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Grist reports that french nuclear power company EDF has decided that it is better to pursue renewable energy in the US rather than bating a dead horse - Big nuke company decides renewables are a better bet in the U.S..

The world’s largest operator of nuclear power plants is dumping its stake in American reactors, turning its focus instead to wind and solar power. French utility company EDF announced this week that it will sell its stake in Constellation Energy Nuclear Group (CENG), which operates five nuclear reactors in New York and Maryland.

EDF cited cheap power produced by fracked natural gas as the big reason why it’s abandoning its American nuclear facilities. But the company said it will now focus its American business strategy not on fossil fuels but on renewable energy.

The Long Now has a post noting that the Long Bet about peak travel in the US has been won by Glen Raphael, who bet that there would be more passenger miles travelled in 2010 than there were in 2005 - Long Bet on Peak Travel.

The challenger - me - appears to have won the bet. But it was a real squeaker! The total was roughly 3 trillion miles for both years and there was a period of decline (associated with war and financial crash) in between that gave me a scare but 2010 finished slightly ahead.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/tvtw/10dectvt/page2.cfm (the december 2010 report) gives total vehicle miles traveled for the year as:

2005: 2,989,395
2010: 2,999,634

So 2010 was more, but it was very very close. See also this press release:

http://www.dot.gov/affairs/2011/fhwa0311.html

"Nation’s Highway Traffic Reaches Highest Level Since 2007"

Earth2Tech reports Tesla CEO Elon Musk is looking forward to a breakthrough in energy storage using capacitors - Tesla CEO: I’d Bet On Capacitors Over Batteries.

Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk says he bets that it could be capacitors — rather than batteries — that deliver an important breakthrough for electric transportation. “If I were to make a prediction, I’d think there’s a good chance that it is not batteries. But capacitors,” said Musk at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Capacitors, or ultracapacitors, are energy storage devices that can deliver quick bursts of intense power and can withstand more charge and discharge cycles than batteries. They’re like batteries, and can be used in complement with batteries.

But it’s interesting that the CEO of a company that bases its technology around standardized, small format, lithium-ion batteries would make such a comment. Perhaps Tesla is doing some R&D on capacitor storage deep in its Palo Alto, Calif. labs?

The original reason Musk came out to California years ago was to do research on advanced, high energy density capacitors at Stanford, and to try to leverage what Musk said was tens of billions of dollars of R&D that’s been applied to capacitors for advanced ship making. But then, that whole Internet thing and PayPal happened. And then Tesla (and SolarCity and SpaceX).

Musk says he’s optimistic there will be a solution found by one or another companies in the capacitor space that “will supercede,” batteries. The capacitor companies I’ve written about include Ioxus, which makes ultracapacitors for transportation in complement with batteries; EEstor, which seems like it’s not ever going to deliver anything; Recapping, which is backed by Khosla Ventures and won an ARPA-E grant; and EnerG2, which makes materials for ultracapacitor makers.