Nuclear Fear

Author: The Kernel & Jeff Artificial intelligence is driving breakthroughs and efficiency gains in medicine, agriculture, and clean energy. While undoubtedly beneficial to society, AI is also a power-hungry tool. The International Energy Agency estimates that an average ChatGPT search uses 10 times more electricity than a standard Google search. The Washington Post reports that one data center complex […]

Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. For financial and investment advice, see a certified financial advisor.  For those who support nuclear power as a critical part of the clean energy future, it can be challenging to find ways to directly invest in the nuclear renaissance. While many environmental, social, and governance (ESG) funds embrace renewable

Author: Madison Schroder For the first time in U.S. history, a closed nuclear power plant is coming back to life! Palisades Nuclear Power Plant will receive a $1.5 billion loan from the Department of Energy to be brought back online. Never heard of Palisades? Here is a brief history of this iconic power plant for context. In 1966,

Author: Madison Schroder Eleven U.S. states across the country have adopted aggressive greenhouse gas reduction targets and pledged to combat climate change. But there’s a catch — these same states also have longstanding “nuclear moratoriums” that ban the expansion of nuclear power, one of the biggest sources of low-carbon electricity available. These bans originated decades ago

Author: Mary Kloser Taylor Swift is undeniably a jet-setter, frequently crisscrossing the world by plane for concerts, events, and appearances. Her busy travel schedule might have some wondering about regular radiation exposure from all of those flights. But Swift clearly isn’t concerned — she continues logging an incredible amount of flight miles year after year. Let’s

Author: Kiersten Sundell If you can’t prove that something is undoubtedly safe, it’s dangerous. Well that’s what the precautionary principle says, anyway. It’s not necessarily a sound argument, or even one that makes any sense at all. Living your life by the precautionary principle would be like wearing a helmet everywhere you go, because there’s a

Author: Kiersten Sundell How did cat litter cause a 500-million-dollar nuclear waste disaster? Let’s dive right in. Back in February 2014, a drum of nuclear waste burst open inside the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP), a nuclear waste facility that’s a half mile underground in the New Mexico desert. This facility isn’t for waste from the

Author: Kiersten Sundell Ever wish you could just send a nuclear plant to a place that’s in dire need of clean energy? Believe it or not, a future like that may be on the horizon. Floating nuclear plants are self-contained power stations on ships or barges, capable of docking in almost any coastal area or waterway.

Author: Kiersten Sundell A comment we recently received on social media: “Storing nuclear waste isn’t exactly getting rid of it… it’s more like moving it to a secure location, right? It’s still going to be around forever.” Well, yes. The way we typically dispose of nuclear waste IS by moving it to a secure location. But

Author: Kiersten Sundell Something we are frequently asked on TikTok is: “If nuclear waste decays over time, how many years until it’s safe again?” This is a tricky question because technically, used nuclear fuel remains radioactive forever. Uranium’s half-life is 4.5 billion years. The good news is that it doesn’t remain equally radioactive the entire time.

Author: Kiersten Sundell Although permanent waste repository sites like Onkalo are 450 meters underground, a surprising number of people are worried that future civilizations will stumble across the site, accidentally dig deep underground, uncover the waste, irradiate themselves unknowingly, and spread it around the earth. Now this scenario assumes that first of all, there will be

Author: Kiersten Sundell What is a fast reactor, and how is it any different from a… normal reactor? Think of it this way. A ‘normal reactor,’ more correctly identified as a light-water reactor, is kind of like… stay with me… your typical landfill. They’ve been around for a long time, the technology is only as complex

Author: Kiersten Sundell What the hell happened at Yucca Mountain? A gigantic, 19-billion-dollar disaster is what happened. Not a nuclear disaster — a political one. For those of you who don’t know, Yucca Mountain is a mound of desert about 100 miles from Las Vegas and is a great demonstration of what happens when politics override

Author: Kiersten Sundell What the hell happened with NuScale? NuScale, an advanced reactor developer, had plans to start building six small modular reactors (SMRs) in Idaho. These would’ve generated enough electricity to power more than 300,000 homes… but as of November 8th, it’s no longer happening. Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), which serves communities in seven

Author: Kiersten Sundell What is hydrogen fuel technology, and how does it relate to nuclear? Let’s start with hydrogen gas. It doesn’t exist naturally in an accessible form, so engineers extract it in one of two ways. The first is called methane steam reforming, which is a carbon-intensive chemical process currently used to produce 90% of

Author: Kiersten Sundell Did you hear that Microsoft and OpenAI want to use nuclear reactors to power their artificial intelligence servers? As it turns out, online platforms like these consume a LOT of energy. In July of 2023, the EPA reported that in a typical year, Microsoft uses about 10,684 gigawatt hours of electricity. This is more than

Author: Kiersten Sundell Throughout history, less developed countries worldwide have grappled with the challenge of securing reliable energy access for their citizens. Energy expansion programs often utilize oil, natural gas, and coal, because they’re cheap to build, relatively reliable, and use easily-sourced materials. While there’s nothing wrong with building out fossil fuels in impoverished countries to

Author: Kiersten Sundell As a lot of people know and hate to talk about, the nuclear industry has a bit of an ugly history as far as uranium retrieval goes. From 1944 to 1986, nearly thirty million tons of uranium ore were extracted from Navajo lands under leases with the Navajo Nation. This was partly

Author: Kiersten Sundell We’ve talked a lot about the COP pledge to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050, but there’s more to unpack. The pledge began with 22 countries on board, which later increased to 25. There many more countries that utilize nuclear power which were conspicuously absent from the agreement, however, so let’s talk