power

Reports continued to come in Monday night detailing the third explosion to hit the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in the past 4 days.The plant, located in northeastern Japan, was first ravaged by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that hit northern Japan last week. Soon after, two hydrogen explosions caused fires that have since been contained. News of the first two explosions only worsened the public's fear of a catastrophic release of radiation into the atmosphere. According to one report, the third explosion "was heard at 6:10 a.m. local time on Tuesday, a spokesman for the Nuclear Safety Agency said at a news conference. The plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said the explosion occurred near the suppression pool in the reactor's containment vessel. The pool was later found to have a defect."

Not good news. And while leaking radiation is a major fear, early reports still vary when it comes to just how bad the situation is. According to the TIME NewsFeed: "In a televised address to the nation at 11 a.m., Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan spoke of the high-pressure situation. Kan advised people within 19 miles of the affected power plant to stay indoors. According to the Associated Press, some 180,000 people within a 12-mile radius had already been evacuated. "There is a very high risk of further radioactive leaks," he said."I ask you to stay calm." Still, it has been confirmed that "radiation leaks are now severe enough to pose a significant threat to people's health"...and that's a statement from Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety spokesman.

The massive earthquake, which has shifted the entire island of Japan by an estimated eight feet, is truly a disaster on a global scale. It's also a disaster that has very suddenly thrust nuclear power back into the limelight...and to say the exposure has been unflattering would obviously be a gross understatement. This is the kind of disaster, on the scale of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, that will take people—both in Japan, and elsewhere—a very long time to forget...or forgive.

Right now, the hope is that the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant will avoid a full meltdown. CBS News defines a meltdown as "when the nuclear fuel inside the reactor gets so hot, it literally melts. Uranium pellets are inside the long fuel rods. If the reactor is not cooled properly, the tubes can fall apart, with the radioactive material falling to the bottom." A description that sounds scarily like the preface to a China Syndrome-esque scenario, but CBS News has also reported that the situation at Fukushima Dai-ichi is not yet as bad as the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, and nowhere near the Chernobly tragedy: "Even with the two [update: three] Fukushima explosions, so far this is nothing like Chernobyl. In 1986, the control rods malfunctioned and the fuel rods melted down. A subsequent explosion catapulted tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere."

California's largest electric utility is desperate to slow down a new program that's going to revolutionize the way small businesses pay for their power. The company claims customers need more time to understand 'dynamic' pricing, but higher "time-of-use" rates will mean a new way of doing business for many of California's small business owners.

Consumer advocate groups and The California Small Business Association have come out against the new pricing for electricity, but state regulators have already approved the program. According to the San Francisco Chronicle "PG&E in November will start charging its roughly 500,000 small-business customers different rates for electricity at different times of day. Businesses will also face significantly higher rates on a handful of days each year when power supplies are strained, either by hot weather or problems with the electricity grid."

It should be noted that business owners will be able to "opt out" of the program —for the time being, anyway. According to The Chronicle, "the California Small Business Association has now asked the California Public Utilities Commission, which approved PG&E's program, to slow down the timetable for the changes. And PG&E, to an extent, agrees, arguing that the utility needs more time to educate its customers."

What utilities like PG&E want to "educate" all of us about is the transition to "time-of-use" rates. So what does all of this actually mean? Wikipedia breaks down the different categories of time-based pricing in relation to electricity industry like this:

• time-of-use pricing (TOU pricing)—whereby electricity prices are set for a specific time period on an advance or forward basis, typically not changing more often than twice a year. Prices paid for energy consumed during these periods are pre-established and known to consumers in advance, allowing them to vary their usage in response to such prices and manage their energy costs by shifting usage to a lower cost period or reducing their consumption overall;
• critical peak pricing—whereby time-of-use prices are in effect except for certain peak days, when prices may reflect the costs of generating and/or purchasing electricity at the wholesale level
• real-time pricing (also: dynamic pricing)—whereby electricity prices may change as often as hourly (exceptionally more often). Price signal is provided to the user on an advanced or forward basis, reflecting the utility’s cost of generating and/or purchasing electricity at the wholesale level; and
• peak load reduction credits—for consumers with large loads who enter into pre-established peak load reduction agreements that reduce a utility’s planned capacity obligations.

The Wiki-editors go on to recommend dynamic pricing, saying that "time-based pricing will reflect the price variations on the market. Such variations include both regular oscillations due to the demand pattern of users, supply issues (such as availability of intermittent natural resources: water flow, wind), and occasional exceptional price peaks." The general idea is that dynamic pricing begets consumer response—once people are paying more for electricity depending on when they use it, they tend to pay more attention to their usage. While it may be true that Americans have long enjoyed cheap electric rates in comparison to other countries, but the days of power that's "too cheap to meter" are decidedly coming to an end...

The story is simple enough: foreign companies (read: countries) are buying up American coalmines and natural gas fields. But what really struck the BTLS braintrust about this story were people’s widely differing reactions to the headline. Some immediately picked up on the sensational energy security angle, while others immediately saw an outrageous hypocrisy in the very notion of "carbon offshoring". Could the United States potentially end up right back where we started in terms of cleaning up the environment? Shouldn’t we be worried about foreign companies taking control of our limited natural resources? Why should we bother with costly carbon capture and sequestration technology if we're just going to end up letting someone else burn our coal somewhere else?

