There's more than one path to net zero emissions by 2050, but the only practical one runs straight through nuclear power, according to the International Energy Agency.

In a report [PDF] released yesterday, the IEA said worldwide nuclear power output, currently at 413GW, would need to double to 812GW by 2050 to meet carbon neutrality goals and limit global warming to 1.5°C, per its own framework. 

The IEA doesn't see nuclear power as the solution to net zero emissions, though, rather a part of the transition process to preferred forms of renewable energy like wind, solar, and hydroelectric. "Building sustainable and clean energy systems will be harder, riskier, and more expensive without nuclear," the IEA said. "Nuclear power has the potential to play a significant role in helping countries to securely transition to energy systems dominated by renewables."

IEA director Fatih Birol said the current energy crisis, rising fossil fuel prices, problems with energy security, and ambitious climate goals give nuclear energy a road to a comeback, but not a smooth one. 

"A new era for nuclear power is by no means guaranteed," Birol said. 

Among the obstacles the report lists, some are obvious, such as public opinion. Even in countries like the US, where nuclear is viewed more favorably and small modular reactor development has grown, still only a third favor government investment in nuclear power.

In addition to sentiment, the report found that advanced economies, which control 70 percent of the current nuclear capacity, are lagging. Since 2017, only four reactors that began construction weren't located in Russia or China.

Sixty-three percent of plants in advanced economies are over 30 years old, creating yet another problem. Several countries have taken steps to refurbish and extend the life of ageing reactors, but the IEA is still concerned those countries could lose a third of their nuclear production capabilities by 2030.

The IEA has a second scenario in which global nuclear energy production shrinks from 10 percent in 2020 to 3 percent in 2050. The body said an additional $500 billion in investment would be needed to meet 2050 carbon goals were that to happen. Consumer prices for energy would also rise, it said.

If the IEA is correct, modernizing nuclear power seems to be a necessary step in a green energy transition. The IEA has seven recommendations for countries considering nuclear power as part of their carbon neutrality plans:

It's worth noting that half of emissions reductions that IEA predicts come from technologies it describes as "not yet commercially viable," which includes SMRs. The report didn't mention what other technologies are holding carbon reduction back, and the IEA has yet to respond to requests for comment. ®

Predicting the weather is a notoriously tricky enterprise, but that’s never held back America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

After more than two years of development, the agency brought a pair of supercomputers online this week that it says are three times as powerful as the machines they replace, enabling more accurate forecast models.

Developed and maintained by General Dynamics Information Technology under an eight-year contract, the Cactus and Dogwood supers — named after the fauna native to the machines' homes in Phoenix, Arizona, and Manassas, Virginia, respectively — will support larger, higher-resolution models than previously possible.

NASA has chosen the three companies it will fund to develop a nuclear fission reactor ready to test on the Moon by the end of the decade.

This power plant is set to be a vital component of Artemis, the American space agency's most ambitious human spaceflight mission to date. This is a large-scale project to put the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, and establish a long-term presence on Earth's natural satellite.

NASA envisions [PDF] astronauts living in a lunar base camp, bombing around in rovers, and using it as a launchpad to explore further out into the Solar System. In order for this to happen, it'll need to figure out how to generate a decent amount of power somehow.

Updated Mini nuclear reactors that are supposed to usher in an era of cheaper and safer nuclear power may generate up to 35 times more waste to produce the same amount of power as a regular plant, according to a study.

A team of researchers at Stanford University and the University of British Columbia came to this conclusion after studying a design from each of three small modular reactor (SMR) manufacturers: NuScale Power, Toshiba, and Terrestrial Energy.

The study, published this week, found that not only did those particular SMR approaches generate five times the spent nuclear fuel (SNF), 30 times the long-lived equivalent waste, and 35 times the low and intermediate-level waste (LILW), their waste is also more reactive, therefore more dangerous and consequently harder to dispose of.

Nuclear fusion will not provide an answer to the medium-term "sacrifice" the world population will have to endure to get to net-zero carbon emission by 2050 — the target for keeping average global heating within the 1.5˚C margin.

This is according to scientists making testimony to the UK's Parliamentary Science and Technology Select Committee.

