Chernobyl begs a lot of questions 25 years later.Photo: Pedro Moura PinheiroCross-posted from The Guardian. Containing the elemental forces that rage inside a nuclear reactor is one of the great achievements of science, but losing control, as happened 25 years ago today at Chernobyl, is one of its greatest failures. So what to think of nuclear power? People often ask me if I support or oppose the building of new nuclear power stations, presuming that because of my job, I'll know the answer. If only it were that easy. Until the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant, I would say I was 51 percent …

Here's a crazy idea: why not use the enormous geothermal resource under Japan -- which is after all sitting on a "ring" made of "fire" -- as a source of nearly always-on baseload power? I asked Alex Richter, an Icelandic financier of geothermal energy projects, how much geothermal energy $152 billion would buy. (That's the projected total cost of the cleanup of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, and doesn't even include the cost of building and maintaining it in the first place.) Using a conservative scenario -- namely the cost of geothermal power in the U.S., which is more expensive …

The projected cost for the management of the Fukushima crisis is $152 billion. And that doesn't even include the cost of building and operating the plant in the first place. What if all that scratch had been spent on solar panels instead? It would be amazing, that's what. Read this infographic and weep. (Click here for a larger version. Brought to you by solar buying club 1 Block Off the Grid.)

An anti-nuclear protestor in Japan gets creative.Photo: Matthias LambrechtThis post was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom's kind permission. Last Monday, Yukio Edano, chief cabinet secretary, defended the Japanese government's response to the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, insisting that the plant complex is in "a stable situation, relatively speaking." That's somewhat like the official description of 11,500 tons of water purposely dumped into the ocean waters off Fukushima as "low-level radioactive" or "lightly radioactive." It is, of course, only "lightly" so in comparison to the even more radioactive water being stored at the plant in its …

Last month, a wind turbine on a North Dakota wind farm suffered a "catastrophic failure" when "oversight" and "human error" -- features of energy infrastructure which scientists suggest are unavoidable -- led to the enormous turbine falling off its mount. The most recent reports indicate that so far the only casualties are a wide swath of grass and possibly a family of voles. So far no evacuation zone has been declared. There are no threats to sea life, and the fallout from the disaster was not detectable thousands of miles away. Cleanup efforts are in progress, and will not include …

Even in France, nuclear power isn't perfect.Photo: Gretchen MahanThis post is coauthored by Cutler Cleveland, Bruce Cooperstein, and Ida Kubiszewski. It's a condensed version of an article in the April issue of the Solutions journal, based at the Institute for Sustainable Solutions at Portland State University. As the Japanese nuclear disaster shows, the cleanup costs after a nuclear meltdown are borne in large part by governments and taxpayers rather than the industry. Paying for cleanup is just one of many hidden costs of nuclear energy that make it difficult to judge the value of nuclear power. Many countries, including the …

In the wake of severe natural disasters, how is Japan going to get its electrical infrastructure back online? The Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability has an answer, and it's anything but business as usual. By deploying a mix of renewables and energy efficiency technology, they argue, Japan's need for electricity could be met three years sooner than through nuclear and conventional fossil fuel power. All told, Japan's earthquake and tsunami have knocked out at least 15,000 megawatts of electricity generating capacity -- that's greater than the total summer peak demand for all of New York City. The plants that …

The nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has leveled up to a 7, or “major accident,” topping out the International Nuclear and Radiation Event scale. That puts it in the same category as Chernobyl, the only other level 7 event in history. Does this mean it's time for us all to put on our radiation hazard suits? Not as bad as Chernobyl: Yes, it's in the same category as Chernobyl, but Hugh Laurie is in the same tax bracket as Bill Gates. There's no level above 7 on the INES scale, so all the bad accidents are gonna be …

Did Japan do something to anger the universe? (Don’t answer that, Jerry Falwell.) After a massive offshore quake, a devastating tsunami, and a nuclear crisis, the beleaguered country is now being treated to aftershocks that would make most quakes feel silly. As for the nuclear status … who knows? It probably isn’t good. Aftershocks ruin everything: One month after the initial quake, a 6.6 magnitude aftershock -- way smaller than the original, but bigger than the vast majority of quakes in the world -- shut down cooling systems AGAIN at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, where workers are scampering to contain …

Periodically, it's nice to step back and get reacquainted with some energy basics. There's no better way to do it than with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's famed (or oughtta be famed) energy flow charts. Here's the most recent, from 2009 (click for larger version): Chart: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory I'm not going to ruin the pretty picture with a bunch of wonk talk. Just a few basic things that are worth noticing: 1. Holy sh*t we waste a lot of energy! I mean seriously. Look up there in the top right -- "rejected energy." Well over half of the raw …