Canada’s Federal Court, in issuing essentially a mild “back to the drawing board” order to Ontario Power Generation regarding one part of its application to build new nuclear reactors at its Darlington generation site, displayed a disappointingly common myopia when…
Category: Japan
Power, fear, and carbon in Japan: the Iron Rule of Power Generation II
On March 11 2011, a 14-meter-high tsunami, triggered by an earthquake of unimaginable power, smashed the northeast coast of Japan. The tsunami killed about 20,000 people pretty much immediately. Watch any video of this catastrophe and you will see why.…
Germany and the Iron Rule of Power Generation: when nuclear goes down, carbon goes up
In electric power generation in developed countries, when one form of steady, large-scale, reliable generation comes out of the system, another with the same attributes must go in to replace it. If the first form steadily puts, say, 1,000 megawatts…
Fukushima, after a thousand days: radiation-related deaths still equal the number of vampires walking the earth
The Fukushima meltdowns occurred 4,649 days ago. As I and others predicted on the day-of and in the anxious-headline-filled days immediately following, nobody has died because of radiological releases from the wrecked reactors. Nobody has died because of radiological releases…
Ontario grid expansion, 1960s: why developing countries will decarbonize electricity using nuclear energy
The developing world, i.e. the world outside Europe, North America, and Russia, is now responsible for nearly three-quarters of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) going into the earth’s atmosphere. The central question for climate change policy is: how can this…