When most people think of fossil fuel supplies, they think in terms of barrels of oil, cubic feet of natural gas and tons of coal. But in evaluating how much energy in the form of finite fossil fuels the world has left, these are no longer adequate measurements. In the 1930s when wildcatters in Texas […]
Archive | July, 2011
Bloomberg Gives Huge Boost to Beyond Coal Campaign
The Sierra Club and its Beyond Coal Campaign received a huge boost when New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Bloomberg Philanthropies kicked-in $50 million to the campaign. Beyond the sheer and unprecedented size of the $50 million investment, the partnership between Bloomberg and the club takes the environmental fight to end the coal era […]
Are Electric Vehicles Really Green?
This is a question that I always have to look for rather than see it boldly stated in any electric vehicle news report that comes out. It’s weird that this question isn’t touched on in popular EV car stories the news media publishes as many people have this debate constantly floating in their head. If […]
Does Culture Matter?
I have given some more thought to the article I cited in my last blog about the placement of the diesel generators being a GE decision. The article stated that some TEPCO engineers were concerned about the decision at the time. It is not clear whether they expressed this concern. Even if they had, it […]
The Origins of the Problem begin to Emerge
Ground zero: Bulldozers (top) take the top off a 35-meter bluff to prepare the site for the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in the late 1960s in this image taken from the documentary “Reimei” (“Dawn”). Left: The construction site is seen after the leveling work. Right: An excavated area where the emergency diesel generators were […]
New Technologies for Maintenance and Monitoring Systems of Insulated Cable – Presentation at International Workshop on Insulated Cables, São Paulo, Brazil
The Brazilian National Study Committee of Cigré B1 – Insulated Cables – is going to promote an International Workshop on Insulated Cables “Workshop Internacional Sobre Cablos Eletricos”, this year in São Paulo, Brazil.
Cross Bonding Earthing Fault Detected by Distributed Temperature Sensing Surveillance in China
The Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) online surveillance of a 220 kV power cable system in Xiamen Power Utility, China helps preventing a potentially serious large-scale high voltage cable fault.
Clean Tech: Wishing We Were China for a Day
In his book “ Hot, Flat, and Crowded,” Tom Friedman wishes that America could be “China for a day…but only one day.” Friedman writes: If only…If only America could be China for a day — just one day. As far as I’m concerned, China’s system of government is inferior to ours in every respect — […]