#Decommissioning Solar Power Plants
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cleangreen0 · 2 months ago
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How Are Solar Panels Recycled? A Step-by-Step Breakdown
As the solar industry grows, so does the challenge of managing old and damaged panels. But what happens to solar modules at the end of their lifespan? This guide breaks down the solar panel recycling process step by step, from collection and material separation to reclaiming valuable components like silicon, glass, and metals. Learn how innovative recycling technologies are making solar energy even more sustainable and what the future holds for end-of-life solar panels.
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dandelionsresilience · 10 months ago
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Good News - July 15-21
Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735! (Or check out my new(ly repurposed) Patreon!)
1. Thai tiger numbers swell as prey populations stabilize in western forests
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“The tiger population density in a series of protected areas in western Thailand has more than doubled over the past two decades, according to new survey data. […] The most recent year of surveys, which concluded in November 2023, photographed 94 individual tigers, up from 75 individuals in the previous year, and from fewer than 40 in 2007. […] A total of 291 individual tigers older than 1 year were recorded, as well as 67 cubs younger than 1 year.”
2. Work starts to rewild former cattle farm
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“Ecologists have started work to turn a former livestock farm into a nature reserve [… which] will become a "mosaic of habitats" for insects, birds and mammals. [… R]ewilding farmland could benefit food security locally by encouraging pollinators, improving soil health and soaking up flood water. [… “N]ature restoration doesn't preclude food production. We want to address [food security] by using nature-based solutions."”
3. Harnessing ‘invisible forests in plain view’ to reforest the world
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“[… T]he degraded land contained numerous such stumps with intact root systems capable of regenerating themselves, plus millions of tree seeds hidden in the soil, which farmers could simply encourage to grow and reforest the landscape[….] Today, the technique of letting trees resprout and protecting their growth from livestock and wildlife [… has] massive potential to help tackle biodiversity loss and food insecurity through resilient agroforestry systems. [… The UN’s] reported solution includes investing in land restoration, “nature-positive” food production, and rewilding, which could return between $7 and $30 for every dollar spent.”
4. California bars school districts from outing LGBTQ+ kids to their parents
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“Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the SAFETY Act today – a bill that prohibits the forced outing of transgender and gay students, making California the first state to explicitly prohibit school districts from doing so. […] Matt Adams, a head of department at a West London state school, told PinkNews at the time: “Teachers and schools do not have all the information about every child’s home environment and instead of supporting a pupil to be themselves in school, we could be putting them at risk of harm.””
5. 85% of new electricity built in 2023 came from renewables
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“Electricity supplied by renewables, like hydropower, solar, and wind, has increased gradually over the past few decades — but rapidly in recent years. [… C]lean energy now makes up around 43 percent of global electricity capacity. In terms of generation — the actual power produced by energy sources — renewables were responsible for 30 percent of electricity production last year. […] Along with the rise of renewable sources has come a slowdown in construction of non-renewable power plants as well as a move to decommission more fossil fuel facilities.”
6. Deadly cobra bites to "drastically reduce" as scientists discover new antivenom
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“After successful human trials, the snake venom antidote could be rolled out relatively quickly to become a "cheap, safe and effective drug for treating cobra bites" and saving lives around the globe, say scientists. Scientists have found that a commonly used blood thinner known as heparin can be repurposed as an inexpensive antidote for cobra venom. […] Using CRISPR gene-editing technology […] they successfully repurposed heparin, proving that the common blood thinner can stop the necrosis caused by cobra bites.”
7. FruitFlow: a new citizen science initiative unlocks orchard secrets
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“"FruitWatch" has significantly refined phenological models by integrating extensive citizen-sourced data, which spans a wider geographical area than traditional methods. These enhanced models offer growers precise, location-specific predictions, essential for optimizing agricultural planning and interventions. […] By improving the accuracy of phenological models, farmers can better align their operations with natural biological cycles, enhancing both yield and quality.”
8. July 4th Means Freedom for Humpback Whale Near Valdez, Alaska
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“The NOAA Fisheries Alaska Marine Mammal Stranding Hotline received numerous reports late afternoon on July 3. A young humpback whale was entangled in the middle of the Port of Valdez[….] “The success of this mission was due to the support of the community, as they were the foundation of the effort,” said Moran. [… Members of the community] were able to fill the critical role of acting as first responders to a marine mammal emergency. “Calling in these reports is extremely valuable as it allows us to respond when safe and appropriate, and also helps us gain information on various threats affecting the animals,” said Lyman.”
9. Elephants Receive First of Its Kind Vaccine
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“Elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus is the leading cause of death for Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) born in facilities in North America and also causes calf deaths in the wild in Asia. A 40-year-old female received the new mRNA vaccine, which is expected to help the animal boost immunity[….]”
10. Conservation partners and Indigenous communities working together to restore forests in Guatemala
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“The K’iche have successfully managed their natural resources for centuries using their traditional governing body and ancestral knowledge. As a result, Totonicapán is home to Guatemala’s largest remaining stand of conifer forest. […] EcoLogic has spearheaded a large-scale forest restoration project at Totonicapán, where 13 greenhouses now hold about 16,000 plants apiece, including native cypresses, pines, firs, and alders. […] The process begins each November when community members gather seeds. These seeds then go into planters that include upcycled coconut fibers and mycorrhizal fungi, which help kickstart fertilization. When the plantings reach about 12 inches, they’re ready for distribution.”
July 8-14 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)
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argumate · 3 months ago
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huh Sacramento has a defunct nuclear power plant that used to power the city until it was closed in 1989 to switch to natural gas generation and more recently, solar:
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the decommissioned cooling towers are surrounded by panels!
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and goats.
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mostlysignssomeportents · 11 months ago
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Real innovation vs Silicon Valley nonsense
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This is the LAST DAY to get my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!
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If there was any area where we needed a lot of "innovation," it's in climate tech. We've already blown through numerous points-of-no-return for a habitable Earth, and the pace is accelerating.
Silicon Valley claims to be the epicenter of American innovation, but what passes for innovation in Silicon Valley is some combination of nonsense, climate-wrecking tech, and climate-wrecking nonsense tech. Forget Jeff Hammerbacher's lament about "the best minds of my generation thinking about how to make people click ads." Today's best-paid, best-trained technologists are enlisted to making boobytrapped IoT gadgets:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/24/record-scratch/#autoenshittification
Planet-destroying cryptocurrency scams:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/15/your-new-first-name/#that-dagger-tho
NFT frauds:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/06/crypto-copyright-%f0%9f%a4%a1%f0%9f%92%a9/
Or planet-destroying AI frauds:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain
If that was the best "innovation" the human race had to offer, we'd be fucking doomed.
But – as Ryan Cooper writes for The American Prospect – there's a far more dynamic, consequential, useful and exciting innovation revolution underway, thanks to muscular public spending on climate tech:
https://prospect.org/environment/2024-05-30-green-energy-revolution-real-innovation/
The green energy revolution – funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act and the Science Act – is accomplishing amazing feats, which are barely registering amid the clamor of AI nonsense and other hype. I did an interview a while ago about my climate novel The Lost Cause and the interviewer wanted to know what role AI would play in resolving the climate emergency. I was momentarily speechless, then I said, "Well, I guess maybe all the energy used to train and operate models could make it much worse? What role do you think it could play?" The interviewer had no answer.
Here's brief tour of the revolution:
2023 saw 32GW of new solar energy come online in the USA (up 50% from 2022);
Wind increased from 118GW to 141GW;
Grid-scale batteries doubled in 2023 and will double again in 2024;
EV sales increased from 20,000 to 90,000/month.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/blog/2023/12/19/building-a-thriving-clean-energy-economy-in-2023-and-beyond/
The cost of clean energy is plummeting, and that's triggering other areas of innovation, like using "hot rocks" to replace fossil fuel heat (25% of overall US energy consumption):
https://rondo.com/products
Increasing our access to cheap, clean energy will require a lot of materials, and material production is very carbon intensive. Luckily, the existing supply of cheap, clean energy is fueling "green steel" production experiments:
https://www.wdam.com/2024/03/25/americas-1st-green-steel-plant-coming-perry-county-1b-federal-investment/
Cheap, clean energy also makes it possible to recover valuable minerals from aluminum production tailings, a process that doubles as site-remediation:
https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/toxic-red-mud-co2-free-iron
And while all this electrification is going to require grid upgrades, there's lots we can do with our existing grid, like power-line automation that increases capacity by 40%:
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/13/1187620367/power-grid-enhancing-technologies-climate-change
It's also going to require a lot of storage, which is why it's so exciting that we're figuring out how to turn decommissioned mines into giant batteries. During the day, excess renewable energy is channeled into raising rock-laden platforms to the top of the mine-shafts, and at night, these unspool, releasing energy that's fed into the high-availability power-lines that are already present at every mine-site:
https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/02/06/this-disused-mine-in-finland-is-being-turned-into-a-gravity-battery-to-store-renewable-ene
Why are we paying so much attention to Silicon Valley pump-and-dumps and ignoring all this incredible, potentially planet-saving, real innovation? Cooper cites a plausible explanation from the Apperceptive newsletter:
https://buttondown.email/apperceptive/archive/destructive-investing-and-the-siren-song-of/
Silicon Valley is the land of low-capital, low-labor growth. Software development requires fewer people than infrastructure and hard goods manufacturing, both to get started and to run as an ongoing operation. Silicon Valley is the place where you get rich without creating jobs. It's run by investors who hate the idea of paying people. That's why AI is so exciting for Silicon Valley types: it lets them fantasize about making humans obsolete. A company without employees is a company without labor issues, without messy co-determination fights, without any moral consideration for others. It's the natural progression for an industry that started by misclassifying the workers in its buildings as "contractors," and then graduated to pretending that millions of workers were actually "independent small businesses."
It's also the natural next step for an industry that hates workers so much that it will pretend that their work is being done by robots, and then outsource the labor itself to distant Indian call-centers (no wonder Indian techies joke that "AI" stands for "absent Indians"):
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/17/fake-it-until-you-dont-make-it/#twenty-one-seconds
Contrast this with climate tech: this is a profoundly physical kind of technology. It is labor intensive. It is skilled. The workers who perform it have power, both because they are so far from their employers' direct oversight and because these fed-funded sectors are more likely to be unionized than Silicon Valley shops. Moreover, climate tech is capital intensive. All of those workers are out there moving stuff around: solar panels, wires, batteries.
