Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Sparks

Sparks

Tennessee Is Hurricane Country Now

Ocean-based storms are increasingly affecting areas hundreds of miles from the coasts.

Blue
Donald Trump.

Trump’s Odd Attack on German Energy Policy

What’s a “normal energy plant”?

Yellow
Donald Trump.

What Would Trump Do About Climate Change? Something About the Mayor of Moscow’s Wife.

Hunter Biden also made an appearance in Trump’s answer to the debate’s one climate question.

Red
Sparks

Trump Complains Solar Takes Up ‘400, 500 Acres of Desert Soil’

Is that a problem? Let’s do the math.

Donald Trump.
<p>Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images</p>

Former President Donald Trump has been warming up to the idea of electric vehicles in recent months, and he used the debate podium on Tuesday night to announce that “I’m a big fan of solar.” But don’t get too excited: He apparently can’t name three of their albums.

During a heated back-and-forth over Vice President Kamala Harris’ stance on fracking, Trump started to get worked up about what will happen if Democrats win the election. “They’ll go back to destroying our country and oil will be dead, fossil fuel will be dead,” he warned. “We’ll go back to windmills and we’ll go back to solar, where they need a whole desert to get some energy to come out. You ever see a solar plant?”

Keep reading...Show less
Sparks

Why Really Tiny Nuclear Reactors Are Bringing In Big Money

Last Energy just raised a $40 million Series B.

A Last Energy microreactor.
<p>Heatmap Illustration/Last Energy</p>

Nuclear energy is making a comeback, conceptually at least. While we’re yet to see a whole lot of new steel in the ground, money is flowing into fusion, there’s a push to build more standard fission reactors, and the dream of small modular reactors lives on, even in the wake of the NuScale disappointment.

All this excitement generally revolves around nuclear’s potential to provide clean, baseload power to the grid. But Washington D.C.-based Last Energy is pursuing a different strategy — making miniature, modularized reactors to provide power directly to industries such as data centers, auto manufacturing, and pulp and paper production. Size-wise, think small modular reactors, but, well, even smaller — Last Energy’s units provide a mere 20 megawatts of electricity, whereas a full-size reactor can be over 1,000 megawatts. SMRs sit somewhere in between.

Keep reading...Show less