Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Hit in Cyberattack Targeting Microsoft's SharePoint
'Attackers did attempt to access Fermilab's SharePoint servers,' according to a Department of Energy spokesperson. 'Thanks to DOE Office of Science's cybersecurity investments, the attackers were quickly identified, and impact was minimal, with no sensitive or classified data accessed.'
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National Geographic
2 days ago
- National Geographic
High Cost of Cheap Coal: The Coal Paradox
A coal train rumbling across Montana is a mile and a half (2.4 kilometers) long yet carries barely a day's fuel for a large power plant. The U.S. burns more than a billion tons of coal a year. Photograph by William Campbell/Corbis Learn about the high cost of cheap coal, including pollution and global warming. On a scorching August day in southwestern Indiana, the giant Gibson generating station is running flat out. Its five 180-foot-high (54.9-meter-high) boilers are gulping 25 tons (22.7 metric tons) of coal each minute, sending thousand-degree steam blasting through turbines that churn out more than 3,000 megawatts of electric power, 50 percent more than Hoover Dam. The plant's cooling system is struggling to keep up, and in the control room warnings chirp as the exhaust temperature rises. But there's no backing off on a day like this, with air conditioners humming across the Midwest and electricity demand close to record levels. Gibson, one of the biggest power plants in the country, is a mainstay of the region's electricity supply, pumping enough power into the grid for three million people. Stepping from the sweltering plant into the air-conditioned offices, Angeline Protogere of Cinergy, the Cincinnati-based utility that owns Gibson, says gratefully, "This is why we're making all that power." Next time you turn up the AC or pop in a DVD, spare a thought for places like Gibson and for the grimy fuel it devours at the rate of three 100-car trainloads a day. Coal-burning power plants like this one supply the United States with half its electricity. They also emit a stew of damaging substances, including sulfur dioxide—a major cause of acid rain—and mercury. And they gush as much climate-warming carbon dioxide as America's cars, trucks, buses, and planes combined. Here and there, in small demonstration projects, engineers are exploring technologies that could turn coal into power without these environmental costs. Yet unless utilities start building such plants soon—and lots of them—the future is likely to hold many more traditional stations like Gibson. Last summer's voracious electricity use was just a preview. Americans' taste for bigger houses, along with population growth in the West and air-conditioning-dependent Southeast, will help push up the U.S. appetite for power by a third over the next 20 years, according to the Department of Energy. And in the developing world, especially China, electricity needs will rise even faster as factories burgeon and hundreds of millions of people buy their first refrigerators and TVs. Much of that demand is likely to be met with coal. For the past 15 years U.S. utilities needing to add power have mainly built plants that burn natural gas, a relatively clean fuel. But a near tripling of natural gas prices in the past seven years has idled many gas-fired plants and put a damper on new construction. Neither nuclear energy nor alternative sources such as wind and solar seem likely to meet the demand for electricity. Where guests are guardians Meanwhile, more than a quarter trillion tons of coal lie underfoot, from the Appalachians through the Illinois Basin to the Rocky Mountains—enough to last 250 years at today's consumption rate. You hear it again and again: The U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal. About 40 coal-burning power plants are now being designed or built in the U.S. China, also rich in coal, could build several hundred by 2025. Mining enough coal to satisfy this growing appetite will take a toll on lands and communities. Of all fossil fuels, coal puts out the most carbon dioxide per unit of energy, so burning it poses a further threat to global climate, already warming alarmingly. With much government prodding, coal-burning utilities have cut pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides by installing equipment like the building-size scrubbers and catalytic units crowded behind the Gibson plant. But the carbon dioxide that drives global warming simply goes up the stacks—nearly two billion tons of it each year from U.S. coal plants. Within the next two decades that amount could rise by a third. There's no easy way to capture all the carbon dioxide from a traditional coal-burning station. "Right now, if you took a plant and slapped a carbon-capture device on it, you'd lose 25 percent of the energy," says Julio Friedmann, who studies carbon dioxide management at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. But a new kind of power station could change that. A hundred miles (161 kilometers) up the Wabash River from the Gibson plant is a small power station that looks nothing like Gibson's mammoth boilers and steam turbines. This one resembles an oil refinery, all tanks and silvery tubes. Instead of burning coal, the Wabash River plant chemically transforms it in a process called coal gasification. The Wabash plant mixes coal or petroleum coke, a coal-like residue from oil refineries, with water and pure oxygen and pumps it into a tall tank, where a fiery reaction turns the mixture into a flammable gas. Other equipment removes sulfur and other contaminants from the syngas, as it's called, before it's burned in a gas turbine to produce electricity. Cleaning the unburned syngas is cheaper and more effective