‘You can’t reuse turbines, and there are now thousands upon thousands of blades just sitting there in warehouses already … It’s an environmental disaster.’ //
While green advocates commonly use the terms renewable, sustainable, and net zero to describe their efforts, the dirty little secret is that much of the waste from solar panels and wind turbines is ending up in landfills.
The current amounts of fiberglass, resins, aluminum and other chemicals — not to mention propeller blades from giant wind turbines — pose no threat currently to local town dumps, but this largely ignored problem will become more of a challenge in the years ahead as the 500 million solar panels and the 73,000 wind turbines now operating in the U.S. are decommissioned and replaced.
Greens insist that reductions in carbon emissions will more than compensate for increased levels of potentially toxic garbage; others fret that renewable energy advocates have not been forthright about their lack of eco-friendly plans and the technology to handle the waste. //
“Globally, we produced 20-25 million tons of solar panels in 2023. They will come offline in roughly 20 years. That is 20-25 million tons of solar waste a year in 2045.”
The International Renewable Energy Agency puts the potential mountain even higher, pointing to studies that put the 2050 figure at 78 million metric tons.
For now, 90 percent of this detritus goes to landfills. And the panel fields and towering turbines must be dismantled, trucked away, usually by diesel-powered vehicles, and then sent to landfills or ports, where they are shipped to poor, developing countries. Fossil fuels may foul the air, but renewables may pollute the ground. //
In many cases, when highly regulated power companies look to build a new plant, laws require them to set aside money in bonds or escrow accounts to cover or defray decommissioning costs, Mills said. That is not always the case. A recently decommissioned coal mine in northern Louisiana may cost $300 million to break down, according to the Alliance for Affordable Energy, which says those costs will probably be borne by ratepayers. But Isaac and Mills believe financial decommissions requirements have been either ignored or insufficiently funded in the renewable market. ///
Compare the millions of tons of renewable waste that is not renewable and the thousands of tons of nuclear waste that is mostly reusable: nuclear waste is easily manageable and won't be scattered all over the landscape.
To use the heating BTU calculator, you will first need to measure the place you want to heat up. You need to know if you’re heating up a 1000 sq ft, 1500 sq ft, or a 3000 sq ft home, or a 400 sq ft room, for example.
Secondly, you need to figure out what climate zone you live in. That will determine how many BTU per square foot you need for heating (more on that later on). The United States is divided into 7 main climate zones or regions. Example: Miami, Florida, is in Climate Zone 2 and requires 35 BTU of heat per sq ft. Chicago, Illinois, is in Climate Zone 5 and requires 50 BTUs of heat per square foot.
https://basc.pnnl.gov/images/iecc-climate-zone-map
Climate Zone BTUs Per Sq Ft
Climate Zone 1 30 BTU per sq ft
Climate Zone 2 35 BTU per sq ft
Climate Zone 3 40 BTU per sq ft
Climate Zone 4 45 BTU per sq ft
Climate Zone 5 50 BTU per sq ft
Climate Zone 6 55 BTU per sq ft
Climate Zone 7 60 BTU per sq ft
We presuppose the standard ceiling height of 8 ft. For every additional ft above 8 ft, you need to add 12.5%. So, for 9 ft ceiling, you need to multiply the BTUs by 1.125 to get the most adequate estimation.
chart covering all 48 propane tank sizes with average dimensions and tare weights
The mainstream economic narrative in the USA would have us believe that power blackouts are always a bad thing – just think of all that lost productivity! Think of the effect on the GDP!
So I was curious to see this video about the recent blackouts in Spain rack up millions of views on Instagram 👇
I think it resonated with people because it points towards a new narrative for society and the economy – one where joy & connection are prioritized over economic productivity. //
That's one of the things about living in Alaska that we all put up with, and most of us are willing to do so because, well, we live in Alaska. But we don't like it. It doesn't help us bond with our neighbors. There's no joy in a 12-hour blackout. No, we just hunker down, fire up our generators, light some candles, and stoke up our wood stoves to stay warm.
