#US electric grid Tumblr posts
dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year ago
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Maryland’s top utility regulator was watching the news one February morning when a headline blindsided him: Two suspects with neo-Nazi ties had been charged with plotting to take down Baltimore’s power grid.
Jason Stanek, the then-chair of the state’s Public Service Commission, said Maryland regulators were “caught flat-footed,” not hearing a word from law enforcement before the news broke — or in the months afterward. Federal prosecutors have alleged the defendants were driven by “racially motivated hatred” to try to cut power to hundreds of thousands of people in the state’s largest city, which has a predominantly Black population.
The FBI declined to comment on its communications with the Maryland commission. But Stanek’s experience is not uncommon.
A POLITICO analysis of federal data and interviews with a dozen security, extremism and electricity experts revealed that despite a record surge in attacks on the grid nationwide, communication gaps between law enforcement and state and federal regulators have left many officials largely in the dark about the extent of the threat. They have also hampered efforts to safeguard the power network.
Adding to the difficulties, no single agency keeps a complete record of all such incidents. But the attacks they know about have regulators and other power experts alarmed:
— Utilities reported 60 incidents they characterized as physical threats or attacks on major grid infrastructure, in addition to two cyberattacks, during the first three months of 2023 alone, according to mandatory disclosures they filed with the Department of Energy. That’s more than double the number from the same period last year. DOE has not yet released data past March.
— Nine of this year’s attacks led to power disruptions, the DOE records indicate.
— The U.S. is on pace to meet or exceed last year’s record of 164 major cyber and physical attacks.
— And additional analyses imply that the true number of incidents for both 2022 and 2023 is probably even higher. POLITICO’s analysis found several incidents that utilities had reported to homeland security officials but did not show up in DOE data.
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According to a report on grid security compiled by a power industry cyber clearinghouse, obtained by POLITICO, a total of 1,665 security incidents involving the U.S. and Canadian power grids occurred last year. That count included 60 incidents that led to outages, 71% more than in 2021.
While that report does not break down how many of those incidents occurred in which country, the U.S. has a significantly larger grid, serving 145 million homes and businesses, with nearly seven times Canada’s power-generating capacity.
Law enforcement officials have blamed much of the rise in grid assaults on white nationalist and far-right extremists, who they say are using online forums to spread tactical advice on how to shut down the power supply.
Concerns about the attacks have continued in recent months, with incidents including a June indictment of an Idaho man accused of shooting two hydroelectric stations in the state.
But law enforcement officers investigating alleged plots against the grid don’t necessarily alert the Energy Department or other regulatory bodies.
“We have no idea” how many attacks on the grid are occurring, said Jon Wellinghoff, a former chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates the U.S. electric grid. “It looks like they’re escalating if you look at the data. But if you don’t have enough data, you can’t discern patterns and proactively work to stop these things from happening.”
Wellinghoff was FERC’s chair when an unknown sniper attacked a Pacific Gas and Electric substation in San Jose, Calif., in 2013 — an incident regulators have described as a “wake-up call” on the electricity supply’s vulnerability to sabotage.
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Last year’s record number of physical and cyber disruptions to the U.S. power system included several incidents that captured public attention, such as a December shooting attack against two North Carolina substations that left 45,000 people without power for four days. The state’s medical examiner has blamed the attack for the death of an 87-year-old woman who died after her oxygen machine failed, ruling it a homicide. Nobody has been charged.
“There is no doubt there’s been an uptick over the last three years in the amount of incidents and also the severity of the incidents,” said Manny Cancel, senior vice president at the North American Electric Reliability Corp., the nonprofit body in charge of setting reliability standards for the bulk power system. He is also CEO of its Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which gathers and analyzes data from power companies.
Cancel said NERC has “seen two pretty substantial increases” in incidents coinciding with the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.
Grid attacks that led to power outages increased 71% from 2021 to 2022, totaling 55 incidents in 2022, according to a NERC briefing to utilities that POLITICO obtained. That increase was primarily due to a rise in gunfire assaults against critical infrastructure.
The largest outage reported from a physical attack early this year — which occurred in March in Clark County, Nev. — affected more than 11,000 people, according to DOE data.
