Washington Post covers Idaho Strategic’s plan to power its Golden Chest Mine with Radiant’s truck-portable Kaleidos microreactor...
Big Tech is investing billions in fusion power startups like Shine Technologies, a Nucleation portfolio company, driven by recent breakthroughs and the vision of a clean energy future...
Published by Ian Brusewitz in Advanced Nuclear, Advanced Nuclear Customers, Climate policy, Fusion, Future of Energy, Investor activity, NEWS, Nuclear R&D, Portfolio Venture, Private companies, Solving climate, Venture capital support for nuclear, Zero emission energy
"Rather quietly, a new age of atomic energy may be approaching. Splitting atoms may not be as exciting as fusing them, or as modish as wind and solar projects. Yet old-fashioned fission is poised to make a comeback thanks to innovative new reactor designs. The world will be better for this revolution — if policymakers allow it."
So begins an online article in the Washington Post with the unflinching title "Net Zero Isn't Possible Without Nuclear." This piece is described as "Analysis by The Editors | Bloomberg."
[Aside: This is an amazing piece of writing—which we entirely agree with and truly admire—but it is all highly unusual. Newspapers typically do not publish "analysis." Also, newspapers typically will not publish opinion pieces from "The Editors" of other organizations. Yet, here it is, Bloomberg Editors (might that include Michael Bloomberg?) have effectively placed an OpEd in the WaPo on the last business day of the year that is, we suspect, going to serve as the exclamation mark for the year. End aside.]
This piece packs a punch. It's not too long. It's not too technical. It just makes the case that we need tons more nuclear energy if we hope to reduce emissions and yet our progress in that direction is blocked by a Nuclear Regulatory Commission that is effectively disfunctional and unable to understand relative risks.
Sadly, we agree. The NRC as it is now, is not well-suited for supporting the success of an innovative nuclear tech sector. Today's NRC could remain the regulator for the traditional industry, which is used to slow and plodding and isn't building all that much. But what the Advanced Nuclear sector needs is a new, more innovative regulatory body which operates at the pace of technology and which can be empowered to use different methods and objectives to provide suitable guidelines and support for innovators but which doesn't stop them from innovating and commercializing good designs, simply because those designs haven't been tested for decades. This group should be empowered to use probabilistic risk assessments, advanced technologies, modeling and even AI to help launch the advanced nuclear sector and ensure that we get the commercial reactor designs we need to prevent climate change from destroying humanity.
The NRC, as it exists now, does not recognize that climate change is barreling down on the world with an absolute certainty, if we don't eliminate emissions. For the sake of zeroing out risks so miniscule that they don't pose a realistic threat, the NRC is standing in the way of important, planet-saving climate solutions.
Read more at the Washington Post, "Net Zero Isn't Possible Without Nuclear," by The Editors, Bloomberg, December 30, 2022.
Published by Nucleation Capital in Advanced Nuclear, Brilliant thinkers, Energy abundance, Future of Energy, History-making, Investor activity, LINKS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear innovation, Nuclear R&D, Politicians supporting nuclear, Private companies, Solving climate, US technological leadership, Zero emission energy
An initiative organized by the Aspen Institute helped Amazon, Ikea, Unilever, Michelin and Patagoniz to pledge that they won't use shipping companies which allow emissions by 2040. Shipping the world's products around produce about 3 percent of human emissions each year, an amount similar to what Germany's annual emissions are, as the sixth largest emitter in the world.
In signing the pledge, the companies hoped to signal their determination to decarbonize this part of their supply chains and inspire "a surge in investment by ocean freight carriers and producers of zero-carbon shipping fuels," their announcement read. They also urged government officials to "to set ambitious marine fuel goals, implement regulations and market-based measures to encourage the rapid development of new fuels and technology, and to allow zero-carbon shipping fuels to “become competitive with fossil fuels as soon as possible.”
Read more in The Washington Post, Amazon, Ikea and other big companies commit to zero-emission shipping by 2040, by Hamza Shaban, published October 19, 2021
Published by Nucleation Capital in Advanced Nuclear, Carbon emissions, Climate change, Corporate purpose, Future of Energy, LINKS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear maritime propulsion, Private companies, Solving climate
Sarah Kaplan's review on the findings released by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in their report "State of the Climate in 2020," as described in a Washington Post article entitled Many measures of Earth’s health are at worst levels on record, NOAA finds, gives this prognosis: "Earth is arguably in worse shape than it’s been."
Even with a global pandemic that halted commerce and human activities for most of the year, Earth's fever has simply increased and global health metrics—including that for CO2 levels—have just continued to get worse. It's a dire report but nothing new, coming on the heels of the IPCC's "Physical Basis" report and follows along on the same trajectory as eleven prior reports published annually by NOAA.
NOAA’s assessment, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, draws on the work of 530 scientists from 66 countries. Atmospheric researchers found no evidence that last year’s 6 to 7% dip in global annual emissions had any lasting effect. The roughly 2 gigatons of carbon dioxide not emitted during the most severe pandemic-related shutdowns have been dwarfed by the more than 1,500 gigatons humans have unleashed since the Industrial Revolution began.
“It’s a record that keeps playing over and over again,” said Jessica Blunden, a NOAA climate scientist who has co-led “State of the Climate” reports for 11 years. “Things are getting more and more intense every year because emissions are happening every year.”.
Because carbon dioxide typically lingers in the atmosphere for a few hundred to 1,000 years, humans will have to stop emitting for much longer than a few months to make a meaningful dent in concentrations of the pollutant. Methane concentrations were also found to have spiked dramatically — rising 14.8 parts per billion to its highest level in millennia. The drilling and distribution of natural gas helps drive up methane emissions. But it is also produced by microbes found in both natural environments such as wetlands and human-built ones such as landfills and farms.
While a spike from natural gas usage is bad, the more worrying possibility is that this increase comes from natural methane sources — such as salt marshes, peatlands and mangrove forests — which would be indicative that we have reached a tipping point, where higher temperatures boost microbe action within thawing permafrost areas. This could continue to add methane for a long time to come, at ever increasing levels, even if we were able to successfully reduce emissions from fossil fuel usage.
Read the Washington Post's Many measures of Earth’s health are at worst levels on record, NOAA finds, by Sarah Kaplan and published August 28, 2021.
Published by Nucleation Capital in Carbon emissions, Climate change, Climate mayhem, Extreme weather, LINKS
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