PushBack » Energy

Drunk on Hydrogen

Peter Sheerin — Sun, 06 Jul 2003 21:36:00 +0000

In the RANT, physics teacher Dom Crea gives his perspective on the energy efficiency in a hydrogen economy.

Corn-Fed Gas

Peter Sheerin — Mon, 24 Feb 2003 00:33:00 +0000

So, will the use of Ethanol raise gas prices? A Reuters news story says, ethanol will boost prices—while a recent story in the Contra Costa Times cites CA energy officials as saying it won’t raise gas prices.

The False Promise of Hydrogen

Peter Sheerin — Sat, 01 Feb 2003 20:32:00 +0000

Paul Georgia writes in the National Review about the facts of hydrogen production and use—that it is very inefficient and creates more pollution than burning gasoline (at least when created using electricity generated by fossil fuel). It could make sense if we could produce it using nuclear power, but not by any other means.

Nuclear regulators back full-scale cask testing

Peter Sheerin — Mon, 23 Dec 2002 22:24:00 +0000

From the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “Full-scale tests of nuclear waste shipping casks would build the public’s confidence in the Yucca Mountain Project even though less expensive computer modeling can gain results just as well, the government’s chief nuclear regulators said Wednesday.”

The gist of the article is that the tests already done on scale models are believed to be accurate, but doing full-scale tests will be expensive ($1 million per cask) and not yeild as much data as the earlier tests.

The future of Yucca Mountain

Peter Sheerin — Sun, 13 Oct 2002 21:42:00 +0000

In the May 2002 issue of Red Herring, Peter Schwartz writes, “What’s the urgency to get Yucca Mountain online? The nuclear weapons program and the country’s 104 nuclear plants have produced 40,000 metric tons of spent fuel to date, and that figure will rise to 105,000 metric tons by 2035.”. I found the story to be a succinct, one-page explanation of why this nuclear storage site is important.