The USGS is saying that Appalachia contains an estimated 2.3 million metric tons of undiscovered, economically recoverable lithium, enough to replace 328 years of U.S. imports at last year’s level. …

As lithium demand is projected to grow more than 48-fold by 2040, driven by electric vehicles and energy storage technologies, securing new domestic sources has become increasingly critical.

USDS Director Ned Mamula notes that the US was the dominant world producer of lithium three decades ago. The newly published lithium resource estimates are preliminary, and much more work is needed to fully realize our current mineral capacity.

The post There’s lithium in them thar hills appeared first on The New Neo.

For example:

Over the past few days, the politics and policies around nuclear energy have shifted faster than at any other period in the post-Chernobyl era. Here are a few examples:

Germany, the world’s long-time anti-nuclear poster child, just did a screeching U-turn. Under its new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, Germany will cooperate with France and treat nuclear as a “green” power source under EU regulations. The move comes just 25 months after Germany took its last three nuclear plants offline. As one German official said, the move is a “sea-change policy shift.”

The announcement from Berlin came just days after Belgium’s federal parliament voted by a large majority to repeal a 2003 law mandating the phase out of nuclear energy and banning the construction of new reactors.

The article lists more in that vein.

Plus of course we have Trump, who yesterday issued a new EO on the subject:

Instead of efficiently promoting safe, abundant nuclear energy, the NRC has instead tried to insulate Americans from the most remote risks without appropriate regard for the severe domestic and geopolitical costs of such risk aversion. The NRC utilizes safety models that posit there is no safe threshold of radiation exposure and that harm is directly proportional to the amount of exposure. …

Recent events in Europe, such as the nationwide blackouts in Spain and Portugal, underscore the importance of my Administration’s focus on dispatchable power generation –including nuclear power — over intermittent power. Beginning today, my Administration will reform the NRC, including its structure, personnel, regulations, and basic operations. In so doing, we will produce lasting American dominance in the global nuclear energy market, create tens of thousands of high-paying jobs, and generate American-led prosperity and resilience.

Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to:
(a) Reestablish the United States as the global leader in nuclear energy;
(b) Facilitate increased deployment of new nuclear reactor technologies, such as Generation III+ and IV reactors, modular reactors, and microreactors, including by lowering regulatory and cost barriers to entry;
(c) Facilitate the expansion of American nuclear energy capacity from approximately 100 GW in 2024 to 400 GW by 2050;
(d) Employ emerging technologies to safely accelerate the modeling, simulation, testing, and approval of new reactor designs;
(e) Support the continued operation of, and facilitate appropriate operational extensions for, the current nuclear fleet, as well as the reactivation of prematurely shuttered or partially completed nuclear facilities; and
(f) Maintain the United States’ leading reputation for nuclear safety.

Much more at the link.

When I’ve discussed these issues for the past few decades with Democrat friends and family members, two patterns have emerged. One is of the non-scientifically-inclined person who is afraid of nuclear power and has exaggerated the bad effects of nuclear accidents in the past, and does not credit safety advances since – for example – Chernobyl. The other is of the scientifically-inclined person who is in favor of nuclear power, considering it a relatively “green” form of energy that could solve some of the problems of fossil fuels.

The post The dawn of a new age for nuclear power? appeared first on The New Neo.

Yesterday there was a blackout in Spain, Portugal, and parts of France. From Michael Shellenberger:

It was one of the largest peacetime blackouts Europe has ever seen. And it was not random. It was not an unforeseeable event. It was the exact failure that many of us have been, repeatedly, warning lawmakers about for years — warnings that Europe’s political leaders systematically chose to ignore.

The bulk of the essay is for paid subscribers, which I’m not, but there are quotes here:

As countries replaced heavy, spinning plants with lightweight, inverter-based generation, the grid became faster, lighter, and far more sensitive to disruptions. That basic physical reality was spelled out in public warnings as far back as 2017. …

Although political leaders promised that renewable energy would provide stable, affordable power, in practice, Spain grew more reliant on the remaining nuclear and natural gas plants to sustain inertia — even as the government pushes them to close. …

Despite all these warnings, political and regulatory energy in Europe remained focused on accelerating renewable deployment, not upgrading the grid’s basic stability. In Spain, solar generation continued to climb rapidly through 2023 and early 2024.

Coal plants closed. Nuclear units retired.

On many spring days by 2025, Spain’s midday solar generation exceeded its total afternoon demand, leading to frequent negative electricity prices.

The system was being pushed to the limit.

