Speaking of which, the boat made the move from the boatyard to BeezleBub’s place late yesterday afternoon. It needs a little bit of cleaning up before I start loading the gear – anchors, mooring lines, a paddle, boat hook, transom light, PFDs, cushions, fire extinguisher, and so on – so I can launch the boat sometime during this week. It will definitely be in the water before the upcoming Memorial Day weekend.
The garage work still continues as I slowly dig through everything residing there to figure out what goes into the attic, what goes back onto the shelves, and what goes to the dump...er…solid waste center. I’m hoping that more than half the stuff presently residing on the shelves can go to the dump. (So far that appears to be the case, but I won’t know for sure until the job is done.)
I have been seeing the summer businesses getting ready, with many of the seasonal restaurants and ice cream stands having been open the past couple of weekends and the summer attractions cleaning up and getting everything ready for Memorial Day weekend. Friends of mine were up this way yesterday and we had lunch at one of my favorite local restaurants because I knew that starting next weekend it would be jam packed with summerfolk until after Labor Day.
And so begins another summer tourist season in New Hampshire.
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Oh yeah, this is going to make the folks in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine happy.
Vast, Untapped Source of Lithium Found in The US Could Last 300 Years.
There could be nearly 330 years' worth of lithium hiding beneath the Appalachian Mountains, which stretch like a stony spine across the eastern United States.I know there are large deposits of lithium in neighboring Maine, having heard that news a couple of years ago. But that there are deposits in New Hampshire and Vermont is a surprise.
New research from the US Geological Survey suggests that the Appalachians may contain around 2.3 million metric tons (2.5 million US tons) of recoverable lithium oxide locked away in pegmatites, the grainy, granite-like rocks that form as water-rich magma cools and crystallizes deep within the Earth.
"This research shows that the Appalachians contain enough lithium to help meet the nation's growing needs – a major contribution to US mineral security, at a time when global lithium demand is rising rapidly," says Ned Mamula, Director of the US Geological Survey (USGS).
I have no doubt there will be opposition against mining the lithium that resides under the mountains and China won’t have to fund any of the protests. Since I must assume that any such mining will be ‘hard rock’ mining meaning tunnels and shafts rather than strip mining, I can see where folks will be concerned about affects on ground water and aquifers as well as what will be done with the tailings. The mountains in all three states run through pristine forests, all of which contain hiking trails, campgrounds, streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, and a wide range of wildlife.
Things are going to get interesting around here.
Since lithium is used in batteries there is a huge demand for it and at the moment we get a lot of it from foreign sources. Being able to source lithium from domestic sources is very attractive for obvious reasons.
However, we must keep in mind that there are other high-capacity battery chemistries under development by DARPA that could make the lithium-ion batteries obsolete, with one of the more promising chemistries being graphene-silicon that doesn’t use lithium or cobalt or manganese as part of its chemistry. That means it is also cheaper to make because the materials used are available everywhere. It also has much higher energy density and lower internal resistance than lithium-ion batteries and won’t have the propensity of igniting itself like lithium-ion batteries.
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Being one of those engineering types, I have always been skeptical about so-called “green energy”, knowing that even while the energy – solar and wind – is free, collecting it and putting it into a usable form - electricity – was not. It also isn’t cheap, something so many of the green energy proponents keep choosing to ignore. And in many cases it also isn’t environmentally friendly between the mining of materials needed for solar panels and destruction of large tracts of land to hold these “green energy” systems.
However, it seems the luster of “green energy” has waned as the reality of that energy becomes apparent, with the biggest in-your-face factor being that it isn’t capable of meeting the growing demand and doing so cheaply. Instead, the focus has turned elsewhere with nuclear topping the list. The nuclear comeback is something that will leave green fantasies behind.
After years of efforts by radical greens to strangle America’s oil, gas, and coal industries — while forcing the nation to accept costly, land-devouring wind and solar — the U.S. is once again emerging as a global energy superpower.This cannot be said enough when it comes to nuclear power: Too many people against nuclear power today seem stuck in the 1970’s because modern Gen III and Gen IV nuclear reactors “are not you grandfather’s nuclear reactors”. This is particularly true of small modular reactors (SMRs) which can have electrical power outputs of a dozen megawatts to up to 300 megawatts output power. The days of big Gen II 1000+ MWe reactors are gone if for no other reason is that they cost a lot of money to build, take a very long time to build (mostly due to lawsuits and regulatory changes partway through construction which also adds to the cost), and they can be very difficult to site as they can have requirements for conditions that are difficult to meet. But SMRs are different.
And this time, it’s not just fossil fuels: In fact, nuclear power is taking center stage.
Tennessee is poised to become the world’s leading hub for nuclear innovation, thanks to Trump administration policies and state leaders willing to back real energy solutions over climate virtue-signaling. Public and private investments are now flowing into advanced reactors, uranium enrichment, and next-generation nuclear technologies.
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Together with a resurgence in oil, natural gas, and coal production, these developments will unleash American energy, manufacturing, innovation, and job creation while lowering electricity prices and reducing blackout risks for families and businesses alike. They also send a clear warning to America’s blue states: If you cling to anti-energy ideology, you will be left behind.
One of the biggest differences is right in their name: They are modular. Depending upon the generating capacity they can be built in a factory in a single piece and fit in a shipping container or in less than a dozen pieces that will be fit together on the construction site. They use advanced nuclear technology which makes them safer, easier, faster, and less expensive to build. Some designs can actually use ‘depleted’ nuclear fuel from old Gen I and Gen II nuclear power plants which has the advantage of being able to use fuel that is considered waste and reduce that waste from something that needs to be stored away for 25,000+ years to requiring to be stored only a couple of hundred years or so.
SMRs can be clustered together to provide the equivalent power to the old fashioned Gen II plants or spread out to create a distributed generation and transmission grid.
I could go on and on about SMRs but there’s plenty of information about SMRs on the Internet.
One thing I can say bodes well for a nuclear power renaissance is that my state’s governor, Kelly Ayotte, has been a big proponent of more nuclear power in our state.
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If we need any more proof that green energy and the over the top push to “Save The Planet” is failing, all we have to do is look at the EV market and see who’s either dialing back their production of electric vehicles or is throwing in the towel altogether.
The latest automaker to take a huge hit in the EV market?
Honda.
In this case Honda took its first ever loss in its history and is pulling back on EVs.
Such was the cultural vibe that giant corporations all collectively jumped off a cliff together hoping to invent a new technology fast enough to be able to land.There are just too many problems with EVs to make them popular enough to replace Internal Combustion Engine vehicles. Two of the biggest problems – the stability of Lithium-Ion batteries (and cost of replacing them) and the lack of electricity generation capacity to meet the projected demand if EVs had truly been popular and didn’t depend on government subsidies in order to drive demand.
In the case of Honda, after 70 years of endless profits, they burnt at least $9 billion dollars, and have given up the idea of trying to get EVs to make up one fifth of their sales by 2030. The demand just isn’t there. They also thought they could shift their whole fleet to electric or fuel cells by 2030. That’s gone too.
Will EVs ever go away? Probably not. But they won’t be nearly as numerous as ICE vehicles unless the battery safety issues, and the battery replacement and repair costs are addressed. We would also need to see the electrical grid capacity expanded and charging stations to become as ubiquitous as gas pumps. Until then I think EVs will be a niche market, Tesla notwithstanding.
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we’re seeing actual summer temperatures, more boats are being seen on the lake daily, and where Memorial Day weekend is only a week away.