What about Bloom Boxes (fuel cell technology) as the solution to decentralized power. Did anyone see "60 minutes" a few weeks ago?
On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 10:19 AM, Mike Russo
<mrusso@lcbmail.uoregon.edu> wrote:
Colleagues,
I've always felt that a great contribution to the story of what killed nuclear power here came from Forbes, in a cover story on February 11, 1985. I was in grad school by then, but had just put in three years for Pacific Gas and Electric Company commercializing wind and solar energy and watching the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant ever-so-slowly move forward.
The article, entitled "Nuclear Follies," does not finger obstructionists and environmentalists, but rather primarily implicates the utility companies themselves and the nature of their relationships with contractors. As Forbes put it (quoting from what may be a poor memory) "nuclear power was killed by its friends, not its enemies" through cost-plus contracting, weak contract enforcement regimes, and purchasers (utilities) that still saw themselves as sole providers who could pass through costs as long as regulators permitted them. The institutional environment, broadly defined, indeed was key to what took place.
What is provocative is this question: As we move to a world where generation is increasingly separated from transmission and distribution, and much more competitive in nature, will there be the requisite pressure to bring these units on line in a cost effective manner? Two countervailing pressures are the fact that we still have no long term solution for waste and that if decentralization of production really takes hold, centralized power plants may well be supplanted by site-based generation. As I'm fond of saying, solar energy has been 5 years away for the last 30 years. But the depth of commitment to this technology and the scale that it increasingly enjoys suggests that-particularly in a world where externalities are reflected in prices of conventional power production-its time may finally have come. And that's before we take into account the fact that the Price-Anderson Act (renewed for 20 years in 2005) extends socialized insurance to nuclear plants because commercial insurers won't touch them.
Mike
Michael V. Russo
Charles H. Lundquist Professor of Sustainable Management
Head, Management Department
Lundquist College of Business
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403
541-346-5182
--
Alfred A. Marcus
Professor and Spencer Chair in Strategy and Technological Leadership
University of Minnesota
Carlson School of Management
Strategic Management and Organization Department
Minneapolis, MN. 55455 USA
612 624 2812
amarcus@umn.edu