It's a beaut, Clark
On Christmas lights, slow changes, and the things we ought to know about the power generation mix
One of the best sight gags in "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" (a movie spilling over with such jokes) is a throwaway. As Clark Griswold illuminates the world's most over-the-top set of Christmas lights, the power dims all over Chicagoland -- and for a split second, the audience is treated to a hand flipping the switch to activate a (misspelled) Auxiliary Nuclear power supply to keep up with the Griswold family light show, as though nuclear power plants were simply sitting idle all around, just waiting to be activated.
■ The Energy Information Administration reports that 18.6% of all US electricity comes from nuclear power plants, while renewable fuels -- led by wind -- are up to 21.4%. Nuclear power generation figures really haven't changed much at all this century: The total change between total megawatt-hours produced in 2001 and in 2023 is less than 1%.
■ Wind, on the other hand, is up by a factor of 62 over the same time period, and utility-scale solar (which was utterly negligible in 2001) is hot on wind's heels. Once we account for small-scale solar generation, total solar generation is almost as big as hydroelectric.
■ These are subtle successes that ought to be celebrated. Even if it's not possible to simply flip a switch to spin up an "auxiliary nuclear" reactor, we may even be getting closer to the widespread advent of small-scale modular reactors, which when used in coordination with the growing renewable sector, could help us chip away even faster at the remaining 60% of electrical generation that comes from carbon-emitting sources.
■ Big, slow changes are hard to celebrate well, unless there are obvious milestones built around them. But the fact that so much has been done to make the generation mix evolve in a good direction, with so much growing promise coming from solar and so much potential to do more with nuclear, ought to be enough for us to applaud: "It's a beaut, Clark!"