In other parts of the country, though, most people don't have generators or battery backups. These folks are just blacked out, and I can guarantee you that they see no "joy" in it.
Virtually every prescription from the climate-scold left involves us giving up something. They want us to give up our rural homes, they want us to give up our pickups and SUVs, they want us to give up our reliable natural gas and nuclear power plants for unreliable and low-density solar and wind power. They want us, in short, to surrender our prosperity, our modern technological lifestyle, all to prevent some fraction of one percent of a degree of warming over the next century. And now they admonish us to find joy in this? That's going to sell about as well as Kamala Harris's "campaign of joy." //
PubliusCryptus
3 hours ago
I think it resonated with people because it points towards a new narrative for society and the economy – one where joy & connection are prioritized over economic productivity.
Joy and connection? I see hunger and privation. //
Quizzical
3 hours ago
Whenever the power goes out for very many people, someone dies. Literally. Some people in relatively poor health are literally dependent upon electricity to keep powering the machines that keep them alive. Literally killing people is not something to be glossed over as no big deal. //
Peter Mohan
2 hours ago
As a retired NYC Firefighter I personally witness the joy of the 1977 blackout. Four deaths, hundreds injured, thousands arrested and 1600 buildings destroyed or looted.
Many of the businesses never returned to the poor neighborhoods that they had served. I’m looking forward to a heart attack so I can meet the dedicated doctors and nurses in the nearby emergency room.
This is truly bananas: all of Europe appears to have been seconds away a continent-wide blackout.
The grid frequency across continental Europe plunged to 49.85 hertz — just a hair above the red-line collapse threshold.
The normal operating frequency for Europe’s power grid is 50.00 Hz, kept with an extremely tight margin of ±0.1 Hz. Anything outside ±0.2 Hz triggers major emergency actions.
If the frequency had fallen just another 0.3 Hz — below 49.5 Hz — Europe could have suffered a system-wide cascading blackout.
At that threshold, automatic protective relays disconnect major power plants, and collapse accelerates.
And it's disturbingly easy to imagine multiple scenarios where that could have occurred...
SPAIN BLACKOUTS: AN ANONYMOUS EXPERT VIEW
From a deep groupchat, last night, translated from Spanish, written by an expert in transmission and distribution of power. Not my words.
"What has happened on April 28 has a well-located origin: the Aragón-Catalonia corridor, which is one of the most important electric highways in Spain. There is not only the electricity produced by our solar and wind farms in the northeast, but also the electricity that we import from France. This international interconnection, although weak (it can only contribute 3% of our demand, well below the minimum of 10% that marks the EU), in times of stress is essential to balance the network.
At 12:32 p.m., in that Aragón-Catalonia corridor there was an electric shock. What exactly does "shake" mean? It means that suddenly and abnormally, the power that flowed through those lines began to vary violently, rising and falling in a very short time. Such abrupt variability can be due to three main causes:
-
That a relay or transformer on that electric highway detects an abnormal flow of current or voltage (higher or lower than expected) and automatically disconnected to avoid burning or destroyed. This is called that "opens" a relay or switch: it jumps and cuts the passage of electricity to protect itself.
-
That the enormous concentration of renewable energy in that area (mainly solar and wind) has created an electrical resonance: electronic inverters, which synchronize current, can sometimes be amplified between them if a small voltage alteration (for example, due to clouds, strong wind or a slight failure) extends like an echo to all devices, causing widespread oscillations.
-
That a wrong control order has been sent (by mistake or attack) from the SCADA systems, disconnecting or reducing the generation of multiple hit plants. There is no confirmation of this possibility yet, but it is being investigated.
What is known is that as a consequence of that shake, the interconnection with France jumped: we were isolated just at the worst time, when the peninsula needed external support to stabilize.
