grand Mufti of Constantinople, and any random Sikh.
Quagmire indeed. Living one state south, it’s a place I avoid at all costs, especially the city. The really weird part is the contrast, there are large areas in the central part of the state that are 100% agricultural with no cell phone service. I cannot image being a farmer being governed by the woke clowns in Albany.
The issue is immeasurably complex, based on a discussion with the nation’s top nuclear scientists and engineers provided by my old friend The Honorable Deputy Secretary of Energy Herm Rosen, who has since died. He occupied the position previously called Chairman of the Atomic Energy Agency, staffed by Glen Seaborg, after whom Seaborgium is named.
The danger of “snapping the dragon’s tail” is immeasurable using mixed waste. That sets off a self-sustaining slow nuclear reaction that cannot be dampened but must be allowed to burn itself out, even if it takes centuries. That’s the real “China Syndrome.” It won’t burn through the earth, but it will eventually destroy all life.
How does the French reprocessing effort continue? I know they decided that the SRP reprocessing facility wasn't practical but could more local plants be built? How much can be robotically be done?
A lot can be done with small local plants that are designed against regulatory over-reach. When fracking was first tried in New York, in upstate areas that typically vote for Republicans, the Governor at the time, a Democrat, demanded an environmental impact statement. It recommended the project go forward. Then he demanded a second one which recommended proceeding. I don't recall if it was the third or fourth EIS that finally returned the result he wanted, so no additional low-cost fuel for Republicans and other New Yorkers.
We can do almost everything with robots nowadays, they just don't look like Data from Star Trek TNG.
Brilliantly written. I get the sense that even on left leaning voters, the opinion regarding nuclear is slightly shifting and they are increasingly welcoming the idea.
Brilliant? No. I’m just older than dirt
I'm learning to trust you on, oh, I don't know, *everything,* but I still want to know how we safely and permanently store nuclear waste and all that glowing water from the cooling pools.
I don't know. We could try chelating materials to solidify the bad stuff, pack it into cheap dumb rockets and send it to the sun. If we can accurately hit the sun, we're good. Put the entire Biden clan on a billion dollar per month payoff, then turn this one over to VP Harris. She's smart, just self-involved and lazy.
We'll save money and the planet too. Not bad.
Great graphic novel proposal!
Now back to the serious stuff. While I'm greatly cheered that the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is now the largest nature reserve in Europe, a lot of kids got thyroid cancer on the way to that paradise, and I'm still haunted by Voices from Chernobyl and how those men died.
So anyone touting nuclear needs to look not just up the road, as guys are wont to do, but around all the corners too.
We agree. At the beginning of his talk about Space Aliens cause Global Warming, Crichton says he began research for a novel by looking for a major disaster and started in Chernobyl. He was shocked to discover that after the deaths in the explosion, fewer people died each year than died in UK from falling out of bed.
That sounds like a really sneaky way on Crichton's part of avoiding difficult questions. "[d]ied each year" ignores the potential for long-term development of radiation-related disease and a greatly-extended timeline of suffering and eventual death.
I'm sure (being anything but an expert though) that the technology exists or can be fairly easily developed to reduce/scrub emission from coal plants and to ensure safer extraction of oil. And reasonable compromises can be devised, prohibiting oil exploration/drilling in the most fragile environments while better exploiting known fields.
I was fascinated to see, in operation, a wood-pellet burning furnace used to heat an entire house. Would be great to see more of that and on a commercial-building scale. Whaddaya think?
Wood pellets emit CO2 when they are burned, because they contain primarily organic matter, which means linked-chains of carbon atoms. Peat moss too. Technology was developed about 15 years ago to scrub most emissions from coal burning plants, including both CO2 and acid rain-producing chemicals. The result was what was called "clean coal."
It was shut down by the Anthropogenic Global Warming Enthusiasts, notI because they were afraid it wouldn't work, but because they were afraid it would. That would disprove the central tenet of the virtue signaling, that there can be no compromise.
I support immediate limitations on use of fossil fuels and conversion as quickly as possible to other technologies. My reasoning is simple: fossil fuels are not infinite, and we know they create harmful emissions, such as acid rain-producing sulfur. Never have to mention CO2, or polar bears. By the way, the Department of the Interior does a survey of polar bears, at least it used to, through the Trump administration. Every year set a new high record. The best glaciologists in the world are in (where else) Iceland. They report that the total mass of glaciers is unchanged from year to year. This was ordered taken down from the internet by Obama, because it was inconvenient to his narrative of wealth transfer.
Also BTW, the point man in the Clinton Administration for countering the original declaration of principles in favor of transferring wealth between countries (I believe these were the Kyoto Principles) was Al Gore. After losing in 2000, he switched sides to follow the money.
Follow the money. We've spent trillions trying to do away with fossil fuels without understanding what we were doing. The most complex of all complex systems in which humans are involved is the global climate. No one has identified the 1,000 most powerful actors in that system, yet we are "certain" that human-produced CO2 is the culprit. Gimme a break.
I was reading up recently on the settlement of Greenland. Turned out the Vikings took advantage of a brief--in the scheme of things--window of climate warming to establish farms, and began leaving when things started to get cold again and the cattle and sheep began to starve. History's a useful subject...
This was a tour de force.
It’s just looking up the text. Period.