But the state Public Utilities Commission was not aware of any outage due to an attack occurring that day, spokesperson Peter Kostes told POLITICO by email. That’s even though state regulations require utilities to contact the commission within four hours of a significant outage.
The state’s largest utility, NV Energy, said in a statement that it had reported the incident to local law enforcement “as soon as we learned about this incident ... so we can continue to increase our resilience against ongoing threats to the energy industry.” A spokesperson for the utility did not respond to multiple requests for comment on whether it had informed the commission.
Federal regulations also require utilities to report cyber or physical attacks to DOE, including physical attacks that cause “major interruptions or impacts” to operations.
They must also tell the department about disruptions from weather or other causes that meet certain criteria, such as those that cut off service to more than 50,000 customers for at least an hour, an uncontrolled loss of more than 200 megawatts of power, or a utility voluntarily shutting more than 100 megawatts, according to an Energy Department spokesperson. The spokesperson provided the information on the condition that they not be identified by name.
The Energy Department’s records don’t include at least seven reported physical assaults last year and this year that the Department of Homeland Security and the affected utilities said caused substantive economic damage or cut off power to thousands of customers. POLITICO found these incidents by cross-checking the department’s data against warnings issued by DHS and the FBI’s Office of the Private Sector.
DOE said the incidents may not meet its reporting thresholds.
Several of the incidents missing from DOE’s data involved clear physical attacks, based on other agencies’ descriptions. But the utilities involved said they did not report the incidents to the department because the attacks did not affect the kind of major equipment that could lead to widespread, regional power failures.
One of the incidents not found in DOE’s records cut off power to about 12,000 people for roughly two hours in Maysville, N.C., after a shooting damaged a substation in November, according to a DHS report. The FBI’s investigation into the incident is ongoing, according to the intelligence agency.
The utility affected by the incident, Carteret-Craven Electric Cooperative, reported the incident to NERC’s Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, but didn’t report the attack to DOE because it was a “distribution-level” incident, said Melissa Glenn, a spokesperson for the utility. That means the outages caused by the damage would have been limited to local power customers and not lead to the wider blackouts federal regulators are most concerned with.
In another case unreported to the Energy Department, a substation owned by the East River Electric Cooperative serving the Keystone oil pipeline in South Dakota was attacked by gunfire late at night in July 2022, according to DHS. The incident caused more than $1 million in damage and forced the pipeline to reduce operations while repairs were underway.
East River co-op spokesperson Chris Studer said the utility reported the incident to local law enforcement, which brought in the FBI. East River also reported the incident to NERC and its E-ISAC, along with regional grid agencies, but said it did not report it to DOE because the attack did not affect the bulk power system.
Brian Harrell, a former assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at DHS, said in an email that utilities have too many competing agencies to report to, and suggested reporting be streamlined to NERC’s E-ISAC.
“This lack of consistency, by no fault of the utility, suggests that the numbers may not paint a complete picture,” he said.
Grid experts said these data gaps clearly indicate a lack of understanding about which agencies utilities need to report to and when.
Utilities may be using a “loophole” based on definitions of what constitutes “critical infrastructure,” said Jonathon Monken, a grid security expert with the consulting firm Converge Strategies. He was previously senior director of system resilience and strategic coordination for the PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest power market.
There are “lots of ways” to work around DOE requirements, Monken added, but as he reads the regulation, utilities are required to report any operational disruptions caused by a physical attack.
“[I]t appears the information you collected shows that companies are still missing the boat when it comes to mandatory reporting,” he said. “Not good.”
One former FERC official who was granted anonymity to speak about a sensitive security issue said the commission also received no alerts from law enforcement officials about the planned and actual attacks that took place last year. That omission hinders agencies’ ability to respond to these kinds of events, the person said.
A spokesperson for FERC declined to comment on the commission’s communications with law enforcement.
But Cancel defended government agencies’ response to these incidents, and said federal investigators may have had specific intelligence reasons for keeping FERC and state utility agencies out of the loop.