Without that French help, the frequency of the peninsular network (which should always be 50 Hz exact) began to drop quickly. The frequency is like the heartbeat of the network: if it falls too much, the systems understand that the patient (the network) is collapsing and automatically disconnected so as not to self-destruct. Thus, in just five seconds, the solar and wind farms were turned off —very sensitive to frequency variations—, 15 GW of power was lost suddenly (60% of all the electricity generated at that time), and the network could not take it anymore: it was It collapsed completely, showing the Redeia Platform (REE) a "0 MW" nationwide. That does not mean that all the turbines were physically turned off, but there was no generator synchronized at the common frequency of 50 Hz. It was, for practical purposes, a country off.
To ignite a completely dead network again, one essential thing is needed: plants that can start in black, that is, without receiving energy from anywhere else. Spain has identified five large hydroelectric jumps capable of doing this. However, and here is one of the great negligences that are coming to light, three of those five groups were stopped in scheduled maintenance, by business decision supervised by the administration. Only two were operational. That made the recovery much slower and weaker than it should be in a normal contingency plan.
BREAKING NEWS: Spain and Portugal Celebrate Historic Achievement: First Renewable Blackout Festival™ a Roaring Success
In a stunning victory for progress, major cities across Spain and Portugal plunged into darkness today… a bold, equity-driven milestone being hailed by experts as “a necessary recalibration of oppressive light privilege.”
Government officials, cloaked in the safety of candlelit diversity councils, were quick to assure citizens that the blackouts had absolutely nothing to do with their relentless obsession with renewables, socialism, or Marxist energy redistribution initiatives.
Instead, they blamed “unexpected atmospheric challenges”… otherwise known as night time.
“This is what success looks like,” declared Iberian Minister for Sustainable Equality™, Juanita de Powerless. “Zero emissions. Zero industry. Zero functioning infrastructure. Welcome to Net Zero: where zero means zero.”
Sources confirm that during the outage, critical DEI teams remained operational… bravely identifying which marginalized communities were being most equitably electrocuted when traffic lights failed.
“True social justice,” noted one Gender Energy Equity™ analyst, “is making sure everyone gets hit by a bus equally.”
Meanwhile, local media proudly reported that while trains, phones, and emergency services collapsed, Spain’s Ministry of Feelings achieved its monthly KPI by holding an inclusive brainstorming session on how to decolonize electricity.
Critics foolishly tried to link the blackouts to decades of grid neglect, mass immigration-fueled demand surges, solar panels that don’t work in the dark, and a population conditioned to think work ethic is colonial violence™… but were quickly fact-checked by experts who graduated with double majors in Critical Energy Studies and Queer Wind Turbine Maintenance.
As night fell over the silent streets of Madrid, citizens were reminded that “decarbonisation” is not just an economic transition… it’s a spiritual journey… into medieval living.
Welcome to the future. Hope you brought a torch… and a towel.
Chris Wright: Absolutely. We are refilling the Reserve now and we will continue to refill the Reserve the whole time I'm in office. You know, that was just such an irreponsible action to drain that reserve so quickly for electoral reasons, and in fact it was drained so fast, it did some damage to the facilities. So right now we can only fill two of the four major salt caverns that we have. So, we're doing repair work on the other two, we're slowly filling the other two, and I'm trying to get some funds through Congress that will give us a longer strategic runway to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at the fastest rate we can.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is the world's largest stored supply of crude oil, with a capacity of 714 million barrels, and is intended to serve as a reserve stock (hence the name) in the event of a national emergency. The petroleum is stored in four massive salt caverns along the Gulf of America, and as Secretary Wright pointed out, two of these are not only drained but also damaged by the withdrawal. //
C-K anon-y65w
a day ago
The walls of the salt caverns are under tremendous pressure while holding all that oil. The pressure must be released in a controlled manner to avoid damage. The equipment on one cavern was down for maintenance when Biden ordered the release to prop up his poll numbers. The other caverns were drained too quickly to meet a political timeline resulting in damage to two of the caverns. //
emptypockets
16 hours ago
''Crashing the system''...that was and remains the Left's intention so they can raise their soc-com system up from the ashes to take control for good.
