It took five decades, but the Democratic Party has finally changed its stance on nuclear energy. In its recently released party platform, the Democrats say they favor a “technology-neutral” approach that includes “all zero-carbon technologies, including hydroelectric power, geothermal, existing and advanced nuclear, and carbon capture and storage.” Robert Bryce writes via Forbes: That statement marks the first time since 1972…
Tag: Hydroelectric Power
Volkwagen Touts Massive Energy Storage Potential of Vehicle-to-Grid Electric Car Batteries
Volkswagen’s chief strategist Michael Jost predicts their vehicle-to-grid electric car batteries could open up a new business opportunity: selling their electricity back to the power grid during peak demand. Reuters reports: “By 2025 we will have 350 gigawatt hours worth of energy storage at our disposal through our electric car fleet. Between 2025 and 2030 this will grow to 1 terawatt…
Good News For Climate Change: India Gets Out of Coal and Into Renewable Energy
“India has been aggressively pivoting away from coal-fired power plants and towards electricity generated by solar, wind, and hydroelectric power,” writes the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Lasrick shared their report: The reasons for this change are complex and interlocking, but one aspect in particular seems to stand out: The price for solar electricity has been in freefall, to levels so…
Scientists Propose Using Mountains To Build a New Type of Battery For Long-Term Energy Storage
An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: One of the big challenges of making 100 percent renewable energy a reality is long-term storage,” says Julian Hunt, an engineering scientist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria. Hunt and his collaborators have devised a novel system to complement lithium-ion battery use for energy storage over the long…
Disappearing Peruvian glaciers
Glaciers are melting in areas across the globe. But glacier loss in the Peruvian Andes is happening particularly rapidly. New research reports a reduction of almost 30% between 2000 and 2016. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/disappearing-peruvian-glaciers…
Lake Baikal: Earth’s deepest, oldest lake
Lake Baikal in southern Siberia is 25 million years old and more than 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) deep. More than 2,500 plant and animal species have been documented in the lake, most found nowhere else. Controversy surrounds construction of hydropower stations on a river that feeds the lake. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/what-is-the-worlds-deepest-lake…
‘I Oversaw America’s Nuclear Power Industry. Now I Think It Should Be Banned.’
Friday the Washington Post published an essay by Gregory Jaczko, who served on America’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2005 to 2009 and was its chairman from 2009 to 2012. He says he’d believed nuclear power was worth the reduction they produced in greenhouse emissions — until Japan’s 2011 nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima power plant. “Despite working in the industry for…
Nuclear Power Can Save the World
Expanding the technology is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions and decarbonize the economy. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/opinion/sunday/climate-change-nuclear-power.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Spinning Water Droplets That Seemingly Defy Physics
Chinese researchers have discovered a new way to make water droplets spin, creating a potential new kind of hydropower. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/video/science/100000006415939/spinning-water-droplets-that-defy-physics.html?partner=rss&emc=rss