Climate tech is infrastructural. As Deb Chachra writes in her must-read 2023 book How Infrastructure Works, infrastructure is a gift we give to our descendants. Infrastructure projects rarely pay for themselves during the lives of the people who decide to build them:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects
Climate tech also produces gigantic, diffused, uncapturable benefits. The "social cost of carbon" is a measure that seeks to capture how much we all pay as polluters despoil our shared world. It includes the direct health impacts of burning fossil fuels, and the indirect costs of wildfires and extreme weather events. The "social savings" of climate tech are massive:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/05/climate-and-health-benefits-of-wind-and-solar-dwarf-all-subsidies/
For every MWh of renewable power produced, we save $100 in social carbon costs. That's $100 worth of people not sickening and dying from pollution, $100 worth of homes and habitats not burning down or disappearing under floodwaters. All told, US renewables have delivered $250,000,000,000 (one quarter of one trillion dollars) in social carbon savings over the past four years:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/05/climate-and-health-benefits-of-wind-and-solar-dwarf-all-subsidies/
In other words, climate tech is unselfish tech. It's a gift to the future and to the broad public. It shares its spoils with workers. It requires public action. By contrast, Silicon Valley is greedy tech that is relentlessly focused on the shortest-term returns that can be extracted with the least share going to labor. It also requires massive public investment, but it also totally committed to giving as little back to the public as is possible.
No wonder America's richest and most powerful people are lining up to endorse and fund Trump:
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-05-30-democracy-deshmocracy-mega-financiers-flocking-to-trump/
Silicon Valley epitomizes Stafford Beer's motto that "the purpose of a system is what it does." If Silicon Valley produces nothing but planet-wrecking nonsense, grifty scams, and planet-wrecking, nonsensical scams, then these are all features of the tech sector, not bugs.
As Anil Dash writes:
Driving change requires us to make the machine want something else. If the purpose of a system is what it does, and we don’t like what it does, then we have to change the system.
https://www.anildash.com/2024/05/29/systems-the-purpose-of-a-system/
To give climate tech the attention, excitement, and political will it deserves, we need to recalibrate our understanding of the world. We need to have object permanence. We need to remember just how few people were actually using cryptocurrency during the bubble and apply that understanding to AI hype. Only 2% of Britons surveyed in a recent study use AI tools:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c511x4g7x7jo
If we want our tech companies to do good, we have to understand that their ground state is to create planet-wrecking nonsense, grifty scams, and planet-wrecking, nonsensical scams. We need to make these companies small enough to fail, small enough to jail, and small enough to care:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi
We need to hold companies responsible, and we need to change the microeconomics of the board room, to make it easier for tech workers who want to do good to shout down the scammers, nonsense-peddlers and grifters:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/
Yesterday, a federal judge ruled that the FTC could hold Amazon executives personally liable for the decision to trick people into signing up for Prime, and for making the unsubscribe-from-Prime process into a Kafka-as-a-service nightmare:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/amazon-execs-may-be-personally-liable-for-tricking-users-into-prime-sign-ups/
Imagine how powerful a precedent this could set. The Amazon employees who vociferously objected to their bosses' decision to make Prime as confusing as possible could have raised the objection that doing this could end up personally costing those bosses millions of dollars in fines:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/
We need to make climate tech, not Big Tech, the center of our scrutiny and will. The climate emergency is so terrifying as to be nearly unponderable. Science fiction writers are increasingly being called upon to try to frame this incomprehensible risk in human terms. SF writer (and biologist) Peter Watts's conversation with evolutionary biologist Dan Brooks is an eye-opener:
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-collapse-is-coming-will-humanity-adapt/
They draw a distinction between "sustainability" meaning "what kind of technological fixes can we come up with that will allow us to continue to do business as usual without paying a penalty for it?" and sustainability meaning, "what changes in behavior will allow us to save ourselves with the technology that is possible?"
Writing about the Watts/Brooks dialog for Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith invokes William Gibson's The Peripheral:
With everything stumbling deeper into a ditch of shit, history itself become a slaughterhouse, science had started popping. Not all at once, no one big heroic thing, but there were cleaner, cheaper energy sources, more effective ways to get carbon out of the air, new drugs that did what antibiotics had done before…. Ways to print food that required much less in the way of actual food to begin with. So everything, however deeply fucked in general, was lit increasingly by the new, by things that made people blink and sit up, but then the rest of it would just go on, deeper into the ditch. A progress accompanied by constant violence, he said, by sufferings unimaginable.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05/preparing-for-collapse-why-the-focus-on-climate-energy-sustainability-is-destructive.html
Gibson doesn't think this is likely, mind, and even if it's attainable, it will come amidst "unimaginable suffering."
But the universe of possible technologies is quite large. As Chachra points out in How Infrastructure Works, we could give every person on Earth a Canadian's energy budget (like an American's, but colder), by capturing a mere 0.4% of the solar radiation that reaches the Earth's surface every day. Doing this will require heroic amounts of material and labor, especially if we're going to do it without destroying the planet through material extraction and manufacturing.
These are the questions that we should be concerning ourselves with: what behavioral changes will allow us to realize cheap, abundant, green energy? What "innovations" will our society need to focus on the things we need, rather than the scams and nonsense that creates Silicon Valley fortunes?
How can we use planning, and solidarity, and codetermination to usher in the kind of tech that makes it possible for us to get through the climate bottleneck with as little death and destruction as possible? How can we use enforcement, discernment, and labor rights to thwart the enshittificatory impulses of Silicon Valley's biggest assholes?
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/30/posiwid/#social-cost-of-carbon
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wumblr · 11 months ago
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okay
For decades, nuclear power has been the largest source of clean energy in the United States, accounting for 19% of total energy produced last year
false. first sentence. off to a great start. you may notice this is a 2022 chart but i can tell you the only new reactors started since then are vogtle 3 and 4 (you may notice that's not a new power plant but new reactors at an existing plant), years late and $17b over budget, vogtle as a whole produces 1.1gwh, we use about 29 million annually. point being: it has not risen to 19%, the last reactor since vogtle was watts bar in 2016 and since then we've decommissioned 14 of them
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The industry directly employs nearly 60,000 workers in good paying jobs
weirdly low estimate, almost by half
maintains these jobs for decades
"maintains" is doing a lot of work here, does that include toxic exposure payouts? because they are still fighting pretty hard to get those in the world's first nuclear contamination site, hanford
and supports hundreds of thousands of other workers
✅ true! 475,000 according to the NEI link above
In the midst of transformational changes taking place throughout the U.S. energy system
sure
the Biden-Harris Administration is continuing to build on President Biden’s unprecedented goal of a carbon free electricity sector by 2035
have they developed carbon free cement yet? (yes.) at scale? (no.) are we just not counting construction emissions because they're one-time emissions investments or how does this work exactly, i would love to know because i think we're also not counting emissions from waste transport to longterm storage because we haven't started doing that. anyway they've built a train for it even though we don't have a storage site so that's umm. that's uhh. fine i'm sure
while also ensuring that consumers across the country have access to affordable, reliable electric power
i guess you can still say "across the country" if you exclude texas as an outlier
and creating good-paying clean energy jobs.
i guess you can still call them good paying clean energy jobs if everybody who mines and refines the uranium dies of cancer because you just pulled out of the largest disarmament program in history due to it being geopolitically inadmissible (for russia... to continue... selling us the uranium from decommissioning...? i'm still trying to figure out the optics of that one but anyway as i have previously stated we didn't actually stop buying it in cases where it's "liable to cause supply chain issues")
Alongside renewable power sources like wind and solar, a new generation of nuclear reactors is now capturing the attention of a wide range of stakeholders
weird way to say that
for nuclear energy’s ability to produce clean, reliable energy and meet the needs of a fast-growing economy, driven by President Biden’s Investing in America agenda and manufacturing boom.
this is a carrier sentence to inject the president's name, but i would like to question which sectors of the growing economy are driving the most energy demand because i'm sure there are no nasty truths being elided there (it's computing)
The Administration recognizes that decarbonizing our power system, which accounts for a quarter of all the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, represents a pivotal challenge requiring all the expertise and ingenuity our nation can deliver.
it's time once again for... the energy flow sankey chart! the reason the power system accounts for a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions is in no small part because 67% of it is lost to waste heat. has the nation's expertise and ingenuity started working on that yet
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The Biden-Harris Administration is today hosting a White House Summit on Domestic Nuclear Deployment, highlighting the collective progress being made from across the public and private sectors
oh boy! a summit! talking about it is the same as doing it
Under President Biden’s leadership, the Administration has taken a number of actions to strengthen our nation’s energy and economic security by reducing – and putting us on the path to eliminating – our reliance on Russian uranium for civil nuclear power and building a new supply chain for nuclear fuel
gosh, i got ahead of myself and already criticized both of those things
including: signing on to last year’s multi-country declaration at COP28 to triple nuclear energy capacity globally by 2050
everybody criticized that
developing new reactor designs
which ones, the bill gates project that just got cancelled because utilities pulled out (edit: that's nuscale, the bill gates project is terrapower), the rolls royce submarine, or the one that just got regulatory approval (edit: this is also nuscale)
extending the service lives of existing nuclear reactors
yep! you sure showed the embrittlement at diablo canyon by doing nothing about it
and growing the momentum behind new deployments
nonsense clause, but it has this really ominous undercurrent due to its vagueness
Recognizing the importance of both the existing U.S. nuclear fleet and continued build out of large nuclear power plants, the U.S. is also taking steps to mitigate project risks associated with large nuclear builds and position U.S. industry to support an aggressive deployment target.
this one is not nonsense but they can't just out and out say "we are deregulating the industry because opening the process for public comment is most often the thing that slows it down" because then somebody might realize they're bulldozing ahead no matter what any constituent says, does, or actually wants
To help drive reactor deployment while ensuring ratepayers and project stakeholders are better protected, theAdministration is announcing today the creation of a Nuclear Power Project Management and Delivery working group that will draw on leading experts from across the nuclear and megaproject construction industry to help identify opportunities to proactively mitigate sources of cost and schedule overrun risk
i'm sure a revolving door working group packed with industry insiders can solve this without compromising their commitment to the profit motive, not that it particularly matters since the cost is passed on to the consumer in the form of fees on the electric bill
The United States Army is also announcing that it will soon release a Request for Information to inform a deployment program for advanced reactors to power multiple Army sites in the United States
good god... that is a fresh nightmare i did not see coming
Additionally, the Department of Energy released today a new primer highlighting the expected enhanced safety of advanced nuclear reactors
"expected" really serves to demonstrate several points i've made
i'm going to stop going line by line here because i know this is already too boring and long for anyone to read this far, unless anybody wants to know what i think about parts 50, 52, and 53 of the NRC licensing guidance -- which many of you have very clearly stated over the years that you don't -- and while i do want to acknowledge that it does go into more detail and even answer some of the questions i raised (vogtle comes up, diablo canyon comes up, a list of which SMR designs is given, or at least a list of the companies responsible for them),
what i would like to focus on is one conspicuous absence:
the reason we need a new fleet of reactors is because they are an essential part of the bomb production chain. they are the beginning of the refinement process, and we cannot carry out the plan (already underway) to replace the minutemen missiles currently in silos with sentinel missiles without significant new construction. we cannot start the president's desired wars with russia and china without the new sentinels. he's not going to be the one to carry this out, he's ensuring whoever is his successor in about 2030 or more likely 2040 will be armed to do so. limited amount of time left to prevent that
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darkmaga-returns · 2 days ago
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Spain and Portugal suffered a historic blackout on April 28, affecting over 50 million people, disrupting airports, hospitals and transportation. The outage occurred just days after Spain ran its grid entirely on renewable energy for the first time.