But to crash it means also remove ALL safety nets while continuing to overburden all systems including the safety net programs. Draining the SPR had a dual purpose, both short term gain [though miniscule] and contributed to fulfillment of longer term agenda. The left behind Biden the Face, the autopen potus, both strangled oil and nat gas and coal production while also depleting any stored capacity and overregulating to strangulation any access to more...except what was bought from enemies to finance endless wars.
Major power facilities require power to operate, and there's lots of unmet demand.
You might think that a power plant could easily start generating power, but in reality, only a limited number of facilities have everything they need to handle a black start. That's because it takes power to make power. Facilities that boil water have lots of powered pumps and valves, coal plants need to pulverize the fuel and move it to where it's burned, etc. In most cases, black-start-rated plants have a diesel generator present to supply enough power to get the plant operating. These tend to be smaller plants, since they require proportionally smaller diesel generators.
The initial output of these black start facilities is then used to provide power to all the plants that need an external power source to operate. This has to be managed in a way that ensures that only other power plants get the first electrons to start moving on the grid, otherwise the normal demand would immediately overwhelm the limited number of small plants that are operating. Again, this has to be handled by facilities that need power in order to control the flow of energy across the grid. This is why managing the grid will never be as simple as "put the hardware on the Internet and control it remotely," given that the Internet also needs power to operate.
It's possible to manage some of this with power brought in from neighboring grids outside the blackout zone. But this also requires that the grid interconnections be isolated from the demand on the blackout side of the connection and send their power directly to idle power plants.
Once sufficient plants are online, a small subset of the grid will be powered, and the plants can manage the synchronization of their alternating current outputs to a single frequency. At this point, it's possible to start meeting demand.
But demand can be massive. Grid failures tend to happen when the grid is stressed by unusually high power demand, such as when heat waves drive high levels of air conditioning use. This means that a lot of the hardware that would be using the electricity is connected and switched on, just waiting for the electrons to appear. Letting all this hardware make demands at once would likely lead to an immediate grid failure and return to blackout conditions. //
While the grids in Spain and Portugal are connected to each other, they have limited connections to elsewhere. The only sources of external power to the grid come from France and Morocco, which are small connections, but they could be used to help black start some plants. Both blacked-out countries have significant hydropower, with Spain seeing it cover 10 percent of its demand and Portugal 25 percent. That's useful because hydro plants need very little in the way of an external power supply to start operating. //
Solar is not an ideal power source for black-starting the grid, given that it's unavailable for a significant chunk of the day. But solar panels produce direct current, with electronic systems matching it to the alternating current of the grid. With the right electronics, it can play a key role in keeping frequencies stable as grid segments are repowered. In productive areas, wind can provide black start power to other plants and doesn't need much external power to begin operations. It's unclear, however, whether the local wind hardware is equipped for black starts or if the local weather will cooperate (a quick check of the weather in various cities suggests it's relatively calm there). //
j
jsully2549
On wind and solar providing black starts, the facilities need grid forming inverters. Most will not be equipped, having grid following inverters instead. While RE black starts have been demonstrated, it's quite uncommon.
Less so in the future, as grid forming inverters provide other capabilities that will be needed as spinning generation disappears.
April 28, 2025 at 10:43 pm. //
View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uOSnQM1Zu4w
Practical Engineering's video on Black Starts is well worth a watch. //
You might think that a power plant could easily start generating power, but in reality, only a limited number of facilities have everything they need to handle a black start. That's because it takes power to make power. Facilities that boil water have lots of powered pumps and valves, coal plants need to pulverize the fuel and move it to where it's burned, etc. In most cases, black-start-rated plants have a diesel generator present to supply enough power to get the plant operating. These tend to be smaller plants, since they require proportionally smaller diesel generators.
The initial output of these black start facilities is then used to provide power to all the plants that need an external power source to operate. This has to be managed in a way that ensures that only other power plants get the first electrons to start moving on the grid, otherwise the normal demand would immediately overwhelm the limited number of small plants that are operating. Again, this has to be handled by facilities that need power in order to control the flow of energy across the grid. This is why managing the grid will never be as simple as "put the hardware on the Internet and control it remotely," given that the Internet also needs power to operate.
