State Senator Mike Barrett offers a brilliant tour of the horizon on climate and energy issues in this podcast conversation with me. Mike is a long-time friend, mentor, and colleague. He is currently the Senate chair of the legislature’s Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy. He shares his perspective on a wide range of issues, providing lots of food for thought and discussion.
Comments and thoughts appreciated!
Prior podcast episodes appear at my podcast episode page.
(Looking forward long-term) Will the next generation of nuclear power plants be significantly safer than the earlier and current ones? Every time a disaster or serious accident occurs, critics of nuclear power point out that the technology and/or the monitoring procedures that eventually failed had previously been touted as “safe and reliable”. And will government, at whatever level, commit to fully compensating victims of mishaps or accidents? Obviously private insurance companies will continue to be extremely leery of shouldering that burden. They can’t print money, after all. Proof-of-concept demonstrations won’t impress them; they will demand to be shown 20 or 30 years of real-world operation at scale. If these issues and a couple of others can be resolved, and especially if fusion reactors can ever be devised that will scale-up to be safe and reliable, I’d probably favor nuclear power as the mainstay of future energy production. For the present, we’re in a confusing in-between stage that appears from your conversation to be very complicated and in need of careful choreographing. Good luck, your work is cut out for you all. btw: is anyone doing a deep dive into possible problems associated with hypothetical changes in global cloud-cover…extent, thickness, seasonality and so forth… due to climate change? If it gets cloudier, solar panels will be adversely affected. The market for them would crash. If it gets less cloudy, everyone would want to invest in that tech. Just wondering. I find no solid confident predictions in my online searches.
This was an excellent interview. Leaving aside substantive issues for a moment, the conversation highlighted the thoughtfulness and deep engagement with detail that characterizes Senator Barrett and his work.
As a citizen advocate for a greater role for nuclear energy, I have had occasion to discuss this with the Senator in the past and to give oral testimony before the TUE. Senator Barrett has always been well-informed, attentive, and courteous in his reception.
I do disagree with a few key pieces in the senator’s overview. Is nuclear in “big trouble” as claimed? In fact, it may be. And he is right that the biggest problem now is financing. However, this is a problem amenable to solution.
I would also maintain that the cost and build-time overrun at the Vogtle plant was not just a problem with caution in the financing community. That situation was complicated, but a lot of the problem has to be laid at the feet of Westinghouse itself, who was far from design completion when ground was first broken and had to go into bankruptcy during the period of construction. Their AP-1000 is now a solid, certified design that should be seriously considered as part of the future energy generation mix.
I also disagree that batteries are the solution to building a system primarily dependent on renewables. Batteries, including developing designs, are chemical devices requiring large amounts of material, acreage, cost, mining, and production of waste. They have finite discharge times — basically worthless for storing summer sun for the winter. Finally, any cost analysis claiming the advantages of solar must include the cost of backup, whether it is batteries, pumped hydro, natural gas or some other technology.
For most of us surviving the high cost of living in Massachusetts it is a never-ending painful burden. Energy is a costly necessity of life. Every effort must be made to reduce the cost of energy. We must move forward expanding the use of fossil fuels along with alternative sources of energy.
To all the panic peddlers human cannot destroy this planet due to rain, wind, fire, volcanic ash and the sun is not going to burn out anytime soon.
My cost of living is going up much more than the federal government claims is the rate of inflation. Every year my discretionary spending gets reduced. I have had enough with political talk. It’s time for positive action.