Thank you for your reporting. The Moss Landing battery fire was sufficiently large that I received a warning about it on my smartphone wildfire application on Friday. I live downwind, slightly more than 100 air miles from the location of the battery fire.
Thank you for your kind comment. It is my hope that this event serves as the necessary wake up call for both only the industry, but the public as a whole. I few weeks ago, I wrote an article and in it I detailed some of the obstacles facing nuclear power, with one of the prime challenges being public perception. It seems as though people believe that there are certain choices, such as battery storage from wind and solar, which pose zero environmental impact or hazard. Yet, as Moss Landing has demonstrated, there is no choice without possible consequences, even to the point of receiving alerts living 100 miles downwind.
I strongly agree with your perspectives in the above comment, David. In a way you are mapping the aphorism, "There is no free lunch!" into the energy space. Every form of energy available to our species has a set of risks. I believe that we must balance risks with benefits. I believe that nuclear power has an excellent risk-benefit ratio. That is one reason why I have invested about 30,000 hours since 2007 in my pro-Diablo Canyon Power Plant advocacy. When I look at the bigger picture, if we as a species make the wrong set of energy choices, our probability of being a successful species is dramatically diminished.
If we are going down the battery road, I am a proponent of flow batteries. The research is under funded because of the present battery trends. Regardless batteries are a massively expensive way to store power.
Thank you for your reporting. The Moss Landing battery fire was sufficiently large that I received a warning about it on my smartphone wildfire application on Friday. I live downwind, slightly more than 100 air miles from the location of the battery fire.
Thank you for your kind comment. It is my hope that this event serves as the necessary wake up call for both only the industry, but the public as a whole. I few weeks ago, I wrote an article and in it I detailed some of the obstacles facing nuclear power, with one of the prime challenges being public perception. It seems as though people believe that there are certain choices, such as battery storage from wind and solar, which pose zero environmental impact or hazard. Yet, as Moss Landing has demonstrated, there is no choice without possible consequences, even to the point of receiving alerts living 100 miles downwind.
I strongly agree with your perspectives in the above comment, David. In a way you are mapping the aphorism, "There is no free lunch!" into the energy space. Every form of energy available to our species has a set of risks. I believe that we must balance risks with benefits. I believe that nuclear power has an excellent risk-benefit ratio. That is one reason why I have invested about 30,000 hours since 2007 in my pro-Diablo Canyon Power Plant advocacy. When I look at the bigger picture, if we as a species make the wrong set of energy choices, our probability of being a successful species is dramatically diminished.
Hi David - You’ve written a solid piece of analysis - nicely done! Best wishes to you and Annuj, and I look forward to reading more on The Brush Up.
Hi Sean,
Thank you for your kind comment. We hope to be releasing plenty of more content like this in the future!
If we are going down the battery road, I am a proponent of flow batteries. The research is under funded because of the present battery trends. Regardless batteries are a massively expensive way to store power.
I sent some pictures of the fire to friends - one person commented that it looked like a space-x launch, and it did.