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Nuclear’s Challenge as Renewables Surge

Two very interesting pieces from Bloomberg that deserve to be read in entirety.
Gift links should get you there.

First up, Europe’s renewable transition, unintentionally juiced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is presenting a big challenge for nukes currently in operation, as prices fall to zero and below on sunny, windy days.
Secondly, a US company originally started to build nuclear waste storage casks, is branching out into restarting an older nuke, and planning new Small Modular units of its own design.

Bloomberg:

The drive to promote renewable energy is turning the screws on Europe’s nuclear industry.

While churning out fossil-free electricity has never been more urgent, surging renewables and a slump in power prices are undermining operations of atomic plants that are still the cornerstone of electricity grids in several parts of the continent.

The signs are that they are facing some tough times ahead. Demand hasn’t recovered fully since the energy crisis and the region’s wind and solar parks are producing more power than ever, which is eating into the share that both nuclear and coal plants send to national grids.

“With current power prices, the traditional baseload plants will struggle, unless we face longer periods with very unfavorable solar and wind conditions, drought or strong heat,” said Sigurd Pedersen Lie, a senior analyst at StormGeo Nena A/S in Oslo.

Longer term, it’s a warning sign that reactors might get increasingly squeezed out, even as countries such as France and the UK plan to spend huge sums on new plants, having identified the technology as a key element in the fight to limit global warming. At the United Nations climate meeting in Dubai late last year, they were joined by more than 20 nations including the US, the United Arab Emirates, Japan and South Korea in calling for a tripling of global nuclear generation by the middle of the century.

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Smoke Returns to Heartland. Canada’s Wildfires Back

New York Times:

If you’re in the northern part of the Central United States and the skies look smoky, here’s why: Minnesota and parts of Wisconsin were under an air quality alert on Monday morning because of wildfire smoke from Canada.

On Sunday, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency issued the alert for the entire state, which was set to expire at noon Eastern on Monday. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources issued an air quality alert for northwestern Wisconsin that was set to last through 10 a.m. on Monday.

Fine particle levels were expected to reach the red air quality index category, the agency said, which also warned that was “a level considered unhealthy for everyone, across all of Minnesota.” In those areas, officials said, everybody, and particularly sensitive people, should avoid prolonged or heavy exertion and should limit their time outdoors.

Axios:

By the numbers: Most of the 146 blazes burning in the first major wildfires since Canada’s record season that finally abated in October were in British Columbia (50) and Alberta (45) as of early Monday, per the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.

  • The CIFFC listed 40 of the fires burning as “out of control.” 
  • The fires were impacting four U.S. states’ air quality: Montana, the Dakotas and Minnesota, with much of the latter state’s air quality listed as “unhealthy” early Monday.

State of play: Authorities issued evacuation orders for communities in British Columbia over the weekend, and B.C. Wildfire Service official Cliff Chapman urged people to avoid travel to the Fort Nelson area and said residents should leave if they hadn’t already “due to the aggressive and extreme” fires.

  • “The fuels are as dry as we have ever seen,” Chapman said in a briefing of conditions surrounding the Parker Lake fire, which had burned across some 13,000 acres as of Monday.
  • “The wind is going to be sustained, and it is going to push the fire toward the community. Escape routes may be compromised and visibility will be poor as the fire continues to grow.”
  • The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency issued an air quality alert for the entire state that’s valid until 12 noon Monday local time due to “very heavy smoke from wildfires in northeast British Columbia.”
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Are US Carmakers Toast? China’s EVs Sleek, Well Made, and Cheap

Wall Street Journal:

The Biden administration is preparing to raise tariffs on clean-energy goods from China in the coming days, with the levy on Chinese electric vehicles set to roughly quadruple, according to people familiar with the matter.

Higher tariffs, which Biden administration officials are preparing to announce on Tuesday, will also hit critical minerals, solar goods and batteries sourced from China, according to the people. The decision comes at the end of a yearslong review of tariffs imposed by former President Donald Trump on roughly $300 billion in goods from China. 