While officials cited a "rare atmospheric phenomenon" or technical faults, experts blamed the outage on rapid renewable adoption without grid upgrades, leading to instability due to reduced inertia from decommissioned coal and nuclear plants.
Solar and wind lack the "grid inertia" of traditional power plants, making voltage fluctuations harder to manage. Spain’s overreliance on renewables—coupled with unreliability during weather fluctuations—left the system vulnerable.
Warnings about grid instability were ignored as Spain prioritized green agendas, closing nuclear and coal plants without adequate synthetic inertia or storage solutions. Critics argue renewables were oversold without addressing foundational infrastructure needs.
The outage highlights Europe’s systemic energy challenges, echoing past blackouts in Austria and Germany. Experts call for balancing renewables with grid resilience, slowing nuclear phaseouts and investing in stabilizing technologies.
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thoughtportal · 7 months ago
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Microsoft deal would reopen Three Mile Island nuclear plant to power AI
Pennsylvania’s dormant Three Mile Island nuclear plant would be brought back to life to feed the voracious energy needs of Microsoft under an unprecedented deal announced Friday in which the tech giant would buy 100 percent of its power for 20 years.
The restart of Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, would mark a bold advance in the tech industry’s quest to find enough electric power to support its boom in artificial intelligence.The plant, which Pennsylvanians thought hadclosed for good in 2019 amid financial strain, would come back online by 2028 under the agreement, according toplant owner Constellation Energy.
If approved by regulators, Three Mile Island would provide Microsoft with the energy equivalent it takes to power 800,000 homes, or 835 megawatts. Never before has a U.S. nuclear plant come back into service after being decommissioned, and never before has all of a single commercial nuclear power plant’s output been allocated to a single customer.
But the economics of both the power and computing industries are changing rapidly. Tech companies are scouring the nation for power that is both reliable and helps them meet their pledge to fuel AI development with zero emissions electricity — driving a nuclear power revival.
“The energy industry cannot be the reason China or Russia beats us in AI,” said Joseph Dominguez, chief executive of Constellation. “This plant never should have been allowed to shut down, ... It will produce as much clean energy as all of the renewables [wind and solar] built in Pennsylvania over the last 30 years.”
Follow Climate & environment
The four-year restart plan would cost Constellation about $1.6 billion, he said, and is dependent on federal subsidies in the form of tax breaks earmarked for nuclear power in the 2022 Inflation Recovery Act.
Constellation will also need to clear steep regulatory hurdles, including intensive safety inspections from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has never before authorized the reopening of a plant. The deal also raises thorny questions about the federal tax breaks, as the energy from the plant would all be produced for a single private company rather than a utility serving entire communities.
A partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979 sent the nation into a panic and the nuclear industry reeling. The unit that Constellation plans to fire back up sits adjacent to the one that malfunctioned 45 years ago.
Constellation and Microsoft conceived the novel deal to solve a deepening energy problem. The sprawling data centers Microsoft and other digital giants need have become so big and energy-intensive that they are straining existing power supplies across the nation.
Constellation disclosed months ago that it was exploring options for restarting Three Mile Island, which sits along the Susquehanna River. The news was met with mixed reactions. Nuclear safety advocates expressed alarm. But some community leaders welcomed the development, seeing potential to revive an economic anchor in a region beset with financial hardship. A study funded by the Pennsylvania Building & Construction Trades Council says a reopening would create 3,400 jobs at the plant and in businesses serving it and its workers, and generate $3 billion in state and federal taxes.
The tax breaks in the Inflation Recovery Act are crucial to making the deal economically feasible, according to Constellation. They provide a credit for every megawatt hour of nuclear energy produced.
Constellation declined to provide details about its contract with Microsoft or disclose the value of tax credits. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has said in the past that federal subsidies could cut the cost of bringing a new plant on line by as much as half.
The announcement of the Microsoft deal follows an agreement Amazon reached with Talen Energy to purchase power produced by the financially troubled Susquehanna nuclear plant for a planned data center campus in Pennsylvania. That arrangement is running into snags with regulators, as regional utilities express concern that their ratepayers will be saddled with the bill for the power grid updates needed.
Amazon’s plan also raised concerns among clean-energy advocates that tech companies are shifting from driving the transition to clean energy to elbowing others out of it by claiming such large amounts of available clean electricity for themselves.
Dominguez argues that the Three Mile Island case is an example of how Silicon Valley’s outside-the-box thinking will help stabilize the power grid for everyone. The power from the plant will not go directly to Microsoft facilities but into the overtaxed regional power grid that serves 65 million people across 13 states and the District of Columbia, called the PJM Interconnection.
Nuclear power is considered “clean” because unlike burning natural gas or coal to produce electricity, it does not create greenhouse gas emissions. The plants are expensive to build or restart, and industry still has no long-term solution for spent but highly radioactive uranium fuel rods.
“This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft’s efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative,” said a statement from Bobby Hollis, vice president of energy at Microsoft.
Dominguez said other ratepayers on the PJM grid will not be expected to shoulder any of the costs, nor will Constellation be seeking special subsidies fromthe state of Pennsylvania.
Constellation has already been doing extensive testing at Three Mile Island.It says most of its components are ready to operate again. “The plant is in extraordinary shape,” Dominguez said.
Three Mile Island is not the only nuclear plant the industry is eager to revive. The owners of a plant in Western Michigan called Palisades are also working to bring that dormant facility back. That project was approved for a $1.5 billion federal loan guarantee. The plant owner, Holtec, says it hopes to feed nuclear energy from Palisades into the region’s power grid by late next year.
The Palisades effort came about at the urging of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), as her state struggles to both meet its climate goals and generate adequate energy. The plant was destined for permanent closure when Holtec acquired it in 2022. The company had planned to decommission the facility but changed course after conversations with the governor.
On Wednesday, though, that plan was dealt a setback when federal nuclear regulators disclosed “a large number of steam generator tubes” could be faulty and need further inspection. Holtec said the finding does not alter its plans. But some nuclear safety advocates argue the company’s push to quickly reopen the plant puts the public at risk.
The huge cost and regulatory headaches associated with nuclear power are not deterring the tech industry from betting on it. In a remarkable turn of fortune for an industry that just a few years ago was struggling to stay competitive and focused mostly on closing plants, it now finds itself in expansion mode. Beyond seeking contracts for power from existing plants, tech companies are also bullish on next generation nuclear technologies.
Several are investigating the potential of locating their facilities near small modular nuclear reactors that could feed them power directly. Such technology is in its infancy and has not yet been approved by regulators. That isn’t stopping a company chaired by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates from doubling down on it. The firm, called Terra Power, this year began construction at what it plans to be a small reactor site in site in Wyoming.
Microsoft is also pursuing power from nuclear fusion, a potentially abundant, cheap and clean form of electricity that scientists have been trying to develop for decades — and most say is still a decade or more away from generating electricity. Microsoft has signed a contract to purchase fusion energy from a start-up that claims it can deliver it by 2028.
correction
A previous version of this article misspelled the last name of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The article has been corrected.
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mariacallous · 5 months ago
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In the old ranchlands of South Texas, dormant uranium mines are coming back online. A collection of new ones hope to start production soon, extracting radioactive fuel from the region’s shallow aquifers. Many more may follow.
These mines are the leading edge of what government and industry leaders in Texas hope will be a nuclear renaissance, as America’s latent nuclear sector begins to stir again.
Texas is currently developing a host of high-tech industries that require enormous amounts of electricity, from cryptocurrency mines and artificial intelligence to hydrogen production and seawater desalination. Now, powerful interests in the state are pushing to power it with next-generation nuclear reactors.
“We can make Texas the nuclear capital of the world,” said Reed Clay, president of the Texas Nuclear Alliance, former chief operating officer for Texas governor Greg Abbott’s office and former senior counsel to the Texas Office of the Attorney General. “There’s a huge opportunity.”
Clay owns a lobbying firm with heavyweight clients that include SpaceX, Dow Chemical, and the Texas Blockchain Council, among many others. He launched the Texas Nuclear Alliance in 2022 and formed the Texas Nuclear Caucus during the 2023 state legislative session to advance bills supportive of the nuclear industry.
The efforts come amid a national resurgence of interest in nuclear power, which can provide large amounts of energy without the carbon emissions that warm the planet. And it can do so with reliable consistency that wind and solar power generation lack. But it carries a small risk of catastrophic failure and requires uranium from mines that can threaten rural aquifers.
In South Texas, groundwater management officials have fought for almost 15 years against a planned uranium mine. Administrative law judges have ruled in their favor twice, finding potential for groundwater contamination. But in both cases those judges were overruled by the state’s main environmental regulator, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Now local leaders fear mining at the site appears poised to begin soon as momentum gathers behind America’s nuclear resurgence.
In October, Google announced the purchase of six small nuclear reactors to power its data centers by 2035. Amazon did the same shortly thereafter, and Microsoft has said it will pay to restart the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania to power its facilities. Last month, President Joe Biden announced a goal to triple US nuclear capacity by 2050. American companies are racing to license and manufacture new models of nuclear reactors.
“It’s kind of an unprecedented time in nuclear,” said James Walker, a nuclear physicist and cofounder of New York-based NANO Nuclear Energy, a startup developing small-scale “microreactors” for commercial deployment around 2031.
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The industry’s reemergence stems from two main causes, he said: towering tech industry energy demands and the war in Ukraine.
Previously, the US relied on enriched uranium from decommissioned Russian weapons to fuel its existing power plants and military vessels. When war interrupted that supply in 2022, American authorities urgently began to rekindle domestic uranium mining and enrichment.
“The Department of Energy at the moment is trying to build back a lot of the infrastructure that atrophied,” Walker said. “A lot of those uranium deposits in Texas have become very economical, which means a lot of investment will go back into those sites.”