than trying to sieve pollutants from power plant exhaust, as the scrubbers at a plant like Gibson do. "This has been called the cleanest coal-fired power plant in the world," says Steven Vick, general manager of the Wabash facility. "We're pretty proud of that distinction." The syngas can even be processed to strip out the carbon dioxide. The Wabash plant doesn't take this step, but future plants could. Coal gasification, Vick says, "is a technology that's set up for total CO2 removal." The carbon dioxide could be pumped deep underground into depleted oil fields, old coal seams, or fluid-filled rock, sealed away from the atmosphere. And as a bonus, taking carbon dioxide out of the syngas can leave pure hydrogen, which could fuel a new generation of nonpolluting cars as well as generate electric power. The Wabash plant and a similar one near Tampa, Florida, were built or refurbished with government money in the mid-1990s to demonstrate that gasification is a viable electricity source. Projects in North Dakota, Canada, the North Sea, and elsewhere have tested the other parts of the equation: capturing carbon dioxide and sequestering it underground. Researchers say they need to know more about how buried carbon dioxide behaves to be sure it won't leak back out—a potential threat to climate or even people. But Friedmann says, "For a first cut, we have enough information to say, 'It's a no-brainer. We know how to do this.'" Yet that's no guarantee utilities will embrace the gasification technology. "The fact that it's proved in Indiana and Florida doesn't mean executives are going to make a billion-dollar bet on it," says William Rosenberg of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The two gasification power plants in the U.S. are half the size of most commercial generating stations and have proved less reliable than traditional plants. The technology also costs as much as 20 percent more. Most important, there's little incentive for a company to take on the extra risk and expense of cleaner technology: For now U.S. utilities are free to emit as much carbon dioxide as they like. Cinergy CEO James Rogers, the man in charge of Gibson and eight other carbon-spewing plants, says he expects that to change. "I do believe we'll have regulation of carbon in this country," he says, and he wants his company to be ready. "The sooner we get to work, the better. I believe it's very important that we develop the ability to do carbon sequestration." Rogers says he intends to build a commercial-scale gasification power plant, able to capture its carbon dioxide, and several other companies have announced similar plans. The energy bill passed last July by the U.S. Congress offers help in the form of loan guarantees and tax credits for gasification projects. "This should jump-start things," says Rosenberg, who advocated these measures in testimony to Congress. The experience of building and running the first few plants should lower costs and improve reliability. And sooner or later, says Rogers, new environmental laws that put a price on carbon dioxide emissions will make clean technology look far more attractive. "If the cost of carbon is 30 bucks a ton, it's amazing the kinds of technologies that will evolve to allow you to produce more electricity with less emissions." If he's right, we may one day be able to cool our houses without turning up the thermostat on the entire planet.
Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Los Angeles Times
A climate report without denial and without excessive alarm bells
A new report from the Department of Energy concludes that, yes, the climate is changing and humans contribute to it — but no, it's not necessarily the impending catastrophe we've been warned about. In another era, an agency charting this kind of middle course would be unremarkable. Today, it feels revolutionary. The debate over climate change and responses has become so polarized that acknowledging the problem of human-driven warming without accepting a narrative that can sound apocalyptic invites attacks from all sides. I understand that the findings are controversial and hope climate scientists debate every detail. Considering the upside of getting this issue right, you would think more people would encourage open debate. That is exactly what led energy analyst Travis Fisher of the Cato Institute to return briefly to the administration to help organize the Climate Working Group, which generated the report. Like many of us who read from outside our ideological circles, Fisher was frustrated that many members of the left treat climate-crisis dissent as a thought crime, while many on the right still dismiss climate change as a joke. Fisher was initially hesitant to return to government service after a bruising prior stint. He was won over by Energy Secretary Chris Wright's stated desire to follow the data and inject more hard evidence into the conversation. Wright's plan was simple: 'Elevate the debate' by gathering a team of credible, often-overlooked, independent experts to critically review the state of climate science — without political filters — and publish the results openly. Five scientists were chosen by the Energy secretary. They are all highly credentialed and have decades of research under their belts. Importantly, they were given complete freedom over their conclusions. One need not agree with the Trump administration's overall climate policy — such as the dismissal of the 400 volunteer scientists preparing the next congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment — to recognize the legitimacy of this new report and its small group of authors. What does the report say? In a nutshell, as Fisher puts it: 'climate science — let alone climate policy — is far more nuanced than the summaries for