Nuclear and Renewables

Is the Gov getting interested in microreators (I've had my terminology wrong calling them small modular) I hope so. Maybe the farm will be nuclear powered yet... :). See my previous posts on this subject. I was only being semi serious with these posts, but open minded.

Grid Security ? How Are We Doing?

Back in 2016, I posted this take on the condition of our electrical grid security. Not really my strong area of expertise, but I thought I'd take a stab at it. So several years later, how are we doing? Well....

This article that I found online seems to show little progress,a new threat was identified with the remote control of substations by countries who may not like us, though I think I noted risks involved in having our substations manufactured in other countries. So the problem was identified, executive order given to address the issue, then recinded by the current administration.

Also little progress on protection from solar storms, emp s, and low tech threats, though a surisingly "affordable" idea was mentioned for solar storm protection. Yet, no action...

So who are the groups oppsing progress here, Companies who profit from business as usual? maybe environmental groups who recieve funding from those companies ? Think tanks (who are funders?) ? I'll leave it to readers to draw your own conclusions, But I'd advise people to make plans to their homes and businesses to be able to generate their own electricity for extended periods. Yet another reason why I remain a fan of distributed electrical generation. Also please check my featured post on property tax shennanigans . The following photo is explained there.

Nuclear and Renewables

Nuclear proponents have been really touting that tech online lately. It would be nice to be able to stop events like this from happening.If a distributed - farm scale powerplant ever became available, it would be nice if it wouldn't turn the farm into a superfund site. :)

Nuclear and Renewables

My last post was a serious one,although the sarcasm was pretty heavy. I really don't expect the regulatory environment to allow distributed scale nuclear installations anytime soon. However, I'm guessing it wouldn't be impossible to scale down compments to distributed scale.Here's an example, though the scale is still quite large that touts its ability to supply electricity, district heating, desalination , etc. Kind of sounds like my swimming pool idea in the previous post. Here's another example - 1 megwatt At any rate, I feel that most of the new energy tech breakthroughs these days favor distributed applications. I'll be including some examples in upcoming posts. I've also promised to offer some critiques on other energy tech besides nuclear. They are upcoming as well, although you could start with my featured post, listing some amazing inconsistencies with MidAmerican energys reporting of wind property taxes. As I have mentioned before, Mid American,county officials, state regulators, etc are welcome to comment on that information and I'll include their comments here. In short, if anyone sees problems with my calulations or wants to assist in getting to the bottom of this issue. Please submit some info. In the meantime, the explanation for this photo is in my featured post as well.

I haven't sent this property tax information to the state ombusman office... and Iowa has a new elected attorney general. Maybe it's time to ask reach out there again. Thanks for stopping by.

Nuclear and Renewables

Yeah, nuclear is not really my expertise, but I thought that I might comment on all the online " debate" over whether the grid should be powered by nuclear, wind solar battery, fossil generation, or grid demand managaement,and what mix of these. Proponents of these positions are usually inflexible, and I frequently get the feeling that they omit facts in order try and make their case. I have questions... so let's start with Nuclear. One of the issues that I've heard with nuclear is that it is unable to ramp output up and down fast enough to respond to wind and solar variablity. That job ususally is done by natural gas generation. Not much info to be found on this subject, but I did find this post on thirdway.org saying no problem ! I found another one from Germany that wasn't so sure.

Next question What happens when things go wrong? As covered by this post on Twitter.

And what about those small nuclear reactors that I keep hearing about? proponents claim saftey issues and ramping issues can be addressed by these, But how small can they be ? Can i install one at the farm and and get electricity, and maybe free heat for the house and a pool? Just spit balling here. Could I sell any excess power to the grid for a fair price? If a sfety issue rose, it seems like it would be easier to remove a tiny reactor than a utility scale one. I'm well documented on my support of and belief in distributed energy. So here I'll mention Mr. Shellenburger, whose hard core endorsement of nuclear only seems to advocate for centralized nuclear generation. Really now, how small can these things be made? And it would be interesting if he would address my security concerns with an overcentralized grid (apologies if he has done that). And in the link above he also is dissappointed on dependence on imported energy. I truley don't understand stopping natural gas production in Europe either, until other options are ready.but as for german reluctance on using nuclear,I remember reading that Germany recieved some fallout from the chernobyldisater years ago. Hmmm, can't find it currently . Sorry about the snarky ness, but maybe these questions should be answered. Oh and I'll probably be devoting some time asking some questions to proponents of the demand management, wind - solar , Fossil folks as well. I know that not many people seem to read blogs anymore, So I'm probably at the "tldr" length so I'll call it a day. If you have any comments or useful info on my questions above I'll probably include them if you aren't bugging me about investment schemes...