New nuclear becomes financeable by shifting construction, financing or revenue risk toward governments, state institutions and regulated electricity customers.
Nuclear power works. It produces low-carbon electricity, avoids the health burden of fossil-fuel combustion, provides firm generation and can operate for many decades. My skepticism about building large new nuclear fleets has never depended on pretending otherwise. The more interesting question is why countries that have built nuclear successfully have … [continued]
Across 25 assessed power systems, planning, markets and project pipelines are consistently more mature than the delivered portfolios needed to provide dependable flexibility.
Grid flexibility is easy to mistake for a technology market. One jurisdiction announces several gigawatt-hours of batteries, another creates a new ancillary-service product, and a third launches a capacity auction, pumped-hydro program or demand-response target. Those are meaningful signs of activity, but they do not answer the harder question: can … [continued]
Supercritical CO₂ is genuinely useful in compact, controlled industrial systems, but those successes do not by themselves justify climate-scale carbon pipelines or a broad new thermal-power market.
Supercritical carbon dioxide is genuinely useful stuff. Above roughly 31° Celsius and 73.8 bar, CO₂ enters a state that combines gas-like flow behavior with densities that can become much closer to liquids. Engineers have found good uses for that combination. It can extract caffeine from coffee, separate valuable compounds from … [continued]
Romania’s controlled Danube blast exposed the hidden dependency: low-carbon thermal generation still requires reliable heat rejection.
Romania gave Europe the kind of energy-transition image that should make planners uncomfortable. On August 3, Romanian naval engineers used 180 kilograms of explosives to remove a rock outcrop in the Bala Canal, a branch of the Danube. The controlled blast cleared the way for a temporary dam intended to … [continued]
It is my considered opinion that all stock market investors are stark raving mad. As wildfires cause devastation on almost every continent and water levels in the Danube are too low to cool nuclear power plants in Hungary, stocks in New York hit an all time high on August 4, … [continued]
Changes in the Earth’s climate can be measured by satellites and sensors in the ocean, but they are hard for ordinary people to visualize — which makes them easy to ignore. Wildfires, on the other hand, do a splendid job of focusing our attention on the situation. Here is a … [continued]
I have a neighbor who often wears a T-shirt that says, “We The People Are Pissed Off!” I suspect it is meant to indicate his support for MAWA (Make America White Again), but it could just as easily apply to many in the US electorate today, as grocery prices, medical … [continued]
Europe is closing passenger-car hydrogen stations while AFIR rules and grants support new dual-pressure sites that retain 700-bar capability.
Europe’s public hydrogen refuelling network is not growing, but shrinking slightly. It is, however, changing shape. The part built for passenger cars is shrinking, while a new generation of dual-pressure stations is carrying 700-bar capability forward into the bus and truck layer. Germany closed 36 first-generation hydrogen refuelling stations during … [continued]
Ember’s all-electric intercity coach fleet shows that scheduled regional coach service can electrify before many expected, while legacy city and regional fleets convert more gradually.
Edinburgh makes electric transit visible. The city has electrified regional rail, trams and a growing number of electric buses, including large battery-electric double-deckers that stand out from the pavement. That progress is important, but it is not especially surprising. Urban buses were always expected to be among the first heavy … [continued]
Lower Saxony’s decision point is not the next fuel-cell repair. It is whether to recapitalize a dedicated hydrogen system after the evidence has moved.
Lower Saxony’s hydrogen trains will probably not be retired because a politician announces that battery-electric multiple units were the better technology. They will be retired when the bill arrives for extending the life of an underused, specialized hydrogen system and the state has to compare that cost with buying the … [continued]