Street-level observations:
- In addition to the fact that electric vehicles *do* have a carbon footprint, as you note, their purchase price/cost of entry is substantially higher. The working poor -- those of them who can afford a vehicle -- drive gas-burning cars, typically older and less fuel-efficient ones. Tax credits for purchasing electric cars only benefit the already wealthy. In my view, proposals to increase taxes on both petroleum fuel and gas-driven vehicles are a redistributive policy meant to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich; champagne socialism at its finest.
- I recently succumbed to telephonic solicitation and had a solar company give me an estimate for installing panels on my house. (I live south of I-70; solar actually makes sense here.) I ran the numbers and found out that the solar system would actually cost me more per month than my average electric bill via the local utility. I don't make enough money for the federal tax credit to be an inducement. I passed.
I note that my electric usage is comparatively low because I strive to keep it that way -- e.g. I use an evaporative cooler and don't have central air conditioning -- so solar might make financial sense for a household that uses significantly more energy than mine. I'm ready to admit that my situation might be an outlier, but I doubt it's unique.
Evaporative coolers only work in a few sections of a few states. Otherwise, most of the US is too humid for them to function.
It's too humid for them to function for about 3 months of the year here. That's when I break out the portable a/c.
Thanks. I've got a couple other columns in the works, one on energy. I'll get back to you privately. If I don't have the ability to link your user name to your e-mail, can you write privately to me at billheath@substack.com? Thanks again.
i really enjoyed https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/price-of-gasoline-too-high-buy-an?s=r as he looks at the economics. I admit not to go through the analysis in detail, but it seems a reasonable argument. At some point we will be able to develop the technology to mine hydrogen at reasonable costs and master storage. Those H2 vehicles will then be an economical solution to more expensive future fossil fuels.
If not for the insanity of the greenies we would be much closer to modular mini-reactors suited well for neighborhoods. The shift from centralized power production to modular grids enables that technology. Rooftop solar with advanced battery storage (not Li-ion) may also be viable neighborhood solutions. The mini-reactor generally fails in $/kWh but gains in long term sustainability costs.
But the notion we are going to be able to have mass use of EVs based on Li-ion is nonsense and those who promote it are simply deluded.
Storage is the immediate problem. The Biden administration views this as one set of constituencies against another special interest group, and Ron Klain (half of the real President). Chief of Staff, is a Nancy Pelosi clone with a penis. He cannot think beyond electing Democrats. No matter who is President, Klain has to go first.
Well as long as the policos can divide us between believers and deniers, we get little done. The real work requires commitment and support for inventors and investors. I thought the Energy Dept DARPA-like operation might work, but it seems like little has been done. I did participate in a crowd funded Vandanium flow battery venture but such efforts shouldn't need crowd funding. But R&D efforts have been declining for years. Look at the demise of the great industrial labs - Bell, Xerox, Eastman, RCA all gone in the pursuit of short term gain.
I looked at the Georgia power website. A lot of power in Georgia is hydro--https://www.georgiapower.com/company/energy-industry/energy-sources/hydropower.html
That is marvelous. The only wrinkle is that Georgia's power may purchased by the 800 pound elephant, the TVA, and Georgia is being supplied by dirty coal plants just across the border in Florida. This stuff is very hard to untangle; requires reading through company annual reports, especially 10-K and 10-Q, because people can claim whatever they wish on a website, but if you lie on a 10-K/Q you go to jail. Ask Martha Stewart.
If you think untangling the TVA is a mess, have a look at what goes on in New York state. State, county and private operators with more than 300 stations.
New York is a quagmire. I'm a classic liberal, and a lower-case L libertarian. I live in flyover country, and eagerly await the secession of the Woke states on the upper east coast and the left coast to form Wokelandia. After six months the petitions to rejoin the Union will be thunderous.
My only requirement for readmission is to hold democratic elections to throw out of office all authoritarians. They can demand international observers from China, Russia, Sudan, etc. I want observers from the Vatican, the Grand Mufti of Constantinople, and any random Sikh.
Quagmire indeed. Living one state south, it’s a place I avoid at all costs, especially the city. The really weird part is the contrast, there are large areas in the central part of the state that are 100% agricultural with no cell phone service. I cannot image being a farmer being governed by the woke clowns in Albany.
You are right about the TVA.
Still thinking I see. Good!
Nuclear waste U.S. could power the U.S. for 100 years
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/02/nuclear-waste-us...
The issue is immeasurably complex, based on a discussion with the nation’s top nuclear scientists and engineers provided by my old friend The Honorable Deputy Secretary of Energy Herm Rosen, who has since died. He occupied the position previously called Chairman of the Atomic Energy Agency, staffed by Glen Seaborg, after whom Seaborgium is named.
The danger of “snapping the dragon’s tail” is immeasurable using mixed waste. That sets off a self-sustaining slow nuclear reaction that cannot be dampened but must be allowed to burn itself out, even if it takes centuries. That’s the real “China Syndrome.” It won’t burn through the earth, but it will eventually destroy all life.
Well, that's a bummer.
How does the French reprocessing effort continue? I know they decided that the SRP reprocessing facility wasn't practical but could more local plants be built? How much can be robotically be done?
A lot can be done with small local plants that are designed against regulatory over-reach. When fracking was first tried in New York, in upstate areas that typically vote for Republicans, the Governor at the time, a Democrat, demanded an environmental impact statement. It recommended the project go forward. Then he demanded a second one which recommended proceeding. I don't recall if it was the third or fourth EIS that finally returned the result he wanted, so no additional low-cost fuel for Republicans and other New Yorkers.
We can do almost everything with robots nowadays, they just don't look like Data from Star Trek TNG.