It's possible to manage some of this with power brought in from neighboring grids outside the blackout zone. But this also requires that the grid interconnections be isolated from the demand on the blackout side of the connection and send their power directly to idle power plants.
Once sufficient plants are online, a small subset of the grid will be powered, and the plants can manage the synchronization of their alternating current outputs to a single frequency. At this point, it's possible to start meeting demand.
But demand can be massive. Grid failures tend to happen when the grid is stressed by unusually high power demand, such as when heat waves drive high levels of air conditioning use. This means that a lot of the hardware that would be using the electricity is connected and switched on, just waiting for the electrons to appear. Letting all this hardware make demands at once would likely lead to an immediate grid failure and return to blackout conditions. //
While the grids in Spain and Portugal are connected to each other, they have limited connections to elsewhere. The only sources of external power to the grid come from France and Morocco, which are small connections, but they could be used to help black start some plants. Both blacked-out countries have significant hydropower, with Spain seeing it cover 10 percent of its demand and Portugal 25 percent. That's useful because hydro plants need very little in the way of an external power supply to start operating. //
Solar is not an ideal power source for black-starting the grid, given that it's unavailable for a significant chunk of the day. But solar panels produce direct current, with electronic systems matching it to the alternating current of the grid. With the right electronics, it can play a key role in keeping frequencies stable as grid segments are repowered. In productive areas, wind can provide black start power to other plants and doesn't need much external power to begin operations. It's unclear, however, whether the local wind hardware is equipped for black starts or if the local weather will cooperate (a quick check of the weather in various cities suggests it's relatively calm there). //
j
jsully2549
On wind and solar providing black starts, the facilities need grid forming inverters. Most will not be equipped, having grid following inverters instead. While RE black starts have been demonstrated, it's quite uncommon.
Less so in the future, as grid forming inverters provide other capabilities that will be needed as spinning generation disappears.
April 28, 2025 at 10:43 pm. //
View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uOSnQM1Zu4w
Practical Engineering's video on Black Starts is well worth a watch. //
Holtec International @holtecintl
·
This marks another major step forward in our effort to return Palisades to service later this year—bringing 800 megawatts of safe, reliable baseload power back to the grid and supporting hundreds of high-paying, highly skilled American jobs. It further underscores the critical role nuclear plays in meeting our domestic energy needs, strengthening U.S. energy security, and reaffirming America’s position as the global energy leader.
8:12 AM · Apr 23, 2025. //
MINorthWoods
5 hours ago
Sort of old news for Michigan at least. Bi-partisan support including Whitmer and others.
From 12/23
"State lawmakers and Michigan officials have generally been supportive of the restart. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has vouched her approval of the restoration of the plan and Michigan lawmakers set aside $150 million for reopening the plant in the 2024 state budget so long as the effort also gains some federal support."
We have proposed that other planetary forces and phenomena, such as albedo, play a much larger role than CO2 in global warming or temperature variations.
The basic laws of physics and thermodynamics are not in support of efficient processing of CO2 using DAC. This is because dilute molecules of CO2 in air prefer to randomly mix and achieve maximum disorder or entropy per The Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Per Sherwood, trace amounts of CO2 molecules in an air mixture are difficult and costly to separate.
Capturing CO2 by DAC takes at least as much energy as that is contained in the fossil fuels that produced the carbon dioxide in the first place, per Keynumbers. //
Extra Thoughts: What Might Happen if CO₂ is Removed from the Air ?
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If CO₂ is removed from the air in some significant quantity, CO₂ may outgas from the other sinks (land, oceans, lakes) to replace the removed CO₂. The reverse is true as well: when CO₂ is increased in the air, land/oceans/lakes) will uptake more CO₂ until a new quasi-equilibrium state is possibly reached over time.
-
A recent Nature Climate Change paper discusses the possible effect of CO₂ removal on the global carbon cycle. The paper notes that removing tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere might not be effective, because the shifting atmospheric chemistry could, in turn, affect how readily land and oceans release their CO₂, aka Le Chatelier’s principle. Another reference discusses the same concepts, and it is noted that both rely on synthetic models, like most climate change theory.
