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A cutaway of the MARVEL reactor, showing its size relative to a person. Idaho National Laboratory
For the past four years, the Department of Energy has been developing its very own microreactor. The Microreactor Application Research Validation and Evaluation, or MARVEL, is a 10-kilowatt, liquid-metal cooled microreactor currently under construction at the Idaho National Laboratory. On Thursday, the lab unveiled the “first potential end users for MARVEL,” including Amazon Web Services, energy equipment giant GE Vernova, oil giant ConocoPhillips, and the data center operator DCX. “With access to MARVEL, companies can explore how microreactors will potentially help us win the global AI race, solve water challenges, and so much more,” John Jackson, national technical director for the microreactor program at the Energy Department’s Office of Nuclear Energy, told Power magazine. “The MARVEL testbed exemplifies how nuclear energy can open the door to a stronger, safer and more prosperous future for our country.”
It’s part of the strides the Trump administration has taken on nuclear power recently. Earlier this week, as I wrote here, the Energy Department awarded $400 million each to two small modular reactor projects aiming to build the first lower-powered versions of third-generation units based on the light water reactors already in operation today. Last month, as I covered in this newsletter, the agency put up a $1 billion loan to fund the restart of the working reactor at the Pennsylvania plant once known as Three Mile Island. There is, after all, what Heatmap’s Katie Brigham called a very “real” nuclear dealmaking boom afoot.
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The prestigious journal Nature has retracted a study published last year that concluded that climate change would cause a catastrophic drop in economic output of 62% by the end of the century, a jarring finding taken so seriously that central banks worked the warning into risk-assessment models. But a team of economists noticed an error in data from Uzbekistan. Excluding the Central Asian republic from the calculation pegged the predicted plunge in economic activity at 23%. That doesn’t mean climate change isn’t an economic threat, as the papers detractors noted to The New York Times. “Most people for the last decade have thought that a 20% reduction in 2100 was an insanely large number,” said Solomon Hsiang, a professor of global environmental policy at Stanford University who in August co-wrote the critique of the original study. “So the fact that this paper is coming out saying 60% is off the chart.”
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The advocacy group Rewiring America is out with an interesting new thought experiment on the potential benefits of making the country’s households more energy efficient as a means of clearing space on the grid for data centers. Upgrading U.S. houses, condos, and apartments with efficient appliances, solar panels, and batteries could create enough capacity to meet the rising electricity demand of large data centers over the next five years. Doing so would create more than 600,000 jobs for carpenters, electricians, and others involved in the supply chain. Virtual power plants — software systems that allow utilities to pay homeowners for the right to tap into rooftop solar panels, batteries, plugged-in electric vehicles, and smart thermostats to balance the grid — are, advocates say, emerging as a potential source of large-scale power that can be harnessed in the next few years, a timescale relevant to many data center projects that are expected to complete construction before new power plants can come online.
Back in October, I told you the next-generation geothermal startup Eavor was on the brink of completing its first power plant south of Munich, Germany. Now the Calgary-based company has entered into commercial operation. Eavor officially delivered its first electrons to the German grid from its facility in Geretsried. Eavor hailed the milestone as proof not just of its potential to operate a generating plant but a victory for its in-house drilling technology designed to carve a closed-loop well deep underground. “With Geretsried now on-stream, we’re more confident than ever that our closed-loop geothermal system, designed for adaptability and suited to the world’s diverse regions, will secure its place as the leading solution for commercial geothermal application,” CEO Mark Fitzgerald said in a statement. It’s not the only geothermal startup making waves. As I wrote in yesterday’s newsletter, Zanskar, the Salt Lake City-based company using artificial intelligence to find new conventional geothermal resources, just claimed one of the biggest discoveries in the U.S. in more than 30 years.
You may also recall another newsletter from October where I told you that all Trump’s nominees to serve on the board of the Tennessee Valley Authority vowed to stand against privatizing the federally-owned utility, easing fears that the president’s recent boardroom meddling wasn’t an attempt at selling off the power provider on which more than 10 million Americans depend for cheap electricity. If you agree with analyses showing public ownership as the best way to keep prices down, then I have good news for you. When businessman and Republican megadonor Lee Beaman came before the Senate for a confirmation Wednesday, the nominee for the board said his preference for private enterprise came with an exception for the TVA. “Although I generally believe that the private sector is more efficient than government, in the case of TVA, I think TVA is more uniquely, appropriately operated as a government entity,” Beaman told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, per E&E News.
