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Meanwhile, the war appears to be back on. After resuming mutual attacks last week, President Donald Trump said Monday the U.S. would reinstate its blockade of Iran’s ports. “The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,’” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social network.
With the world’s largest fleet of nuclear reactors, the U.S. has the capacity to pump out about 97 gigawatts of atomic energy. If every project now waiting in the pipeline goes forward, the country could nearly double that total capacity. A new analysis by the Breakthrough Institute, a think tank, found that the U.S. has 74 gigawatts of projects in various stages of development. “While it is unlikely that all of that capacity will ultimately be built, if even a fraction of it is deployed it would mark a historic turnaround for the U.S. nuclear industry,” Joy Jiang, an analyst at the Breakthrough Institute who authored the paper, wrote in a blog post. And more appears to be coming: New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill signed a bill Monday that creates a new procurement process for building a new nuclear plant in the state.
In Belgium, meanwhile, the government just approved nearly $12.5 million in funding for eight nuclear energy research projects as Prime Minister Bart De Wever seeks to reverse his country’s previous phaseout policy. On Monday, NucNet reported that the government wanted to restore nuclear power to its “rightful place” in the Belgian energy mix.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, or IBEW, added a record 30,000 new members so far this year, up from 24,000 a year ago. The milestone, announced Monday in a post on X, highlights a looming challenge for Democrats who are embracing the populist wing of the party’s calls for a moratorium on data center construction, no doubt a large part of what’s led to the recent hiring boom. “The building trades unions that the left’s major decarbonization agenda revolves around putting to work are further alienated by data center rejection (instead of regulation),” Fred Stafford, the pseudonymous socialist energy researcher and Heatmap contributor, wrote in a post on X. Still, the political dynamics are hard to pass up for left-wing candidates and advocacy groups. As Semafor reporter David Weigel wrote on X, moderates worry that coming out against a data center will activate opposition spending from the AI industry’s political action committees. “No such worries on the left, which wasn’t getting that money,” he wrote.
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A long-exposure photo of turbines in Hatay, Turkey.Ali Kemal Zerenli/Anadolu via Getty Images
Turkey is building its first nuclear plant and billions of dollars of new hydroelectric dams. But that doesn’t mean wind and solar don’t have a part. On Monday, Renewables Now reported that, over the weekend, the Turkish Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources published announcements for nearly two dozen renewable energy tenders scheduled for this year, with a target of deploying 2.4 gigawatts of new projects.
Shortly after the 2024 presidential election, Heatmap’s Katie Brigham declared “the death of ‘climate tech.’” By that, she meant that the incoming Trump administration would kibosh use of that two-word phrase to describe next-generation technologies that could generate power without emissions or reduce the impacts of global warming in other ways. But the sector is mounting quite a comeback. In the first half of this year, the global climate tech sector notched its busiest six months on record. A Bloomberg write-up of a new analysis by the market research firm Currence identified 153 transactions in the first half of 2026. That’s an eye-popping 70% hike from the same period last year.
It’s been 36 years since the signing of the Americans with Disability Act, yet the country remains tragically inaccessible to people who use wheelchairs, walkers, and canes. (For a disturbing account of just how bad things are in the nation’s largest city, listen to this old “This American Life” episode about lawyer and advocate Britney Wilson’s struggle to use Access-a-Ride, New York City’s para-transit provider.) It’s a problem Tesla aims to change. The auto giant is building a wheelchair-accessible self-driving taxi. But Electrek cautioned that Tesla “gave no timeline, no vehicle, and no details, and it’s not clear the ‘active product’ is anything more than the Robovan it unveiled nearly two years ago.” Nevertheless, I’d welcome its entry to the roads.
In April, the Senate approved a House resolution using the Congressional Review Act to clear the way for a mining operation near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, in what my colleague Jeva Lange called a declaration of “open season on public lands.”
Over the past 12 months ending in July, 56 fusion companies raised a total of $4.5 billion, a 69% jump over 2025’s total. That’s according to the latest data from the Fusion Industry Association’s annual report. Total funding since 2021 now stands at $14.2 billion, a sevenfold increase. Twice as many companies are now competing as when the report was first published six years ago. This year’s figures include major financing rounds from Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which raised $863 million last August; Inertia Enterprises, which brought in $450 million in February; Helion Energy, which raked in $456 million last month; and the European champion Proxima Energy, which netted $518 million this month.
A satellite image of Chile’s Chuquicamata copper mine. DigitalGlobe via Getty Images via Getty Images
Back in January, I told you when the price of copper hit a record high. We kept track, too, of Chilean miners’ plans to ramp up production last month. But Chile’s output of copper fell sharply in May, according to a Mining.com analysis of data from Codelco, the country’s national miner. Production from major miners such as BHP dropped over 18% year-on-year to 106,300 metric tons. The fall comes as key mines in the South American nation face declining ore quality.
The move comes right as one of China’s biggest solar manufacturers switched from using silver to copper in its panels in response to what Bloomberg described as the surging prices of the precious metal.
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The world’s first commercial satellite powered by nuclear energy has launched into space after escaping the Earth’s atmosphere on a SpaceX Transporter-17 vessel. Miami-based City Labs, the company behind the launch, specializes in designing, developing, and manufacturing micro power technology based on the radioisotope tritium. The technology is meant to provide long-lasting, maintenance-free power for medical, industrial and space applications. “This is a historic step for commercial nuclear power in space,” City Labs CEO Peter Cabauy told World Nuclear News. The system “demonstrates that safe, compact, and regulatory-approved nuclear power systems are ready for routine commercial deployment.” The technology “enables persistent, always-on” operations “that are not constrained by sunlight or battery life.”
New York is behind on its development of clean energy. Its offshore wind buildout has stagnated. The state has limited space and sunlight for large-scale solar. And while Albany is positioning itself as the state leader on nuclear power with plans to construct more reactors upstate, those efforts are long term, and only just began. But one source of green power is expanding faster than expected: rooftop solar. New Yorkers installed 8 gigawatts of distributed solar capacity, putting the state ahead of schedule moving toward its legally-binding goal of 10 gigawatts by 2030. “New York continues to set the bar high as we mark another milestone for solar within our communities across the state,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said in a statement. “This is low-cost, reliable clean energy that is delivering cost savings for families and businesses while expanding the availability of renewable energy which benefits our environment, our economy and contributes to New York’s diverse energy resource mix.” That’s optimistic. But as Heatmap’s contributor Jesse Jenkins explained on our Shift Key podcast in 2023, there are limits to how big an impact rooftop solar can have on emissions.
China, as I told you last week, has been investing heavily in green hydrogen. The statement in Beijing’s latest Five-Year Plan confirms that green hydrogen, ammonia, and methanol “will play a significant role in decarbonizing China,” Hydrogen Insight reported.
