Goin' Nuclear: Current and Recent Stories

Many experts believe that energy will become the biggest issue of the coming century. I believe the case can easliy be made that this is so. Hence, since last year I have begun collecting books and articles to study and share. Here are some interesting stories on this urgent and timeless topic.

* * * 

The Owner of Three Mile Island Is Turning the Nuclear Power Plant Back on to Fuel Microsoft's AI Operations
In this latest skirmish between the future and its enemies, the future won.
CHRISTIAN BRITSCHGI | 9.20.2024
https://reason.com/2024/09/20/the-owner-of-three-mile-island-is-turning-the-nuclear-power-plant-back-on-to-fuel-microsofts-ai-operations/?utm_medium=reason_email&utm_source=new_at_reason&utm_campaign=reason_brand&utm_content=Kamala%20Harris%20Is%20Not%20an%20Ideas%20Candidate&utm_term=&time=September%2020th,%202024&mpid=46710&mpweb=2534-4502-46710

Is nuclear power safe?
Yes. The safety record of generating electricity from nuclear power is the same as that of wind turbines and solar panels globally. We understand that anything involving nuclear technologies can evoke public concern. However, most modern technologies have inherent risks, be it flying in airplanes, undergoing surgery, or simply having electricity in our homes - all of these have the potential to cause both great harm and provide tremendous benefit. As a society we make these benefits available safely to the public by considering the risks, developing safety regulations, and learning from our mistakes. Nuclear power is no different.                                 

Modern nuclear plants are safe because we build robust containment structures and automated fail-safe systems ensure safe operation. Strict safety regulations and oversight have enabled the industry to operate for over 70 years with negligible impact on public health and safety. As with other industries like aviation, lessons learned from prior incidents continue to the already remarkable safety record.

*

Energy Bad Boys

Enjoy the blackouts, Jack

The Biden administration’s reckless EPA regulations endanger us all
https://energybadboys.substack.com/p/enjoy-the-blackouts-jack?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Nuclear Energy Progress and Regress: A Comparative Status Report

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2024/02/nuclear-energy-progress-and-regress.html

Grid Fragility and a Book by Meredith Angwin

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/09/grid-fragility-and-book-by-meredith.html

Is Our Energy Grid at Risk?  

http://www.businessnorth.com/businessnorth_exclusives/is-our-energy-grid-at-risk/article_8c762ece-c44b-11ee-a7e0-4f412ac3356d.html
Business North

Joe Miller Discusses the Power Grid: Where Are We Now and Where Are We Going?

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2024/01/joe-miller-discusses-power-grid-where.html

The Biggest Drawbacks of Solar Panels

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-biggest-drawbacks-of-solar-panels.html

 
Power to Keep the Lights On, That's All I Ask 

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2024/02/power-to-keep-lights-on-thats-all-i-ask.html

US falling far behind China in nuclear power, report says

The United States is between 10 and 15 years behind China in rolling out next-generation reactors, research institute says.

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/6/17/us-falling-far-behind-china-in-nuclear-power-report-says

The Upside of Ignorance; the Downside of Knowledge

For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
    the more knowledge, the more grief.
--Ecclesiastes 1:18

"Ignorance is bliss; 't is folly to be wise."
--Thomas Gray

* * * 

It's interesting. We live in what has been called the information age. We're completely inundated with information on nearly anything we want to learn more about. Has this made us happier?  

There are a variety of ways in which ignorance can be more satisfying than knowledge. Here are a few examples that I've observed.

In my article Data Analytics: The Three Most Important People in the Room, I show one way in which company decision makers can be happily self-deceived by ignoring the risk factors with regard to a desired decision. 

As has often been noted, "we don't know what we don't know." Sometimes this ignorance is simply a lack of experience. Sometimes, it is the result of our own efforts to block out what we don't want to hear. 

In the political realm two instances come to mind. When the governor of Georgia Jimmy Carter won the White House in 1976, some of his efforts to make a positive impact were thwarted because he brought his own team of people he trusted to Washington, people who didn't really understand how to get things done in the Federal realm. They were ignorant because of their lack of experience inside the Beltway.