In May, the White House created a working group to develop guidelines for deployment of new nuclear power projects. In June, the Department of Energy announced $900 million in funding for small, next-generation reactors. And in September it announced a $1.5 billion loan to restart a nuclear power plant in Michigan, which it called “a first-of-a-kind effort.”
“There’s an urgent desire to find zero-carbon energy sources that aren’t intermittent like renewables,” said Colin Leyden, Texas state director of the Environmental Defense Fund. “There aren’t a lot of options, and nuclear is one.”
Wind and solar will remain the cheapest energy sources, Leyden said, and a build-out of nuclear power would likely accelerate the retirement of coal plants.
The US hasn’t built a nuclear reactor in 30 years, spooked by a handful of disasters. In contrast, China has grown its nuclear power generation capacity almost 900 percent in the last 20 years, according to the World Nuclear Association, and currently has 30 reactors under construction.
Last year, Abbott ordered the state’s Public Utility Commission to produce a report “outlining how Texas will become the national leader in using advanced nuclear energy.” According to the report, which was issued in November, new nuclear reactors would most likely be built in ports and industrial complexes to power large industrial operations and enable further expansion.
“The Ports and their associated industries, like Liquified Natural Gas (LNG), carbon capture facilities, hydrogen facilities and cruise terminals, need additional generation sources,” the report said. Advanced nuclear reactors “offer Texas’ Ports a unique opportunity to enable continued growth.”
In the Permian Basin, the report said, reactors could power oil production as well as purification of oilfield wastewater “for useful purposes.” Or they could power clusters of data centers in Central and North Texas.
Already, Dow Chemical has announced plans to install four small reactors at its Seadrift plastics and chemical plant on a rural stretch of the middle Texas coast, which it calls the first grid-scale nuclear reactor for an industrial site in North America.
“I think the vast majority of these nuclear power plants are going to be for things like industrial use,” said Cyrus Reed, a longtime environmental lobbyist in the Texas Capitol and conservation director for the state’s Sierra Club chapter. “A lot of large industries have corporate goals of being low carbon or no carbon, so this could fill in a niche for them.”
The PUC report made seven recommendations for the creation of public entities, programs, and funds to support the development of a Texas nuclear industry. During next year’s state legislative session, legislators in the Nuclear Caucus will seek to make them law.
“It’s going to be a great opportunity for energy investment in Texas,” said Stephen Perkins, Texas-based chief operating officer of the American Conservation Coalition, a conservative environmental policy group. “We’re really going to be pushing hard for [state legislators] to take that seriously.”
However, Texas won’t likely see its first new commercial reactor come online for at least five years. Before a build-out of power plants, there will be a boom at the uranium mines, as the US seeks to reestablish domestic production and enrichment of uranium for nuclear fuel.
Texas Uranium
Ted Long, a former commissioner of Goliad County, can see the power lines of an inactive uranium mine from his porch on an old family ranch in the rolling golden savannah of South Texas. For years the mine has been idle, waiting for depressed uranium markets to pick up.
There, an international mining company called Uranium Energy Corp. plans to mine 420 acres of the Evangeline Aquifer between depths of 45 and 404 feet, according to permitting documents. Long, a dealer of engine lubricants, gets his water from a well 120 feet deep that was drilled in 1993. He lives with his wife on property that’s been in her family since her great-grandfather emigrated from Germany.
“I’m worried for groundwater on this whole Gulf Coast,” Long said. “This isn’t the only place they’re wanting to do this.”
As a public official, Long fought the neighboring mine for years. But he found the process of engaging with Texas’ environmental regulator, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, to be time-consuming, expensive, and ultimately fruitless. Eventually, he concluded there was no point.
“There’s nothing I can do,” he said. “I guess I’ll have to look for some kind of system to clean the water up.”
The Goliad mine is the smallest of five sites in South Texas held by UEC, which is based in Corpus Christi. Another company, enCore Energy, started uranium production at two South Texas sites in 2023 and 2024, and hopes to bring four more online by 2027.
Uranium mining goes back decades in South Texas, but lately it’s been dormant. Between the 1970s and 1990s, a cluster of open pit mines harvested shallow uranium deposits at the surface. Many of those sites left a legacy of aquifer pollution.
TCEQ records show active cases of groundwater contaminated with uranium, radium, arsenic, and other pollutants from defunct uranium mines and tailing impoundment sites in Live Oak County at ExxonMobil’s Ray Point site, in Karnes County at Conoco-Phillips’ Conquista Project, and at Rio Grande Resources’ Panna Maria Uranium Recovery Facility.
All known shallow deposits of uranium in Texas have been mined. The deeper deposits aren’t accessed by traditional surface mining, but rather a process called in-situ mining, in which solvents are pumped underground into uranium-bearing aquifer formations. Adjacent wells suck back up the resulting slurry, from which uranium dust will be extracted.
Industry describes in-situ mining as safer and more environmentally friendly than surface mining. But some South Texas water managers and landowners are concerned.
”We’re talking about mining at the same elevation as people get their groundwater,” said Terrell Graham, a board member of the Goliad County Groundwater Conservation District, which has been fighting a proposed uranium mine for almost 15 years. “There isn’t another source of water for these residents.”
“It Was Rigged, a Setup”
On two occasions, the district has participated in lengthy hearings and won favorable rulings in Texas’ administrative courts supporting concerns over the safety of the permits. But both times, political appointees at the TCEQ rejected judges’ recommendations and issued the permits anyway.
“We’ve won two administrative proceedings,” Graham said. “It’s very expensive, and to have the TCEQ commissioners just overturn the decision seems nonsensical.”
The first time was in 2010. UEC was seeking initial permits for the Goliad mine, and the groundwater conservation district filed a technical challenge claiming that permits risked contamination of nearby aquifers.
The district hired lawyers and geological experts for a three-day hearing on the permit in Austin. Afterwards, an administrative law judge agreed with some of the district’s concerns. In a 147-page opinion issued in September 2010, an administrative law judge recommended further geological testing to determine whether certain underground faults could transmit fluids from the mining site into nearby drinking water sources.
“If the Commission determines that such remand is not feasible or desirable then the ALJ recommends that the Mine Application and the PAA-1 Application be denied,” the opinion said.
But the commissioners declined the judge’s recommendation. In an order issued March 2011, they determined that the proposed permits “impose terms and conditions reasonably necessary to protect fresh water from pollution.”
“The Commission determines that no remand is necessary,” the order said.
The TCEQ issued UEC’s permits, valid for 10 years. But by that time, a collapse in uranium prices had brought the sector to a standstill, so mining never commenced.
In 2021, the permits came up for renewal, and locals filed challenges again. But again, the same thing happened.
A nearby landowner named David Michaelsen organized a group of neighbors to hire a lawyer and challenge UEC’s permit to inject the radioactive waste product from its mine more than half a mile underground for permanent disposal.
“It’s not like I’m against industry or anything, but I don’t think this is a very safe spot,” said Michaelsen, former chief engineer at the Port of Corpus Christi, a heavy industrial hub on the South Texas Coast. He bought his 56 acres in Goliad County in 2018 to build an upscale ranch house and retire with his wife.
In hearings before an administrative law judge, he presented evidence showing that nearby faults and old oil well shafts posed a risk for the injected waste to travel into potable groundwater layers near the surface.
In a 103-page opinion issued April 2024, an administrative law judge agreed with many of Michaelsen’s challenges, including that “site-specific evidence here shows the potential for fluid movement from the injection zone.”
“The draft permit does not comply with applicable statutory and regulatory requirements,” wrote the administrative law judge, Katerina DeAngelo, a former assistant attorney general of Texas in the environmental protection division. She recommended “closer inspection of the local geology, more precise calculations of the [cone of influence], and a better assessment of the faults.”
Michaelsen thought he had won. But when the TCEQ commissioners took up the question several months later, again they rejected all of the judge’s findings.
In a 19-page order issued in September, the commission concluded that “faults within 2.5 miles of its proposed disposal wells are not sufficiently transmissive or vertically extensive to allow migration of hazardous constituents out of the injection zone.” The old nearby oil wells, the commission found, “are likely adequately plugged and will not provide a pathway for fluid movement.”
“UEC demonstrated the proposed disposal wells will prevent movement of fluids that would result in pollution” of an underground source of drinking water, said the order granting the injection disposal permits.
“I felt like it was rigged, a setup,” said Michaelsen, holding his 4-inch-thick binder of research and records from the case. “It was a canned decision.”
Another set of permit renewals remains before the Goliad mine can begin operation, and local authorities are fighting it too. In August, the Goliad County Commissioners Court passed a resolution against uranium mining in the county. The groundwater district is seeking to challenge the permits again in administrative court. And in November, the district sued TCEQ in Travis County District Court seeking to reverse the agency’s permit approvals.
Because of the lawsuit, a TCEQ spokesperson declined to answer questions about the Goliad County mine site, saying the agency doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
A final set of permits remains to be renewed before the mine can begin production. However, after years of frustrations, district leaders aren’t optimistic about their ability to influence the decision.
Only about 40 residences immediately surround the site of the Goliad mine, according to Art Dohmann, vice president of the Goliad County Groundwater Conservation District. Only they might be affected in the near term. But Dohmann, who has served on the groundwater district board for 23 years, worries that the uranium, radium, and arsenic churned up in the mining process will drift from the site as years go by.
“The groundwater moves. It’s a slow rate, but once that arsenic is liberated, it’s there forever,” Dohmann said. “In a generation, it’s going to affect the downstream areas.”
UEC did not respond to a request for comment.
Currently, the TCEQ is evaluating possibilities for expanding and incentivizing further uranium production in Texas. It’s following instruction given last year, when lawmakers with the Nuclear Caucus added an item to TCEQ’s biannual budget ordering a study of uranium resources to be produced for state lawmakers by December 2024, ahead of next year’s legislative session.
According to the budget item, “The report must include recommendations for legislative or regulatory changes and potential economic incentive programs to support the uranium mining industry in this state.”
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rjzimmerman · 7 months ago
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Excerpt from this story from CNN:
Britain’s last coal-fired power plant will close on Monday, ending 142 years of coal-generated electricity in the nation that sparked the Industrial Revolution.
The Ratcliffe-on-Soar station in central England is to finish its final shift at midnight, after more than half a century of turning coal into power. Owner Uniper says many of the 170 remaining employees will stay on during a two-year decommissioning process.
The UK government hailed the closure as a milestone in efforts to generate all of Britain’s energy from renewable sources by 2030. The shutdown makes Britain the first country from the Group of Seven major economies to phase out coal — though some other European nations, including Sweden and Belgium, got there sooner.
In 1990 coal provided about 80% of Britain’s electricity. By 2012 it had fallen to 39%, and by 2023 it stood at just 1%, according to figures from the National Grid. More than half of Britain’s electricity now comes from renewable sources such as wind and solar power, and the rest from natural gas and nuclear energy.
