Following-up on our earlier post, it seems necessary to point out that even though the consortium (significantly) mis-estimated the price (through carelessness and careerism), that doesn’t mean the ITER  A) can’t be completed, or  B) can’t be commercially successful.   The fact that governments over-promise in order to buy votes or avoid resistance does not fundamentally constrain reality.  It should, however, constrain our enthusiasm for government-directed solutions; or even government involvement.   The Tokamak design demonstrated that magnetic bottle fusion reactors could operate above energy breakeven, (more…)

Raul raised a question which is worth its own posting, I think.

We were thinking aloud about the interrelatedness of the modern global economy, and how difficult it is to develop something for one group, without disadvantaging another group.  Raul asked this question.

“Anyone of you have any action plan in mind?   We have gone so far that the transition to a sustainable living on Earth seems so impossible to achieve… I think the challenge is more from a culture and political nature than anything else.   I see growing inter-generational selfishness, at least in Western societies, as something very dangerous for mankind’s survival.

Each day the current model is maintained, it becomes more difficult to come back.   We need an energy transition plan (do you have any idea how powerful the big boss of the current paradigm are?),  a value transition plan (people seems to be each day more far away from nature, they need “incentives” to behave sustainably!), etc etc.   My point of view is:  the action plan will be trustily considered when people see the end very close, and maybe it’ll be too late.

Sorry for my pessimistic view..”

I read an advertisement that technology is the only way to solve the really big problems.  But doesn’t it seem that the really big problems came from technology we introduced awhile back?  Economics postulates that the adverse impact of actions builds up, raising the price of continued movement in a particular path, which is supposed to reduce the amount of that activity in which we engage.  (more…)

They’re tearing down a nuclear power plant near me.  The owners say it would cost a billion dollars to refurbish it to generate electricity, but it only costs them a billion dollars to tear it down.  Still, they have no place to take the spent fuel, so they are going to leave it on the site; first in a pool of water, then later in dry casks to be constructed later.  I wish they would hurry on the dry casks, because there is a simple technique terrorists can use to massively weaponize the spent fuel as long as it is stored in water. (more…)

Does it make any sense to mandate a solution which is seemingly unachievable?  We see governments doing this sort of thing to bolster political support from one highly-focused segment of their polity; but it seems to echo similar social programs which have ended in tears, sometimes horrifically.   What is the cost to a politician to falsely promise, and falsely accuse? (more…)

The economics are compelling, and the results are pretty darned green, too.  This is the kind of solution we keep trying to find.  The city of Santa Rosa, California, USA, has been able to curtail environmentally destructive sewage discharges into the Russian River by injecting it into an aquifer more than a mile underground, and reaps electricity as a side benefit.   (more…)

So which is it?  Did the panel exonerate the Climategate guys, or not?  Well, sort of both.  In short, they said that the guys behaved badly, but that the methodology was not seriously flawed due to that particular misbehavior.  That probably does not satisfy anyone. (more…)

From the UK’s Yorkshire post (also reported in other locations): Dutch review supports global warming scientists despite ‘minor’ report flaws. Is it now emerging that last year’s hysteria over the apparent errors in the IPCC report was whipped up by global warming deniers, swallowed by media hungry for a sensational story? This follows similar reviews of the so-called ‘Climate-Gate’, which also found that whatever weaknesses of practice emerged did not cast the basic science or conclusions into doubt.

It is now (finally) being more widely reported what was discovered when the original gamma ray investigation of the Macondo well’s  blowout preventer was examined   (more…)