Current conditions: The Central United States is bracing for flooding as soaking storms deluge the region • Arctic air is barreling southward to replace the record warmth in the Midwest and Northeast • Temperatures in the Indian state of Gujarat are hitting 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
THE TOP FIVE
1. Westinghouse says building 10 of its AP1000s would give the U.S. economy a trillion-dollar boost
If you know anything about America’s flagship nuclear reactor, the Westinghouse AP1000, you know the only two built in the country so far cost around $35 billion total to install, more than double their original cost estimate. While the best projections at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggest the next AP1000 will be the cheapest option per megawatt of any reactors currently in development in the U.S., no one really knows exactly how much the project would cost. Westinghouse can now put a number on how much building a bunch of new AP1000s would do for the U.S. economy, however. A study it commissioned by the consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers found that, assuming an 80-year lifespan, a fleet of 10 new AP1000s would add more than $1 trillion to America’s gross domestic product.
Here are some more numbers from PwC’s report:
- The construction phase alone would generate nearly $93 billion of gross domestic product for the country and support 44,300 jobs every year for the estimated 13 years of work.
- The labor income from the construction phase would approach $55 billion, and tax revenues would top $20 billion.
- The labor income from 80 years of operation would reach $329 billion, with tax revenues of $271 billion.
- The 10 reactors could power at least 7.5 million homes.
The 10-reactor target comes from one of President Donald Trump’s four executive orders on nuclear power last May directing the Department of Energy to build a fleet of new large-scale reactors with an already-certified design. The AP1000 is the obvious frontrunner to fulfill that order, and the agency has already begun meeting with utilities and developers, as Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer reported last month. Dan Sumner, Westinghouse’s interim chief executive, said the report “highlights that work to deploy a 10-unit AP1000 fleet can begin immediately” and called the reactor “the only fully licensed, construction-ready advanced reactor available today.”
2. White House admits the Navy hasn’t escorted a ships through the Strait of Hormuz
In a Tuesday morning post on X, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright announced that the U.S. Navy had “successfully escorted an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz to ensure oil remains flowing to global markets,” crediting President Donald Trump with “maintaining stability of global energy during the military operations against Iran.” Newswires promptly blasted out the story. Oil prices went for what The Wall Street Journal called “another wild ride.” Then, abruptly, Wright deleted the tweet. Hours later, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt corrected the record: “The U.S. Navy has not escorted a tanker or vessel at this time.” The Energy Department ultimately blamed a staffer for incorrectly captioning a video of Wright speaking.
That wasn’t the only thing roiling oil markets. The Financial Times blamed “mixed messages” from U.S., Israeli, and Iranian leadership about the nature of the conflict coming to an end. Then, in a separate scoop from the Journal on Tuesday, the International Energy Agency proposed the largest release of oil reserves in its history, exceeding 182 million barrels of oil. Countries that depend heavily on imported fuels are preparing for shortfalls. Thailand and several oil-poor Asian nations this week ordered government bureaucrats to take the stairs and work from home to save energy. In a Tuesday night post on X, Senator Chris Murphy, the Democrat from Connecticut, said administration officials briefed him on classified intelligence about the war and “on the Strait of Hormuz, they had NO PLAN.” He continued: “I can’t go into more detail about how Iran gums up the Strait, but suffice it say [sic], right now, they don’t know how to get it safely back open. Which is unforgiveable, because this part of the disaster was 100% foreseeable.”
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3. U.S. solar installations dropped by double digits last year
The U.S. solar industry installed just over 43 gigawatts of panels last year, a 14% decrease from 2024, according to the latest report from the consultancy Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association. The utility-scale sector, which depends heavily on cheap imported panels, shrank nearly 40% quarter-over-quarter in the last three months of 2025. Residential solar declined by just 2%. Still, solar accounted for 54% of all new power-generating capacity in the U.S. In every future scenario the report analyzed, solar made up roughly half of all new capacity every year through 2060.
The solar manufacturing industry, on the other hand, had what the report called “a monumental year.” New cell capacity continued to expand, while the first new wafer capacity since 2016 came online. If you want a primer on how panels work, Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin has a good explainer on what exactly goes on with the different components.
4. New industry coalition launches to advocate smarter use of the existing grid
Big companies including Tesla, Google, and the appliance maker Carrier launched a new industry coalition called Utilize on Tuesday “to address the most urgent challenges facing the U.S. energy system: growing electricity demand and rising power bills driven in part by an electrical grid that is built for short periods of peak use but underutilized most of the time.” The companies involved in the group planned to advocate to state governments, utilities, and regulators for “technology-neutral” policies. “For decades, we’ve built the grid to meet peak demand, even though large portions of it sit unused for most hours of the year,” Ian Magruder, the executive director of Utilize, said in a statement. “It’s like building an airplane that only flies with full passengers a few times a year. That excess capacity is hiding in plain sight, and new technologies give us the opportunity to unlock it. Better grid utilization is one of the fastest, most practical levers states can pull to reduce power bills while supporting economic growth.”
5. Trump launches a new effort to fight Asian carp invasion in the Great Lakes
The great battle to defend our shores from the invasion of Asian carp has brought together two political foes: President Trump and one of the people widely seen as a candidate for the Democratic nod to replace him in 2028. On Tuesday, Trump posted on Truth Social that he was working with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer “on trying to save the Great Lakes from the rather violent and destructive” invasive species, which dominate some inland rivers in the U.S. to the point that the fish, first brought over from China in the 1970s, now make up 95% of the total biomass. In the post, Trump said he would ask other governors to join the effort, “including those of Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, New York,” as well as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, whom he called “the future Governor of Canada,” a nod to his often-stated desire of annexing Canada as the U.S.’s 51st state.
Separately, he said, “I am also working to save The Great Salt Lake, in Utah, which, in a short period of time, if nothing is done, will have no water.” He offered no other details. But last week, the federal government reached a deal with Utah to claim 22,311 acres of the Great Salt Lake that had been disputed with the state, the Utah News Dispatch reported.
THE KICKER
A conservation ecologist studying macaws in Peru spent his weekends visiting archaeological sites such as 1,000-year-old tombs in the arid north. To his surprise, parrot feathers adorned burial sites on the opposite side of the Andes mountains, in a region nowhere near the birds’ habitat. He spent years trying to find out how the feather got there. The side quest turned into a new study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, in which the scientist, George Olah, concluded that live parrots were traded far and wide across the mountainous region. The feathers pointed to what The New York Times called “a complex trade network that predates the Inca Empire.”
