Atomic energy technology, politics, and perceptions from a nuclear energy insider who served as a US nuclear submarine engineer officer
Rick Maltese is a creative artist who spent this afternoon creating an amusing parody of the diffuse, weather dependent, unreliable power sources that some think can beat both fossil fuel and nuclear energy. Share Call Them Unreliable widely!
PS – Just in case you would like to have a sing along at your next pronuclear gathering, Rick has added the lyrics to the YouTube link above.
I’ve been engaging in a discussion with several commenters who strongly disagree with my assertion that atomic fission is the ONLY technology that has the technical potential to beat hydrocarbon combustion in the market. It can provide cheaper, cleaner and more reliable heat that can be converted into useful power in almost exactly the same [...]
A friend just posted a link to a site that everyone who wants effective energy decision making should bookmark. It is titled Performance of Photovoltaics (PV) in Germany. The site includes animation features that illustrate the modeled output of solar installations over the course of each day. The model used should provide a reasonably good [...]
I’m mad as hell and I don’t want to take it any more. Groups that fight any and all use of nuclear energy and also spend time advocating for the increased use of massive, industrial scale energy collectors on undeveloped, virgin land should NEVER be called “environmental groups”. I am not saying that the groups [...]
On Friday, Nov 16, I wrote about the potential impact of applying a “peanut butter spread” sequestration algorithm to the NRC budget. (I spent a few years as a government budget analyst, so I sometimes speak the lingo.) If the accountants at the Office of Management and Budget continue on their proposed path, the NRC [...]
Peter Diamandis, the head of the X Prize Foundation, recently gave a TED talk titled Abundance is Our Future. It was an inspiring, energetic talk full of optimism for the ability of technology to solve the world’s biggest challenges. In all areas of technology but one, Peter is on target. When it came to his [...]
I just received the below solar PV advertisement in a mass email. I am certainly glad that I am not a UK resident and taxed to support this kind of generous payments – guaranteed to be a drain on the economy for the next 25 years. Can anyone please help me to understand what must [...]
The Discovery Channel is teasing a show called Earth 2050: Powering the Future. One of the primary sponsors of the show is the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company. Here is a brief teaser about future energy supplies from “renewable” sources of power. On the one hand, it was interesting to note that Discovery had classified [...]
My new word for the energy sources popularly known as “renewables” is “unreliables”. Though there may be some tiny exceptions, the general characteristic is that they are all diffuse sources that cannot actually be controlled by humans or automated control systems. One of the main reasons that energy has been a huge political topic since [...]
While driving home after a great Labor Day weekend with friends and family, we ran into scattered showers. My wife helped me figure out the switches that control the timing of the intermittent windshield wipers for both the front and rear windows. (She is the primary driver for our recently purchased family vehicle; I had [...]
Watch the full episode. See more Colorado State of Mind. On Friday, June 24, 2011, the Colorado State of Mind program aired a discussion about nuclear energy that featured respectful conversation from several different points of view. The impetus for the discussion was to reflect on the implications of the recent Associated Press portrayal of [...]
The Energy Collective, is an aggregation site that provides a wide variety of views about energy. It is often a place with high quality discussions, but it can also be a site where article placement decisions completely baffle me. Yesterday, I visited The Energy Collective and found out that the best, most visible spot on [...]