What's happening
The rain in Spain is not mainly on the plain
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I’m writing this on Nov. 1, four days before what will easily be the most consequential election in my lifetime. Many people have gauged this to be a referendum on democracy: Will we continue to have one or not?
I add to this that it will be a referendum on whether we will continue to have a livable planet or not. This may sound hyperbolic. I judge it to just be a straightforward extrapolation of facts. The data is everywhere, and much too much to put into a 900-word column. Every day there is news from somewhere to support my contention. I’m going to use two columns in the Friday edition of the New York Times as examples.
2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season
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For 2024, forecasters predicted an above-average Atlantic hurricane season, typically starting on June 1 and ending on Nov. 30.
As of Oct. 11, there have been 13 named storms, including four tropical storms and nine hurricanes, of which four have been major hurricanes (Beryl, Helen, Kirk, and Milton).
Hurricane Milton grew from a tropical storm on Oct. 6 to a Category 5 storm 24 hours later, becoming the fifth-strongest Atlantic hurricane. Milton reached rare wind speeds of 180 mph, almost never-seen barometric pressure lows and has an incredibly small eye, known as a ‘pinhole’. Milton made landfall in Florida near Siesta Key on Oct. 9.
Will AI’s huge energy demands spur a nuclear renaissance?
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Contracts with Google and Amazon could help, but bringing new types of reactor online will take larger investments — and time.
Last week, technology giants Google and Amazon unveiled their deals supporting ‘advanced’ nuclear energy, as part of their efforts to become carbon-neutral.
Google announced it will buy electricity made with reactors developed by Kairos Power, based in Alameda, California. Meanwhile, Amazon is investing approximately US$500 million in the X-Energy Reactor Company, based in Rockville, Maryland, and has agreed to buy power produced by X-energy-designed reactors due to be built in Washington State.
Both moves are part of a larger green trend as tech companies deal with the escalating energy requirements of the data centers and number-crunching farms that support artificial intelligence (AI). Last month, Microsoft said it would buy power from a utility company planning to restart a decommissioned 835-megawatt reactor in Pennsylvania.
Read the article at nature.com
Read about what else is happening: Nuclear power for AI: what it will take to reopen Three Mile Island safely
Germany and France two opposite paths to the nuclear energy future
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Faced with an energy crisis linked to the war in Ukraine, Germany and France have taken opposite paths when it comes to nuclear energy: while Germany finally agreed to give it up in 2011, France doubled down on its commitment to this technology.
France and Germany have always been considered the “motive” of the construction of Europe: now each country pulls in a different way in terms of energy, with the influence that this can have in the debate about the future of Europe in this area, especially in one. a point of geographical and economic uncertainty throughout the continent.
America can and should lead a nuclear energy future
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- - Tuesday, April 18, 2023
For good reason, we often hear of the need to “unleash American energy” and “return to energy independence.”
To accomplish this, we should be enacting policies that actually make it easier to produce and export energy of all kinds here in the United States. That means sources that continue to provide baseload power generation like coal, oil, and natural gas, and also renewables like wind and solar.
That must also include the need to strengthen and advance nuclear energy, and take full advantage of its potential in a clean, reliable energy future.
The Real Obstacle to Nuclear Power
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It’s not environmentalists—it’s the nuclear-power industry itself.
Kairos Power’s new test facility is on a parched site a few miles south of the Albuquerque, New Mexico, airport. Around it, desert stretches toward hazy mountains on the horizon. The building looks like a factory or a warehouse; nothing about it betrays the moonshot exercise happening within. There, digital readouts count down the minutes, T-minus style, until power begins flowing to a test unit simulating the blistering heat of a new kind of nuclear reactor. In this test run, electricity, not uranium, will furnish the energy; graphite-encased fuel pebbles, each about the size of a golf ball, will be dummies containing no radioactive material. But everything else will be true to life, including the molten fluoride salt that will flow through the device to cool it. If all goes according to plan, the system—never tried before—will control and regulate a simulated chain reaction. When I glance at a countdown clock behind the receptionist during a visit last May, it says 31 days, 8 hours, 9 minutes, and 22 seconds until the experiment begins.
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