policymakers (produced by previous government efforts) would have you believe.' The report affirms that greenhouse gases are warming the planet but tempers several claims. For example, the authors found no convincing evidence that U.S. hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts have become more frequent or intense in recent decades, despite what you'd gather from headlines. This debate will continue, as it should, with many related dimensions to consider. But at least there is now high-profile evidence on record to give a say to reasonable experts who disagree with other, more alarmed perspectives. The Department of Energy report's authors also find that the planet's warming is unlikely to cause as much economic damage as is commonly claimed, in part because they believe past projections have been too extreme — something the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other mainstream climate scientists have recognized in recent years. Another finding in the report is that drastic policies meant to reduce warming could do more economic harm than good, and that even the most heavy-handed climate policy can't make much of a difference. Even if we eliminated all U.S. emissions, the authors argue, it would have an 'undetectably small' effect on global temperatures. Far from denying climate change, this perspective puts it into context and reminds us that sometimes the strongest medicines can hurt more than the disease. None of this is to say that the report has all the answers or that other, more worried scientists should not be heard. That's exactly the point: There should be an ongoing debate. Insisting that 'the science is settled' implies that only one narrative is allowed and downplays other important conversations about the effects and scale of the challenge. So, while some self-styled science defenders try to silence any dissenting view, one of the authors of the new report, Judith Curry of Georgia Tech, rightly notes that 'any scientist that isn't skeptical isn't doing their job. … The 'mainstream' attempt to enforce a faux consensus to support political objectives is antithetical to science.' A healthy process welcomes scrutiny and disagreement, which should help sharpen the work of any conscientious expert. For better or worse, the study is already having an impact, with the Environmental Protection Agency citing it in a proposal to reconsider the federal government's 2009 finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. That will mean legal fights, lots of criticism — and more debate. This report — the first of many of its kind, I hope — shows that it's still possible to respectfully and professionally confront entrenched dogma. It takes experts and people in power who are willing to be challenged or erroneously smeared as deniers. That's no small thing. I also hope the result is a climate policy crafted from facts, whatever they might be, rather than fear. For that to happen, others must insist that open debate guides the response. And more importantly, we must all tolerate the debate. Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Why Oklo Stock Popped, Then Dropped Today
Key Points Oklo and its subsidiary won a total of three Department of Energy contracts to build pilot small modular nuclear reactors. Nano Nuclear and NuScale Power won no contracts. But eight other companies not named Oklo also won contracts. 10 stocks we like better than Oklo › Shares of Oklo (NYSE: OKLO), one of a handful of start-up nuclear power companies aiming to commercialize small modular reactors, jumped more than 6% in early trading Wednesday before reversing course and losing it all. As of 12:35 p.m. ET, Oklo stock is now down 1%. So why did Oklo pop and then drop? Good news for Oklo The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) picked Oklo to perform two projects under its new Reactor Pilot Program, and picked Oklo subsidiary Atomic Alchemy to perform a third, the company announced today. All three projects are in furtherance of President Donald Trump's May 2025 executive order to get at least three working small modular reactors (SMRs) up and running by July 4, 2026. This sounds like pretty great news for Oklo, and we haven't heard (yet) about either of its closest rivals in the SMR space, Nano Nuclear Energy (NASDAQ: NNE) or NuScale Power (NYSE: SMR), winning similar contracts. Both of those other nuclear stocks are down today, by the way, and down even more than Oklo. Less-good news for Oklo Digging a little deeper into the news, however, and going to DOE's website to learn if any other companies did win contracts, I discovered that a total of 10 separate companies (two of which are Oklo or its subsidiary) did win contracts. Neither of the 10 is Nano Nuclear or NuScale, which is pretty bad news for those companies, I suspect. But also, eight of them are not Oklo, and that means Oklo's not quite the odds-on favorite to inaugurate the nation's nuclear renaissance, as its initial press release might lead one to believe. And this, I suspect, is why Oklo stock was unable to hold on to its gains today. Should you invest $1,000 in Oklo right now? Before you buy stock in Oklo, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Oklo wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $653,427!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,119,863!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,060% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 182% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of August 13, 2025 Rich Smith has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends NuScale Power. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Why Oklo Stock Popped, Then Dropped Today was originally published by The Motley Fool Sign in to access your portfolio