And [yesterday], at 12:35 pm, it broke. …

Unless Spain rapidly invests in synthetic inertia, maintains and expands its nuclear fleet, or adds some other new form of heavy rotating generation, the risk of future blackouts will only grow worse.

There’s much more information of a technical nature at the link, but apparently the problem has to do with the grid being in a “low inertia condition” and “oscillations in very high voltage lines” causing “synchronization failures.”

Modern society is heavily heavily dependent on the generation of power, and the decisions many industrialized nations have made in recent years regarding power generation seem nearly suicidal. Of course, the response of those who made those decisions would be that the goal is to prevent an even more suicidal situation as a result of AGW. But whether or not you buy into the AGW scare, it seems to me that nuclear power would be an obvious answer.

The post Western Europe’s decisions leave its power grid vulnerable appeared first on The New Neo.

Must have seemed like a great idea to the California legislators at the time, but guess what? It turns out the people aren’t keen on it. Who would have guessed such a thing? And now even many of the Democrat lawmakers are backing away from it.

But not Gavin Newsom:

California governor Gavin Newsom is standing by the state’s soon-to-be-implemented “equitable” policy to base electricity bills on income, rather than usage, even as public and political opposition to the idea builds in the Democratic coalition.

A spokesman for the governor said on Tuesday that Newsom is looking forward to seeing a final proposal from the state’s utilities commission “that is consistent with” the 2022 law that required the agency to devise an income-based billing system.

“California must combat climate change by rapidly expanding the use of clean electricity in our vehicles and buildings, while at the same time making it more affordable for low-income Californians,” the spokesman said in a statement.

Newsom’s commitment to California’s income-based electricity billing plan followed a press conference by a group of Democratic lawmakers who want to reverse the policy, after they voted in its favor as part of a 2022 budget bill. Citing public outcry, they condemned the plan as another price hike for Californians’ astronomical energy bills that would punish conservation-minded households while also subjecting everyone to invasive income checks.

I wonder why they didn’t think of that in 2022. That’s not sarcasm on my part – well, only a bit. I really do wonder, because this is such an egregiously bad idea that it could have been confidently predicted that even in bluer-than-bluer California the consumers would not like it. Apparently they – and Newsom – are extremely out of touch.

Speaking of out of touch – or rather, untouchable [emphasis mine]:

The latest proposals vary between an extra $30 to $50 per month for Californians who aren’t poor enough to qualify for subsidies. Utility companies initially pitched charges of up to $128 for higher-income households, but walked those back after public outcry. The agency, an unelected body of regulators, is tasked with settling on a final fee and implementing it by summer.

A lot of people think Newsom will somehow replace Biden as the Democrat candidate for president in 2024. I don’t think so. He may have survived recall in California, but I don’t think he’d do well on a national level. At least, I hope not.

The post Newsom wants electricity costs to be income-based appeared first on The New Neo.

This is the news:

For 35 years, the Emsland nuclear power plant in northwestern Germany has reliably provided millions of homes with electricity and many with well-paid jobs in what was once an agricultural backwater.

Now, it and the country’s two other remaining nuclear plants are being shut down. Germany long ago decided to phase out both fossil fuels and nuclear power over concerns that neither is a sustainable source of energy.

Nuclear power seems very “sustainable” to me – unless a country decides to shoot itself in the foot by not sustaining it.

More:

…[W]ith energy prices stubbornly high and climate change a growing concern, some in the country and abroad are branding the move reckless.

Ya think?

And the claim in bold seems like wishful thinking [emphasis mine], except for the fact that they will legislate it to make it so, no matter what the reality:

“Right now, existing nuclear plants are a critical source of carbon-free baseload energy,” said Peter Fox-Penner, previously a senior official at the U.S. Department of Energy and now with the Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy. “Energy efficiency, wind, and solar energy will soon become dominant sources, but in the meantime, it is wisest to continue to run existing nuclear,” as long as safety is the priority, he said.

The anti-nuclear movement rests on exaggerations of accidents that have already happened, one of which occurred in a plant such as Chernombyl with ancient technology that is quite different from and far riskier than today’s plants in Germany:

“Nuclear power remains a risky technology, and in the end, the risks can’t be controlled even in a high-tech country like Germany,” Environment Minister Steffi Lemke said at a news conference ahead of the shutdown.

She cited the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima atomic power plant in 2011, when a tsunami knocked out the power supply leading to a catastrophic meltdown, evoking memories of the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl that remains a pivotal event for Germany’s anti-nuclear movement.

