A recent article at Renew Economy, an Australian publication that follows the change to renewables, shows us the practical problems with focusing on new nuclear plants instead of alternatives, like solar and wind with battery storage. As is often the case, ideas that can look good on paper often don’t … [continued]
Since 2014 I’ve been tracking the natural experiment in China regarding the ability to scale nuclear generation vs renewables. My hypothesis was that the modularity and manufacturability of wind and solar especially meant that it would be much easier for them to scale up to massive sizes. That hypothesis was … [continued]
A few months ago, a STEM and economics literate global decarbonization executive for a $4 billion annual revenue logistics business operating in most of the major trading companies of the world asked me “What drives this madness on hydrogen?” They were being peppered with irrational proposals for the molecule and … [continued]
The decommissioning costs for the UK’s nuclear generation are coming home to roost, and they are laying golden eggs for the firms that won the business. For UK citizens, not so much. Despite the very high costs of both the new nuclear reactors at Hinkley Site C, the rapidly rising … [continued]
The fiscal ideologues who seem to like nuclear power the most are ignoring the lessons of the past because their cognitive biases don’t allow them to understand that free market economics and nuclear generation go together like flame throwers and gas stations.
Legacy forms of electrical generation are going to diminish radically in significance. Total energy requirements are going to halve. Renewable generation will dominate. Grids will become even more important. Storage will be everywhere.
Heat pumps and solar panels rule in the UK this June. In fact, it has been a bumper year for all green energy upgrades — batteries included — a 62% increase over 2022. As I sit here in the winter sunshine in Brisbane, Queensland, I remember my 18 months working … [continued]
HVDC is the technology for energy links. Tubes of steel carrying molecules need not apply.
Recently, the new coalition government of the Netherlands looked across its decarbonization portfolio, realized that it had failed to meet renewables targets, and so announced that it would build two nuclear power reactors with 1-1.6 GW capacity each. And the government is claiming that it will have them running in … [continued]
Wrights Law isn’t going to save the deep inefficiencies of SMRs. As I pointed out two years ago, the world tried tiny commercial nuclear reactors in the 1960s and 1970s, they were too expensive.
