10 Things the Country Must Do to Avoid an Energy Crunch

Check out number five from the Houston Chronicle:

5. The U.S. nuclear energy industry has proved itself to be safe, reliable and free of toxic emissions. New technologies make plants more efficient and easier to build and operate. Environmental concerns dictate that nuclear power play a larger role. However, full exploitation of nuclear power plants demands that the government quickly provide a safe site for the disposal of radioactive waste.

Comments

Anonymous said…

One thing the country will learn sooner or later is that using less energy is not a solution. At every step of economic development human societies use more energy then in the step before it.

As some nations have chased out industries like aluminum smeltering, they've found the service economy that replaced it was much lower paying jobs. The heavy energy jobs like in a factory or a mine or smelter pay very high wages. Jobs where people can make 80 grand a year with full benefits and a pension.

In other words going down to lower energy sectors, was a step backwards in economic development. 25,000$ a year retail jobs with no benefits replacing the 80,000$ jobs.

February 26, 2008 at 6:33 AM

Anonymous said…

An abundant supply of electricity is the most tangible commodity that can be made available to a developing country. Availability of electricity is the key to advancing the quality of life in all countries. The quality of food, shelter, healthcare, and manufacturing capability are determined by the availability and affordability of electric power.

February 26, 2008 at 8:16 AM

Sneak Peek

There's an invisible force powering and propelling our way of life.
It's all around us. You can't feel it. Smell it. Or taste it.
But it's there all the same. And if you look close enough, you can see all the amazing and wondrous things it does.
It not only powers our cities and towns.
And all the high-tech things we love.
It gives us the power to invent.
To explore.
To discover.
To create advanced technologies.
This invisible force creates jobs out of thin air.
It adds billions to our economy.
It's on even when we're not.
And stays on no matter what Mother Nature throws at it.
This invisible force takes us to the outer reaches of outer space.
And to the very depths of our oceans.
It brings us together. And it makes us better.
And most importantly, it has the power to do all this in our lifetime while barely leaving a trace.
Some people might say it's kind of unbelievable.
They wonder, what is this new power that does all these extraordinary things?

A Design Team Pictures the Future of Nuclear Energy

For more than 100 years, the shape and location of human settlements has been defined in large part by energy and water. Cities grew up near natural resources like hydropower, and near water for agricultural, industrial and household use.

So what would the world look like with a new generation of small nuclear reactors that could provide abundant, clean energy for electricity, water pumping and desalination and industrial processes?

Hard to say with precision, but Third Way, the non-partisan think tank, asked the design team at the Washington, D.C. office of Gensler & Associates, an architecture and interior design firm that specializes in sustainable projects like a complex that houses the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. The talented designers saw a blooming desert and a cozy arctic village, an old urban mill re-purposed as an energy producer, a data center that integrates solar panels on its sprawling flat roofs, a naval base and a humming transit hub.

In the converted mill, high temperat…

Seeing the Light on Nuclear Energy

If you think that there is plenty of electricity, that the air is clean enough and that nuclear power is a just one among many options for meeting human needs, then you are probably over-focused on the United States or Western Europe. Even then, you’d be wrong.

That’s the idea at the heart of a new book, “Seeing the Light: The Case for Nuclear Power in the 21st Century,” by Scott L. Montgomery, a geoscientist and energy expert, and Thomas Graham Jr., a retired ambassador and arms control expert.

Billions of people live in energy poverty, they write, and even those who don’t, those who live in places where there is always an electric outlet or a light switch handy, we need to unmake the last 200 years of energy history, and move to non-carbon sources. Energy is integral to our lives but the authors cite a World Health Organization estimate that more than 6.5 million people die each year from air pollution. In addition, they say, the global climate is heading for ruinous instability. E…

NEI Nuclear Notes

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