“I’m not a lawyer or a law enforcement professional, but you had an active criminal investigation going on,” he said. “I don’t think they wanted to sort of blow the horn on that and compromise the integrity of the investigation.”
An FBI spokesperson offered no direct response to these criticisms in an email, but said the agency “views cybersecurity as a team sport.” The person commented on the condition that the remark be attributed to the bureau.
The FBI urged utility executives last month to attend security training hosted by intelligence agents in order to ensure they are up to speed on the threats posed by bad actors.
“We can’t do it without you,” Matthew Fodor, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, said during an all-day FERC technical conference on Aug. 10. “The challenges that we have — and DOE can probably speak to this better than anybody — is limited resources.”
People attacking the electricity supply have thousands of potential targets, including power substations and smaller but critical pieces of utility infrastructure. The smaller pieces often go unprotected because federal standards do not require utilities to secure them.
Nearly half of the 4,493 attacks from 2020 to 2022 targeted substations, according to the NERC briefing from February, making them the most frequent targets for perpetrators over that period.
Details on how to carry out these kinds of attacks are available from extremist messaging boards and other online content, researchers and federal security officials say. These include maps of critical entry points to the grid, along with advice that extremists have gleaned from incidents like the assault in North Carolina.
Stanek, the Maryland electricity regulator, said he was “disappointed with the level of coordination and communication” that federal and state law enforcement displayed in handling the alleged plot in Baltimore. No trial date has been announced for the case, which is in U.S. District Court in Maryland.
Maryland’s Public Service Commission is in charge of ensuring that the state’s power system keeps the lights on. Regulators need to be kept informed of threats to the system so they can coordinate with other agencies in case an attack succeeds, Stanek said.
At the same time, he quipped, maybe he was better off in the dark after all.
“There’s a lot of colorful details in [the FBI report],” Stanek said. He paused, thinking. “And honestly, as a regulator, had I received these details in advance and shared the information with trusted sources within state government, I would have had sleepless nights.”
“So perhaps the feds did a favor by only sharing this information after everything was all said and done,” he added.
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savage-rhi · 4 months ago
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😀
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tonguetyd · 5 days ago
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Friendly Neighborhood Engineer takes a training course and learns we literally went “well. NYC distributes at this voltage and Chicago is at this” and instead of the country being like “ok to connect yall in the Big Grid yall gotta get to This One”…
They just said “nah, we’ll just adjust to ours”
And did not regulate it and just fuckin puzzle pieced it together 😂😂😂
No WONDER the grid and updating it is a fucking mess, it was DESIGNED as a collage mess the WHOLE TIME.
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marginal-notes · 4 months ago
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You could talk about floodwater management on here instead :3
lololol but seriously, I’m constantly thinking so much about the economics and infrastructure of ATLA, especially at scale, given the existence of bending.
First off, I’m still not 100% sure what percentage of the population has bending. Personally, I think it’s a minority? Let’s say 30% max? Probably more around 10-15%, don’t ask where I’m getting this number from.
Then you gotta think about stuff like, “okay, I want to build this dam around this location along a river, and I have to do a geological survey first along with collecting whatever else elevation data we need.” So, are you planning to find a specialized earthbender? I fully embrace the idea of Toph’s sensing ability being really rare, so how much value does an earthbender bring in? And what if you’re in the Fire Nation’s territory and for various reasons you don’t want to use an earthbender, so you need to develop nonbender methods anyway.
When do things reach sufficient scale that using tools and technology override the need for individual human labor?
“What does this have to do with floodwater management?” Yeah, whatever, this is just some of the usual bean counter ramblings, let’s also talk about security.
In the show, Jet already proves the knowledge that infrastructure’s destruction can be a weapon. He needed blasting jelly to destroy that dam, but what if you had an earthbender. The thing with dams is that you just need to punch one hole through the wall, and the weight of the water and physics will do all the rest for you. Bitch slapping a meter cube of material out of a dam is way too easy for an earthbender.
Like, bro, what the fuck. Why are you forcing me to pay so much money on effective security to keep you maniacs out.
