The world's best thinkers on energy and climate
Southeast Europe is headed for an energy crisis. The region has an energy infrastructure that is unreliable, inefficient, and unsustainable, while at the same time it is faced with the need to reduce dependence on external sources and conform to EU climate and air quality regulations. The best way out, argues Tim Yeo, Chairman of the New Nuclear Watch Institute, is to invest in new nuclear capacity. … [Read more...]
France is at a crossroads, writes Jules Hebert, program coordinator at the Heinrich Böll Foundation office in Paris. It can pursue a renewed nuclear model – or follow the German example and invest massively in renewable energy. It is often said that the French people support the nuclear path, notes Hebert – but a recent survey comes to a different conclusion. … [Read more...]
Spain’s energy regulator has rejected an attempt by the government to prop up the nation’s oldest and most polluting coal power plants, stating that Spain’s massive overcapacity means it can safely close a “significant part of the existing coal fleet” without undermining security of supply. … [Read more...]
Last week, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) issued a momentous final decision to close the state’s last nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon. This outcome represents the culmination of over a year of effort initiated by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) in 2016. … [Read more...]
KiloPower: A Gateway to Abundant Power for Exploration: NASA Glenn, Cleveland, OH – NASA is pushing forward to test a key nuclear energy source that could literally empower human crews on the Mars surface, energizing habitats and running on-the-spot processing equipment to transform Red Planet resources into oxygen, water and fuel. … [Read more...]
Nuclear plants can be the workhorse for many utilities, offering reliable and economic electricity into their grids. Operations across the globe have been excellent with the entire US fleet, representing a quarter of the world’s operating plants, consistently operating at 90% capacity factors or better. … [Read more...]
Last week was National Clean Energy Week. On Tuesday, there was a wide ranging symposium with talks about nuclear energy, wind, solar, biomass, hydroelectricity, carbon capture and sequestration and natural gas. … [Read more...]
U.S. nuclear power plant outages averaged 4.6 gigawatts (GW) during the summer of 2017 (June through August), 10% lower than outages during the summer of 2016. Nuclear outages were highest in June, averaging 7.4 GW, but then averaged 3.8 GW in July and 2.6 GW in August. On August 14, nuclear outages reached their summer low, when just 0.4 GW of nuclear power plants were out. … [Read more...]
Nuclear power is not merely an energy option for the future, geoscientist Scott L. Montgomery writes in his new book, it is a life-saving and essential way for the world to provide energy and avoid “carbon and climate failure.” … [Read more...]
Running out of fuel for navigation, NASA intentionally caused the Cassini spacecraft to burn up in Saturn’s atmosphere to prevent the possibility it might impact one of the planet’s moons that may support life. The spacecraft sent back data on its flight to the very last second of its existence. … [Read more...]
BWXT Image of a nuclear thermal rocket engine A nuclear thermal rocket has double the propulsion efficiency of the Space Shuttle main engine, one of the hardest-working standard chemical engines of the past 40 years. That capability makes nuclear thermal propulsion ideal for delivering large, automated payloads to distant worlds. … [Read more...]
Renewable energy and fossil fuel advocates have one thing in common – an unhealthy tendency to fall in love with a particular energy technology. Will nuclear power solve the world’s problems? Are solar and wind the answer to everything? Can natural gas save the day? What about biomass or clean coal? … [Read more...]
KiloPower Design – Image Source: Dasari V. Rao, Patrick McClure, Los Alamos National Laboratory as published in R&D Magazine 02/14/17 The reactors would use highly enriched uranium as a fuel to power fission processes. The development of the technology would also require completion of the design and flight qualification of the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator. (ASRG) … [Read more...]
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