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Recent Posts
- Electrifying freight trains in the U.S. is a bad idea
- Why Nuclear Power can’t replace fossil fuels
- Energy, Water, & Climate Change are interdependent
- Why fusion power is Forever Away
- Climate Change dominates news coverage at expense of other existential planetary boundaries
- Excerpt from “The Geopolitics of Resource Wars”
- Homes & Buildings
- Book Review “The Outlawed Ocean” by Ian Urbina
- Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future
- Motherboards: too complicated to make after oil
- “More and More and More” one of the best books on energy ever written
- The staggering destruction of knowledge by Christians in the Roman Empire
- Why the R/P Reserves to Production ratio does not show when oil will run out
- Catton on Collapse “Bottleneck: Humanity’s Impending Impasse”
- Book Review of Grain Brain: Extraordinary claim not backed up by evidence
Category Archives: Renewables
Book review: Atomic Days. The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America
Preface. Plutonium for nuclear weapons was produced at the Hanford Washington site for nearly four decades. Today it is the world’s most polluted site chock-a-block with radioactive waste and toxic chemicals. Chemical pollution is one of the planetary boundaries that … Continue reading
Posted in Chemical Pollution, Disasters, Energy Books, Nuclear Waste, Pollution
Tagged accident, Bechtel, DOE, Hanford, nuclear waste, plutonium
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Bill Gates Gen IV sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) in Wyoming
Source: Japan abandons Monju fast reactor: the slow death of a nuclear dream. The Ecologist. ‘Fast breeder’ reactors are promoted by nuclear enthusiasts as the clean, green energy technology of the future. But all the evidence tells us they are … Continue reading
Posted in Gen IV SMR reactors
Tagged bill gates, Gen IV, Natrium, nuclear power, SMR, sodium-cooled
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Fusion: Book review of “Sun in a Bottle”
Preface. I don’t know of a book or article that better explains fusion and why fusion is so difficult and far from being commercial. Or ever commercial for that matter. Except for hydrogen bombs.
Posted in Fusion, Nuclear Books, Nuclear Waste
Tagged bomb, fission, fusion, H Bomb, hydrogen, nuclear power, radiation, Teller, tritium
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Fusion at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Source: The target chamber of LLNL’s National Ignition Facility, where 192 laser beams delivered more than 2 million joules of ultraviolet energy to a tiny fuel pellet to create fusion ignition. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Preface. Anyone who thought the … Continue reading
Posted in Fusion, Nuclear War
Tagged fusion, ignition, laser, LLNL, nuclear weapons, weapons lab
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Fusion: Tokamak Obstacles
Source: Sparkes M (2022) Korean nuclear fusion reactor achieves 100 million°C for 30 seconds. New Scientist. Preface. Hope springs eternally for Fusion. I’ve come to see press releases about fusion breakthroughs as mostly a way to get more startup investment … Continue reading
Uranium waste from 50+ sites contaminating groundwater
Preface. One of the top priorities of collapse from energy decline is to clean up nuclear (Superfund and other hazardous) wastes NOW, while we have the energy and technical ability to do so. Future generations will be thrown back into … Continue reading
Posted in Chemical Pollution, Hazardous Waste, Nuclear Waste, Peak Water
Tagged groundwater, nuclear waste, uranium
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Nuclear waste storage plans in the news
Preface. With world peak oil of conventional likely to have happened in 2008 (90% of our oil) and all oil, including conventional in 2018, there’s not much time left to clean up nuclear wastes to keep future generations for the … Continue reading
Posted in Nuclear Power Collapse, Nuclear Waste
Tagged Hanford, nuclear, waste, Yucca mountain
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Clean up nuclear waste for the sake of the next 30,000 generations
Preface. One the greatest tragedies of energy decline will be the nuclear waste left to harm 30,000 future generations so 3 generations could keep the lights on. We owe it to the future to clean up waste while we still … Continue reading
Posted in Nuclear Waste
Tagged borehole, Britain, disposal, Finland, nuclear, underground, waste
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Hibernating freeze-thaw molten salt batteries for seasonal energy storage
Preface. A 100% renewable grid can’t happen without long-term energy storage. Today that’s done with natural gas (with a little help from hydropower in the 10 states that have most of it). Meanwhile nuclear and coal chug along at a … Continue reading
Hydrogen hopium: Storage
Source: Russel Rhodes (2011) Explosive Lessons in Hydrogen Safety. https://appel.nasa.gov/2011/02/02/explosive-lessons-in-hydrogen-safety/ Preface. What is hopium? Irrational or unwarranted optimism. An addiction to false hopes. A metaphorical substance that causes people to believe in a false hope (H + opium). And Hopium … Continue reading
Posted in CAES Compressed Air, Drought & Collapse, Electric & Hydrogen trucks impossible, Hopium, Hydrogen, Trucks
Tagged CAES, drought, embrittlement, explosive, hopium, hydrogen, salt dome, storage
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