Aluminum, sulfur, salt. Common, everyday items. They may be the basis for low-cost electric battery storage, supplanting expensive lithium-ion technology. If so, they could provide a low-cost way to store intermittent renewable electricity from wind and sun, using abundant, domestically available material. In an article published last August in the journal Nature, 16 researchers from … More Researchers Propose Revolutionary Battery

This is a variation of a column that I have been writing once a year for decades. I write it to remind readers that skepticism has been a driving factor in my over 40 years in journalism, including small and large city dailies, the Associated Press, Congressional Quarterly, Energy Daily, Electricity Daily, POWER magazine, and, … More In Praise of Skepticism

Rare earth elements are not rare. Economically exploiting them for commercial purposes is difficult. And some of the 17 rare earth minerals are increasingly important in a world that is increasingly electro-centric. Windmills, electric vehicles, lighting, smart phones, televisions, advanced computing, advanced nuclear power plants, and many other end uses depend on rare earths. Science … More Rare Earths: Plentiful, Important, Difficult to Exploit

Is South Africa’s electric grid on the narrow edge of a total collapse? According to South African business website MyBroadband, “The United States Government has advised its stakeholders in South Africa to start thinking about disaster management plans for a total collapse of Eskom’s power grid.” The website reports that the U.S. State Department’s Overseas … More Could Eskom Problems Cause South African Blackout?

Do cook stoves burning natural gas (some dare call it “methane”) cause childhood asthma? Some climate activists, bent on removing gas from the nation’s fuel mix from kitchen stoves to power plants claim that science establishes a connection between the fire under the frying pan and the scourge of asthma in kids. The case appears … More Commentary: Gas Lighting Stoves?

Seeking to push greater market penetration of electric vehicles, the Biden administration’s Department of Energy has offered a conditional loan of up to $700 million for a new lithium and boron mine in western Nevada, hoping to produce enough lithium to supply batteries for around 370,000 EVs annually. The Rhyolite Ridge project in Esmeralda County, … More Energy Dept. Puts Up $700M Loan for Lithium Mine

The Jan. 4 New York Times had a headline and article that have caused considerable consternation among energy analysts and economists: Why Are Energy Prices So High? Some Experts Blame Deregulation. The teaser below the head read: “California and the 34 other states that have deregulated all or parts of their electricity system tend to … More Hass Energy Institute: Blame It All on California

She was a dream ship, not just a steam ship. But the dream turned bad. The U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD) has issued a notice seeking public comment on “disposition” of the NS Savannah, the nation’s first and only nuclear-powered merchant ship, a product of the Eisenhower administration’s 1955 commitment to its “Atoms for Peace” program, … More MARAD Looks to Fate for Atom-Powered NS Savannah

Riffing on the great American philosopher Lawrence “Yogi” Berra, it’s déjà vu all over again, but backwards. Holtec International, perhaps the most ambitious nuclear-oriented company ever, says it can use its aspirational small nuclear reactor, SMR-160, to repurpose coal-fired power plants. The Holtec SMR design is for a 160-MW pressurized light-water reactor, still in the … More Holtec Wants to Turn Coal Plants into Nukes

Could the municipal utility members of Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) that have committed to the NuScale small nuclear reactor project save significant money by dumping the unproven nuclear technology and sign up for available and new geothermal-generated electricity from local investor-owned utility, NV Energy? That’s the case made in a recent paper from … More Should UAMPS Scuttle NuScale Nukes for Cheaper Geothermal?