The main aims of power electronic converter systems (PECS) are to control, convert, and condition electrical power flow from one form to another through the use of solid state electronics. This book outlines current research into the scientific modeling, experimentation, and remedial measures for advancing the reliability, availability, system robustness, and maintainability of PECS at different levels of complexity.

The importance of power electronic converters for electricity grid equipment is increasing due to the growing distribution-level penetration of renewable energy sources. The performance of the converters mostly depends on interactions between sources, loads, and their state of operation. These devices must be operated with safety and stability under normal conditions, fault conditions, overloads, as well as different operation modes. Therefore, enhanced control strategies of power electronic converters are necessary to improve system stability.

There are many ways to harness the renewable and emissions-free energy available from the Earth's oceans. The technologies include wave energy, tidal and current energy, and energy from thermal and salinity gradients. In addition, offshore wind energy and marine (floating) solar arrays offer a possibility to exploit vast resources that are far larger than those available onshore. The potential capacities range from many hundreds of gigawatts to terawatts of generation. These technologies could contribute a significant part of the global electricity demand; they are particularly suitable for providing sustainable power to marine regions and island communities and nations.

After a tsunami destroyed the cooling system at Japan’s Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, triggering a meltdown, protesters around the world challenged the use of nuclear power. Germany announced it would close its plants by 2022. Although the ills of fossil fuels are better understood than ever, the threat of climate change has never aroused the same visceral dread or swift action. Spencer Weart dissects this paradox, demonstrating that a powerful web of images surrounding nuclear energy holds us captive, allowing fear, rather than facts, to drive our thinking and public policy.

Building on his classic, Nuclear Fear, Weart follows nuclear imagery from its origins in the symbolism of medieval alchemy to its appearance in film and fiction. Long before nuclear fission was discovered, fantasies of the destroyed planet, the transforming ray, and the white city of the future took root in the popular imagination. At the turn of the twentieth century when limited facts about radioactivity became known, they produced a blurred picture upon which scientists and the public projected their hopes and fears. These fears were magnified during the Cold War, when mushroom clouds no longer needed to be imagined; they appeared on the evening news. Weart examines nuclear anxiety in sources as diverse as Alain Resnais’s film Hiroshima Mon Amour, Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, and the television show The Simpsons.

Recognizing how much we remain in thrall to these setpieces of the imagination, Weart hopes, will help us resist manipulation from both sides of the nuclear debate.