I’ve written about both of those events on this blog, and the propaganda surrounding them (see this as well as this).

Also:

While Lemke’s environmentalist Green party is most closely linked to that movement, it was former Chancellor Angela Merkel — then leader of Stegemann’s Christian Democrats — who pulled the plug on atomic energy in Germany following Fukushima. The decision led to a greater reliance on fossil fuels that has kept Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions stubbornly high compared to neighbors such as atom-friendly France.

Fancy that.

Germany expects to rely on hydrogen, which I know little about but which doesn’t seem nearly ready at this point to take up the slack: “some people have joked that hydrogen is the energy of the future, ‘and always will be.'” In the meantime, we have the next goals of the anti-nuclear movement:

Campaigners like Vent have now shifted their focus to nearby facilities that process nuclear fuel for reactors elsewhere in Europe.

“We need to stop enriching uranium,” he said. “We need to stop producing fuel rods for all the nuclear plants outside Germany.”

The post Germany is shutting down its last nuclear power plants appeared first on The New Neo.

In a pathetic bid to “show results” from the latest global climate-change confab, the Biden administration followed Western Europe’s hysterical lead by signing on to a lunatic “climate reparations” scheme.

It’s beyond outrageous. It won’t even bring any progress in reducing global carbon emissions, the supposed goal of the COP-27 meetings. If it works as promised, it’s just another wealth transfer from wealthy nations to the (largely corrupt) governing class of poor countries.

On and on it goes – the fake virtue-signaling by “elites” at the expense of ordinary citizens of the Western world.

The post Climate reparations appeared first on The New Neo.

Almost two months after the Russian Nord Stream pipelines blew up in the Baltic Sea, the Swedish prosecutors have found traces of explosives at the underwater site and declared that the incident was an act of “gross sabotage.”

The explosions that ripped apart the pipelines at four places had a force of almost “500 kilograms of TNT” and measured 2.3 on the seismic Richter scale — comparable to “a powerful bomb from the second world war,” the German and British media outlets reported.

But is this really news? I suppose the traces of explosives and the official confirmation are news, but I don’t think there have been many people who didn’t conclude quite early on that this was most likely sabotage. Among other things, seismographic data indicated it almost from the start. The real question is whodunnit, and as in the best detective novels, there is no shortage of candidates.

I’d like to add a few things that people don’t usually emphasize. The first is that neither pipeline was active at the time. Number two wasn’t yet operating to begin with, and Russia had purposely stopped the flow of number one for “repairs” close to four weeks earlier (the article just linked was written weeks before the explosions):

Russia’s state-owned energy giant, Gazprom, halted all exports via Nord Stream 1 from Aug. 31, citing maintenance work on its only remaining compressor.

However, while flows were due to resume after three days, Gazprom on Friday cited an oil leak for the indefinite shutdown of the pipeline. The shock announcement came hot on the heels of a joint statement from the G-7 economic powers backing a proposal to put a price-capping mechanism on Russian oil.

In what energy analysts see as an escalation of Russia’s bid to inflict economic pain on the region, the Kremlin has since said that the resumption of gas supplies to Europe is completely dependent on Europe lifting its economic sanctions against Moscow.

The sanctions were not lifted. Also, Gazprom informed Germany’s Siemen’s Energy that until Siemen’s repaired some allegedly faulty equipment, the flow would not be resumed and the shutdown would continue. Siemen’s said this:

…[T]he company told Reuters that it’s not currently commissioned by Gazprom to do maintenance work on the turbine with the suspected oil leak, but said it remains on standby to do so.

Siemens Energy added that it “cannot comprehend this new representation based on the information provided to us over the weekend.”

Even more interestingly, months earlier Russia had already reduced the flow in the only-operating Nord Stream pipeline (number one) to 20% of the originally agreed-upon volume. Then came the report by Russia of a maintenance problem, and then a shutdown that was supposed to last three days, and then an indefinite shutdown supposedly due to a leak. The shutdown was about a month before the sabotage. Even the shutdown was causing great worry in Europe and particularly Germany about fuel shortages:

“Russia’s move to again cut gas supply to the EU just as the region scrambles to fill its inventories ahead of winter is a further escalation of its policy of the past months to inflict economic pain through repeated supply cuts to Germany, the EU’s biggest economy and gas consumer,” analysts at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group said in a research note.

“Sources in Berlin say they are now making all winter energy plans on the assumption of zero supply from Russia,” they added. “That means there will now also be a focus on central and southern Europe, which still receives Russian gas including through pipeline transit of Ukraine and Turkey.”