According to Michael Lewis in The Fifth Risk, this ignorance of how things work at the Federal level was amplified more than ten-fold when Donald Trump was elected because it was a willful ignorance. The incoming president didn't understand the complexity involved in the transition process. When former governor Chris Christie saw this he stepped up to assist in what is generally one of the biggest challenges of a new administration. According to Lewis, the newly elected president chose to shut his ears.  

Lewis went on to cite Jared Kushner's surprise that when taking over the government the incoming leadership team has to appoint all new department heads to run everything. Kushner assumed that the people working there would still be at their posts, as would happen when a new CEO takes over a company. 

A reviewer of The Fifth Risk at Amazon.com wrote these thoughts, which were the impetus for today's blog post:

Willful ignorance plays a role in these looming disasters. If your ambition is to maximize short-term gains without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing those costs. If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it’s better never to really understand those problems. There is upside to ignorance, and downside to knowledge. Knowledge makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a worldview.

* * * 

It happens in boardrooms. It happens in government. It happens in life. There are no sure things when it comes to the future. Life involves risk. How to find the balance between worrying too much and too little about every little thing is just one problem we face. If we knew how many ways our little world could be upended in the next 24 hours, we might never be able to sleep. 

Some disasters are unavoidable. Others, however, are set in motion by willful ignorance. 

For example, an acquaintance of mine was hospitalized for eight days due to a health-related condition that he'd ignored. It almost cost him his life. When I spoke with him afterwards, his sage advice was this: "Don't ignore the signs."

Disasters (generally) don't just happen. Whether running a country or just taking care of your own day-to-day health--both physical and mental--you usually have clues when things need to be addressed.  

* * * 

All these things reminded me of the Rolling Stones hit single, "Mother's Little Helper".

     "Kids are different today, " I hear every mother say
     Mother needs something today to calm her down
     And though she's not really ill, there's a little yellow pill
     She goes running for the shelter of her mother's little helper

And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day  

The song is about pill-popping as a way of escape. Of course there are other ways people self-medicate, choosing to avoid rather than face issues. The end result, whether it's a car, a business, your health or a relationship, is a breakdown.

* * * 

Life is hard, and knowledge can be painful. How we choose to address all the issues that we grapple with is up to us.  

One useful starting point might be what is known as The Serenity Prayer.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept   

the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can, 

And wisdom to know the difference.”

Villanova Championship Teaches a Principle of Success: There Is Always Risk Involved

Anyone who watched the 2018 NCAA Basketball championships saw a mighty Villanova make mincemeat of its opponents with volumes of 3-point shots from outside the arc. In its showdown with Kansas in the semi-final last Saturday Villanova set a new record for 3-pointers by two minutes into the second half, and they kept on shooting them. They set a new record for three point goals for a season as well.

In Monday's championship game it was a different story though. Against Michigan, eight of their first nine shots were whiffs. Their 3-point game had chilled and Villanova fans began biting their nails.

No worry. This didn't stop their efforts to shoot the long ball, and despite the failed shots they continued to attempt these longer shots, making the necessary adjustments to recover their magic. And here's the lesson. Success is directly proportional to one’s willingness to accept the possibility of failure. If we can’t allow the possibility of failure, we will freeze and never succeed because we are no longer moving toward a goal rather we are moving toward safety. Fear paralyzes confidence. Confidence is an essential ingredient in success.

* * * *
In my article Increasing the Odds of Success I wrote, "In short, risk is part of business; there are no sure things. Wall Street does not always lead to Easy Street. Nor does an Internet retail strategy always lead to Internet riches. As Robert Burns noted in his ode to a mouse, 'The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.'"

Risk, by definition, means exposure to danger. This applies not only to soldiers in the battlefield, but also to businesses, as well as the people in these businesses, all the way down to those ground-level grunts who actually do the heavy lifting.