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darkspine10 · 1 year ago
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GF Fanfic - Critical Meltdown
Dipper and Mabel Vs. The Past (40,456 words) by darkspine10
Chapters: 8/9
Fandom: Gravity Falls
Rating: Teen and Up
Surrounded by a giant field of solar panels glistening in the evening sun stood a pair of conical grey towers. Out here in the desert they seemed a resolute fixture of the landscape. Pacifica wondered how long they would last. If humanity vanished tomorrow, how many centuries would pass before those circular towers crumbled into dust? How much longer still might the elements within, hidden in the core deep below, linger on as a persistent danger.
She read the name on the signs, ‘Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Plant’. It seemed a remote spot, nearly 2 hours drive out from Piedmont and miles from the city centre. An odd place to end this. Rusting sirens stood on poles. They would be silent if anything dangerous happened.
She heard the screech of tires and saw the Mini pull up to the plant. Her husband practically fell out of the car, followed by Mabel, Zera, and his father.
Dipper looked immensely worn out. Making the round trip to pick up the others was the cherry on the cake of a very long day. He wasn’t the only one. Zera was wiped out from all the spellcasting and running around too.
Mabel seemed as peppy as ever though, bounding over to her mother and Merrise with a spring in her step. “Heya guys, how’ve you been? We went to the zoo!”
Merrise bounced on the spot. “Ooh, we went to this science museum place, and fought a dinosaur, and now I’ve got a toy dinosaur!”
“That’s great kiddo!” She turned to Pacifica, suddenly dropping her exuberance. “Any sign of tulpa number 3?”
“Not from out here. I haven’t stepped inside yet.” Pacifica lowered her voice to a whisper. “I don’t want Merrise going anywhere near a radioactive building.”
“You don’t have to worry about radiation,” Dipper said loudly, making it impossible for anyone not to hear. So much for sensitivity. “This place was decommissioned 50 years ago. The only active nuclear plant in the whole state is Diablo Canyon, south of the city.”
“So how’d you find this place?” Mabel asked, turning her head to look around and doing a 360 degree spin in the process. “There are no news crews anywhere. No anyone, in fact.”
“That’s where there might be a problem.” Dipper turned on his energy scanner. A large green pulse was flashing brightly on the map. Its location corresponded to where they were currently standing. “It’s possible the tulpa here is leeching power from some latent potential energy remaining in the core. Or maybe doing something with contaminated waste. Either way it’s not good. The tulpa could use the energy to manifest as something even more powerful than what we’ve witnessed so far.”
“They already did a convincing T-Rex,” Pacifica said, unimpressed. “How much bigger can you get?”
“I’m talking universal level threat.” He mimed an explosion by expanding his hands out in a wide area. “Something that won’t merely terrorise the city, but could destroy it instead!”
“Oh, so no pressure then,” Mrs Pines said. “I suppose the seven of us are going to walk right inside and save the world?”
“That sounds like the Pines MO,” Zera said. She was still slumped in the back of the car with her eyes half-lidded.
“I suppose, if no-one else is going to do it… it falls to us.” Mr Pines unexpectedly led the way towards the facility, with the others, besides Zera, following in lockstep. She stayed where she was to nurse her head, making a half-hearted thumbs up.
As nuclear plants go, the site was modest. Besides the two cooling towers there was a small main building, consisting of a bunch of functional square units with a squat cylindrical tower attached, resembling a grain silo. Behind was an electrical substation and pylons trailing off to the horizon. Over to their left, a row of storage unit sheds containing used fuel rods. A sign saying ‘trespassers are prohibited’ did nothing to stop them. As the sun went down, electric lamp posts automatically switched on, bathing them in a harsh artificial glare.
“A nuclear plant after dark, what a place for a mystery hunt,” Dipper said, his voice echoing slightly.
“Reminds me of that derelict hydro dam we went to once,” Mabel said. “There’s something eerie about a place that used to give power now sitting lifeless.”
“Don’t get poetic on us, May,” Pacifica said. “You can rhapsodise all about this place when we’re cosy and warm at home, sipping hot chocolate and unwrapping presents.” She shook her head. “What are our lives like? I mean, of all the places…”
Dipper pointed over the plains to the south. “There were actually some cryptid sightings near here once. There’s a lake and a park over there. People said they saw a ‘raptor’ flying above.”
“I remember that,” Mabel said, snapping her fingers. “We camped out by the lakeside and staked it out. Back in ‘21.” She poked her brother in the side. “You got bitten by sooooo many mosquitos that night.”
“That wasn’t long before the wedding,” Pacifica said, lost in thought. “Then we moved away from Mabel a short while after.”
“Dark days,” Dipper said jokily. “We never did find any raptor. At least this time our outing won’t be wasted. We know for a fact that the tulpa is here at the plant.”
“Dad, what is a nuclear power plant anyway?” Merrise asked, neck straining to look up at the cooling towers. Red LED lights shone around the rims of each, making them seem like the bastion of an evil fortress.
Mr Pines was the one to explain, glad to be able to provide something from his wheelhouse. “It uses the splitting of high-mass elements to generate heat, which causes water to turn into steam and rotate a turbine to produce electricity. Like… a really big water wheel, essentially.”
“Cool,” Merrise said. Though she didn’t always get overly excited by science topics, she still had a voracious desire to understand more about how the natural world worked.
“This one isn’t doing anything though,” Mabel said, scoffing. “They should have never built it in the first place.”
“Oh yeah, cause it’s so totally dangerous to the environment.” Dipper rolled his eyes.
“Well it is!”
“Only if you buy into the anti-nuclear propaganda”
“You’ll be the one regretting it if a place like this melts down and makes half of California unlivable.”
“Just so long as you admit that you’re encouraging a return to fossil fuels if you bash nuclear!”
“Can you two shut up for a second?” Pacifica hissed. “Debate later, when the city isn’t at risk.”
Merrise raised an eyebrow at the twins. “I thought you two were meant to have some super special, epic sibling bond or something like that?”
“Oh, we do,” Mabel said. “Sibling relationships are just like this. It’s not always sunshine and roses. What, you think we never argue? Never want to have our side heard?”
“I believe it,” Pacifica said, “I’ve got two decades of first hand experience of you two bickering.”
“I’ve got three,” Mrs Pines gleefully added.
“The point is,” Mabel said, returning to her niece, “is that we may disagree and have differing views… but we’re still family. We still love each other, no matter how much we drive each other up the wall. I keep forgetting, none of you guys ever had any siblings. Even Z, who had a crazy amount of tadpole siblings, doesn’t count.”
“It’s like having a ‘default friend’,” Dipper said. “We’re so close, but we also know exactly how to drive each other mad. We share a bunch of family in-jokes and memories that’s hard for anyone else to appreciate, even with you, Paz.”
Merrise thought for a moment. “I guess then we’ll have to act like a family now. So we can all know what that’s like. Like you said before. Family traditions can start whenever we want to make some.”
Dipper smiled, proud of his daughter’s initiative and desire to heal their fractious family make-up one way or another. He glanced at his parents, walking ahead along the silent alley. He resolved to reconcile with them as soon as possible, so they could put the whole sorry lying business in the past for good.
To no-one’s surprise the doors to the reactor building were locked. A metal chain and padlock were slung across. Mr Pines pushed it to no avail. “Oh well, guess we’ll have to go home. He gave a weak laugh that nobody else reciprocated and it died in his throat. “Worth a shot.”
“Step back everyone, I’ve got this.” Mabel smugly pushed through to examine the doors. She squinted and focused with her glasses, before standing up and wiping her hands. “Oh, this’ll be easy. I won’t even have to pick the lock.” From her jacket pocket she removed a pair of wire clippers and snipped the rusting chain. The padlock clanked to the ground. “Voila!”
“I’m constantly amazed by the stuff you happen to be carrying,” Pacifica said, shaking her head.
“I always carry wire clippers with me. Usually bolt cutters and a couple of spray cans too.” Mabel shrugged. “Never know when you have to do an impromptu bit of political activism.” She pushed the double doors open and peered into the dark gloom.
Dipper switched on his flashlight and entered the reception area. There was a smell of dry must, as well as a clinical antiseptic scent. They’d probably sprayed the whole place down to reduce any chance of leakage or waste. His scanner showed the same bright pulse, but it was once again poor at giving him the fine detail needed to pin down the tulpa. He turned off the tracking feature and extended twin aerials on either side of the boxy device. It instantly started making a constant clicking noise. “Geiger counter reading is looking alright, only a little above background. Even though this place isn’t too big I think we should stick together for now. That way we won’t accidentally go anywhere with higher risk levels.”
“And you’re still sure Merrise should be in here?” Mrs Pines asked. “Might it be worth her going back to wait by the car?”
“I don’t want to go.” Merrise said, frowning. “This is a family adventure.”
“I’m being conscious of your wellbeing, my dear. It’s not even something out of the ordinary. Radiation poisoning is no laughing matter.”
“She knows the risks,” Dipper said absent-mindedly. “It’s dangerous, but if Pacifica and I are willing to stick our necks out then nothing we say can stop Merrise tagging along. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
“I suppose child endangerment is what you’re used to,” she said sharply. “You said it yourself, you started out so young.”
“That’s… that’s not important right now,” he mumbled. Resting his flashlight in the crook of his neck he shone it down at Journal 9 while he sketched a rough layout of the facility. “Ok, there’s the parking lot, cooling towers over here.” He drew two circles off to the right side. “Main entrance here, reactor core should be… there.” In an empty space at the middle of his drawing he marked a cross.
“Seems the most likely spot,” Mabel said. “Let’s go
“Then we have to deal with that Errata guy,” Pacifica added, a sour look on her face. It had already been a long enough day and she didn’t relish the idea of dealing with yet another cryptid on the loose.
The group passed through a series of functional grey corridors, only briefly shining their lights into side rooms and moving on. Dipper kept adding to his map, drawing more lines at every junction they went by. At the next turn he abruptly went left. They entered a large control room, with banks of dusty computers along the walls and ranks of freestanding consoles. A window running the length of the far wall looked down onto the reactor core itself. Walkways crisscrossed a large hall with empty circular pits.
“Most of the components were stripped out ages ago,” Dipper said. “The power generating equipment was all removed, the control rods, and the turbines. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission made sure to clean it all too, before you ask, Mabel, so in theory it should be safe.” His geiger counter was still ticking away at the same rate.
“Hmm, I’m still not convinced,” Mabel said, peering through the window. Given her poor eyesight she wasn’t able to make out much. “There must be something, or else why would the tulpa come here?”