Again, please note that was written three weeks before the explosions.

It is my impression that many of those blaming the US for the sabotage – and there are plenty of them – seem to be ignoring this build-up. Let me say right here that I do not know who set the explosives. But to me, Russia is the most likely culprit for the simple reason that Russia had already been cutting off the flow through that pipeline for months, and then shutting it off for a month, in order to get the concessions it wanted from Europe. Russia was obviously more than willing to sacrifice whatever revenue it got from the Nord Stream, bargaining that hurting Europe was well worth it. And it had already become clear that Europe wouldn’t cooperate and give Russia what it wanted – with Germany also making it clear that it was trying to free itself from dependence on Russian fossil fuels entirely as soon as possible. So Russia may indeed have calculated that it would be losing nothing by making the already-shut-down Nord Stream pipelines inoperative, and that Europe would be losing much more.

To go back in time a bit further to demonstrate what I mean, in April of 2022 Germany made this announcement:

Germany could end Russian oil imports this year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday, signalling the urgency driving Europe’s biggest economy to wean itself off energy from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine…

“We are actively working to get independent from the import of (Russian) oil and we think that we will be able to make it during this year,” Scholz said during a news conference in London with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson…

The DIW economic institute said in a study published on Friday that Germany might be able to secure enough gas supplies for the coming winter without any imports from Russia through a combination of alternative suppliers and drastic energy-saving measures.

That deadline might have been somewhat premature, but at any rate the intent of Germany was clear way back in April and Nord Stream was due to become obsolete in fairly short order. Then Russia shut it down, and then it was purposely damaged.

I am virtually certain that many people here will disagree with me about the likelihood that Russia was the culprit and not the US. I have no illusions about those running Biden’s administration; I believe they are capable of deeply nefarious activities. But I don’t see strong signs that point to them being the perpetrators in this particular case and I see much stronger signs that point to Russia. That said, nothing would surprise me.

NOTE: This article on the history of Germany’s dependence on Russia is of interest (yes, I know, the Guardian is leftist, but it still seems pretty comprehensive to me). Many ironies abound, including the surprising (to me, at least) fact that the whole thing began in 1970, when Russia was still the USSR. Some details:

On Sunday 1 February 1970, senior politicians and gas executives from Germany and the Soviet Union gathered at the upmarket Hotel Kaiserhof in Essen…to celebrate the signing of a contract for the first major Russia-Germany gas pipeline, which was to run from Siberia to the West German border at Marktredwitz in Bavaria…

Germany would supply the machines and high-quality industrial goods; Russia would provide the raw material to fuel German industry…[This was part of the] new “eastern policy” of rapprochement towards the Soviet Union and its allies including East Germany, launched the previous year under chancellor Willy Brandt…

Before the signing, Nato had discreetly written to the German economics ministry to inquire about the security implications. Norbert Plesser, head of the gas department at the ministry, had assured Nato that there was no cause for alarm: Germany would never rely on Russia for even 10% of its gas supplies.

Half a century later, in 2020, Russia would supply more than half of Germany’s natural gas and about a third of all the oil that Germans burned to heat homes, power factories and fuel vehicles. Roughly half of Germany’s coal imports, which are essential to its steel manufacturing, came from Russia.

The article goes on to list many many people over the years who warned Germany, including a lot about Reagan:

Over 50 years, Germany fought numerous battles with a series of US presidents over its growing dependence on Russian energy. In the process, Germany’s foreign office developed a view of American anti-communism as naive, and a belief that only Germany truly understood the Soviet Union.

“I was wrong,” the former German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, says, simply. “We were all wrong.”

What name is prominently missing from the entire 4,200+ word article? You can probably guess: Donald Trump. A reminder from 2018; Nord Stream 2 was planned but not yet built at the time:

I haven’t read any apologies to Trump coming from Germany or Western Europe. Perhaps I missed them, but a search didn’t locate them. If you find some, let me know.]

The post Swedish prosecutor says Nordstream explosions were attacks, but nothing about who may have done it appeared first on The New Neo.

“The inflation report is out. Have you seen gas prices around here in LA? It’s 7 bucks a gallon almost,” a reporter asked Biden as he paid for food at a Los Angeles-based taco shop.

“Well, that’s always been the case here,” Biden replied. “You know, it’s not — what — nationwide, [gas prices] came down about $1.35, and they’re still down over a dollar. But we’re going to work on, housing is the big, is the most important thing we have to do in terms of that.”

The explanation?

(1) Biden lives in the moment; past and future don’t exist.