U.S. Grant -- National Archives

Great leaders like General U.S. Grant knew how important those front line foot soldiers were. That is why he sometimes got as close to his troops as possible so he could assess their morale and readiness for another fight. On one occasion, before the Battle of Vicksburg, he parked his horse at the end of a very narrow bridge and watched his men walk across. He had been done his share of front line work in the Mexican War and wanted his men to see he identified with them.

He also knew the importance of initiative. Decisive action is the responsibility of leaders. It's one of the reasons General Patton would get so annoyed with Britain's General Montgomery, whom he called Monty. For Patton, "A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow." Why, because tomorrow never comes. Because of our tendency to overthink things that "perfect plan" never comes.

The Latin proverb "Fortune favors the bold" has been adopted by military leaders throughout history. Boldness involves a willingness to take risks. If there was no risk involved, by definition it would hardly be a bold action or maneuver.

And so it was that Villanova kept at it, shooting those long ball hoops with an almost excessive exuberance, bold and beautiful. 'Twas a season to cherish that produced a championship as well.

* * * *

“The greatest risk to man is not that he aims too high and misses, but that he aims too low and hits.” ― Michaelangelo

Increasing the Odds of Success: Putting SEO In Perspective

Peter Bernstein, in his bestseller Against the Gods, the Remarkable Story of Risk, stated that no matter what the venture, whether managing a family or managing nations, risk is a factor that must be taken into consideration. No one can infallibly predict success, because there are always variables beyond our control. “Even with thousands of facts," wrote Bernstien, "the track record of experts proves that their estimates of the probabilities of final outcomes are open to doubt and uncertainty.”

In short, risk is part of business; there are no sure things. Wall Street does not always lead to Easy Street. Nor does an Internet retail strategy always lead to Internet riches. As Robert Burns noted in his ode to a mouse, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

Nevertheless, we also know from experience that the very opposite is also true. Attempt nothing, and nothing you will achieve. In light of this latter equation, efforts at Search Engine Optimization are not optional but necessary.

This past month a friend of mine who runs a specialized online retail music business lamented that despite efforts at click-through links and banner ads, he had not found himself making any money despite the traffic brought in.

I observed, “Your lack of success might well have been your website's inability to easily and quickly lead to a purchase decision. Another failing may be that the traffic generated was too general and not specific enough.” In other words, SEO and other mechanisms for bringing in web traffic are only one piece of a larger strategic marketing plan.

He replied that he’d not thought of that.

The wonderful thing about the net is that we can measure everything. The hard data we gather helps us fine tune our efforts. By continually improving our systems, we generate more revenue with the same amount of effort (greater efficiency). Banner ads, pay per click ads on search engines, Google Adwords are all tactics, though none guarantee sales.

All that said, one sure way to be unsuccessful is to have no traffic at all because no one can find you. SEO is one tool among many that we use to minimize risk and increase odds of success.

* * * *
This article was originally published in Internet Retailer circa 2004.

Writing and Risk

Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone. – E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

This past month I finished reading (or listening to) the Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2. At one point he talks about encouraging his brother Orion to include all the dark parts of his life story when writing his autobiography, sort of like the advice from E.M. Cioran above. Twain, however, acknowledged that he himself would not dare to include such material in his own autobiography, inasmuch as his aim would be to put himself into a much more favorable light with his readers.

So what's the correct way to write about one's life? There's plenty to be ashamed of in most lives. Do we leave that material on the cutting room floor for the proverbial trash bin? These are certainly not the parts we highlight when meeting people for the first time, and it seems a curious bit of advice to be telling strangers (in a book) about things you don't even share with friends.

I've always carried the notion that our lives are something akin to a retail store with three aspects. The storefront is designed to invite people in. It projects something of an image to people passing by on the sidewalk. The image should correspond to the contents inside the store, of course. You wouldn't put women's clothing in the storefront of a shoe store.

The store itself also has a back room, or downstairs, where inventory and other items are stored. It's an "employees only" space, and is often a bit cluttered, occasionally a mess even. It's not a perfect metaphor, but I've found it useful.

