Beautiful Nuclear

Caring about the environment has traditionally focused on the scarcity of natural resources, but with nuclear power a healthier world can also mean abundance for all, environmentalist Ben Heard (NGO Bright New World) said today at the Atoms for Humanity discussion on Why Humanity Needs Nuclear produced by Russia's Rosatom. The discussion centred on the social, environmental, and global partnerships aspects of the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It was moderated by Kirsty Gogan, co-founder of Terra Praxis.

Dr. Bilbao y León, Director General of the World Nuclear Association, was interviewed by Kirsty Gogan, host of the launch of Atoms for Humanity, a unique awareness initiative capturing ordinary people from all over the world telling stories on how nuclear transforms their lives. Gogan said one of the core SGDs relates to gender equality. "But also, it's about public health and wellbeing, and again this is absolutely essential to the sustainable development goals. I think nuclear energy can contribute really meaningfully to both of those objectives." "Nuclear energy per se obviously contributes to having this reliable, resilient, 24/7 energy supply that we know is absolutely indispensable to power modern health infrastructure," Bilbao y León said. "We are in the middle of this very terrible COVID-19 pandemic and we are seeing how essential having that access to 24/7 electricity is to cope with this crisis.

Eric Ingersoll, co-founder of Terra Praxis, helped teach this MIT engineering course, which became an incubator for fusion design innovations. Dennis Whyte, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC), is the professor of nuclear science and engineering class 22.63 (Principles of Fusion Engineering). Since taking on the course over a decade ago, Whyte has moved away from standard lectures, prodding the class to work collectively on finding solutions to “real-world” issues. Over the past years the course, and its collaborative approach to design, has been instrumental in guiding the real future of fusion at the PSFC.

The $3bn HNH facility, to be powered by 1.8GW of onshore wind, will generate up to 1m tones of green ammonia per year.

We wanted to share this informative article; it does not mention Terra Praxis.

We'd like to share this article by Dr. Sweta Chakraborty: Nuclear energy must play a role in the overall global energy transition alongside other low-carbon technologies, although the extent of the role will vary between countries. With the U.S. recommitting to the Paris Accords and conceivably taking the lead, the role of nuclear energy must be supported globally...The U.S. must lead by example and show that nuclear energy is necessary for a stable energy transition and to support the removal of reliance from fossil fuels. (This article does not mention Terra Praxis.)

This article reports that two groups of independent researchers set out to identify the most effective nonprofits that are working to curb climate change. Their findings may surprise you. Giving Green recommends five organizations: the Clean Air Task Force, the Sunrise Education Fund, which is the 501(c)(3) arm of the Sunrise Movement, Climeworks, Burn and Tradewater. Top charities selected by researchers at the Founders Pledge are the Clean Air Task Force (again), Carbon 180 and Terra Praxis.

The EU’s Sustainable Finance Taxonomy committee had out-of-date information that was putting nuclear at risk of being misclassified. So ARUP team members dug through 70 years of the industry's techniques and best practices. The report they delivered showed a body of scientific evidence for good waste management—supporting a conclusion that nuclear power deserves a place in the EU Sustainable Finance Taxonomy framework. Kirsty Gogan of Terra Praxis was an advisor to this report. Read the report at the link below.

Listen to this podcast with Kirsty Gogan about her life and how she came to work on climate issues. Kirsty highly recommends reading Professor Sir David MacKay’s book “Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air” (www.withouthotair.com) which opened her eyes to the scale of the energy challenge and not being able to address it with renewables alone.

There are immediate actions that countries and stakeholders can take in understanding the importance of nuclear power in the transition to clean energy, according to a report published today by the Flexible Nuclear Campaign for Nuclear-Renewables Integration (FNC). FNC is a campaign of the Nuclear Innovation: Clean Energy Future (NICE Future) initiative under the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM), and coordinated by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Terra Praxis' partner organization helped create this campaign.

LucidCatalyst created a Stakeholder Engagement Curriculum for newcomer countries on behalf of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The workshop aims to provide a basic grounding in the concepts and best practices of stakeholder involvement for a broad variety of participants, drawn from around the globe and across the full range of nuclear activities.

Terra Praxis welcomes the new International Energy Agency (IEA) report, Nuclear Power and Secure Energy Transitions: From Today’s Challenges to Tomorrow’s Clean Energy Systems, (published June 30, 2022), which concludes that nuclear power can play a significant role in helping countries solve the twin crises of energy and climate.