(2) Biden’s been rereading Nineteen Eighty-Four, and since “Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia” worked for Ingsoc, he figures it’ll work for him.

(3) Math is hard.

(4) The last time Biden bought gas in California was never.

(5) Newsom told him so.

Actually, though, I think I know what Biden might have been trying (and totally failing) to convey. It would go something like this: ‘It’s always been the case that gas is more expensive in California than in other states. You know, it’s not as high elsewhere right now as in California — nationwide, gas prices came down about $1.35 from their recent high, and they’re still down over a dollar from that. But in terms of inflation, what we’re going to work on, housing is the most important thing we have to do in terms of that.’

You can still find enormous fault with the message, but at least it would be intelligible. What Biden said was not.

Biden has never been a particularly intelligent man, nor has he been a good communicator. Now his thoughts are more confused than ever, and his communications are more fragmented. You shouldn’t need a translator to understand a president’s meaning when he speaks – although you can’t go wrong if you always assume that Biden is intending to excuse himself and blame others, or bend the truth to his own advantage. In that, he’s not much different than many politicians; just more so, and also so cognitively challenged that it’s hard to tell what the thought is behind the words.

Some would say there isn’t a thought behind the words. But I’ve long differed on that. I think that despite his cognitive decline, Biden retains the ability to understand the basics, to connive and to lie, to be corrupt and nasty, and to play to his leftist base. He’s just nowhere near as good at it as he’d like to be, and not even as good at it as he used to be.

The post Biden says gas in California has always cost $7 a gallon appeared first on The New Neo.

President Joe Biden (D) is reportedly preparing to ease sanctions on socialist Venezuela to allow a U.S. oil company to resume production there, which comes as OPEC announced early Wednesday that it would be significantly cutting oil production.

The New York Times reported that Russia and Saudi Arabia, acting as the leaders of the 23-member nation OPEC energy cartel, announced a massive reduction in oil production of two million barrels per day, a move that will likely send gas prices skyrocketing and cause political problems for the Biden administration.

The Biden administration is now “preparing” to lift sanctions on Venezuela to allow Chevron to pump oil again from the leftist authoritarian regime in an attempt to stave off political disaster for the administration caused by rising fuel prices.

The administration would give “significant sanctions relief” if Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s regime held talks with the country’s political opposition and held free and fair elections in 2024. The administration has also worked out a deal freeing up hundreds of millions of dollars in Venezuelan funds that are frozen in U.S. banking institutions.

The Biden administration also released convicted narco traffickers related to Maduro in exchange for hostages taken by the regime, a move that could incentivize other hostile foreign powers to detain American citizens so they can use that as leverage over the Biden administration.

And all of this is because the administration clamped down on domestic oil production and refuses to change that policy (more here).

Or perhaps it has long wanted to be friendlier towards leftist Venezuela.

Sometimes the answer is “all of the above.”

The post Friendly overtures to Venezuela appeared first on The New Neo.

I don’t understand how people can think that it’s smart to reduce your own energy supply in order to become dependent on the supply of others. How on earth would that even help the environment, if the environment is your concern? It seems nonsensical on the face of it, and yet politicians propose it and people vote for it. Is it an “extraordinary popular delusion” in order to virtue-signal?

And if you want to use alternate sources of energy that are greener, good luck. I might even say “more power to you” (pun intended). But you’d better be able to deliver, or you’re setting yourselves up for disaster.

Not to mention, of course, the sheer stupidity and folly of becoming dependent on a hostile foreign power for energy. Madness.

Of course, if you posit that the leaders of the Western world have as a goal to destroy the Western world, then all is explained. It’s the old “fools versus knaves” question. I happen to think that stupidity is a goodly part of it, with a generous heaping of “knave” thrown in as well.

In the piece by William Jacobson that I linked in the first sentence of this post, Professor Jacobson quotes this very alarming Twitter thread by Finnish economist and professor Tuomas Malinen:

I am telling you people that the situation in #Europe is much worse than many understand. We are essentially on the brink of another banking crisis, a collapse of our industrial base and households, and thus on the brink of the collapse of our economies. Short thread. 1/4

We are also totally at the mercy of the authorities, and we have very little knowledge what they have planned. Will they be able to stop the onset of the banking crisis, yet again? I don’t know, but I am doubtful. 2/

In any case the speed of deterioration is massive now, and it’s only a matter of time, when markets catch up.

Certain politicians in this country seem to want us to follow suit, and are doing their best to make it happen.

The post Europe is in trouble appeared first on The New Neo.