However, the potential source of atomic energy does promise to offer citizens "hope" for sustainable economic expansion in the second half of the 21st century, after the period of climate change sacrifice, said Tim Luce, head of science and operation at ITER, the world's largest fusion experiment relying on magnetic confinement.

Many large corporations are taking measures to reduce their carbon footprints, but a new report claims that for some, the greatest source of emissions is actually from investments being made with their wealth, and this is undermining their own environmental efforts.

The Carbon Bankroll report highlights the documented carbon dioxide emissions of a number of large corporations and contrasts these with pollutants being generated as a result of the cash and investments held by those companies, comprising cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities.

In some instances, this figure is greater than the emissions generated by their own business, demonstrating, in the words of the report, that "climate accomplishments are being undermined by a misaligned financial system that is channeling hundreds of billions of corporate US dollars into the carbon-intensive sectors driving the climate crisis."

Amazon is giving out funding and support to more startups developing technology that points us in the direct of net-zero emissions, as part of its AWS Clean Energy Accelerator program.

The accelerator will provide 12 eco-minded companies with guidance on how to get more out of the AWS cloud, by training their employees on machine learning, analytics, and high-performance computing. Each startup will also get up to $100,000 in AWS Activate credits, double what was offered to the program's first cohort of ten startups announced in July 2021.

Howard Gefen, GM of AWS' energy industry business unit, said in a canned statement that despite climate change being the defining issue of our age, the technology needed to achieve today's grand environmental goals isn't there. The Clean Energy Accelerator program is supposed to help foster the development of this green tech we're lacking.

The pandemic has made people more concerned about sustainability than ever, and businesses are the focuses of their collective ire, with most saying they don't take enterprise sustainability goals (ESGs) seriously. The solution, Oracle says, is to put AIs in charge.

Oracle's 2022 ESG Global Study surveyed some 11,000 consumers and businesses, and its findings reveal a population overwhelmingly frustrated with a lack of progress toward sustainability initiatives (94 percent). Seventy-eight percent also say that they're frustrated with the lack of progress businesses have made on the ESG front.

Consumers aren't content to let businesses pat themselves on the back either: nearly half said that they believe businesses have more power than individuals or governments to affect change, and 89 percent said they need to see proof that progress is being made toward ESG goals.

When faced with climate models coded in Fortran in the 1960s and 70s, MIT decided there wasn't any more cobbling together left for the ancient code, so they decided to toss it out and start fresh. 

It's an ambitious project for MIT professors Raffaele Ferrari and Noelle Eckley Selin, who submitted their Bringing Computation to the Climate Challenge proposal as part of MIT's Climate Grand Challenges (CGC). Out of 100 submissions, MIT picked five projects to fund and support, one of which is Ferrari and Selin's. 

"The goal of this grand challenge is to provide accurate and actionable scientific information to decision-makers to inform the most effective mitigation and adaptation strategies," the proposal said. 

If you've been wondering about the fate of Ukraine's nuclear power stations amid Russia's full-on invasion of the nation, you're not alone. Here's an update from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The Chernobyl plant, which is being held by Russian troops, lost its connection to Ukraine's power grid on March 9, and since then it's been running its systems on power from diesel generators.

You might be wondering why that's important. It's probably not what you think. The radioactive fuel removed from Chernobyl following the 1986 disaster is set in large pools of water onsite to dissipate the heat it emits. You might think pumps are needed, and thus power required, to stop the pools from boiling off and exposing the fuel assemblies – yet according to the IAEA, no pumping is necessary. The heat load and volume of the water is such that no pumps or electrical supply are needed, we're assured.

A project to produce green hydrogen using wind power is planned in the mid-east of Sweden, which is expected to have the ability to make up to 240 tons of the stuff on-site every day.

However, work on the proposed facility is not expected to begin until 2025, and it may not be operational until 2030.

The project is described as a partnership between wind farm operator WPD Offshore AB and Lhyfe, a green hydrogen producer. The pair said they intend to jointly install a 600MW hydrogen production plant in an industrial area of the municipality of Söderhamm, in the immediate vicinity of the Storgrundet offshore wind farm operated by WPD, to produce green hydrogen that can be used by industry as well as in the transport sector.

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