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Nigeria is an interesting case of an oil rich but useful energy poor country. It is a major crude oil exporter, but its citizens get by with an average of about 8 watts of electricity, which is about 1/5 of what the light above my computer uses. Apparently, some of the leaders of the country…

One of the issues that I have with fusion enthusiasts is that they obscure the truth about the fuel that they plan to use. When talking about the potential for fusion to supply the world’s energy needs, they often talk about using hydrogen and point out that it is the most abundant element on the…

On July 1, 2005, Ira Flatow interviewed Ned R. Sauthoff, Project Manager, U.S. ITER Project, DOE Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton University. As usual, I was not able to listen to the program at the time that it was broadcast, but fortunately Ira has established a podcast edition of his show, so it showed up…

It seems that BNFL’s unions are pretty upset that their employer is planning to sell off the Westinghouse organization. Here is a relevant article from Cumbria Online http://www.cumbria-online.co.uk/viewarticle.asp?id=260225.

On Tuesday 28 June, Rep Bernard Sanders I-VT introduced an amendment to the foreign aid bill that would prevent the Export-Import Bank of the United States from lending $5 Billion to Westinghouse that is intended to finance the sale of nuclear reactors to China. The Sanders amendment to H.R.3057 was passed by a 313-114 vote….

BNFL has announced that they are going to sell their Westinghouse division. This sale is going to be an interesting case to watch, as it will either validate my position about the bright future for nuclear power or disprove it. Though there are a lot of legacy products with the Westinghouse brand on them, the…

I’ll admit it. I am a child of the 70’s and actually liked doing the Bump when I was in high school. I even wore a leisure suit and polyester shirts with long pointed collars. I just stumbled across a web site that had me laughing out loud. The site is sponsored by Friends of…

Another low sleep night. Through a long and unrepeatable browsing path involving the Chris Perillo show and Dave Ryder’s excellent web site, I came across this picture link, which made me remember that I had something to say about transmission lines. The joy of blogging and streams of random thoughts. I recognize that electric power…

One of the most often repeated myths about nuclear power is that no one wants to invest in it. There was a time when that seemed to be true, but that time is long gone. If you review the performance of utility companies during the past three years, the more nuclear exposure that the utility…

My family and I just returned from a terrific coach tour of the UK and Ireland. I liked being a passenger; it gave me the opportunity to see a lot of the country. As people that know me might suspect, I paid a good deal of attention to the energy infrastructure that I could see…

The following post was first created as the response to one more article from a “pro energy” guy who does not understand his competition. The original article can be found at the Energy Pulse web site under the title of Oil Now and Oil Tomorrow. In case you do not want to wade through all…

The Alaska state legislature has approved $500,000 to fund a study of using nuclear power reactors – perhaps the Toshiba 4S described here a couple of days ago – to replace diesel generators as a source of electricity in remote areas. Even though Alaska is a large crude oil producer, the residents of the state…