Energy

How to lie about radiationDrinking one beer a night for a year is a lot less harmful than drinking 365 beers in one go. The same applies to radiation exposure, but regulation doesn’t agree.Why American data centers can’t plug inThe AI buildout is bottlenecked by energy. But America has the electricity to power its data centers; the problem is getting it to them.How Britain learned and unlearned nuclearBritain gave an elite group of engineers sweeping power and massive resources to deliver a nuclear power revolution. But their nuclear dreams crumbled. How the world’s first electric grid was builtIn 1918, fifty systems supplied London’s electricity. Turning these into a grid required war, nationalization, and an act of engineering insubordination.The beauty of batteriesKeeping the grid stable requires overbuilding generating capacity, driving up costs. Batteries fix that.Sunscreen for the planetThe world is warming faster than we can cut emissions. Volcanoes are already cooling the planet, with particles that reflect sunlight. Maybe we can too.Rivers are now battlefieldsChinese dams will hold billions of people downstream to ransom. Could solar-powered desalination make them irrelevant?Liberté, égalité, radioactivitéFrance built 40 nuclear reactors in a decade. Here’s how they did it, and how the world can follow their lead today.The bad science behind expensive nuclearHow a dubious theory of radiation damage based on fruit flies and a secretive weapons testing program came to be – and why its time may now be up.Steam networksNew York’s skyscrapers soar above a century-old steam network that still warms the city. While the rest of the world moved to hot water, Manhattanites still buy steam by the megapound.Watt lies beneathThe earth’s core is hot. So hot, that if we drilled deep enough, we could power the world millions of times over with cheap, clean energy, supporting renewables when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. But getting there is tough.Olivine weatheringOlivine is a green mineral that reacts with CO2 in the ocean to form a harmless silt. This reaction might be the key to slowing down climate change, or reversing it altogether.Taming the starsCheap, safe nuclear power is possible, but is all but prohibited in most Western countries. A regulatory sandbox for fission could shake us out of our regulatory sclerosis.The end of acid rainEnding acid rain was one of humanity’s greatest environmental successes. Here’s how it happened.Building back fasterBuilding infrastructure doesn’t need to come at the cost of the environment. But it does need smarter rules.Every generator is a policy failurePower outages force businesses across Africa to rely on expensive, dirty diesel generators. Price caps block improvement, but removing them isn’t easy.The most dangerous substance known to manWe have learned to fear plutonium – one of the world’s most useful materials. But as long as you don’t eat it, you’re probably safe.Interview: J. Storrs Hall on getting lost in stagnationStripe Press’s Tamara Winter sits down with J. Storrs Hall, whose book ‘Where is My Flying Car’ inspired this issue, to talk about stagnation and the possibility of progress.Making energy too cheap to meterThe great slowdown began when we started rationing energy. Restarting progress means getting energy that is so abundant that it’s almost free.Local warmingGas heating is bad for the environment. But home-built heat pumps aren’t perfect either. How we fixed the ozone layerThe story behind humanity’s greatest environmental success is too rarely told and too often taken for granted. This is how humanity fixed the ozone layer and why it matters.Interview: Ted Nordhaus on ecomodernismAre technology and the environment friends or foes? In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss climate policy, activism and ecomodernism with Ted Nordhaus.