Enough sunlight reaches the earth each day to meet all of our energy needs for one year including powering all transportation from electric cars to high-speed rail. Globally, over 70GW of solar power is installed and over 250GW of wind energy. Solar power has grown over 30 percent annually since the 1970s, and 85 percent Continue reading →
South Korea says a decision to install smart meters in at least 50 percent of the country’s households by 2016 could reduce electricity consumption equivalent to the projected cost of one nuclear power plant, Bloomberg reports. via South Korea’s smart meters avert the need for nuclear plants? | SmartPlanet.
The anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, which claimed the lives of 19,000 and left another 325,000 without permanent housing, was observed on Sunday with a moment of silence and prayer at 2:46pm, the time at which the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck. In the wake of the disaster, Japan reassessed its energy policy, alongside many nations Continue reading →
An escalating crisis at nuclear power plants in Japan following a massive earthquake and tsunami has not changed the investing thesis about clean technology, according to a number of leading venture capitalists and researchers. via Everyone but investors can now safely panic about Japan’s nuclear crisis | Reuters.
In the 1970s, two countries took two different paths in energy policy. Denmark pursued wind power, but failed to replace its fossil fuel power plants. It has among the highest carbon emissions per capita in Europe. France pursued nuclear power, and now has the lowest carbon emissions of any OECD country. Lesson learned. Nuclear power Continue reading →
The costs and the waste, the protests and the planning objections:virtually no-one would propose new nuclear capacity. Even the Tories had come to a virtually anti-nuclear position by ruling out public subsidy, since every plant ever built in Britain has required spectacular sums of taxpayers’ money. via Nuclear is not a viable energy stop-gap – Continue reading →
The countries of the Middle East might seem like the last places that would embrace non-hydrocarbon energy sources. With a total of 55 percent of the world’s crude oil reserves and 41 percent of its natural gas, why should they? But the past year has seen a major push towards nuclear and renewable sources of Continue reading →
TerraPower, the developer of a small-scale nuclear reactor technology, has raised about $35 million in a new round of venture capital from investors that include Charles River Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Intellectual Ventures co-founder Nathan Myhrvold and Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Founded three years ago, TerraPower’s technology is based on inventions created at Intellectual Ventures, which is Continue reading →
Despite all the talk about the Smart Grid, spending on electric power infrastructure has dropped for two straight years for the first time since the Great Depression. According to a new survey by Black & Veatch, many utilities are pulling in their horns to focus on keeping the lights on while keeping their books in Continue reading →
Whenever we hear the word “nuclear,” we think of a tremendous mushroom cloud in a gloomy sky, followed by images of a desolate, uninhabitable, and barren land. For many of us, “nuclear” translates directly into “nuclear weapons.” We should not, however write off “nuclear” so easily, as the same technology used in such devastating weapons Continue reading →
President Obama has called for a new generation of nuclear-power plants. But when he abandoned plans to store the nation’s nuclear waste in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, he effectively forced states eager to break ground on reactors to accept the idea of keeping that waste within their borders—not a popular idea since the Three Mile Island Continue reading →
The Department of Energy is offering $8 billion in loan guarantees to break ground on a new nuclear power plant in Maryland. Will this be the start of a nuclear building boom? Speaking in Lanham, Maryland, President Obama outlined a simple objective: Jump start nuclear power plant construction in the U.S., which hasn’t built a Continue reading →
One of the reasons that I am a strong advocate of smaller nuclear energy plants is that I resist the notion of the inevitability of greater interconnectedness and dependence. I like systems that have firewalls, circuit breakers, and air gaps to ensure that a failure in one location can be isolated. I do not like Continue reading →
Solar, wind, geothermal, hydro and carbon-dioxide capture rank high on President Barack Obama’s priority list for developing “renewable” energy. But so does nuclear power. “Nuclear has to be part of the mix,” Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Monday. “It’s clean, base-load energy.” Chu, speaking to the Western Governors’ Association in Deer Valley, said loan guarantees Continue reading →
