Ghosn helpers in Japanese custody
BOSTON — An American father and son wanted by Japan for aiding former Nissan Motor Co. Chairman Carlos Ghosn escape from the country in a box were handed over to Japanese custody Monday, ending their monthslong battle to stay in the U.S.
Michael Taylor and his son, Peter, failed to persuade U.S. officials and courts to block their extradition to Japan, where they will be tried on charges that they smuggled Ghosn out of the country in 2019 while the former auto titan was awaiting trial on financial misconduct charges.
The Massachusetts men had been in a suburban Boston jail since their arrest in May. Their lawyers had argued that they would be treated unfairly in Japan and subjected to “mental and physical torture.”
Re “Bold investment needed to modernize electric grid” (Our Views, Feb. 23): The energy fiascoes in Texas and California raise important issues. Nationally, we are haphazardly moving down the road of “green” renewable energy sources.
This transformation, integrating wind and solar into the existing grid, requires a resilient infrastructure. “Resilient” isn’t on anyone’s radar.
Utilities site power plants in “not-inmy-backyard” locations because moving energy over long distances involves transmission line losses that are wasteful. Solutions could involve building a larger remote source with losses as a cost of doing business, or reducing the losses by some technological solution not ready for prime time (superconductors) or utilize direct current transmission.
Direct current can be buried or routed under water. Wind and solar generate direct current. These facilities are sited to maximize sun or wind availability — not positioned where the energy is needed, in population centers or near large energy consumers.
A fundamental issue is that base load is reliable. The Texas grid was not weather hardened — so, no base load.
An energy storage grid component would allow operators to balance energy supplied from intermittent sources combined with base load and allow for selectively powering users with sources. Schools and offices generally consume energy during the day. Homes use energy mornings and evenings. These are not a good choice for solar unless one can store enough energy during the day — the Tesla wall battery.
California residents couldn’t charge electric vehicles (and cellphones) because portions of the grid were destroyed by fire. Many of these population centers were built without considering the infrastructure needed to support them during bad weather.
Virginia has the same problems coming. We import power, and we are building up a renewable infrastructure with not much of a plan in place for storage or moving power over longer distances economically.
Jim Hurst, Williamsburg