The generally higher cost of renewables has had a discernible effect: the bulk of global renewable-energy spending is concentrated in high-watt countries even though electricity demand in those countries is generally flat or declining. For instance, in both the U.S. and Germany, electricity production in 2017 was roughly the same as it was 2004. Meanwhile, in the no-watt and unplugged countries — where electricity is scarce and demand for electricity is booming — spending on renewables lags far behind that of electricity-rich countries.
In 2016, global investment in renewable energy projects totaled some $242 billion. Of that some $106 billion, or 43 percent, was spent in Europe and the US. China spent another $78 billion. Thus, the U.S., Europe, and China together accounted for more than 75 percent of all global spending on renewables. //

Meanwhile, spending on solar and wind in Africa, the Middle East, and India totaled just $17 billion. //

What would it take solely to keep up with the growth in global electricity demand by using solar energy? We can answer that question by looking at Germany which has more installed solar-energy capacity that any other European country, about 42,000 megawatts. In 2017, Germany’s solar facilities produced 40 terawatt-hours of electricity. Thus, just to keep pace with the growth in global electricity demand, the world would have to install 14 times as much photovoltaic capacity as now exists in Germany, and it would have to do so every year. //

While cost, storage, and scale are all significant challenges, the most formidable obstacle to achieving an all-renewable scenario is simple: there’s just not enough land for the Bunyanesque quantities of wind turbines and solar panels that would be needed to meet such a goal. The undeniable truth is that deploying wind energy and solar energy at the scale required to replace all of the energy now being supplied by nuclear and hydrocarbons would require covering state-sized chunks of territory with turbines and panels. //

From a practical on-the-ground standpoint, the power density of wind energy will forever be stuck at 0.5 to 1 watt per square meter.

In 2015, at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science who was one of the co-authors of the 2013 letter, reiterated his belief that nuclear must be part of any emissions-reduction effort. “The goal is not to make a renewable energy system. The goal is to make the most environmentally advantageous system that we can, while providing us with affordable power,” Caldeira said. “And there’s only one technology I know of that can provide carbon-free power when the sun’s not shining and the wind’s not blowing at the scale that modern civilization requires. And that’s nuclear power.” //

By the mid-2020s, the US could prematurely retire as much as a third of its installed nuclear capacity. What’s driving the retirements? Low-cost natural gas is a major factor. In addition, nuclear plants must compete in the wholesale market with heavily subsidized electricity produced from wind and solar. Add in aging reactors, post-Fukushima regulations, and the never-ending opposition from big environmental groups, and the US nuclear sector has been taking a beating.
The closure of these plants has been cheered by the well-funded opponents of nuclear energy. For decades, nuclear energy’s foes have relied on three main criticisms to justify their opposition: radiation, waste, and cost. //

The facts show that the accident at Fukushima led to exactly two deaths. About three weeks after the tsunami hit the reactor complex, the bodies of two workers were recovered at the plant. They didn’t die of radiation. They drowned. //

In 2013, the UN’s Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation released a report which found that “No radiation-related deaths have been observed among nearly 25,000 workers involved at the accident site. Given the small number of highly exposed workers, it is unlikely that excess cases of thyroid cancer due to radiation exposure would be detectable in the years to come.” (Thyroid cancer is among the most common maladies caused by excessive exposure to radiation.) The UN committee was made up of 80 scientists from 18 countries. //

the one thing that we have learnt from both Chernobyl and Fukushima is that it actually wasn’t radiation that’s done the health damage to the people in the surrounding areas. It’s their fear of radiation. There’s been far more psychological damage than there has actually physical damage because of the two accidents.”

JACKSONVILLE, Ark. — The Minute Man restaurant has a special new food truck that will be coming to the Jacksonville location at 120 John Harden Drive.

The Space Shuttle Cafe will arrive at 8 AM Thursday. .

The Space Shuttle café is a converted DC-3 airplane that saw service in WW II in 1944. It is the only road-worthy DC-3 airplane licensed for street use in the world. //

After WW II, the plane saw service as a commercial airliner on the East Coast including Argonaut Airways, based in Miami, FL.

In 2015, the vehicle was upgraded to a full commercial food-service kitchen for use in the New York Metro area.

Minute man Restaurants purchased the vehicle in 2021 with plans to support its growing fleet of mobile restaurants and trailers in Arkansas, as well as promote the Minute Man Foundation’s not-for-profit mission to reduce hunger in the state.