Welcome to your Friday Rundown for the week ending Aug. 17. Feedback is always welcome at info@clearpathaction.org.
PROGRESS FOR MILITARY ADVANCED NUCLEAR, EXPORTS BECOMES LAW
President Trump signed the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, including bipartisan languageled by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) to require the secretary of energy to report on the feasibility of siting, constructing and operating “micro reactors” at critical Defense Department or Energy Department national security facilities.
The NDAA also allows approvals of exports of non-sensitive nuclear technologies to be delegated to officials more junior than the secretary of energy. This would allow for much quicker approvals, which at times have taken more than a year. All exports to China and Russia would still have to be approved by the secretary of energy.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Sen. Cory Gardner visited the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, touting the economic and national security benefits tied to microgrid and other work being performed there.
Speaking to NREL employees following their Aug. 14 tour, Gardner stressed the thousands of direct wind and solar jobs that will result in the next few years. “It really is about our economic security,” he said. Perry added: “The answers to how the grid in this country and literally the world are doing, a great deal of that will come out of this lab and the work you’re doing.”
NREL that day announced it is moving forward with a new high-performance computing (HPC) system that can dramatically accelerate early-stage energy tech R&D. The peak performance of the new system, named Eagle, will be a three-fold increase in the amount of scientific computing capability relative to the current NREL supercomputer. Eagle will be installed this summer there and put into production use in January.
PROMISE, ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF CARBON CAPTURE
In his latest digital whiteboard video, ClearPath Executive Director Rich Powell and Production Director Mitch Kersey detail the potential economic impact of an uptick in using captured carbon emissions from coal and natural gas generation for enhanced oil recovery.
A recent study sponsored by ClearPath and the Carbon Utilization Research Council, with support from key unions, found that carbon emitted from as much as 87 gigawatts of coal and gas power could be captured and sold for enhanced oil recovery in the United States by 2040. But that will only happen if the U.S. pursues an aggressive research, development and demonstration program to achieve industry cost and performance targets.
