Who's the boss?

The conference in MoBay was unreservedly fantastic. We'll see in coming days/months/years whether I made the absolute best of it, but I'm happy with the networking I did and the things I learned.

Now, about that latter item.

One of the lingering fears I've had is that I'd end up someone's paid lab monkey. It always irked me a bit that scientists and engineers - big brains all - end up being treated as commodities by the managerial types who, unkind as it may be to say, probably aren't nearly as clever (or perhaps they're self-evidently smarter?). Nevertheless, I'm not about to suffer through a PhD so some schnook with an MBA can make more money than me while doing less.

I confess to avarice. A deep, abiding obsession with accumulation and power. Or, at least, I want to be the guy with the purse strings and the executive control, rather than the well-meaning scientific type who has to run around fighting for funding for the rest of his life.

That's one thing I learned - or rather - reaffirmed - at the conference. I could be Earl Jarrett, buffeted between politics and power regulators and not breaking even despite herculean effort and a noble and innovative agenda; or I could be the JPS, or the Minister, or the IFC private equity mogul or any other of the many incarnations of The Man (tm) that I met there.

Bad News for Nuclear?

Some interesting challenges to nuclear power loom.

Long lead up times, political/economic/environmental constraints and high capital costs are conspiring to scuttle nuclear power.

New plant require long lead up times - 10 years or so. The lead up time is more for countries that don't have the grid capacity, technical know-how and regulatory framework. And while nuclear power is dirt cheap once you get a plant started on its (industry average) 40 year lifespan, the start-up costs are perhaps THE most expensive of any variety of electricity.

Key quote:

Assuming an average lifetime of 40 years for all operating and in-construction reactors, in order to maintain the same number of operating plants the report concludes that an additional 42 reactors (16GW) would have to be planned, built and started up by 2015 – that is one every month and a half. An extra 192 units (170GW) would need to be commissioned over the following 10-year period – one every 19 days, according to the report.

That's not a rosy picture.

More reading:

Wikipedia on nuclear plant economics

The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2009

A report on that report, from Nuclear Engineering International

Japanese Orbital Death Ray - er, I mean Solar Plant

apparently the Japenese are planning a solar power plant that will collect 1GW (!) of power for consumers.. in SPACE.

not having to worry about night or atmouspheric conditions should make the whole thing pretty efficient. More interestingly, the energy will be beamed down to earth somehow. Gonna look into the physics of this, but I keep imagining a pillar of searing light, a la Goldeneye or Independence Day or the Death Star. Surely this will end well.

Via Bloomberg

B. Bibens on Biochar

My colleague / group member on a possible way to sequester carbon, improve soil quality and get a bit of bio-energy to boot.

Read it here!

Caribbean Energy Forum

http://caribbeanenergyforum.com/index.php

Looks good... REAL good. Sadly, I doubt I'd get funding for a non-scientific conference that I won't be presenting at.

I'll be getting a copy of the minutes or proceedings though, by hell or high water.

EDIT:

Bah, I'm going even if I have to pay for it myself. It's too good an opportunity to pass up. I'll just consider it an investment in myself, a worthwhile one. People spend more money than that on foolishness anyway, so why not?

Potpourri

A few things:


--Pitch A Tent weekend has come and gone. It was a marvelous time in some ways (good rugby, good friends, laughs, fireside chats), awful in others (obnoxiousness, gratuitous nudity). I played very well, and my teammates did too, and telling each other as much was comforting. I feel myself getting a little older.


-- For added perspective on the whole Gates thing, listen closely to this:



Content warning: Contains mild language and an incorrect album label (it's from Black on Both Sides, sillies!)


-- Where did the summer go? Good Lord. I'll be scampering around in the next two weeks trying write up these these damned results for publication.So many things to do... just need to try and tackle one at a time, for sanity's sake.

What do you call a black man with a PhD?

Nigger.

This is something that affects people like me (i.e. higher-level students who are foreigners and/or people of colour) in a pretty profound way. On the one hand, we love this country - so many resources, so much opportunity, so much to learn. We come here because we'd NEVER get to do what we do staying at home. But at the back of our minds is the creeping fear that we'd always be outsiders.

I don't want to live my life as a man without a home.