“Fair point.” Dipper shone his light down into the reactor area but it barely made a dent in the enclosed darkness. “It makes you sad, doesn’t it? This place used to harness the power of the atom to create incredible amounts of power. Now it’s a husk.”
“Doesn’t make me sad,” Pacifica said. “It’s just a grimy industrial hole in the ground and I’d rather we don’t stick around chatting all evening and got the hell out of here.”
“Right right, let’s stay on mission.” He laid out his journal on the nearest desk and the others huddled around to look. Dipper’s finger slid along the page. “There are two passageways that lead down there, one on each side of the complex leading from this control centre. I recommend we break into two groups and meet again in the middle. Since the core’s likely the most likely place for the tulpa to be hiding, and also probably has the highest chance of radiation. I'm going to take a page out of your book, Mom. Merrise, I want you to stay up here, and before you argue,” she’d already opened her mouth to complain, “you can still help. From here you can watch everything that goes on down there and warn us if there’s trouble. The lights outside had electricity, so there should be an intercom.”
He hurried around the consoles, but his father found the microphone first. He clicked the button and they heard a quiet feedback sound from the main chamber.
“Good good,” Dipper said. “Now, Pacifica, I know you’ll hate me for this, but I want you to stay up here and look after Merrise.”
“What, and play babysitter while you go down there?”
“If my hunch about the core is wrong then we need someone to watch our flank if the tulpa shows up where we aren’t expecting it.” He put his palm on her cheek. “You and Merrise are our backup if something goes wrong.”
Pacifica clutched his hand and kissed it. “When you put it like that… don’t be reckless down there.”
“Hey, you know me. As long as I don’t eat any uranium rods I’m sure I’ll be fine.” He flashed a crooked grin and she giggled.
“Go on, get out of here and finish this.”
“I’ll go with Mom down the right corridor,” Mabel said. “You take Dad a go around the other way.”
Dipper nodded and both he and his sister strode out of the room. Mr and Mrs Pines shared an uneasy look before following their respective children out. “Relax,” Pacifica called after them. “It’s only a monster that can turn into any other monster in the multiverse, sitting on top of what could turn into a ginormous ticking time bomb. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Ignore her,” Dipper said to his dad. “She’s trying to lighten the mood the way only Pacifica can.”
“You can sure pick ‘em,” Mr Pines replied.
They were only a few feet down the corridor when the air was split by an ear-piercing shriek. “Pacifica!” Dipper cried. “Dad, stay here.” He immediately bolted back down the corridor. When he got back to the control room he bumped into Mabel who’d had the same idea. They found Pacifica cowering in the corner, while Merrise was in hysterics. She pointed to the corner of the room, where a mass of cobwebs were tangled up. “I walked right into it!” Pacifica said, stamping her feet.
Mabel dropped down onto her front and watched a spider scuttling along the floor. “Aw, poor cutie.” She held out her finger and let the arachnid crawl over her fingers. “That tickles.” She set the spider down over by the webs and let it wander off. “You were scared of that tiny thing, Paz?”
“I wasn’t expecting it ok! It got in my hair! It’s not mutated is it?”
“Nope. Looks perfectly average. The girl who’s fought demons one-on-one can’t handle a small bug. Wow.”
Dipper coughed into his fist, “Moth.”
Mabel screamed and leapt to her feet. “WHERE? KILL IT!” The look of amusement on everyone’s faces made her straighten. “Uh, I mean. Wooh. Crazy.” She cupped her hands together then pointed down the corridor. “Let’s… let’s keep going.”
“Wait!” They turned to Merrise, face and palms right up against the glass. Down in the reactor room Mr and Mrs Pines each emerged from either side.
“They went on without us,” Mabel said, furrowing her brow.
“That’s why!” Merrise pointed but they’d all seen it. Following Mr and Mrs Pines into the room were two shimmering golden humanoids. They were short, only children. Dipper was confused. Where were the terrifying enemies, the cosmic entities hellbent on destruction that the tulpa would surely have turned into?
The two tulpas had taken the shape of a boy and a girl. The boy had a baseball cap and wore a sleeveless vest and shorts, while the girl’s colourful woollen sweater was hard to miss. Dipper had been wrong. The tulpa didn’t want the energy in this place to turn into something powerful. It needed the vast sums of energy to create another emotional connection, similar to his own repressed internal turmoil at the golf course. The tulpa had turned into perfect replicas of the Pines twins, circa 2012.
Zera’s eyes flipped open. She’d managed to drift off peacefully in the car. The lights from the plant hadn’t reached her and it was perfectly pitch black in the desert. Or it had been. A bright light made her cover her eyes and sit up. The glare was covering the entire plant and its surroundings in a diffuse halo. It wasn’t a golden illumination, as the tulpas and their creator had been. It was a harsher, lifeless light, like the glow of a distant forest fire over the horizon. An unholy aura.
Zera didn’t know what was causing the sudden luminance, but she knew it couldn’t be a good sign. She was worried it was radioactive in some way. That was silly though. Radiation didn’t actually glow like in a cartoon. It was an invisible, insidious killer. This must be related to the tulpas.
A dark shape flew past the car and she turned her head to catch it. Her mouth dropped open as she recognised the four-legged, top-heavy monstrosity lurching towards the main reactor building. “Oh May. I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Mary? What are we doing? I’m not so sure this was a good idea.”
“Me neither. But what else are we supposed to do?”
They’d each seen a tulpa manifesting in the hallway, taking on the almost cherubic representations of their children. The children beckoned Mr and Mrs Pines onwards. Since they had no clue how to fight back they’d not demurred, and let the creatures guide them. Once all four of them were in the reactor room, the tulpas stood side-by-side and faced the parents. They each held one hand aloft, casting an ominous light to outshine the feeble flashlights. It enveloped the chamber, blocking all vision from the outside. Since then the tulpa twins had stood lifelessly in the reactor hall, staring vacantly ahead. They were like clockwork automatons waiting for the strike of noon.
Up in the control room, blinded by the glare, Pacifica and Merrise tried desperately to come up with answers. “We’ve gotta do something!” Merrise said, throwing her arms down in frustration. “This is a control room, right? Can’t we do anything from up here? I don’t know, turn off the power, stop the reactor. Control rods, those are a thing, right?”
“That’s just it, there are no controls.” Pacifica slammed a fist on the nearest console, which resounded with an echoing clang. “Like Mason said, all the power regulating machines are already gone. There shouldn’t be anything down there that’s capable of generating energy, let alone allowing us to switch it off!” Even the intercom had proven useless, giving nothing but static. Whatever the tulpas were doing to shine such a bright glow was also blocking radio waves too.
“That light, it hurts to look.” Merrise shielded her eyes with her hand and tapped the glass overlooking the floor below. “This is like bulletproof or something. They’re my grandparents!” Merrise said, on the verge of tears. “We’ve gotta be able to do something.”
“It’s up to the twins now.” Pacifica set her lip in a resolute line, determined not to show any fear in front of her daughter. “Why does it always have to fall on their stupid shoulders?”
That, as a matter of fact, was what Dipper was thinking at that same moment, creeping along the corridor to the reactor. He had no plan, no backup magic artefacts or clever tricks to win the day. He had his journal, his sister, and a fleeting hope his parents weren’t about to be disintegrated in a ball of fiery death.
Mabel ran up to the door to the room where her parents were. She pressed herself against the door, commando style, readying her gauntlet and squaring her shoulders. She nodded to Dipper as if expecting him to match her stance. He simply walked up to the door and shoved it open. Forget surprise; the tulpas must know they were coming.
He thought it would be burning hot inside but found all heat was being leached from the air. As they passed through the blazing nimbus of light the twins’ eyes adjusted quickly. It was like being underwater, the light speckling in bands which caught dust beams suspended in the air. “Mom, Dad!” Mabel yelled.
The tulpas and their parents were in the heart of the power plant, the eye of the storm where the light dimmed to acceptable levels to stare without squinting. Mr and Mrs Pines didn’t seem aware of the real twins outside the core, and hadn’t heard Mabel’s calls.
“Finally.” The multi-faceted voice ricocheted into the twins’ ears. The doors leading to the opposite corridor exploded off their hinges. The twins ducked. Swooping in was the enormous four-legged chimaera they’d last seen downtown. He was flying via a pair of wings that had sprouted out of the bark on his back. Each flapping wing was made of a tight coil of paper strands, brown and weathered, covered in scrawl from multiple writers.
Errata hovered above the tulpas and then set himself gently behind them. He held out his arms as if beckoning Mr and Mrs Pines forwards, like an evangelical preacher welcoming his flock. “Oh, that is good!” He primarily sounded like Dipper now, blocking out most of the other voices vying for dominance in the beast’s throat. “One happy family, back together. Isn’t that how it should be?”
Mabel ran towards her parents but came up against the wall of light. She pushed against the translucent barrier, finding herself repelled. “Don’t hurt them! Dipper, do something!”
“I- I don’t know what to do.” From out here the tableau within looked as still as the surface of an undisturbed lake. Neither the fantastical creatures or his parents were moving in the slightest. He reached out with his fingers and brushed the edge of the light core. To his astonishment they passed through the outer barrier.
Mabel watched him intently, then patted her brother on the back. “Dipper, it has to be you!”
“What, why me? You’re a part of this too, we both lied.”
“It’s not about that anymore. Dipper, don’t you get it? Errata, he’s a reflection of you more than anyone else. Think about it. Ford started the journals, sure, but you’ve written the most! You made them your entire life, devoted yourself to mysteries and adventures. You can break through. I believe in you, bro.” She hugged Dipper, then gently guided him towards the core.
As he’d anticipated, he passed through without resistance. The light parted like a curtain to let him approach. “Plus it was your decision to lie in the first place!” Mabel shoved Dipper the rest of the way through the light barrier. “You got this Dip! No backsies!”
“Hey, Mabel! Not fair!” He stumbled and nearly fell over until he righted his sense of balance. He looked forward and swallowed hard. “Oh crap.” The tulpas and his parents had turned to look at him with unanimous blank expressions. Dipper almost felt like laughing when he saw the copies of himself and Mabel up close. Him with his hat down firmly over his forehead, still mired in embarrassment about the birthmark that nowadays he considered nothing more than a fun quirk. Mabel’s purple sweater with a doofy cat wasn’t so different from something she’d still wear, but Dipper recognised the specificity. Both twins looked exactly as they had on the day Dipper had found Journal 3 in the woods. They were unchanged, a snapshot of innocence from that warm summer’s day 17 years ago.