Nevertheless, there's another way to approach the matter. When you study paintings by the Dutch masters, it's the contrast between darkness and light that makes the images pop, makes the story so vivid,

Earlier this week I interviewed the author of a memoir who told the story of what it was like to grow up in a home where his mother was a hoarder.  It's Eddy Gilmore's explicit candor that gives the book its shock value, and makes the emancipation he has achieved all the more powerful.

Naturally it isn't just the authors of books who have to wrestle with where to draw the line as far as what to disclose and what to set aside. We see it continually here in social media where people bare their souls in discussions that may well be better left "off the record." Here's a web forum where this very matter is being dissected: How truthful and honest should we be?

A word that comes to mind for me at this point is circumspect. It means "wary and unwilling to take risks." People who have been burned will not respond well to someone prodding them to "be vulnerable and expand your world."

At the end of the day it's a matter of finding balance. If we spend a lifetime concealing who we really are and what we really feel, it can put us in a fairly lonely place. The deepest and most rewarding friendships are built on trust, and it's in that context we can take those risks and drop the barriers that isolate us from one another. In that context we can experience the deep healing of ontological affirmation.

Just a seed from the mind farm. What do you think?

Risking Death: Why Do We Do It?

One of the biggest annual motorcycle rallies in the world take place in one of the tiniest towns in the Midwest, Sturgis, South Dakota. This tiny community tucked into a fold in the Black Hills plays host to more than a half million bikers, and from I understand the excitement never ends as the area campgrounds and businesses compete to hold the attention of this temporary city. All kinds of big names perform here, including Bob Dylan in 2010, whom is well-known to have had a lifelong love affair with motorcycles.

This week, the famous Buffalo Chip Campground played host to a daredevil show in which a number of extreme stunts were to be performed. Evidently there is no end to the number of people willing to risk their lives in order to become memorialized as the next Evel Knievel, who holds the Guinness Book World Record for most bones broken in a lifetime. Unfortunately, the spectacular tunnel of fire world record attempt got too hot to handle resulting in daredevil Chip Ewing choosing to crash through the wall rather than being cooked to a cinder in the intense 2900 degree heat. The stunt went bad, but he'll live to ride again even if his bike has become a heap of charred debris.

Reading this story made me ask myself why people risk their lives in this way? What is it that these people are seeking? Recognition? Fame? Thrills?

Ewing survived his experience but not every daredevil is so lucky. In June a stunt plane at an airshow in Ohio crashed and burned killing its pilot and wingwalker in front of an audience who paid money to have their hearts get lodged in their throats. That is, they go to see death being defied, not to actually see it happen. It's a horrorshow that can potentially happen every week of the year in circuses and stunt shows.

In this instance Jane Winker, the stuntwoman, described her act as "managed risk." And that's probably how most of these people think about what they're doing. I don't know the number off-hand, but there are quite a few bodies that have been left on the slopes of the Himalayas. When Richard Branson famously circumnavigated the globe in a hot air balloon, he had no certainty that he would come home alive. He already had riches and fame. Why would he do this?

Every NASCAR driver knows that next weekend could be his or her last race, even with the extreme measures being taken to ensure driver safety these days.

My guess is that for some daredevils death just doesn't seem that real and the thrill one gets is far more real. When stuntmen do flips on snowmobiles they assume that a worst-case scenario will be a painful hospital room recovery. They look at Evel Knievel and think to themselves, "Well, if he could survive that, so can I."

Maybe there has always been a fascination with taking risks (human cannonballs, for example) but with the advent of our celebrity age the tendency seems more pronounced, as the temporary fame associated with being listed as a world record holder forms some kind of validation of one's existence.

Or maybe Evel Knievel and others of his ilk simply loved the thrills and saw it as a route to personal fortune.

Then again, what about our soldiers in combat? They put their lives on the line, as well, but it's not for personal glory. For many it is duty to country or something nobler. Or they believe it to be so. 

Bottom line: a stuntman got burned this week in Sturgis; fortunately he'll live to ride again. The story of his accident gave us something to think about.