Contents

Here are some prompts for this week's discussions.

Nuclear has been in the news with the disaster in Japan. It has caused a lot of disfavorable talk about nuclear power and the safety features involved. Moreover, nucelar is subsidized, has a finite supply to mine, and has a storage issue. Or does it? Remember, think like scientists...can these problems be solved? New energy technologies cannot be based on old ones. This is a video of Bill Gates at a TED talk (I am addicted to these litte TED videos and use them in class to spark imagination). Bill is talking about a whole new type of nuclear energy and the fuel is filtered from the ocean, not mined.

http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html

Efficiency and smart grids

According to a recent scorecard NV is #19 for energy efficiency.

http://www.aceee.org/sector/state-policy/nevada

What does efficiency mean for the energy grid. Most of you said that investing in efficiency for the auto industry was one of the cheapest, easiest ways to get a profit and reduce emissions. How do we expand that to the grid? What is a smart grid? The term gets used a lot, but no one seems to be able to actually explain what it is. Can you?