Real talk, would you really want to have a lot of dams in the world of ATLA when you have to live with the constant threat of some drunk idiot stumbling along and fucking up the earth around your giant water infrastructure and immediately threatening the lives of thousands downstream.
Good grief.
Now also take that constant aggravation and apply it to rivers. Rivers already don’t want to stay along the same course. Those things famously shift around constantly to find the path of least resistance. How easy would it be for someone to weaken and manipulate the ground along a riverbank to lay a strategic time bomb waiting for the next heavy rain to hit.
Oh, what’s that Mr. Fire Army General sir, you planned your supply routes along this path near the vicinity of this river? If I have a sneaky enough crew of earthbender willing to be relentless mole people for a couple of weeks, I can utterly ruin your day and career.
Man, imagine if the Fire Nation already had an interest in instruments that can measure seismic activity because these people are crazy enough to put their SEAT OF POLITICAL POWER inside the caldera of an ACTIVE VOLCANO, WHY. But the real reason why the Fire Nation has such good instruments is because of the military trying to fend off renegade bands of mole people laying mines under their camps.
I mean, that’s how a lot of tech development tends to go anyway irl.
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tolbachik · 1 year ago
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sorry for being so angry tonight. a better world is possible, we have the engineers, the knowledge, and the power to do it. but our world is driven by a greed and hatred unlike any other, one that sucks the soul out of us all.
we can live lives filled with peace, love, and relative comfort but it's been decided for us that we can't. we can uncover the secrets of our world and universe, but we only chose to do so when it's profitable.
there are so many amazing, wonderful, beautiful people on this world. so many vibrant cultures, so much love, so many hopes and dreams. but the west takes it all. capitalism takes more than the world can provide, pushes people into poverty and slavery, all so only a few can play with us all as mere toys and have dick waving competitions.
we're turned against each other, we're told others are savage and inhuman, that they're just a number, just a percentage point. they play god, and as one that is filled with nothing but vengeance and rage. one that only seeks to punish and hoard all that there is, until there isn't anything else anymore. we could've made such a beautiful world for ourselves by this point if a few key things had gone through, but greed and hatred was won time and time again.
my only hope is that we can finally start to push this horrid system into the fire, and we can truly start to set things right. for all its failings, i think the internet has really started to bring us together. i just want people to live and be happy. i want everyone to be able to follow their dreams and feel love. i really hope we can reach that point someday.
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coffeeastronaut · 1 year ago
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the shitscript is in fact a a a shitscript but crowley and aziraphale's 6000 years of crowley cheating at checkers every time and aziraphale never wins is seriously so insanely funny. like.
aziraphale is not at all stupid, let alone enough for crowley's literal "whats that outside!!!! [snatches his pieces]" but the fact that he KNOWS hes been cheating this whole time and has been LETTING him is so fucking funny.
not for the reason the script gives (something something its aziraphale's lame moral lesson that even he knows is stupid, but only after an 11 year old points it out to him) but for the reason ive invented in my mind, which is that this is yet another example of their looserman weirdo foreplay
#mi#fuck it. goes in my good omens tag#good omens#i am firm in my belife that they only have a. bad sex but lots of it or b. looney toons sex that gets interuppted by increasingly outlandis#incidents cumulating in like a stick of dynamite from a mining convention thats passing through town accidentally gets swapped with the cig#the cigar that aziraphale was going to use in their noir detective rp that theyve been working up to for 6 years (technically 8 but they#forgot about it for a few years in the middle) and when he goes to sensually smoke it he gets blowed up like columbo and when the smoke#clears all his clothes have spun around backwards like daffy's beak.#both scenarios cause power outages but for different reasons. in the first its bc even the lamest of sex has them like AWOOOOGHAAAA and#convinced theyve reinvented gods greatest gift to mankind and inadvertently fuck with the power grid and in the second its because#crowley tried to feed aziraphale food in bed but butterfingered the fork and as it slipped and tumbled and bounced between his hands like a#master juggler high on too little sleep and too many coworkers who say shit like 'egads!' it miraculously found its way into the wall outle#(the only uncovered outlet in the bookshop; every other outlet has one of those babyproof covers because aziraphale doesnt trust the wiring#to not make random bolts of electricity to come out otherwise; which means they really do do that purely bc he expects it)#and when he impulsively went to pull it out he got electrocuted but on account of him not being human it just felt a bit funny and then#they stood and took turns holding the fork in the outlet and giggling like old ladies do at raunchy operas; completely blowing out the#circuts in the bookshop and every other shop on the same wiring
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drgnbld · 8 months ago
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i kinda want. to make it a thing next month to do a drawing a day so I can improve on art. so, gimme your best (free, or cheap) drawing programs for tablets and your favourite brushes to download.