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Handwaving synthetic climate models: a general rule that has been propagated is that for every tonne that ends up being emitted from fossil fuels or “land use changes”, a quarter gets absorbed by trees, another quarter by the ocean and the remaining half gets left in the atmosphere. I have not seen any hard data that backs this up. It basically says half the CO₂ emitted by man is left over and can’t be absorbed or re-equilibrated.
Beginning in the early 1980s, UK homes could have electrical meters installed with a radio teleswitch attached. These switches listened for a 198 kHz signal from the BBC's Radio 4 Long Wave service, primarily broadcast from the powerful Droitwich Transmitting Station. These switches listened to 30 messages per minute, waiting for a certain 50-bit data packet to arrive that signaled that electricity was now at cheaper, off-peak rates ("tariffs" in the UK).
With this over-the-air notice, homes that bought into Economy 7 or Economy 10 (7 or 10 hours of reduced-price power) could make use of ceramic-stuffed storage heaters that stayed warm into the day, prepare hot water heaters, and otherwise make use of off-peak power. How the electrical companies, BBC, and meters worked together is fascinating in its own right and documented in a recent video by Ringway Manchester (which we first saw at Hackaday). https://hackaday.com/2025/04/10/farewell-economy-7-a-casualty-of-the-long-wave-switch-off/
But BBC Radio 4's Long Wave transmissions are coming to an end, due to both modern realities and obscure glass valves.
Two rare tungsten-centered, hand-crafted cooled anode modulators (CAM) are needed to keep the signal going, and while the BBC bought up the global supply of them, they are running out. The service is seemingly on its last two valves and has been telling the public about Long Wave radio's end for nearly 15 years. Trying to remanufacture the valves is hazardous, as any flaws could cause a catastrophic failure in the transmitters.
Rebuilding the transmitter, or moving to different, higher frequencies, is not feasible for the very few homes that cannot get other kinds of lower-power radio, or internet versions, the BBC told The Guardian in 2011. What's more, keeping Droitwich powered such that it can reach the whole of the UK, including Wales and lower Scotland, requires some 500 kilowatts of power, more than most other BBC transmission types.
As of January 2025, roughly 600,000 UK customers still use RTS meters to manage their power switching, after 300,000 were switched away in 2024. Utilities and the BBC have agreed that the service will stop working on June 30, 2025, and have pushed to upgrade RTS customers to smart meters. //
Arstotzka Ars Scholae Palatinae
8y
970
Subscriptor++
Taunted Happy Fun Ball said:
Seems like the obvious solution would be for the regulator to decree that any customer using an older meter following the shutoff will be billed at the off-peak rates for all usage.Then watch the utilities fall all over themselves to deploy updated meters.
It's rare you can have a technological solution to a people problem, but here it is -- the last transmission before shutdown can be "switch to cheap rates". The utilities will figure it out, after all, because it might cost them money. //
jvok Smack-Fu Master, in training
3y
7
plectrum said:
This is the BBC conveniently lying because it suits them. Nautel recently-ish (2017) installed a 2MW solid-state transmitter for Antenna Hungaria on 540kHz. Their NX400 system is based on stacking phase-locked 25kW modules feeding into a combiner - just buy as many modules as you need. 600kW is no problem - at 90% efficient they're much more efficient than vacuum tubes (50-60%).I think the bottom line is the BBC just doesn't want to spend the money, on either upgrading the transmitter or on the power bill. Which is fair enough - LW reception is only getting worse given the amount of RF smog from power supplies nowadays so there aren't so many listeners out there any more - but they should own up to it.
I completely buy the idea that the transmitter needs replacing (its 40 years old after all), and that the limited number of listeners left on longwave doesn't justify the expense. It fits with the BBCs and other broadcasters pattern of closing down other legacy services over the last few years (e.g. the local radio AMs). The content broadcast on 4LW is the same as you get on Radio 4 FM and DAB now anyway, the opt-outs (e.g. for cricket coverage) were discontinued a few years back. Hell, how many people even still own a longwave radio?
