On June 3, 2008, Apache Energy’s Varanus Island gas production facility off the coast of Western Australia experienced an explosion and fire in one of two pipelines carrying gas from the large processing plant to the mainland. The fire spread and caused damage to the second pipeline. The accident removed 370 terrajoules per day from…
I noticed yesterday that I had missed two interesting articles in the Financial Times last week (July 8, 2008) – Oil price prompts nuclear move and Total and Eni eye nuclear option. Apparently, Total (a large French oil company) and Eni (a large Italian oil company) have determined that their future includes nuclear power plant…
On Sunday July 13, I published a chart that illustrated the amount of heat energy input from oil and nuclear power that was converted into US consumed electricity in the years from 1954 (right after Eisenhower announced the Atoms for Peace program and Congress passed the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, which broke the US…
Chris Nelder, who co-wrote Profit from the Peak with Brian Hicks, is worried about energy supplies. He favors conservation, population control, wind, solar and geothermal. He is pessimistic about nuclear. I was recently offered the opportunity to read a review copy of Profit from the Peak by Brian Hicks and Chris Nelder. The book, despite…
Many observers, perhaps even most observers, claim that the growth of nuclear power has nothing to do with oil consumption. They claim that nuclear power is limited to electrical power and that there is very little oil used to generate electricity. I want to dispel that rumor right now. Since I do not have a…
T. Boone Pickens is making a lot of waves in the energy world – again. He has 60 years worth of history in the business as a wildcat driller, corporate raider and hedge fund manager who is proud of the fact that he has paid more than half of the taxes that he has ever…
Every once in a while, I feel the need to step away from politics and detailed technical considerations about the existing machinery designs for systems that can use nuclear heat to remind myself why fission has fascinated so many people for so long. The bottom line is that it is a clean, immensely dense heat…
I apologize for my lack of shows during the past couple of weeks. Summer is always a challenging time – there is less news, potential guests are out of town, and there are always competing activities that can take the place of putting together a show. I hope you all forgive me, but it sure…
As a currently serving military officer, I am not allowed to campaign for a particular candidate or political party. I am part of an organization that is subordinate to the authority of civilian leaders and required to follow their orders. I am also required to be respectful of those in my chain of command. I…
Though most of us suffer when energy prices increase, there are some who benefit greatly. Conversely, when energy prices fall precipitously, there are some who suffer massive losses of wealth and power. The part that is unfair is that the people who benefit from high energy prices have designated representatives who often get together and…
I have done some reformatting of the graph of non combustion energy sources in the US during the period of 1949-2006. Following the suggestion of Kirk Sorensen, I put wind, solarPV and geothermal on the bottom of the chart in an attempt to better illustrate their growth. Feedback is welcome. Source of the data is…
This is a time compressed post whose major purpose is personal – I need to work a bit on my graphing skills and on my use of the Blogger software that enables Atomic Insights. Quite a while ago, I promised to find some graphs that would show the real energy path that the US has…