The whispering is becoming a roar. In the six months since the first “For the Rest of Us” column, there have been hundreds of news stories indicating that the “N” (nuclear) word is no longer taboo. Of course, it would be unrealistic to think that there is any cause and effect relationship between my rosy…
People who oppose nuclear power often use the words “Three Mile Island” and “Chernobyl” as shorthand to imply that there are safety concerns relating to the technology that cannot be overcome. The great news, however, is that Three Mile Island happened more than 22 years ago, while the 15th anniversary of Chernobyl occurred Thursday, April…
I have developed a morbid fascination with reading stories about California’s energy supply situation. I am also working my way through a second reading of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. It is a good thing that the news stories appear as text on my computer screen while Rand’s book is a three-inch thick 35th Anniversary hardback…
“Clean coal” has always seemed to be an oxymoron, a phrase with words that do not belong in the same thought. Having seen the soot-coated buildings in British cities, the yellow tinged smoke pouring from the stacks of power plants around Tampa Bay, and the enormous bag houses often used to capture most of the…
There is an old story that goes something like this. An inventor once came up with a revolutionary carburetor so effective that it enabled a typical American car to travel 100 miles on a single gallon of gasoline. The carburetor never made it to the market because “Big Oil Companies” purchased the patent on the…
“Okay, We’ll go first.” I heard Exelon’s new advertising slogan for the first time on February 1, 2001. I felt the secret thrill that comes from recognizing an allusion that one is pretty sure very few people “get”. I had a strong desire to say “Yeah” and pump my fist. You see, I had just…
The news from California is frightening. The electricity supply has become so tenuous that it took quick action by the Water Resources Board to avert rolling blackouts yesterday, Sunday January 21, 2001. When supplying normal loads on a Sunday is an emergency, things are very, very, very bad. (My high school English teacher would be…
Originally published by Power Online On Tuesday, Jan. 9, the U.S. President Clinton is going to hold a meeting at which he plans to try to figure out what to do about the electricity supply situation in California. I have not yet received my invitation to the meeting, but when asked (fat chance), this is…
The “me too” philosophy common in the power generation business is again beginning to take its toll. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, power industry predictions showed that most new plants would be nuclear powered with the technology achieving a 50% market share by the early part of the 21st century. In the 1990s,…
I’ll admit it. There are some confusing things happening in the energy business, especially concerning nuclear power. I promised to translate information about the business and the technology into something you could use. I have been struggling for several days to digest and synthesize a wide range of recent developments. Last week, the Finnish company…
In 1984, Apple Computer introduced the Macintosh, starting what became a tsunami in the computing world. No longer were screens limited to displaying cryptic messages that only a geek could love. Instead, the new Mac displayed a welcoming “Hello” rendered in cursive writing large enough to fill the tiny, high-resolution screen. With the pleasant greeting…