His first thoughts were on practical matters. Ignoring his parents he fixed his glare on Errata’s starry face. The chimaera seemed to be smiling, though as always it was hard to discern. “First things first,” Dipper said. “I want to know how you harnessed the radiation. I’ve no idea where it’s coming from, but I demand you stop. Every second I spend bantering with you we’re all getting irradiated. I’d prefer if my parents didn’t end up mutated. Plus Pacifica and I have already dealt with enough infertility issues to last a lifetime, thank you very much.”
Dipper thought irreverence would be the easiest way to project his authority. Errata didn’t care. He gave a small grunt and shrug of the head that Dipper took to be a laugh. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.” Dipper frowned at the perceived insult, both to him and the rest of his family. “There is no radiation.”
Dipper’s jaw dropped open. “But how-“
“Easy. I fed off the symbolic energy of this building.” Errata swept his hands around the room. A faint ectoplasmic glow appeared to hover off the walls before fading. “After you dealt so efficiently with the chaos I’d sown across the city, I was ready to embrace the lurking power. This place is practically drowning in…” Errata sniffed, “significance. All those technicians working here, they couldn’t help but express the way the world thought about it. The totemic fear, cracking the atom, the scientist’s dream of ultimate power. Of course it seeped into the very foundations of the brickwork! Then when it was abandoned it grew to an even greater significance. An enduring relic of man’s folly, of a path science went down before being treated as a dead end. I couldn’t resist the ritual of it all.”
“And now your tulpas are done harvesting all the energy up.”
“Not quite, you still have something of mine.”
Dipper felt in his pocket and found the two tulpas they’d caught, still locked in the form of the amulet and key. Seeing no other option, he held the objects out for Errata to take. He passed one each to the twins’ tulpas, handing the amulet to Mabel and the key to Dipper. It was then that the real Dipper realised the significance of the items. They’d managed to collect each others’ items, but it didn’t matter. These were in fact the very first artefacts the twins had acquired on their adventures, even if only temporarily in the amulet’s case. Dipper even still had the real President’s Key, framed back home.
Dipper slapped his forehead. “I should’ve realised sooner. You’re empathic. I’ve met a few empaths before. All those complicated foreign emotions swirling around must be enough to drive you mad.”
“Very nearly, boy. But I like the aftertaste of discord, the bitter swill of recriminations, smothered sentiment and… regret. Oh, how it feeds me. I was born in the crucible of lies and now it nourishes my soul!”
Dipper stood his ground and scowled. “Don’t think you can scare me. I’ve faced all kinds of psychic assaults. Dream demons who think they know me, regression to past events, I’ve seen it all. I’m not afraid of you.”
“Oh, I don’t want your fear, at least not this tawdry primal stew.” The chimaera’s paper wings swept down to surround Dipper’s parents, who remained oddly unresponsive. “No no no, not the shakiness of terror, the risk of physical hurt, even the potential harm to your loved ones. It’s all part of the game to you. The fear I want is much richer. It’s the fear that people could find out your secret: that you get off on all this.”
Dipper began to sweat and dropped his prepared stance. “You’re wrong.”
“Am I?” Errata snapped his finger, bringing Mr and Mrs Pines back to life.
“Dipper? What’s going on, where are-” Mr Pines gazed up to see Errata towering above him.
“Hi there,” Errata said wickedly. Pacifica’s tone of voice had floated to the top of the pile.“You’re a sick, dirty little addict. Mason ‘Dipper’ ’Ursus’ Pines. You and your sister, sneaking out at night, skipping school, repressing everything. How scrumptious it will be when those emotions come pouring out!”
Mrs Pines began to whimper. “He’s trying to make things worse, don’t listen to him.” Dipper’s parents tried to run free, but the wings kept them surrounded in a cruel embrace.
“Stop it!” he yelled, pushing forwards.
“Not yet.” Errata held out a single one of his six fingers and held Dipper back by the forehead. “Let’s have more of that juicy turmoil hidden behind your astronomical ego. Get the pun?” Dipper shoved the finger away from his birthmark but Errata had another trick up his sleeve.
“Boy, I can’t believe we defeated all those gnomes!” The tulpa of Mabel had spoken, and Dipper knew it was his reflection’s turn next.
“Who knows what other secrets are waiting to be unlocked thanks to this journal!” The copy sounded so eager, so carefree. He was ready to deceive his own parents if it meant there wasn’t even the slimmest chance of losing this new window of opportunity. Both of his parents could see this for themselves, giving disappointed glances at the golden twins, at least when not being intimidated into silence by Errata’s freakish thuggery.
The chimaera himself seemed overwhelmed with pleasure. “Oh, that’s decadent. Who knew one measly human boy could generate such drama.”
“Shut up!” Dipper shouted, surprising Errata. Defiance wasn’t an emotion he’d been expecting. “I’ve had it up to here with your petty taunts! Forget it. I don’t care if my parents don’t approve of my life. I’m an adult, I’ve got a family and responsibilities that I chose, alright. This doesn’t define anything anymore.” Dipper opened Journal 9 and held it for all to see. “Haven’t you got the memo yet, Errata? My parents have all the time in the world now to get to know me and my secrets. You said you were an open book? Well I’ve got dozens of the things lying around at home.” Errata was stunned into silence, and Dipper couldn’t tell if it was from his outburst or the sudden severing of his precious food source.
Dipper looked down from the irrelevant monster and approached his parents. “Yes, Mom, Dad. I lied. I did it because I wanted to have it both ways.” He pointed at his 12-year old self. “I could be ‘Dipper the investigator’, ‘Dipper the cryptid expert’, ‘Dipper the romantic hero’, and still come home and be ‘Mason the ordinary kid’.”
“Oh Dipper.” His mother knelt down and hugged him. “You could have told us and not had to hide any part of yourself.”
“Maybe,” he said, lightly hugging back. “Try telling that to me back then. You might not have understood, even if someone like Ford tried to explain it. There were times that first summer where I thought I couldn’t trust Grunkle Stan, or Mabel, or even my own doppelgangers. The idea of someone who didn’t even know the first thing about magic accepting it off the bat seemed laughable.” He rubbed his neck. “And if we’re being honest, I never really had any friends before that summer. I was a nerd, with freaky forehead acne. Then I found people I could relate to, who lived and breathed weirdness. I didn’t want to lose them as much as the actual adventures.”
Dipper sniffed, and Mr Pines put a supportive hand on his shoulder. “Hey now, we might not get all of this craziness, but we still love you son. None of this can change that. I mean, it’s not like you turned out to be hiding something bad about yourself, is it?”
“Exactly!” His mother was smiling now, almost forgetting where they were. “We never knew you had such a capacity to draw and write, in such detail.”
“Yeah, those tulpa things could only be so accurate if the source material already was, right? Lifelike doesn’t even begin to cover it! Then there’s Mabel, doing all those fancy spells. I never thought my little girl had it in her! Or Zera, she leapt into action to save us, near-strangers. If that isn’t heroic I don’t know what is.”
“And what about little Merrise, who was so brave to endure so much. If you hadn’t told us the truth we’d never know har far you’d all come.”
“And Pacifica, she… did we learn anything new about Pacifica, Mary?”
“I don’t think so.“ His parents laughed. “Well she’s a wonderful person as well, I’m sure she’ll be a great mother to Wendy and Merrise.”
“Thanks,” Dipper said, smiling and holding back tears. “It means a lot, to hear all that from you after so long.”
“C’mon Dipper!” Dipper looked up. Errata was frozen with a pensive expression. The tulpa of Mabel was leading her brother away. “Let’s go find another adventure in Gravity Falls.” The echoes of the twins wandered away, past Errata, before disappearing into the light. A cascade of golden energy flowed into Errata a moment later, but he didn’t react.
“I think I get it now,” he said, with an almost eerie calmness. He stumbled on his hind legs as if drunk. “I thought the potential of that trapped doubt and guilt was all I needed. But this, this cocktail of missed opportunity and exuberant acceptance, a new beginning… It’s a heady mix.”
“It’s an all new flavour of emotion. I like it too,” Dipper said softly. Errata smiled, and for the first time it wasn’t in a mocking way.
His brutish hands were almost graceful as they reached out to a sunbeam, catching falling dust motes in his palm. “Here I was thinking I knew you Dipper Pines. Perhaps I only knew your imprint. All your years jumbled together on the pages of the journals. None of them could quite capture who you are in the present.”
Dipper noticed the mood around them had subtly changed. There was a satisfying warmth in the reactor room, and the light was no longer harsh to the eye. It was a pleasant orange, like the light of a roaring campfire or a homely hearth. Dipper saw his sister waving, back by the entrance. She could tell something positive had taken place.
Errata creaked as he stretched out his trunk neck. “Thank you. For showing me there can be other paths. Perhaps we will meet again, and I can return the favour.” Errata stood in place, but the room began to shake.
Dipper was the first to cotton on to what was about to happen. He took his parents by the hand and backed away from his indirect creation, offering a grin of support before turning to leave.
“What the heck is-” Mabel was cut off as Dipper ran past, adding her hand to the list and dragging her away. Sprinting out, they stopped in the control room for only a second.
“Time to go guys,” Dipper said to Pacifica and Merrise, who looked relieved to see them all unharmed. The quakes became more violent, knocking over desks and computers, which let off a flurry of electrical sparks.
Dipper spared only a single glance down into the reactor. The light was building in intensity again. Errata was blurred and indistinct. Dipper lingered until he became completely obscured, and was the last to run out of the main block after his family. They continued to run until they reached the parking lot. Zera was standing outside the car, mouth agape watching as the entire plant shone like the sun.
A sudden gust of air blew inwards toward the reactor, dimming the light as it went. The Pines family watched in amazement as there was sudden implosion, with all the light focusing into one point at the centre of the plant before shooting upwards like a searchlight’s beam straight up into the night sky. The roof of the reactor room blew outwards, sending concrete walls catapulting away. Amongst the devastation, Dipper smiled when he saw a brief vision of Errata, racing away into the stars up above.
Then it was all over. The light dissipated, the earth was still, and the danger was over. They all let out deep breaths of relief and looked around at each other, celebrating the fact they’d survived together.
“It’s over.” Mrs Pines had spoken. Her gaze was fixed on the sky. “Where-”
“It’s not important,” Dipper said. “He’s nothing anymore. Merely a footnote. What’s really important is the story we write next.” He showed his parents the cover of Journal 9, with the same starry pattern as Errata’s face. It glimmered in the half-light of the moon. Dipper looked expectantly at the two of them. “So? What do you say? Want to add your own touch?”
His parents shared only a short look, before taking Journal 9 and turning it to the latest blank page. Marc and Mary Pines would be the latest in a long line to lend a small part of themselves to the ever expanding tapestry started in Gravity Falls so many years ago.
“Great, world’s saved again,” Zera yawned. “Now can we please go home and get some sleep?”
