The Daily Energy
President Obama began a tour of the country to promote his energy policy and try to defuse the growing discontent over gas prices. Oil rose to $106 a barrel in the wake of Iranian disruptions and gas prices in the US were edging toward $4. Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich had a rebuttal waiting, however. He called the President’s energy policies “un-American.”
Mergers and acquisitions picked up as major corporations began releasing their fourth quarter reports. Chesapeake Energy, the country’s leading gas explorer, saw its profits double last quarter, while Yingli, the leading Chinese renewables company, cut its forecasts and saw its stock drop 7 percent. Fortis, a Canadian energy company, has purchased Central Hudson Gas & Electric, the New York utility, raising concerns among customers. The sale is evidence of growing Canadian strength in energy production while US utilities are trying to cope with blocked transmission lines and efforts to close down nuclear reactors.
Japanese steelmakers have petitioned the government to restart some of the country’s nuclear reactors in order to relieve electrical shortages. Only two of the nation’s 54 reactors are now operating and they will close down shortly for routine maintenance. TEPCO has gotten back in the bond market but Kuwait has announced it will scrap plans to build a reactor in the wake of the Fukushima crisis. Vermont will appeal the federal court decision that has blocked its efforts to close Vermont Yankee while the US Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia has dismissed an environmental effort to revoke the Tennessee Valley Authority’s permit to begin construction of a reactor at Bellefonte.
Finally, the world of physics is producing its usual wonders as researches at Purdue and the University of South Wales have built a transistor by placing a single atom of phosphorus in a bed of silicon. The feat could mean an extension of Moore’s Law to the quantum level. Researchers from MIT and the University of Kentucky have posted papers disclosing the new phenomenon of time crystals, which, in their lowest energy state, could achieve something resembling perpetual motion. German scientists have revealed a new phenomenon called “skyrmions,” which only require only 1/100,000th the current used by existing microchips to store data. And just to show that physics hasn’t gone completely microcosmic, NASA has launched a rocket into the northern lights (above) to explore the recent bursts of charged particles from the sun.