I get a serious case of Gell-Mann amnesia reading that Guardian article though. I get the impression that the author heard some off-hand comment about the transmitter using valves and decided to turn it into some "OMG critical BBC infrastructure is still using old school valves" story. Even calling them glass valves (which isn't accurate) to invoke images of us all gathering round the wireless like its still the 1930s. When in reality high power transmitters using valves is pretty normal and they're still manufactured today. But of course the public doesn't know that so it still makes for a good story. //
video series on how the 900MHz system in the US works.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYlhncU2MojDY9gxU36pxNVkiylGGcbwq&si=D0j-q_xzW_uuYAQp
The result is a press that cheers policies antithetical to its audience’s interests. International lenders, swayed by the climate mob, tie financing to “renewable” mandates. The World Bank, once a financier of coal plants in Africa, now balks at funding anything that emits demonized carbon dioxide, leaving countries like Mozambique struggling to exploit their gas fields.
In Ghana, where power outages still plague daily life, the government hesitates to tap coal reserves, wary of an international backlash stoked by media outrage. In Kenya, where coal in the Mui Basin could power millions, local outlets echo The Guardian’s disdain for “dirty energy,” ignoring how such resources could slash electricity costs for the rural poor.
In South America, pressure from green-leaning non-governmental organizations – amplified by outlets like O Globo – has stalled oil projects in Ecuador, even as indigenous communities plead for the jobs and infrastructure they bring. In Peru, where natural gas discoveries promise economic liftoff, El Comercio fixates on melting glaciers, marginalizing rural natives still cooking over open fires.
In many developing countries, natural gas could ease energy prices, but policymakers bowed to “green pressure” and left citizens to shoulder rising costs. The poorest suffer most from higher bills, fewer jobs, and dimmer futures.
Popular news reporting no longer empowers with facts but incestuously recounts nonsense that leaves the developing world with the burden of a climate crisis fabricated by self-dealing globalists. //
People of the developing world must demand better or have their hopes buried by false prophets. And journalists in Africa, South America, and Asia must break free from the echo chamber of the climate-industrial complex. It is time to ask tough questions – the basis of critical thinking and honest reporting.
The left loves to talk about how they are all about "trusting the science," but one of the fundamentals about science is this: When the data contradicts your hypothesis, you change your hypothesis. The Biden administration certainly didn't do this; they would rather hide inconvenient data.
Case in point: A recent Daily Caller exclusive reveals that the Biden administration buried an inconvenient liquid natural gas (LNG) export study that would have removed the primary reason for that administration's LNG export ban. //
The thumbnail? The Biden administration had a draft report in hand that contradicted their claims that halting LNG exports would result in more greenhouse gas emissions. The draft report indicated the opposite was true. So the Biden Department of Energy round-filed the report. //
The first layer of this stinker is in the deliberately deceptive practice. The administration made a claim to justify the damage the export ban was doing to domestic energy development; that claim was not only false, but the administration knew it was false, they had data in hand showing it was false, and they went ahead and implemented the ban anyway, in the name of "climate change."
The second layer of this stinker is that the Biden administration hid the results of a taxpayer-funded study and then lied to the American people about it.
And the final layer? They completely disregarded the standard Democrat shibboleth about "trusting the science," but then, Democrats have never been about the science - about the data. They are about the agenda, and this episode is just one more example of many.
A hydroelectric generating station is a plant that produces electric power by using water to propel the turbines, which, in turn, drive the alternators.
These power stations generate about a quarter of all the electricity used in the world. With access to vast water reserves, Hydro-Québec uses water to generate almost all of its energy output. In this way, the company helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
But if you’ve seen this thorium ball for the 653d time, you may start wondering what exactly the ball summarizes. And what size it should be – apparently, there are different opinions here.
Does it supply all the energy needed to sustain the life you live? Does it include your yearly trip to the Bahama’s? Your kilometers made for commuting? Or just the electricity to last you a lifetime? It looks so small.
