More on “mindset reversal,” AQOP excerpts, podcasts, ICEs are here to stay

Four items for a beautiful Friday in December

It was a glorious morning here in Austin, brisk and pale-blue nearly cloudless skies. Better yet, Barton Springs is open today. I'm already looking forward to a brisk swim this afternoon. Four items in today's blast: 

• My Forbes piece on radiation

• Two excerpts from A Question of Power

• A pair of new podcasts

• Why internal combustion engines aren't running out of gas.

In my last email, I discussed the episode of the Power Hungry Podcast I did with Dr. Geraldine Thomas, the director of the Chernobyl Tissue Bank. During the podcast, she talked at length about the public's excessive fear of radiation and why we need a "mindset reversal" about that fear. I decided to follow up the podcast with a piece in Forbes, which I published on November 24. As I explained:  

Nuclear energy must grow – and grow rapidly – if the countries of the world are to have any hope of limiting the growth of carbon dioxide emissions. 

But the growth of nuclear is being hobbled by several factors including cost and the long licensing and construction schedules for new reactors. Those high costs and long schedules can largely be traced back to a single issue: the public’s excessive fear of radiation. That excessive fear of radiation is preventing nuclear energy from being deployed at scale here in the U.S. and around the world and in doing so, it is hindering low-income and wealthy countries alike from benefiting from the single best source of low-cost, zero-carbon, high-power-density electricity known to science. 

To be sure, nuclear energy at a meaningful scale faces many challenges. But getting the public to understand radiation -- and why it shouldn't engender so much fear -- is among the biggest of those challenges. So please read the Forbes piece. And if you haven't done so, listen to Gerry Thomas talk about radiation and encourage your friends to give it a listen.

By the way, the beautiful image at the top of the email shows Cherenkov radiation in a research reactor operated by Rosatom. The blue color is caused by the fact that electrons move faster in water than light does.

Two chapters from A Question of Power on Freopp.org

Last week, the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, the Austin-based think tank where I'm a visiting fellow, reprinted two chapters (numbers 17 and 19) from my new book, A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations.

Of course, I am proud of the entire book and have been pleased with its reception. But these two chapters are particularly relevant now given the ongoing debate over the future of energy policy in the U.S. and around the world. The first chapter explains "the all-renewable delusion." The second one details what I call "the nuclear necessity."

While the release of A Question of Power was not the best timing (it occurred as the stock market was crashing and the lockdowns were beginning) I am pleased that the book continues to get attention. The ongoing push to "electrify everything," ban natural gas, and manufacture hydrogen, will make electricity -- and the electric grid -- even more important in the  years ahead.

Two new podcasts

Last week, we released a podcast featuring Dr. Carey King, a research scientist and assistant director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas. I talked with Carey about his new book, The Economic Superorganism: Beyond the Competing Narratives on Energy, Growth, and Policy, and what he sees as the “hollow narratives” about energy and power systems. We talked about the legacy of Thomas Malthus, why Carey considers himself a “finite earther,” the relationship among GDP, energy, and human well-being, and why the global economy should be viewed as a “superorganism.”

This week, we released a long episode that features Rod Adams, who is a retired commander in the US Navy, as well as the publisher of atomicinsights.com and host of the Atomic Show Podcast. I talked with Adams about the “magical power source,” which companies and reactor designs he believes have the quickest path to commercial deployment, his experience aboard nuclear submarines, and the seemingly intractable problem of what to do with used nuclear fuel. 

His stints on submarines have given him a unique way of describing the staggering power density of nuclear energy. "The fuel on board my submarine weighed approximately the same as what I weigh - but it powered a 9,000-ton submarine at speeds almost unimaginable underwater..." 

Adams also had very sharp insight on the issue of nuclear waste, which has contributed to the slow progress being made with the development and deployment of new reactors. He said, "We’ve been safely storing nuclear waste for 70 years. Not a single person anywhere in the world has ever been harmed by nuclear waste.”

It was an interesting discussion. Give it a listen.

Rumors about the death of internal combustion engine are greatly exaggerated

Finally, on November 29, Real Clear Energy published my article, "Five Reasons Why Internal Combustion Engines Are Here to Stay." I wrote the piece after reading about the ongoing bans on ICE engines and the never-ending publicity about the surge in electric vehicle sales.

The piece is a reprise of some of the things I wrote about in my fifth book, Smaller Faster Lighter Dense Cheaper: How Innovation Keeps Proving the Catastrophists Wrong, which was published in 2014. I won't reprise the entire piece here, but I opened the article by writing, "Oil prices are down and bans on automobiles powered by internal combustion engines (ICE) are up – way up. But don’t be fooled; there is plenty of life left in the ICE."

I then talk about the high price of EVs, (a new Chevy Bolt costs $46,500!) as well as mining impacts, the energy density of gasoline, recharging times, and my favorite: "internal combustion engines keep getting smaller, faster, more efficient, and more powerful." I continued, "In 1908, Ford Motor Company launched the Model T. In 2011, the company unveiled its new 3-cylinder turbocharged 1-liter engine, the EcoBoost. The new engine is 28 percent lighter than the engine in the Model T, produces about 16 times as much power per liter of displacement, and is more than twice as fuel-efficient."

What can you do? 
1. Subscribe to the Power Hungry Podcast and give it a positive review on your favorite podcast platform.
2. Rent or buy Juice on iTunes or Amazon Prime.
3. Buy my new book, A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations and give it a positive rating on Amazon.
4. Follow me and Juice on Twitter.
5. Need a speaker for your meeting or webinar? Email me!  
Thanks!