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rattkachuk · 10 months ago
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ot??? in this climate???
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cygnetbrown · 1 month ago
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What if the Lights Go Out This Winter?
Winter’s coming are you ready for what you be facing this winter? It happened in Texas a few years ago with deadly results that could have been prevented if adequate precautions had been taken. There’s a strong possibility that many of us could spend up to three weeks or longer without power this coming winter. Being without power could happen any time during the year, but since the winter…
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softgrungeprophet · 6 months ago
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*frantically googling sunset times*
#KP 9 ?!?!?!! NINE??? G5?????? 2003 Halloween solar storm levels???? ''walk outside and look up past 10 pm'' ???? hello???#idk the chance that i see a damn thing esp naked eye but getting a phone notif of a 33% chance at 5:45 pm BROAD DAYLIGHT#like what#nadia rambles#okay ftr if it is visible and you do go out there be careful wrt reliance on satellite signals and GPS and radio etc#if it's strong enough there will be a lot of noise at minimum and worse case scenario it might completely knock out sat and gps#and cause major radio interference - at least temporarily#could also cause power outages which is more of a problem on the eastern coast of the US and Canada due to the structure of the grid#west coast has shorter east-west lines and more redundancies than east coast interconnection#east coast has longer east-west lines which makes it more vulnerable to geomagnetic interference and damage#plus the geology of the ground for buried lines also makes a difference. if you live in an area with less conductive soil materials#buried lines are more likely to overload from geomagnetic interference as all of the power will be funneled into the lines#if you have more conductive ground around the buried lines there's less funneling so less chance of major surges and outages#I am not sure about effect on electric cars but historically strong geomagnetic storms like this have affected the lights in times square#just as one example (tho it was prob grid related it could have also been direct induction surging the lights)#so it may be worth a little bit of caution as certain lights or parts of the electrical grid or possibly vehicles may have some troubles#you wanna know what tesla coils were invented for? wireless electrical power. they can power lights from a distance w/ no contact#geomagnetic storms also do this
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happigreens · 10 months ago
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My parents thought it was silly that i unplug my washer and dryer, microwave and TV after I'm done using them, and keep the dishwasher unplugged cuz i dont use it. They believed they werent using power when turned off bc they were off. Thats not how electricity and circuits work lol but I dont blame them for not knowing that since its counterintuitive and they may not have learned that in school, or otherwise forgot.
Anyway, uplugging these major devices has saved around $20 a month on my power bill, I think. I saw an immediate difference after unpluggng the laundry appliances and dishwasher. I unplug as much stuff as i can thats practical and tbh i wish i could unplug everything, including my stove (the fridge is a must tho lol i dont want that unplugged ever; the stove, im using a tad but more now but tbh i dont use it every day of the week).
I know the tips from this link are moreso for consumer saving than making a significant impact on the power grid though i imagine it would make a considerable impact if many ppl had the mentality of unplugging electronics after use.
I used to fear that unplugging TVs and large appliances constantly would destroy them somehow, but idk why I thought that (ig some of my own arbitrary misconceptions abt how electricity would damage circuits of appliances that had a lot of wattage or cause surges if i didnt take advantage of the "convenience" of keeping it all plugged in).
I think its a good habit for everyone to try if they can wherever practical!
