Energy Tax Breaks

While production tax credits are a questionable way to choose technologies for energy production, they are a valuable way to tackle the real issues of environmental impact. Production tax credits (PTCs) should be wielded in a technology-neutral way that help encourage businesses to pursue environmental goals that are not necessarily perceived as part of their bottom line.

But all that said, the current policy that allows PTCs to be created and expire on an annual basis is the worst of all worlds. If we are going to have an energy policy that relies on PTCs, then we need to make them last as long as the time scales necessary to effect change in energy futures.

Let's first find a way to make PTCs become based on the environmental goals and divorced from the technology. Then, let's make them last for a long time so that we can plan on them and make a difference.

Risk-free Iconography as Energy Policy

I was struck by this paragraph in Sunday's New York Times:

Still, “there’s a huge danger if we try to build public policy about risk-free iconography and storytelling,” Mr. Godin says. “We end up with nuclear waste dumps and ethanol. There really is no free lunch, but that’s a difficult story to tell.”

It is a poignant summary of the whole article, that discusses the role of the wind turbine as an icon of a better energy future. While some of my colleagues might use such an article as a springboard to condescendingly dismiss wind energy, I hope that the above paragraph is appreciated by someone who can help wind energy grow without promising the moon (or all its He-3).

Ode to Joy

One of my favorite pieces of classical music, however cliché, is Beethoven's Ode to Joy. The reason is that it is indelibly imprinted in my brain in connection to a moving film about the fall of the Berlin Wall that I saw at the "Museum at Checkpoint Charlie" in 1992 (and again in '96 or '97).

But this post is on a different topic altogether... today, some dear friends and neighbors are moving away to another state. As they leave, we find ourselves listing all the reasons we are sad to see them go. To be sure, my school-aged daughters will miss their playmates (the new owners have no children) and we will miss the easy and casual conversations in the fence-less backyard. The list of specifics could go on, but it can all be summarized by the neighborly ideal they represented.

It is not about being inseparable best of friends. We have our circle of friends and they have theirs. Rather, it is about being a welcome part of each other's everyday lives - so common and regular that your lives become intertwined in a way that is hard to catalog. In today's world, there are no guarantees that neighbors will achieve this ideal in their relationship. In fact, most conversations are peppered with the extreme opposite - long-soured neighborly relationships in which those daily interactions are despised and avoided.

We will miss them for some time. In more ways that one, some joy has been taken away from our lives.

Talking about nuclear energy

The Wisconsin Public Utility Institute recently hosted a "Power Lunch" on Nuclear Energy. You can find most of the presentations posted there. The whole program was recorded for posterity in two segments. One for the morning and one for the afternoon. I was on the program, both giving a lecture on the nuclear fuel cycle in the morning (2:24:30) and on the panel discussion at the end (1:33:00).

The Pessimism of Youth

When we discussed nuclear non-proliferation in my class on Friday, none of the students could even imagine a world without nuclear weapons. While I admit that I don't expect it soon, I can imagine concrete steps towards it - a trajectory that would not be impossible to begin. I thought I was supposed to be the jaded and cynical one.

Fun engineering design competition - and effective too!

2nd Place Team
Originally uploaded by gonuke

At the 2008 ANS Student Conference @ TAMU this weekend, the organizers did a fantastic job pulling off an engineering design competition. We had tossed this idea around when we hosted the conference in 2004, but it was a huge failure on many levels. The biggest contributor to this success was getting us all into it when we were a captive audience - they also offered big $$ prizes.

Each table got a box of stuff - two thin dowels, a role of twin, some rubber bands, a plastic cup. a small plunger, springs, zip ties, a coil of wire.... and so on, with a small marble. The goal was to create a contraption that would keep the marble moving longest after starting it off. You could release it, but not push it, to start. There were a number of rules (more on that later) to limit what you could or couldn't do. Our table came 2nd.

We went with a simple pendulum supported by a bipod held in place with guy-wires. We suspended the cup and filled it with as much mass as possible. Finally, we put the plunger head upside down in the top of the cup with the marble - the shape of this surface was conducive to keeping the marble moving and wobbling even if the pendulum was slowing down.

Now for the rules - and the pedagogical value. The rules were designed to be simple. They defined what "moving" meant to avoid typical engineer arguments like the earth is always moving so the marble is too - or Brownian motion, etc. They also did not allow the contraption to be fastened to the table. (Some groups feel we ran afoul when we held our box with the endorsement of the judge - they were probably right!) These rules were quite clear an unambiguous. Less clear was the guidance on the size/footprint of the system.

As the instructions were given to us, we were told to fold our box flat and put it on the table - this was the footprint our system had to fit into. Some groups, including ours, took that to mean that the system must be built upon the flattened box. Others just assumed that any system that was smaller than the size of the flattened box was OK and that the box was available to be used as part of the building materials.

At least two pedagogical lessons:

• sometimes rules are vague - you have to interpret them for yourself
• diversity of opinions can lead to better design

Graduate student training

One of the things that I do as a professor is train graduate students to be productive scientists. There are many apsects to this: research, communication, and teamwork skills, and maybe even some teaching experience. The faculty-student mentoring relationship for these skills is well defined. Students expect to pick up these skills and look to the faculty member for help, either from direct instruction and feedback, or by following the example set by the faculty (hopefully a good example). In addition, over time, many people are working on resources to help with this.

But occasionaly I encounter a dimension that is more difficult: personality coaching. On one hand, many aspects of this are related to the other skills mentioned above. But on the other hand, when students have personalities that make it difficult for them to interact constructively with others, they have a hard time acquiring these other skills. It becomes a barrier to many of the other aspects.

More importantly, this aspect of the relationship between faculty and student is not well defined. It somehow seems more difficult to approach a student on this topic. Nevertheless, students who behave poorly can not only hamper their own professional development, but can interrupt the development of other students.

Perhaps there is room to develop resources to help us deal with this aspect too.