News
The Real Obstacle to Nuclear Power
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- Category: Regulation & Business
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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.
Will Washington Halt the Global Renaissance of Nuclear Power?
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- Category: Regulation & Business
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Hopes to slash emissions using nuclear energy are being dashed by U.S. regulators.
For anyone hoping to reboot the nuclear power sector as a source of zero-carbon energy in the age of climate change, the news has not been good. On Feb. 28, the staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) forwarded a proposed licensing framework for next-generation reactors to the agency’s five politically appointed commissioners. That proposal came little more than a year after the NRC summarily rejected Oklo Power’s license application for its Aurora reactor. The application was the first attempt to obtain a license to operate an advanced nuclear reactor in the United States.
The West’s Green Delusions Empowered Putin
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- Category: Energy Problems
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While we banned plastic straws, Russia drilled and doubled nuclear energy production.
...it was the West’s focus on healing the planet with “soft energy” renewables, and moving away from natural gas and nuclear, that allowed Putin to gain a stranglehold over Europe’s energy supply.
How much electricity would it take to power all cars if they were electric?
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- Category: Electric Cars
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The US would need to produce 20-50% more electricity annually if all cars were electric vehicles.
While electric vehicles (EVs) currently represent a modest proportion of the automotive market, sales of all types of EVs are expected to continue growing in the near-future.
This raises questions over how much more electricity would be needed to power these cars, and how much more cost-effective EVs are per mile.
Why I Changed My Mind
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- Category: Opinion
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Ron Gester, retired geologist & physician August 2021
In the 1970s, I marched in opposition to nuclear power plants. In 2008, I began to realize that I knew a lot about nuclear energy ... that just wasn’t true. When I discovered how wrong I had been, I became obsessed with the quality of my information. I wanted to promote options for fighting climate change and global poverty that were supported by rigorous science and math. David MacKay’s book,
Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air, showed how. [1] After much effort, I concluded that nuclear energy was one of those options – perhaps the most important one – since clean energy is essential for fighting both climate change and global poverty. I realized that while other forms of clean energy were important, they would not be sufficient. What follows is a summary of why I changed my mind.
Nuclear Q&A
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- Category: Nuclear energy
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This is a Q&A document prepared by The Finnish Greens for Science and Technology. In the document, we try to answer some common questions about nuclear energy based on the latest scientific information.
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- Renewable Energy Paradox: Solar Panels and Their Toxic Waste
- Avoiding water bankruptcy in the drought-troubled Southwest: What the US and Iran can learn from each other
- Air pollution linked to millions of birth complications across the globe
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