For political reasons, the U.S. president has put the kibosh on TransCanada’s plan to extend the Keystone pipeline from Cushing Oklahoma to Houston. That project would have immediately created 6,500 high-paid, high-skilled construction jobs, along with thousands more spinofff jobs. The employment situation in the U.S. has been persistently bad through Obama’s presidency, and...
Monthly Archives: January 2012
Nuclear progress in Canada: like the western pipelines, it’s all about real property rights
If your energy strategy involves somebody else’s real property, don’t be surprised if that somebody’s legal property rights trump your energy strategy. CBC Radio’s The Current recently published a very interesting interview with the Canadian federal natural resources minister, who during the interview gives a pretty well-explained account of the government’s support of the...
The new industrial economy takes shape at NGNP
It’s exciting and fascinating to watch the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) take shape. The NGNP is a graphite moderated, gas-cooled nuclear reactor that draws on nearly half a century of R&D and operational experience with these kinds of reactors in the civilian nuclear sector. This will be a high-temperature machine—above 700 °C at the...
Oceans of Acid: the seven seas are the dumping ground for million-year “clean” fossil fuel waste
If you want to keep a modern society running cleanly and efficiently, you need large-scale sources of electricity. You can generate that electricity in one or more of only three ways: coal, natural gas, and nuclear. Coal and natural gas are fossil fuels. To generate electricity with them you have to burn them. Burning...
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