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alpha-mag-media · 1 year ago
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I live off grid in shack with NO water or electricity – it’s infested with SNAKES… but the views are worth it | In Trend Today
I live off grid in shack with NO water or electricity – it’s infested with SNAKES… but the views are worth it Read Full Text or Full Article on MAG NEWS
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ur-mag · 1 year ago
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I live off grid in shack with NO water or electricity – it’s infested with SNAKES… but the views are worth it | In Trend Today
I live off grid in shack with NO water or electricity – it’s infested with SNAKES… but the views are worth it Read Full Text or Full Article on MAG NEWS
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reasonsforhope · 6 months ago
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Green energy is in its heyday. 
Renewable energy sources now account for 22% of the nation’s electricity, and solar has skyrocketed eight times over in the last decade. This spring in California, wind, water, and solar power energy sources exceeded expectations, accounting for an average of 61.5 percent of the state's electricity demand across 52 days. 
But green energy has a lithium problem. Lithium batteries control more than 90% of the global grid battery storage market. 
That’s not just cell phones, laptops, electric toothbrushes, and tools. Scooters, e-bikes, hybrids, and electric vehicles all rely on rechargeable lithium batteries to get going. 
Fortunately, this past week, Natron Energy launched its first-ever commercial-scale production of sodium-ion batteries in the U.S. 
“Sodium-ion batteries offer a unique alternative to lithium-ion, with higher power, faster recharge, longer lifecycle and a completely safe and stable chemistry,” said Colin Wessells — Natron Founder and Co-CEO — at the kick-off event in Michigan. 
The new sodium-ion batteries charge and discharge at rates 10 times faster than lithium-ion, with an estimated lifespan of 50,000 cycles.
Wessells said that using sodium as a primary mineral alternative eliminates industry-wide issues of worker negligence, geopolitical disruption, and the “questionable environmental impacts” inextricably linked to lithium mining. 
“The electrification of our economy is dependent on the development and production of new, innovative energy storage solutions,” Wessells said. 
Why are sodium batteries a better alternative to lithium?
The birth and death cycle of lithium is shadowed in environmental destruction. The process of extracting lithium pollutes the water, air, and soil, and when it’s eventually discarded, the flammable batteries are prone to bursting into flames and burning out in landfills. 
There’s also a human cost. Lithium-ion materials like cobalt and nickel are not only harder to source and procure, but their supply chains are also overwhelmingly attributed to hazardous working conditions and child labor law violations. 
Sodium, on the other hand, is estimated to be 1,000 times more abundant in the earth’s crust than lithium. 
“Unlike lithium, sodium can be produced from an abundant material: salt,” engineer Casey Crownhart wrote ​​in the MIT Technology Review. “Because the raw ingredients are cheap and widely available, there’s potential for sodium-ion batteries to be significantly less expensive than their lithium-ion counterparts if more companies start making more of them.”
What will these batteries be used for?
Right now, Natron has its focus set on AI models and data storage centers, which consume hefty amounts of energy. In 2023, the MIT Technology Review reported that one AI model can emit more than 626,00 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent. 
“We expect our battery solutions will be used to power the explosive growth in data centers used for Artificial Intelligence,” said Wendell Brooks, co-CEO of Natron. 
“With the start of commercial-scale production here in Michigan, we are well-positioned to capitalize on the growing demand for efficient, safe, and reliable battery energy storage.”
The fast-charging energy alternative also has limitless potential on a consumer level, and Natron is eying telecommunications and EV fast-charging once it begins servicing AI data storage centers in June. 
On a larger scale, sodium-ion batteries could radically change the manufacturing and production sectors — from housing energy to lower electricity costs in warehouses, to charging backup stations and powering electric vehicles, trucks, forklifts, and so on. 
“I founded Natron because we saw climate change as the defining problem of our time,” Wessells said. “We believe batteries have a role to play.”
-via GoodGoodGood, May 3, 2024
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Note: I wanted to make sure this was legit (scientifically and in general), and I'm happy to report that it really is! x, x, x, x
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northgazaupdates · 6 days ago
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FANTASTIC update from our dear friend Moataz!!
Moataz @moatazart has had some major developments in his situation.
A few weeks ago, PayPal terminated Moataz’s account without warning, taking back much of the funds he had raised to rebuild his house in Gaza City. To make matters even worse, the IOF recently bombed the house next to where Moataz and his family are staying. This heavily damaged their communal solar power grid, making access to electricity and internet even more difficult and dangerous.