Fortunately, we have David MacKays great calculations of what we actually use. A handy number is the consumption of 195 kWh’s per person per day: the amount of energy used by the average affluent person, including household electricity, heating, transportation, food, energy contained in the ‘stuff’ we buy: everything that fits our western lifestyle.
From here, it’s easy to calculate how much energy we need for a lifetime. Let’s say we live 80 years. Of course, we live a bit longer, but I assume we use a bit less energy at infancy and at old age. That means we need 80 x 365 x 195 kWh’s = 5.694.000 kWh’s. This equals 0,00065 GWyr. And in our previous Numbers page, we saw that 1 tonne of thorium or uranium equals 1GWe-yr. This means the energy of a lifetime can be produced with 650 grams of metal.
In the case of Thorium, which has a density of 11,7 kg’s/ltr, 650 grams, equals 55,5 ml. In that case, the ball would be 4,74 cm diameter.
If the ball would be made of Uranium, which has a density of 18,95 kg’s/ltr, the same 650 grams would eaqual 4,04 cm diameter.
On my screen, Sorensen’s hand measures 7,5 cm, and the ball 2,3 cm. If I compare this to my own hand (11 cm wide), the ball should be slightly bigger, about one third in the case of Thorium (the slightly less dense and bigger ball of the two).
But although slightly bigger, it’s still perfectly possible to hold the energy for a lifetime in the palm of your hand, if this energy is produced in a molten salt reactor. //
I went over my calculations again – and realized I had made a mistake. In my calculation, I had used the grams to kWh ratio for electric power, where MacKay provides his number (195kWh per person per day) for thermal power.
This means my thorium balls are … too BIG! The weights should be divided by about 2,5… //
https://web.archive.org/web/20250119074832/http://www.daretothink.org/how-big-is-that-thorium-ball/
The price of electricity in German soared from 17 cents per kilowatt hour in April 2020 to $4.69 in August 2022. It is now $1.40—or 8 times what Germans once paid. //
Germany's electricity prices have experienced an increase in the latter half of 2024 and the beginning of 2025, reaching an average of 140.42 euros per megawatt-hour in February 2025. This marks a notable decrease from the record high of over 469 euros per megawatt-hour in August 2022, yet remains above pre-pandemic levels. The ongoing volatility in energy prices continues to impact German households and businesses, reflecting broader trends across Europe's energy landscape.
Bill Gates’ nuclear innovation firm TerraPower has broken ground on the non-nuclear portion of Kemmerer Unit 1, a 345-MW Natrium sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) power plant. The groundbreaking on June 10 makes the federal demonstration project the first advanced nuclear reactor project to move from design into construction in the Western Hemisphere, the company noted.
The project is taking shape in Lincoln County, Wyoming, about 3 miles from PacifiCorp’s three-unit 604-MW coal and gas–fired Naughton Power Plant, furnished with up to $2 billion in authorized funding under the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP).
An incredible NUCLEAR-POWERED FLIGHT film is newly available online!
We just scanned this declassified film showing 30 minutes of detail from the major reactor development program at its peak, between 1956-1958.
It presents the program goals and evolution, including how global operating costs were expected to be reduced by eliminating the need to operate foreign air bases around the world. Materials problems required them to reduce requirements from high-altitude/supersonic to low-altitude/subsonic. Ongoing development and progress is shown on the GE direct air cycle (XMA-2) in Idaho and Evandale, and the P&W indirect liquid-metal lithium-7 cooled cycle at CANAL, where they developed niobium-based alloys and technology that could run at the required crazy-high temperatures and withstand lithium.
It shows dozens of things I've never seen before, like the 3 ZrH and BeO inserts put into HTRE-2, and talks a bit about the HTRE-3 meltdown. The HTREs can still be seen in the parking lot of the EBR-1 museum on the INL site.
They show an in-reactor test loop being fabricated and tested in a large oil-fired heater, destined to be inserted in the ETR in Idaho.