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Atomic Insights

Atomic energy technology, politics, and perceptions from a nuclear energy insider who served as a US nuclear submarine engineer officer

Unreliables

Northwest wind takes a week-long vacation

November 25, 2014 By Rod Adams

Some Atomic Insights readers don’t like it when I use the term “unreliables” to describe weather dependent power sources like wind and solar energy. They believe that word is demeaning and not entirely accurate, especially in certain system designs where wind turbines are partnered with hydro or pumped storage. Even in that situation, however, the […]

Filed Under: Alternative energy, Unreliables, Wind energy

Helping people understand the power grid

September 4, 2014 By Rod Adams

Yesterday, the Institute for Energy Research launched a project to help people gain a better understanding of the electric power grid, a marvel of modern society that most people take for granted — unless its product delivery is interrupted for more than a few minutes. This information project is timely, especially considering all of the […]

Filed Under: Economics, Natural Gas, Unreliables

Amory Lovins continues Sowing Confusion About Renewable and Nuclear Energy

August 9, 2014 By Rod Adams

On August 5, 2014, Amory Lovins published a commentary on Forbes.com titled Sowing Confusion About Renewable Energy. He was responding to an opinion piece published in the July 26, 2014 issue of The Economist that was based on a working paper titled The Net Benefits of Low and No-Carbon Electricity Technologies written by Charles R. […]

Filed Under: Antinuclear activist, Atomic politics, Fossil fuel competition, Unreliables

Atomic Show #217 – Michael Mariotte, President NIRS

June 19, 2014 By Rod Adams

At the suggestion of a long time Atomic Insights contributor and Atomic Show listener, I invited Michael Mariotte for a guest appearance on the Atomic Show. In the small world made up of active nuclear advocates and people adamantly opposed to nuclear energy, Mariotte and his organization are famous — or infamous, depending on one’s […]

Filed Under: Antinuclear activist, Climate change, Podcast, Solar energy, Unreliables, Wind energy

James Hansen is worried about CO2 and realistic about solutions

May 2, 2014 By Rod Adams

Dr. James Hansen is perhaps the world’s most famous and stubbornly insistent climate change activists. He bases his concerns on several decades worth of intensive research. During part of his career, he served as the director of a large laboratory at NASA Goddard Space Center, so it was not just his own research that he […]

Filed Under: Atomic politics, Climate change, Unreliables

Where’s the Wind When You Need It?

January 22, 2014 By Rod Adams

Bonneville Power Authority Load versus generation sources Jan 16-Jan 22, 2014

The Bonneville Power Authority service area has more than 4,000 MW of wind energy capacity installed. They also provide a web-based information service that is updated every five minutes that reports on the service area load, thermal generation, hydro generation, and wind generation. Here is a picture reporting those numbers for the period from Jan […]

Filed Under: Unreliables, Wind energy

Cape Wind scrambling to meet deadline to qualify for $780 million taxpayer gift

December 27, 2013 By Rod Adams

Cape Wind is the leading offshore wind energy project in the United States. In 2001, more than 12 years ago, Jim Gordon, the project founder, started the process of promoting his vision of a building a 430 MWe (peak capacity) field of 130 massive (rotor diameter – 110 m, hub height – 80 m, nacelle […]

Filed Under: Alternative energy, Smoking Gun, Unreliables, Wind energy

Energiewende – planned by industry and government without customer considerations

October 22, 2013 By Rod Adams

Jim Conca recently published a blog on Forbes titled European Economic Stability Threatened By Renewable Energy Subsidies. One of the earliest comments in the growing thread on that blog provided an interesting point of view about Germany’s decision to abandon nuclear energy in favor of unreliable power sources backed up by flexible lignite, coal and […]

Filed Under: Fossil fuel competition, International nuclear, Politics of Nuclear Energy, Unreliables

Distressingly elitist view from two “sustainability consultants”

October 18, 2013 By Rod Adams

Joris van Dorp is an HVAC and energy systems mechanical engineer at a building installations consultancy. His primary work is associated with projects intended to improve energy efficiency/sustainability within the field. Clients include medical centers, airports, data centers, laboratories, office buildngs and some industrial clients. On October 18, 2013, Joris submitted the following comment. It […]

Filed Under: Climate change, Solar energy, Unreliables, Wind energy

Talk of electric power grid demise is wrong

September 6, 2013 By Rod Adams

Someday, America is going to return to logic and reality. We may be making some progress as shown by the fact that there are an increasing number of people who no longer watch TV or trust the TV talking heads in the entertainment business called “television news.” However, we still have our issues. One irrational […]

Filed Under: Alternative energy, Fracking, Solar energy, Unreliables, Wind energy

Explaining my dismissal of fossil fuel alternatives that are NOT nuclear fission

February 14, 2013 By Rod Adams

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 […]

Filed Under: Advanced Atomic Technologies, Atomic politics, Solar energy, Unreliables, Wind energy

German solar photovoltaic performance – informative graphic site

January 20, 2013 By Rod Adams

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 […]

Filed Under: Solar energy, Unreliables

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