Either the Biden Administration is not serious about about the whole energy transmission thing or they would be happy to rely on China for our critical materials. Either way, we pay.
AP News (2/01/23) Reports: "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took an unusually strong step Tuesday and blocked a proposed mine heralded by backers as the most significant undeveloped copper and gold resource in the world because of concerns about its environmental impact on a rich Alaska aquatic ecosystem that supports the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery. The move, cheered by Alaska Native tribes and environmentalists and condemned by some state officials and mining interests, deals a heavy blow to the proposed Pebble Mine. The intended site is in a remote area of southwest Alaska’s Bristol Bay region, about 200 miles (322 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage. The mine site is accessible only by helicopter and snowmobile in winter, developer Pebble Limited Partnership said in a permit application with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. As proposed, the project called for a mining rate of up to 73 million tons a year."
"Wyoming has no desire to establish infrastructure that will likely fail,”"
– Wyoming, on refusing to build EV charging infrastructure across its highways
Remember kids, no one hates nuclear more than the NRC (with the possible exception of the German greens who would rather burn lignite).
National Review (1/29/23) Reports: "The Nulear Regulatory Commission (NRC) bureacracy has proposed new rules for approving nuclear reactors---rules that are mathematically impossible to meet. Not nearly impossible. Actually impossible. The new framework for risk assessment is ostensibly meant to offer a simpler way of calculating risk. But several unrealistic assumptions built into the proposed framework make it vanishingly unlikely that any new reactor could ever again clear the hurdle of the risk-assessment portion of the regulatory-approval process. The proposed change to the way the NRC assesses risks will turn the already arduous approval process for new reactor into an unnavigable, Kafkaesque nightmare."
Fuzzy math.
Bloomberg (1/30/23) reports: "The amount of electricity produced from burning fossil fuels in the European Union is set to plunge this year as the bloc focuses on renewables to replace energy supplies from Russia. Total fossil generation could drop by 20% this year, with relatively expensive natural gas-fired generation falling the fastest, according to Ember, a UK-based energy think tank. Europe has raced to find alternative energy sources after Russia cut gas flows in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine, sending energy costs soaring. That led to greater reliance on fossil fuels, partially due to a drop in nuclear and hydropower, and contributed to an increase in emissions. Still, solar and wind energy filled in much of the gap, producing a record 22% of the EU’s electricity last year and overtaking gas for the first time."
