The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has issued a notice of intent to fund six carbon capture demonstration projects. Two are to be located at new or existing coal-fired generators, two at new or existing gas-fired facilities, and two at new or existing industrial facilities not proposed for electric generation.
A legendary nuclear whistleblower’s open letter to Bill Gates over his new love of nuclear power.
A virtually unknown company has a $1.4 billion plan to extend the life of New Mexico’s largest coal-fired power plant by installing carbon capture. Critics say it’s likely to be a costly distraction from the state’s just transition. As New Mexico lawmakers were putting the finishing touches on landmark legislation Read more…
Molten salt nuclear reactors are all the rage among some nuclear power enthusiasts. They promise designs that will soon lower emissions from shipping, be cheaper to run and consume nuclear waste, and be transportable in shipping containers. The Canadian government has provided two companies, Terrestrial Energy and Moltex, with tens of millions of dollars in funding.
Small modular reactors (SMRs), proposed as the future of nuclear energy, have purported cost and safety advantages over existing gigawatt-scale light water reactors (LWRs). However, few studies have assessed the implications of SMRs for the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. The low-, intermediate-, and high-level waste stream characterization Read more…
Under a 2020 law, utilities must generate some of their power from coal plants fitted with technology that captures carbon, but in recent filings to regulators, two companies are warning about the cost and environmental impacts.
The failure of the Gorgon project to make the sort of impact it was projected to, with final numbers 50% below projections, raises very serious questions around plans to use Carbon Capture and Storage as a key tool to meet net zero norms. It forces us to consider that firms Read more…
Abstract Nuclear power is being intensively promoted and increasingly subsidized in both old and potential new forms. Yet it is simultaneously suffering a global slow-motion commercial collapse due to intrinsically poor economics. This summary in a US context documents both trends, emphasizing the absence of an operational need and of Read more…
A recent opinion piece in Utility Dive touting the merits of nuclear power favors a “technology-inclusive approach” over reliance “solely” on desirable-but-inadequate renewables. This framing avoids comparing technologies by claiming all are needed, and even makes comparisons sound unjustly discriminatory by echoing social-inclusion language. It condenses the exuberantly diverse renewable portfolio to Read more…
A first-of-its-kind “green” Shell facility in Alberta is emitting more greenhouse gases than it’s capturing, throwing into question whether taxpayers should be funding it, a new report has found.