For answers we talked to BTLS host and senior braintrustee-Scientific American's David Biello. David explains that even though we see a lot of stories in the news about countries like China making great strides building clean energy technologies (like solar panels), China’s energy economy is still far from 'green'. Because China’s economy is expanding so rapidly, and because coal is still their primary resource, they need more energy (read: coal) than ever before.

While China may still have a long way to go, keep in mind—so too does the United States. According to David, coal makes up for over 70% of China’s energy mix. In the United States we’re not much better...

Nuclear reprocessing. You often see it in the news, usually related to what countries are doing it and why. Reprocessing in India and China may get more ink, but the the U.K. & France do far more of it. In the United States, on the other hand, we do not currently reprocess our spent nuclear fuel. So why not? Now that many environmentalists are reevaluating nuclear power (thanks to its status as a low-carbon fuel), many are asking just that: why shouldn't we be recycling this stuff? Almost seems like the least we can do, given the complications of mining and transporting uranium, right?

Not so fast. The fellows at The Union of Concerned Scientists aren't quite so keen on reprocessing. In fact, they're actually quite...concerned about it. As scientists. In their own words, here's what their list of major concerns boils down to:

• Reprocessing would increase the risk of nuclear terrorism.
• Reprocessing would increase the ease of nuclear proliferation.
• Reprocessing would hurt U.S. nuclear waste management efforts.
• Reprocessing would be very expensive.

Very legitimate-sounding concerns, scary-sounding, even—but not everyone would agree. After all, France and Britain seem to be doing alright and they've been reprocessing for decades. To find out more about the argument for reprocessing, we talked to CEO of Duke Energy (and Beyond the Light Switch expert) Jim Rogers.

Jim Rogers knows energy. Just this past Monday he rolled out plans for a $13.7 billion megadeal that will make Duke Energy the largest electric utility in the nation. So how can he consider something that has raised such serious concerns in the past to now be no different than "recycling"? First, Rogers addressed fears that reprocessing will create a greater risk of nuclear terrorism, saying that he finds it much easier to mitigate the risk of proliferation "in the 

Is Global Climate Change to blame? After reading this story about the thawing of the permafrost layer, BTLS was surprised to learn that not only are falling rocks killing more people each year, the thaw is also jeopardizing their economic infrastructure. The rapidly changing geology of the area has been attributed to global climate change for years now, but that information would be much more useful if everyone could first agree on whether climate change is real or not.

Alas, there has been no agreement. So when the BTLS braintrust heard about melting glaciers spelling real trouble for the Swiss Alps, we decided to investigate a little further. Are a few falling rocks and some melting snow really that big of a problem? For answers we talked to BTLS’s resident artist (and Swiss connection), David Hartwell. And David immediately assured us that, yes, a little melting snow is a very big problem in his native land. How big of a problem is it?

Here are just a few of the pre-emptive measures the Swiss have tried so far:

• They've had to redirect natural gas viaducts because of falling rocks caused by the melting permafrost.
• Banks will not lend money to any resorts situated below 1500 meters due to the uncertainties of snowfall.
• They’ve tried covering glaciers with fleece blankets to limit summer UV exposure so that they will not retreat as fast.
• They’re having to redraw their borders with neighboring countries.
• Swiss villagers have even written to the Pope for help.

The Alpen town of Pontresina gained attention as one of the first places to take  precautions against the melting ice (like building a giant dam). Now they're offering nature hikes that promise to let you walk "in the footsteps of climate change". Still, the fact remains: experts estimate Switzerland will lose 70% of their glaciers within the next thirty years. And attracting some of the first GCC ‘disaster tourists’ seems like a pretty lame consolation prize for the Swiss, considering that they’re not one of the region’s big carbon emitters. David Hartwell tells us that the only leverage the Swiss really have is raising fuel and transit taxes to alleviate their growing climate problem. According to Hartwell, the Swiss have all but given up on the idea of making a dent in global carbon emissions—they’re now in the business of “building rafts and making foreign nations pay for them”. But how?

Subsidies for renewable energy may be going away...again.

America's stormy love affair with renewable energy began in the 1970's, when President Jimmy Carter introduced subsidies for what were then termed 'alternative' energy resources. But the burgeoning wind and solar industries that grew under Carter were not fated to last long. Nurturing an infant renewable energy industry was not part of Ronald Reagan's presidential image, nor his platform. Beyond the Light Switch looks at this pivotal time in our nation's history as a means to understand the current state of our energy policy and energy politics.

Currently, the hopes of many long-suffering renewable energy supporters (and industry players) have been pinned on the Obama administration. And Obama did make good--by ushering in subsidies for renewables, known as the "1603 grants" (so-called for the section of the stimulus bill that created them). And just in case you were wondering what those grants actually do, today The LA Times was kind enough to lay it out for us--the 1603 grants "paid up to 30% of the cost of projects breaking ground by the end of this year. Renewable facilities generating a combined 4,250 megawatts (the equivalent of roughly four large nuclear plants) were supported by the program as of March, according to a report by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; that output is doubtless far higher now. The grants have created thousands of jobs, and helped clean the air and wean the country off fossil fuels. But all that may be about to stop".

Sounds scary, doesn't it? Well, what's happening is...