Ed. Note: Hydropower (“white coal”) was once the lone alternative to coal for electrical generation, supplying about one-third of U.S. supply in 1950. Today, hydro supplies around six percent of national power (and falling). The post below speaks to the political imbroglio of this energy source with the example of Michigan.
Michigan regulators have granted Consumers Energy a two-month delay in dealing with its controversial plan to sell 13 small and elderly hydroelectric plants to a Maryland-based private equity firm.
The Jackson, Mich., investor-owned utility last week (Sept. 8) asked the Michigan Public Service Commission to remove a decision on the company’s unusual hydro selloff from its scheduled Sept. 10 meeting until November. The utility said it wants “an opportunity to resolve the issues in this case cooperatively” with the parties to the case.…
For 80 years, the U.S. government and its industrial and utility partners have failed to understand the problem of the noxious and dangerous nuclear waste for war and peace and successfully respond. Kicking the can down the road, evident today with fiscal policy, applied in spades to nuclear waste in wartime and peacetime.
Wartime Waste
It began at Hanford during World War II’s Manhattan Project when little attention was paid to what was left behind when U-235 was stripped from U-238 to turn uranium into plutonium. Nuclear engineers considered it a simple problem that could be dealt with later, much later. The nasty brew of chemical and nuclear poisons was dumped into large, oil-field-derived stainless-steel tanks.
In 1947, pioneering Baltimore “sanitary engineer” Abel Wolman — who had standardized the use of chlorine to purify drinking water — joined the Atomic Energy Commission’s advisory board.…
“But we all know there is no such thing as a free lunch. Hydrogen problems are real. It is so light it is difficult, meaning expensive, to store. That’s a problem for transportation uses.”
Hydrogen, 1H, the primary and most common element in the universe, consists of one proton, one electron, and no neutrons. It’s in first place on the periodic chart of the elements. In common, gaseous form, H2, it is colorless, odorless, and highly combustible. It is the fuel of the sun.
For many years, some energy mavens have touted hydrogen, an energy carrier, as the perfect fuel form for a greener earth. When combusted in pure oxygen, it produces only water and a lot of energy. When burned in air, it emits only small amounts of oxides of nitrogen.…