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cleangreen0 · 21 hours ago
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The Second Life of Solar Panels: Opportunities in Resale and Reuse After Removal
Our team is able to handle everything with ease, no matter if you are upgrading your system or removing it.We help remove solar panels and reuse, reduce, or appropriately recycle them.If you are in search of solar panel disposal and recycling near me, then you are already on the right path. At Green Clean Solar, we give the best solutions that are environmentally friendly and affordable.
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blamebrampton · 2 years ago
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I saw your reblog about nuclear and uh...
Are you a nuclear scientist? I don't really think too much about people's "real" lives on here (I like my anonymity on here). But if you are, um, wow you just got more intimidating.
Heh! I’m not intimidating, I’m the person dogs run up to in the park! Not a nuclear scientist, either, but I’ve been writing on science and tech topics including power tech and policy since the late 1980s, so I’ve spoken to multiple nuclear scientists over the decades as part of that.
The problems with nuclear have always been time/cost to build and safety of running, disposal and decommissioning. In the past, the reliability, comparatively low total greenhouse emissions over the lifetime of the plant (including construction and running) and comparatively low risk made the high cost and long build time worthwhile, because coal, gas and oil kill far more people more regularly and make many more ill.
That’s not to say that arguments about nuclear waste disposal and plants being dangerous are wrong: they’re real problems. But compared to 50,000 coal deaths per annum in the US alone, they’re small problems. And then there’s catastrophic climate change.
However, while nuclear plant designs have become cleverer, cheaper and easier to construct, the speed of improvement in solar and wind has far outstripped it and now renewable power generation costs are the lowest in many markets. Renewables aren’t all sunshine and roses, there are distribution and storage issues and environmental costs for the mining required to build plant, but it does look as though this is the sector that is the future of power generation, on simple market grounds. Anyone telling you it’s not possible is basing their arguments on 1980s’ tech.
In Australia, where I now live, there are some loud political voices who are now calling for nuclear. Ironically, it would have been great if they had built plant here 40 years ago given the geologically stable ground of most of the continent but those same voices were then shrieking against it to protect their coal interests. Never trust an Australian mining billionaire. (Or media billionaire!)
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magpiejay1234 · 2 days ago
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Listening to pylon arguments in England, I feel like the more ideal solution to this would be simply promoting local virtual power plants, and residential solar, than mega wind projects, especially considering how the wind energy production in Europe in 2025 has declined rapidly.
The kind of undiscussed issue here is that after the significant rise of electricity demand for automation, the electricity demand will return to declining rapidly due to massive gains in energy efficiency. So, in the long term, the existing pylons will likely be decommissioned anyway.
This is also particularly funny to see in an outsider perspective, since though average UK consumption is high, this is largely skewed due to public consumption, and consumption by the ultra wealthy. Median household in UK probably consumes less electricity besides their electric cars than continental Europe, so the Green sentiment of simply reducing consumption, while valid, doesn't really impact the majority of the country.
Most of UK's electricity problems come from archaic infrastructure, and archaic management, and lack of utility scale batteries, which is largely due to Thatcher gutting the UK tech industry back in the 1980s (she thought finance, real estate, and North Sea oil would save UK), and current lack of underground electric infrastructure is largely due to Cameron-era NIMBYism, which the Greens unintentionally end up being the successors of.
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thedailydecrypt · 2 days ago
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Bitcoin's Energy Paradox: Villain or Vanguard of the Global Grid?
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For years, Bitcoin mining has been the poster child for energy excess — a ravenous beast chewing through terawatt-hours of power, emitting carbon, and spawning academic doomsday papers faster than it produces blocks. But what if the real story isn’t that simple? What if the next chapter in Bitcoin’s energy saga is not destruction, but disruption — of the best kind?
Recent studies suggest that Bitcoin mining might not only be less environmentally catastrophic than once feared — it could become a catalyst for global energy innovation.
Let’s unpack this.
Yes, Bitcoin Uses a Ton of Energy — That’s the Point
The security of Bitcoin relies on proof-of-work: a decentralized system where miners expend energy to validate transactions and maintain the network’s integrity. This energy-intensive process is precisely what makes it nearly impossible to tamper with Bitcoin’s history. But critics, armed with stats about Bitcoin consuming more electricity than Argentina, have long argued the cost isn’t worth it.
And to be clear — they had a point. In 2022, coal made up over 36% of Bitcoin’s energy mix. Mining operations often drew power from dirty grids. And yes, those gleaming server farms dumped heat into the atmosphere and churned out e-waste by the ton.
But here’s what’s changed.
The Quiet Revolution in Bitcoin Mining
A new report by Cambridge University finds that 52.4% of Bitcoin’s energy now comes from sustainable sources — well above the 50% threshold Elon Musk set in 2021 as a precondition for Tesla to re-enable Bitcoin payments. Wind, hydro, and even nuclear now account for the majority of the network’s power. Coal use? Down from 36.6% to just 8.9% in two years.
That’s not all. Natural gas — often in the form of flared gas that would otherwise be wasted and vented as methane — has become the dominant fossil source. That’s a significant shift, because using flare gas for mining not only generates productive value but also reduces methane emissions, which are over 80 times more potent than CO₂ over a 20-year period.
The report also finds that 86.9% of decommissioned mining hardware is now resold, repurposed, or recycled. E-waste remains a challenge, but it’s increasingly being addressed through market pressure and regulation.
Bitcoin Miners: The Grid’s Secret Weapon?
One of the most surprising findings is Bitcoin’s emerging role as a flexible load — a kind of shock absorber for power grids. In 2023, miners curtailed 888 GWh of electricity usage during peak demand, helping grid operators prevent blackouts and balance loads. Some mining firms are even co-locating with renewable producers to mop up excess solar or wind power that would otherwise go unused.
Think about that. In an energy world plagued by intermittency, Bitcoin mining is starting to act as a programmable demand sink — one that can scale up or down in real time to match energy supply. That’s not a bug. It’s a feature.
And it’s not just theoretical.
In New York, a spa heats its pool with waste heat from a nearby Bitcoin mining rig. In Texas, miners cut power use during winter storms to help stabilize the ERCOT grid. In rural Canada, off-grid hydro plants are coming back online — not to serve homes, but to mine bitcoin.
Bitcoin isn’t just consuming energy. It’s monetizing stranded energy, incentivizing new infrastructure, and subsidizing the green transition.
The Critics Are Still Loud — But Are They Right?
Not everyone is buying this redemption arc.
A recent Harvard-led study blasted Bitcoin for increasing air pollution across U.S. mining sites, claiming millions were exposed to harmful particulate matter. But energy experts like Daniel Batten have called the study “deeply flawed,” accusing it of cherry-picking outdated data and ignoring the shift toward cleaner energy and smarter load management. The Digital Assets Research Institute issued a formal rebuttal, citing similar issues.
Let’s be blunt: there are bad actors in Bitcoin mining, just as there are in every industry. But the dominant trend is moving in one direction — smarter, cleaner, and more integrated with modern energy systems. And unlike most industries, Bitcoin miners have a direct profit incentive to seek the cheapest — and increasingly, greenest — energy available.
Tesla, It’s Time to Pay Up
Back in 2021, Elon Musk said Tesla would resume accepting Bitcoin once miners hit 50% clean energy usage with a positive trendline.
We’re there.
Cambridge pegs sustainable use at 52.4%, with an upward trajectory. The network is more efficient than ever. The worst carbon offenders — like coal-fired mining — are rapidly disappearing. And miners are helping stabilize grids and monetize excess renewables in real time.
So what’s the holdup?
Tesla still holds over 11,500 BTC — now worth over $1.1 billion. If it wants to align its climate rhetoric with its crypto holdings, it’s time to flip the switch and bring Bitcoin payments back.
Not just because it’s good for Tesla. Because it would send a powerful signal that Bitcoin can be part of the solution — not the problem.
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christinamac1 · 18 days ago
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Ukraine is seeking solutions to the Chernobyl nuclear reactor's damaged confinement vessel .
 Ukraine is seeking solutions to repair the damage caused by a Russiandrone attack to the confinement vessel at the stricken Chornobyl nuclearpower plant, a government minister said on Saturday. Minister ofEnvironmental Protection and Natural Resources Svitlana Hrynchuk wasspeaking outside the decommissioned station during the inauguration of a0.8-megawatt solar power facility ahead of two…
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cyberbenb · 20 days ago
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Ukraine works to repair Chornobyl containment structure damaged in Russian drone strike
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Ukraine is working to repair damage to the containment structure at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant following a Russian drone strike in February, Environment Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk said on April 12.
Speaking at the site of the decommissioned plant, Hrynchuk noted that the strike had compromised the functionality of the massive protective arch installed in 2019 to prevent radioactive leaks.
The minister commented during the launch of a new 0.8-megawatt solar power station near Chornobyl ahead of two upcoming nuclear safety and energy conferences. She said that Ukraine is cooperating with international experts to assess the extent of the damage and determine the necessary steps to restore the arch’s integrity.
“Unfortunately, after the attack, the arch partially lost its functionality. And now, I think, already in May, we will have the results of the analysis that we are currently conducting …,” Hrynchuk said. “We are actively working on this … We, of course, need to restore the “arch” so that there are no leaks under any circumstances because ensuring nuclear and radiation safety is the main task."
She added that the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, as well as scientific institutions and companies involved in the arch’s original installation, are contributing to the analysis.
Plokhy argues in Chornobyl occupation book that Russia’s nuclear blackmail is ‘warning for the future’
The specter of nuclear war cast a long shadow over the 20th century, serving as a reminder of humanity’s capacity for self-destruction. Now, as the world seems to shrug off Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling against Ukraine — and by extension, all of humanity — a haunting question calls for an answer:…
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The Kyiv IndependentKate Tsurkan
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According to plant officials, the February 14 drone attack created a hole in the containment vessel’s outer layer and exploded inside. The Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed the incident as “a provocation.”
The structure was designed to enclose the unstable sarcophagus hastily built after the 1986 reactor explosion—the worst nuclear accident in history.
Hrynchuk also emphasized the importance of renewable energy in the Chornobyl exclusion zone, saying the new solar facility would support the site’s power needs.
“We have been saying for many years that the exclusion zone needs to be transformed into a zone of renewal,” she said. “And this territory, like no other in Ukraine, is suitable for developing renewable energy projects."
These parents and children were killed by Russia after Kyiv agreed to 30-day ceasefire
One month ago, Ukraine agreed to a full 30-day ceasefire in the U.S.-mediated talks in Jeddah, and Russia did not. Russia has soon intensified its attacks against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. Russian attacks on Ukraine have killed over 160 civilians in March alone. According to the United Na…
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The Kyiv IndependentDaria Shulzhenko
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