Tag Archives: energy

Another issue in the US is the lack of a compatible safety device called a ground fault circuit interrupter, or a GFCI. They are typically built into outlets installed near water sources, like a sink, washing machine, or bathtub. They’re designed to minimize the risk of electric shock by cutting …

The causes of the power outage that left millions in Spain and Portugal without electricity on Monday have yet to be fully determined, though service has now been restored across 99 percent of the Iberian peninsula. Red Eléctrica, the public company in charge of operating Spain’s transmission infrastructure, has preliminarily …

“Lawyers are going to have a field day with this,” says Hathaway, who now works as a director at Lawyers for Good Government, a legal nonprofit dedicated to progressive advocacy. It’s clear these new rules are exclusively a gift to extractive industries like drilling and mining. Solar and wind projects—which …

American nuclear is in 25-year-old Isaiah Taylor’s blood: his great-grandfather worked on the Manhattan Project. In 2023, Taylor, who dropped out of high school to work in tech, started his own nuclear company, Valar Atomics. It’s currently developing a small test reactor, named after Taylor’s great-grandfather. But the company says …

Grounded subways, canceled flights, stores, hospitals, and offices completely in the dark: This is the situation following the vast blackout that hit Spain, Portugal, and some regions of southern France. The power grid was sent down around noon local time on Monday, simultaneously blocking all public services in major Spanish …

At 12:30 pm local time on Monday, the power went out. Across Spain and Portugal trains, planes, and traffic lights abruptly stopped working. Reports emerged of people being stuck in lifts, and Google Maps live data showed traffic jams in big cities, including Madrid and Barcelona, as they became gridlocked. …

Grid batteries have a halo effect for other power generators too. Most thermal power plants—coal, gas, nuclear—prefer to run at a steady pace. Ramping up and down to match demand takes time and costs money, but with batteries soaking up some of the variability, thermal power plants can stay closer …

Together with his colleagues, Jinshan Pan, a professor of corrosion science at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, published a study in January 2023 devoted to the risk of sulfides in groundwater corroding the copper used for spent nuclear fuel containers. “More work is needed to define […] the …