Weekend Digest #9

A Curated Assortment of Scrolls

You know what time it is.

Let’s go.

Housekeeping

1. Defending Diablo Canyon ft. Heather Hoff. I had a great chat with Heather Hoff, who works at Diablo Canyon and co-founded Mothers for Nuclear. The Diablo Canyon closure is starting to gain a lot of opposition—FINALLY. Heather’s story is really inspiring and she was a fantastic interview. Give it a listen.

2. Titans of Nuclear Appearance. Bret Kugelmass invited me onto Titans of Nuclear—it was an honor to be invited and we had a great time. Bret’s coming on Nuclear Barbarians soon, so keep your eyes peeled for that!

3. All That Is Culture Melts Into Porn ft. Mary Harrington. I run another podcast called ex.haust. It’s about why nothing feels possible. We try to look at issues and problems that feel deadlocked/intractable. Recently, I interviewed Mary Harrington, a contributing editor at Unherd. Without a doubt, it’s one of my favorite interviews of the whole year. We go deep on the cultural and political issues of the digital age, including the pronographification of everyday life.

News

1. Power Brief: China Flexes Rare Earths Muscle (Again). Energy involves geography and so can never avoid politics—especially geopolitics. Greens prefer to avoid this inconvenience. Robert Bryce’s latest Power Brief, a short youtube video expounding on a recent article, goes into how the focus on renewables will put America at a disadvantage with China. Check it out.

2. Viewpoint: Nuclear, the auctions, and the grid. Meredith Angwin has a new piece out in World Nuclear News about our current grid. It serves as an excellent and clarifying primer. I recommend everyone read her book Shorting the Grid to get the scoop in depth. However, this pieces adds Meredith’s concept of the “fatal trifecta.”

3. ISO-New England: Power Grid On Edge This Winter; Rolling Blackouts Possible. Speaking of grid fragility. Here’s this: “The New England power grid is vulnerable in winter and this year it is in an even more precarious situation due to energy supply chain issues and a changing global natural gas market. "ISO-New England officials Monday said if generators lack access to enough fuel, and a prolonged cold snap grips the region, rolling blackouts may be needed to prevent the entire grid from crashing.” A big mistake to make here is thinking if these tragic events transpire it will cow our opposition and bring them into sobriety with regards to renewables and fragilization. As I’ve written elsewhere, crises are legitimating for renewaphiles because they make their apocalyptic climate and extreme weather prediction seem true despite their own culpability in making us vulnerable to normal weather. Their position is anti-fragile in this way—it gains from disorder. Let’s hope for a mild winter.

4. Gonzalez Introduces Bill to Spur Nuclear Energy Innovation. “Representatives Anthony Gonzalez (OH-16) and Elaine Luria (VA-02) introduced the Accelerating Nuclear Innovation through Fee Reform Act, legislation designed to accelerate innovation and catalyze private sector investment in advanced nuclear reactor technologies by eliminating Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) review fees for advanced reactor license applications. Currently, advanced nuclear companies face onerous application costs that can reach tens of millions of dollars and disincentivize them from bringing their novel technologies to market.” You can read the language of the act here. No clue if it will pass, but I’m glad to see stuff like these attempted. If anyone knows more about this or how I can help (if at all) please reach out.

5. How to Manage Cyber Risk as Grid Modernization Efforts Intensify. “Few sectors face as much disruptive change in the years ahead as power and utilities (P&U), with the mantra of decarbonization, decentralization, and digitization continuing to grow more intense.” This one’s an interesting read. I’d love to get someone with a deeper knowledge of cyber security in the power and utilities to come on the show and talk to me. Give me a shout if you know anyone. I thought this graph from the article was interesting.

   

Commentary

Astoria blocked a gas plant. The DSA is thrilled, naturally—they helped. But Prince from Queens drew my attention to this letter from New York’s Senator Gianaris, who originally supported the plant. Check out the second paragraph.

What’s noticeable is the third reason for needing the plan: the Astoria plant was slated to make up for th loss of Indiant Point. But a few months after this letter was submitted in 2017, NYISO claimed no in-city generation would be needed to make up for the loss of IP.

As PFQ tweeted, “Someone’s lying…”