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☆ The US is dismantling nuclear warheads to power next-gen reactors
▼ + stars: | 2024-09-09 | by ( Ella Nilsen | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

This fuel is set to power the next generation of America’s nuclear reactors — small, modular power stations that are easier and cheaper to build. They require far less upkeep and physical space than the aging fleet of large nuclear power plants. “In order to meet our energy security needs and our climate goals, we do need significantly more nuclear energy deployed.”The nuclear power industry is increasingly looking to smaller reactors, which run on HALEU. The uranium for conventional reactors is enriched up to 5% and HALEU is uranium enriched between 5-20%. Highly enriched uranium is anything more than 20% and is used in weapons or naval submarines.

Persons: —, Michael Goff, Bill Gates, ”, Jeff Navin, “, hasn’t, Benjamin Rasmussen, Jeff Chamberlin, Goff, Dan Leistikow, Josh Jarrell, Leistikow, Centrus, TerraPower’s Navin, ” Navin Organizations: CNN, Manhattan Project, National Nuclear Security, US, Energy, of Nuclear Energy, Idaho National Laboratory, Department of Energy, New York Times, United, US Energy Department, Miller, Centrus Energy, Idaho National Laboratories, Idaho National Labs, Energy Department, DOE Locations: Oak Ridge , Tennessee, Oak Ridge, Tenneseee, United States, Russia, Ukraine, Idaho, Wyoming, Kemmerer , Wyoming, Congress

☆ Nuclear Power Is Hard. A Climate-Minded Billionaire Wants to Make It Easier.
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-11 | by ( Brad Plumer | Benjamin Rasmussen | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Outside a small coal town in southwest Wyoming, a multibillion-dollar effort to build the first in a new generation of American nuclear power plants is underway. Workers began construction on Tuesday on a novel type of nuclear reactor meant to be smaller and cheaper than the hulking reactors of old and designed to produce electricity without the carbon dioxide that is rapidly heating the planet. The reactor being built by TerraPower, a start-up, won’t be finished until 2030 at the earliest and faces daunting obstacles. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission hasn’t yet approved the design, and the company will have to overcome the inevitable delays and cost overruns that have doomed countless nuclear projects before. Bill Gates, currently ranked as the seventh-richest person in the world, has poured more than $1 billion of his fortune into TerraPower, an amount that he expects to increase.

Persons: won’t, Bill Gates Organizations: Workers, Nuclear Regulatory Commission Locations: Wyoming

It’s hard to say precisely when Silverton, Colo., started to come apart, but the town election of April 7, 2020, might be a good moment to begin the story. That was when a young, progressive New York lawyer and adventure skier named Shane Fuhrman beat the longtime fire chief Gilbert Archuleta, part of Silverton’s old guard, by 10 votes to become the new mayor. To supporters, mainly of his generation, Fuhrman, 42, represented progress. After working at top finance firms in Manhattan, he had returned to his native Colorado and renovated the old Wyman Hotel on Greene Street, not in the mountain-town Victorian style of the Grand Imperial a block away, but as an elegant, hip boutique inn, with rooms going for as much as $385 a night. To Fuhrman’s opponents in the former mining town of 796 residents, he was the incarnation of the T Word, Telluride, and the A Word, Aspen, with their staggering housing prices, luxury outposts and billionaire denizens.

Persons: Shane Fuhrman, Gilbert Archuleta, Wyman Organizations: Aspen Locations: Silverton, Colo, New York, Manhattan, Colorado, Greene, Imperial, Telluride

☆ Wind energy has a massive waste problem. New technologies may be a step closer to solving it
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-28 | by ( Laura Paddison | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

It’s a problem that’s vexed the wind energy industry and provided fodder for those who seek to discredit wind power. But in February, Danish wind company Vestas said it had cracked the problem. It announced a “breakthrough solution” that would allow wind turbine blades to be recycled without needing to change their design or materials. Wind energy has been growing at a fast pace. It is the world’s leading renewable energy technology behind hydropower, and plays a vital role in helping countries move away from fossil fuel energy, which pumps out planet-heating pollution.

☆ The Hunters, the Landowner and the Ladder That Triggered a Wyoming Showdown
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-10 | by ( Michael Allen | Photographs Benjamin Rasmussen For The Wall Street Journal | Benjamin Rasmussen For The Wall Street Journal | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

ELK MOUNTAIN, Wyo.—As the name suggests, there are hundreds of elk on Elk Mountain, an 11,000-foot peak in southern Wyoming. The problem for hunters: You can’t get there from here. The sprawling mountain is surrounded by private ranchland. While the prime hunting ground is checkerboarded with federal and state property, access is limited by an age-old Western doctrine. Ranchers consider it unneighborly for outsiders to hopscotch through their land by crossing over public sections that meet only at a corner.

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