Thankfully, there is some good news. Our dear friend Najia was able to help Moataz set up a new PayPal link, as well as a fundraiser on Chuffed, which is very similar to GoFundMe! Now Moataz is able to raise funds for his home reconstruction again, as well as repair the solar grid.
Moataz is a dear friend of ours. He has risked his life to document the ongoing genocide against Gaza, as well as to help other displaced people raise funds for evacuation. He has done so much for so many people, and we would appreciate anyone who could help repay his dedication by supporting his campaign.
Thank you❤️
We also want to send a huuuuge thank you to Najia, who made this possible. Please visit @gothhabiba and support the posts and campaigns she is promoting.
REMINDER: You can use either link! One goes to Chuffed, the other to PayPal!
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afeelgoodblog · 10 months ago
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The Best News of Last Year - 2023 Edition
Welcome to our special edition newsletter recapping the best news from the past year. I've picked one highlight from each month to give you a snapshot of 2023. No frills, just straightforward news that mattered. Let's relive the good stuff that made our year shine.
January - London: Girl with incurable cancer recovers after pioneering treatment
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A girl’s incurable cancer has been cleared from her body after what scientists have described as the most sophisticated cell engineering to date.
2. February - Utah legislature unanimously passes ban on LGBTQ conversion therapy
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The Utah State Legislature has unanimously approved a bill that enshrines into law a ban on LGBTQ conversion therapy.
3. March - First vaccine for honeybees could save billions
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The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has approved the world’s first-ever vaccine intended to address the global decline of honeybees. It will help protect honeybees from American foulbrood, a contagious bacterial disease which can destroy entire colonies.
4. April - Fungi discovered that can eat plastic in just 140 days
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Australian scientists have successfully used backyard mould to break down one of the world's most stubborn plastics — a discovery they hope could ease the burden of the global recycling crisis within years. 
5. May - Ocean Cleanup removes 200,000th kilogram of plastic from the Pacific Ocean
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The Dutch offshore restoration project, Ocean Cleanup, says it has reached a milestone. The organization's plastic catching efforts have now fished more than 200,000 kilograms of plastic out of the Pacific Ocean, Ocean Cleanup said on Twitter.
6. June - U.S. judge blocks Florida ban on care for trans minors in narrow ruling, says ‘gender identity is real’
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A federal judge temporarily blocked portions of a new Florida law that bans transgender minors from receiving puberty blockers, ruling Tuesday that the state has no rational basis for denying patients treatment.
7. July - World’s largest Phosphate deposit discovered in Norway
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A massive underground deposit of high-grade phosphate rock in Norway, pitched as the world’s largest, is big enough to satisfy world demand for fertilisers, solar panels and electric car batteries over the next 50 years, according to the company exploiting the resource.
8. August - Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99
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If the claim by Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim of South Korea’s Quantum Energy Research Centre holds up, the material could usher in all sorts of technological marvels, such as levitating vehicles and perfectly efficient electrical grids.
9. September - World’s 1st drug to regrow teeth enters clinical trials
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The ability to regrow your own teeth could be just around the corner. A team of scientists, led by a Japanese pharmaceutical startup, are getting set to start human trials on a new drug that has successfully grown new teeth in animal test subjects.
10. October - Nobel Prize goes to scientists behind mRNA Covid vaccines
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The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists who developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines. Professors Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman will share the prize.
11. November - No cases of cancer caused by HPV in Norwegian 25-year olds, the first cohort to be mass vaccinated for HPV.
Last year there were zero cases of cervical cancer in the group that was vaccinated in 2009 against the HPV virus, which can cause the cancer in women.
12. December - President Biden announces he’s pardoning all convictions of federal marijuana possession
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President Joe Biden announced Friday he's issuing a federal pardon to every American who has used marijuana in the past, including those who were never arrested or prosecuted.
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And there you have it – a year's worth of uplifting news! I hope these positive stories brought a bit of joy to your inbox. As I wrap up this special edition, I want to thank all my supporters!
Buy me a coffee ❤️
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
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