The administration claimed the rollback would save Americans $109 billion over five years and shave $1,000 off the average cost of a new car. But as Rob noted in August, the administration’s fight against tailpipe emissions could actually end up raising the price of gasoline.
Secretary of Energy Chris Wright.Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
Secretary of Energy Chris Wright pitched tapping into backup generators at data centers, hospitals, and factories to augment the supply of power on the grid. Speaking at the North American Gas Forum on Tuesday, Wright said the generators — most of which run on diesel, natural gas, or fuels such as propane — could contribute roughly 35 gigawatts of electricity. “We have 35 gigawatts of backup generators that are sitting there today, and you can’t turn them on. That’s just nuts. Emissions rules or whatever … people, come on,” Wright said, according to E&E News. “If we just turn those generators on for a few hours a year, we’ve expanded the capacity of our grid by 35 gigawatts. That’s massive.”
In a post on X, Aaron Bryant, an energy markets analyst at the law firm White & Case, called the proposal “shortsighted at best,” since the generators expose load growth to some measure of commodity risk and “unworkable at worst” because zoning ordinances, air pollution, and noise restrictions may prohibit use of the generators.
The National Petroleum Council, an advisory panel at the Energy Department, submitted its recommendations Wednesday for how to reform federal permitting rules. Among the proposals was an endorsement of an idea to bar federal agencies from yanking already-granted permits. Democrats in Congress put forward the concept to prevent the Trump administration from reversing approvals for offshore turbines and other renewable projects targeted by the White House.
The proposal marks a significant step within the executive branch, given that Trump himself is “the biggest wild card in permitting reform,” as Heatmap’s Jael Holzman wrote last month. But legislation is moving in Congress. In the House, the SPEED Act overwhelmingly won a committee vote last month. Now Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican, has introduced a new bill in the Senate with its own House version.
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Following a summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in October, Beijing agreed to overhaul its licensing regime for approving exports of rare earths to allow for streamlined permits to sell the metals overseas. At least three Chinese manufacturers of rare earth magnets have now secured new licenses to speed up exports to some customers, Reuters reported. It’s a sign of easing tensions between Washington and Beijing, offering some reprieve from the Chinese export restrictions that threatened to choke off the U.S. supply of key metals. But it’s still tenuous. China could ratchet up restrictions again, and the U.S. is still looking to increase domestic production of critical minerals to counter the leverage the People’s Republic wields through its near monopoly on the metals.
If there’s one thing Tim Latimer, the chief executive of the next-generation geothermal company Fervo Energy, wants to see in any permitting reform, it’s measures to making building new transmission lines easier. “The biggest threat to American global competitiveness, and it does not matter if your priorities are climate change, affordability, the AI race, national security or all of the above, is our country’s complete inability to build and upgrade transmission at any meaningful scale,” Latimer wrote in a post on X. Fervo is working on building the nation’s first full-scale next-generation geothermal plant in Utah, and running new transmission lines out to remote parts of the desert where it’s often best to drill for hot rocks is costly.
Fervo isn’t the only geothermal company making news. On Thursday morning, Zanskar, a geothermal startup that uses modern prospecting methods to find new conventional resources, announced that it had made the biggest “blind” discovery in the U.S. in more than 30 years. A “blind” find is a geothermal system that shows no visible signs of what’s below the surface, such as vents or geysers. While companies such as Fervo aim to use fracking technology to create reservoirs in hot rocks located where there aren’t underground aquatic formations to tap into, Zanskar is betting that using artificial intelligence to locate new conventional resources can result in faster, cheaper geothermal plants than next-generation technology can yield.
Here’s a little exclusive for you to end on: I got a copy of a letter signed by dozens of pro-nuclear advocates calling on New York state and local officials to kickstart an effort to rebuild the Indian Point nuclear plant just north of New York City. Describing the “forced premature closure” of the plant as “a major setback for New York,” the letter said the plant could be restored, noting that rising demand for clean, firm electricity has spurred utilities in Michigan, Iowa, and Pennsylvania to embark on historic restarts of decommissioned reactors. “Recommissioning Indian Point would stabilize electricity prices and deliver one of the fastest and largest returns of clean power available anywhere in the country,” the letter reads.