Officials are particularly focused on electric vehicles, and they are expected to raise the tariff rate to roughly 100% from 25%, according to the people. An additional 2.5% duty applies to all automobiles imported into the U.S. The existing 25% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles has so far effectively barred those models, often cheaper than Western-made cars, from the U.S. market. Biden administration officials, automakers and some lawmakers worry that wouldn’t be enough given the scale of Chinese manufacturing. 

Bloomberg:

Once upon a time, Japanese cars were seen as an exotic and quirky product that could never take on the might of Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. Right now, Chinese EVs are in a similar place. 

“Corolla, New Economy Car, Is Shown Here by Toyota,” the New York Times yawned in a 1968 headline, introducing history’s best-selling automobile to the US market. Four years later, another piece noted with idle curiosity that Honda Motor Co. — “primarily a motorcycle name in the United States” — was starting to sell “diminutive” four-wheelers as well.

The story of the Big Three automakers’ hubristic fall to Japanese rivals is well-known, and should act as a warning to manufacturers who underestimate China’s competitive threat. With designers focused on large, powerful gas-guzzlers that earned better margins for Detroit’s inefficient production lines, the US auto industry in the 1970s failed to comprehend the appeal of affordable Japanese cars that sipped fuel, needed minimal maintenance, and came packed with standard features that local buyers were used to finding only as pricey add-ons.

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Michigan Attorney General: I’m Putting Together a Team

Let’s go.

You’ve become part of a bigger universe. You just don’t know it yet.

Michigan Attorney General:

This request for proposals (RFP) is to solicit proposals from attorneys and law firms to serve as Special Assistant Attorneys General (SAAGs) to pursue litigation related to the climate change impacts caused by the fossil fuel industry on behalf of the State of Michigan through the Department of Attorney General (DAG) (together, the State) on a contingency fee basis.

Tornadoes Challenge Climate Science and Models

This video is a few years old, but still current scientifically.
I interviewed a pretty good spread of extreme weather experts to get current thinking on extreme convective storms and climate change.
Given the continuing outbreaks across the country this week, seems like a good time to review.

The connection for tornadoes is tough, because the reliable record is not as long as we would like. Modern systems of Doppler radar and networks of reliable spotters have only been in place for a few decades, according to Jason Samenow, weather guru at the Washington Post.

Still, Dr. Jeff Masters told me, “..we are seeing tornadoes at locations, and at times of year, we’re not used to seeing them.”
John Allen of Central Michigan University reminded me of the outbreaks of December 2021, which saw 218 twisters, more than any previous December – “that’s more like the number of tornadoes you’d see in a typical May, or April May period. That’s a really big departure from our normal values.”

I had also done a piece on the outbreaks of that December of ’21, which is below.

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States Moving to Hold Climate Criminals Accountable

NBC News:

Vermont lawmakers passed a bill this week that is designed to make big fossil fuel companies pay for damage from weather disasters fueled by climate change.

The legislation is modeled after the Environmental Protection Agency’s superfund program, which requires the companies responsible for environmental contamination to either clean sites up themselves or reimburse the government for the costs of work to do so. 

Vermont’s bill, referred to as its Climate Superfund Act, would similarly mandate that big oil companies and others with high emissions pay for damage caused by global warming.

The amounts owed would be determined based on calculations of the degree to which climate change contributed to extreme weather in Vermont, and how much money those weather disasters cost the state. From there, companies’ shares of the total would depend on how many metric tons of carbon dioxide each released into the atmosphere from 1995 to 2024.

The law passed with just three no votes in Vermont’s state Senate in early April, followed by approval in the state House on Monday. The Senate will deliver a final vote later this week before the bill heads to Republican Gov. Phil Scott’s desk. 

State Sen. Anne Watson, a co-sponsor of the bill, said she hopes that if the law goes into effect, it pushes big oil companies “to become purveyors of renewable energy sources and keep fossil fuels in the ground.”

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