Was randomly thinking of energy and national security. Mostly, I think, due to a recent power outage that we experienced. This is far from the only one I ever experienced since I grew up and live in rural areas of the U.S. which has a surprisingly fragile power network in some areas. Fighting to learn programming for better job opportunities makes power outages a specific issue for me as well. Consider how worthless your computer really is without electricity and without internet.
That consideration has me pondering the national security implications of a weak power grid such as is in the news regarding certain states or as Aaron Renn discussed in his podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-third-worldization-of-america/id1530654244?i=1000552447070
It seems to me that being able to put a large portion of the US citizenship into “the dark” by knocking out two states, both of which have a recent history of a failing electrical grid poses a serious security issue. Not to mention public health, communication, etc. Etc. This then leads to the question of how to fix it.
One option of course would be to throw money at the problem to increase power production and improve the network (INFRASTRUCTURE!!!!!) as many like to bring up. But, while this is needed, does infrastructure spending really create the best electric network? Does it create a resilient one that can handle sudden spikes in demand or other unforeseen events? I assume we can all agree that the answer to that is: nope.
Besides, as California is proving, renewables can’t produce enough energy, for an entire grid. Instead, renewable energy seems to work best at small scale widely repeated: every individual house providing for itself with solar panels during the day for example. Night gets a bit harder though. Luckily day time is when air conditioning, refrigerators and our other cooking technology needs to work more though.
Alright, so big networks cannot handle changes very well and have weak points and non-network levels cannot produce enough energy for network level needs. What to do? My solution is both.
I am not knowledgeable enough about policy to know exactly how to do it yet but, somehow producing energy on large, centralized scale is still needed, I think nuclear may be our best way to go for a while since it’s so effective and efficient. It’s also a chance for states like Wyoming and Montana to bring in high paying jobs because fewer people means fewer safety issues. But, still, large energy producers are needed. At the same time, figuring out some way to promote, or at least, not hinder, small scale personal production is need too. That way, we could have our large scale electricity to function in the modern world but, we would also produce some of our own to use or contribute in the event the larger network has issues. At least then we could keep the dark at bay and minimize huge spikes in demand to let the larger network work most efficiently
Fleeting Thoughts of a Bad Student 