Green Energy

A Michigan nuclear plant is looking to make history not once but twice over: First by restarting a reactor shuttered in 2022 and second with newly solidified plans to build the nation’s first small modular reactors.

Holtec International — the nuclear company best known for decommissioning shuttered plants and manufacturing the canisters that store spent fuel — bought the Palisades nuclear plant on the southeastern shore of Lake Michigan a month after utility giant Entergy took the financially troubled single-reactor facility offline.

Last year, the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office finalized a deal to give Holtec $1.52 billion to bring the 55-year-old, 800-megawatt pressurized water reactor back online. The company wants to plug the facility back into the grid by the end of this year.

Now Holtec plans to nearly double the electricity output from Palisades by building two of its own small modular reactors, or SMRs, at the site.

On Tuesday, top executives gathered at the facility in Covert Township, Michigan, to unveil blueprints for adding a pair of its proprietary SMR-300s and announce Hyundai Engineering and Construction Co. — the South Korean firm already working with the Florida-based Holtec to develop its 300-MW units internationally — as its partner in the debut U.S. project. Completing the reactor would be a first not just for the country but the company. While Holtec has disassembled reactors, it has yet to build one, much less its own design.

“If we can’t do it, I don’t know who else is going to do it,” Rick Springman, the president of Holtec’s Global Clean Energy Opportunities division, told Canary Media ahead of the event. ​“I really think we can be the horse America can ride to a clean-energy future and to enable AI and everything else we want to do in this global competition.”

First, Holtec will need the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s approval of its reactor design.

So far, the U.S. federal regulator has only approved one SMR, Oregon-based NuScale Power’s 50 MW unit. The first plant designed around NuScale’s reactors, a 720 MW station built on property owned by the Idaho National Laboratory to provide power to ratepayers in Utah, was scrapped in November 2023 amid rising costs.

2024 marked a breakout year for nuclear power in the U.S., as Congress passed new legislation to streamline reactor regulations, Microsoft put up $16 billion to reopen the mothballed unit at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island, and SMR developers lined up major deals with Amazon and Google.

Yet no SMR developer got the green light from the NRC to become the nation’s second certified design.

“Most of our competitors are essentially offering the technology but don’t want to take any risk,” Springman said.

In other words, those developers will design and license the technology and make money off the intellectual property, he said, but utilities and construction firms must provide the financing, time, and materials.

“You have this stagnation where no one wants to stand behind the project,” Springman said. ​“Enter Holtec. We can manufacture the parts, build the plant, and arrange the financing for the project. We can also manage the spent fuel … and we can decommission the plant at end of life. We can do the entire spectrum of the project. There’s no U.S. company that can offer all of that.”

https://archive.is/BNGg1

Several old fossil fuel wells in the north of England were going to be used for fracking. Instead, they may now be a template for the UK's geothermal industry.

Elsewhere, the US Geothermal Technologies Office has run an initiative to explore converting old oil wells to geothermal energy sites in states including Utah, Texas and Nevada. The European Union has also funded research in a similar vein.

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“The global north must take responsibility for reducing its own consumption and building domestic renewable capacity, instead of externalising socio-environmental costs to the global south. We must continue to fight to decolonise and transform the global financial architecture.”

Pretty cool

This company is working to produce a machine that produces methane from waste electricity, water, and atmospheric air.

I searched for this company and only found a few references from several years ago.

I'm always skeptical of these bold claims, and my skepticism for something useful is still here with this company.

That said, from all of their public press and their description of their approach and goals, there could be something here. Time will tell.

The most important aspect of their approach is that they make no claim of this being energy efficient. Quite the opposite. They say it takes about 300% more energy input into their process than results from the energy in the methane that comes out.

Why this still looks like a possible viable path, is that they are building this to consume overproduced electricity that cannot otherwise be used or stored. As in, put it at a solar farm where the utility is rejecting more energy at the height of a sunny day (because of overcapacity).

I like how they've broken the technological challenges down into three main parts:

• input CO2 source
• input H2 source
• methane formation step.

Further, they're building out their product to ship on container skids, so deployment (or redeployment) doesn't have the same permanent infrastructure requirements a virgin build might (such as pouring concrete, etc). They also claim to not require any exotic materials for any of their steps.

Lastly, what give me the most confidence is in April 2024 they have already built a working prototype of their tech and produced synthetic methane from it and sold it to a utility company! I fully recognize that have a working prototype doesn't mean that that their approach can scale to anything useful, but I give them credit for recognizing the shortcomings of their approach while still producing a prototype that does what it claims to do: Produce methane from waste electricity, water, and atmospheric air.

Disclaimer: OP doesn't support CCP or authoritarian communism.

Disclaimer: OP doesn't support CCP or authoritarian communism.

TLDR Despite significant advancements and price drops in renewable energy sources, the lack of profitability compared to fossil fuels hinders investment and expansion. Factors like unbundled energy markets, volatility in pricing, and reliance on private investment further complicate the transition. The narrative calls for a reevaluation of energy production systems, advocating for state-led, publicly funded renewable projects to ensure a viable path toward sustainable energy solutions.

This looks like an interesting project:

https://fbrc.dev/

I have no background in evaluating how legit battery tech is. Anyone know anything more about the project or that type of battery?