Update:

Nothing quite like waking up to a war you have been warned about your entire life.

In Friday’s Heatmap AM: ☢️ Energy Department in talks on 10 new large reactors 🌤️ Trump admin starts reviewing new solar projects 👎 Support for data centers is deep underwater Finish out your workweek with the top stories from @alexckaufman.bsky.social: heatmap.news/am/trump-nuc...

Coining a new phrase this morning: Reactor realism. Reactor realists recognize the need to build more of the large-scale reactors we actually know how to construct and operate while simultaneously developing of next-gen tech. It's about re-learning to ride a bike before attempting to unicycle.

The speed with which American voters are turning against data centers is breathtaking. One comparison might be what happened to nuclear after the doublewhammy of "The China Syndrome" debuting days before Three Mile Island, except there's no equivalent in terms of Hollywood or industrial accidents.

Great @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social scoop on the efforts the Trump administration is going to help Westinghouse sell 10 more AP1000s. heatmap.news/energy/trump...

a big bet on a fusion company that's *not* gunning for a commercial reactor anytime soon, but is already making money today by producing medical isotopes

Scoop in @heatmap.news: Shine Technologies, the fusion company that's producing medical isotopes and plans to get into spent nuclear recycling, just raised $240 million. 63% of the funding came from Patrick Soon-Shiong, the biotech billionaire who owns the LA Times. heatmap.news/climate-tech...

The European Union has launched the world’s first emissions-based tariff—the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.🌍 Joe Hezir spoke with @alexckaufman.bsky.social for @canarymedia.com about CBAM and the future of a low-carbon economy. www.canarymedia.com/articles/emi...

The Energy Department is financing the uprating of the two older reactors at Southern Company's Plant Vogtle.

Outside may be interminable winter. But inside Château Kaufman the pre-war radiators are creating the conditions to sprout dragonfruit seeds.

In today’s Heatmap AM: ❄️ Half a million in U.S. lost power in blizzard 👨‍⚖️ Supreme Court to hear Exxon Mobil case vs. Boulder 🌎 NRDC starts geoengineering research project Read all the top stories from @alexckaufman.bsky.social: heatmap.news/am/blizzard-...

Mississippi's governor on the data center backlash: "I understand individuals who would rather not have any industrial project in their backyard... I do not understand the impulse to prevent our country from advancing technologically—except as civilizational suicide."

Boston Metal suffered "unforeseen critical equipment failure." No injured workers, no environmental damage. But now the green-steel startup had financing conditioned on hitting certain operational milestones that are now impossible, so it has to lay off nearly one-quarter of its global workforce.

Scooplet in this morning's Heatmap AM: The California bill to lift the 50-year moratorium on new nuclear reactors has some new supporters since its introduction on Friday.

In today’s Heatmap AM: ☀️ U.S. new generating capacity will be nearly all renewables and batteries in 2026 ☢️ New California bill would mostly end new nuclear ban 🏭 NRG buys New York City’s biggest power plant Start your week with @alexckaufman.bsky.social: heatmap.news/am/us-renewa...

Sources with direct knowledge of the situation say it’s snowing.

So far, the big Northeast blizzard has only knocked out power for about 13,000 households in New Jersey. But New England is bracing for blackouts as the winter storm bears down. Grid fragility is bicoastal. The bulk of U.S. outages right now is in NorCal, where high winds downed power lines.

It's wild that California has had a ban on building nuclear power plants since 1976 — three years before Three Mile Island.

Shout out to mimosas. Gotta be one of my favorite flowers.

embarrassed to admit I'm just hearing about at least three of these

Interesting difference in approach to publishing op-eds by major European leaders: The New York Times makes the leader of the EU's fourth-largest economy introduce himself in the headline. Tablet magazine lets the French president's byline speak for itself.

In Wednesday’s Heatmap AM: 👋 Chris Wright threatens to leave International Energy Agency 📉 Trump may lower tariffs on metals 🇬🇧 Gavin Newsom inks clean energy partnership with the U.K. Have a cuppa and enjoy the news from @alexckaufman.bsky.social: heatmap.news/am/chris-wri...

Ramadan mubarak to everyone celebrating. I wish you peaceful, reflective, and easy fasts. And I thank you for filling the stores in my neighborhood with delicious chocolate-covered dates that I promise to try not to eat in front of any of you during the day.

Real heads know this is a Busta Rhymes reference.

“You work with this incredible little insect that lives where there are no trees, barely any plants, and you still find plastic in its gut. That really brings home how widespread the problem is.” e360.yale.edu/digest/antar...

Now THAT'S an Anglo word if I've ever seen one.

Another sunny perspective on the direction of the U.S. solar market: great piece by @ceboudreau.bsky.social www.latitudemedia.com/news/solv-en...

✔️wrote books ✔️was there at past wars that proved historically pivotal Radosław Sikorski, Europe yearns

Québec is going to skip the fossil fuel industry part and go straight to the CCS->CDR part.

Erik Prince has a new mercenary company that’s essentially serving as an American Wagner Group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. www.reuters.com/world/africa...

Heatmap AM’s top stories: ☢️ Bipartisan bill proposes nuclear reactor backstop 🚙 Demand accelerates for hybrid vehicles as EVs stall 🇦🇺 Orsted pushes to build Australian offshore wind farm Jump into the latest from @alexckaufman.bsky.social: heatmap.news/am/trump-nuc...

India's solar manufacturers are very bullish on the seven percentage points the new trade deal with Trump will shave off U.S. tariffs.

For the rest of this decade, China will bring new nuclear power plants online at a pace more than double that of the global average. By 2030, its share of global nuclear generation will rise from 17% to 20%, while the U.S. and Europe decline.

China is on track to make up almost half of all new nuclear power in the world over the next four years.

NEW in Heatmap AM: ↩️ EPA to repeal “endangerment finding” this week 🇨🇳 BYD sues Trump admin over 100% tariffs on EVs ♨️ Fervo drills its hottest well to date Stay informed with @alexckaufman.bsky.social: heatmap.news/am/trump-end...

Good morning with good news: Solar PV prices fall to a record low for Turkey at 2.79 cents/kWh and 2.37 cents/kWh! Prices are for 25-year power purchase agreements for 2 GW at Sivas and Karaman solar projects. The solar projects will cost $2 billion. www.bloomberg.com/news/article... #energysky

Scoop in the Substack this a.m.: An Irish startup that says its technology is the Penicillin of cooling data centers just inked a deal to start mass manufacturing. kaufman.substack.com/p/is-this-th...

We hear a lot about data centers, cooling systems, and how much water it takes to keep servers from overheating. Until finding this chart, I hadn't seen anything that spelled out how different data centers cool themselves. AI specialists, for example, are using different tech than hyperscalers.

Wrote a long Substack about how I got into reporting so much about Puerto Rico, and rounded up the 9 books in my library that really helped me better understand America's relationship to its most populous colonial prize from 128 years ago. kaufman.substack.com/p/9-books-yo...

Puerto Rico isn't the only U.S. territory experiencing energy problems. The U.S. Virgin Islands, the third-most populous of the five inhabited territories, had "a major power outage" just last week. The other three in the Pacific are also heavily reliant on costly imported diesel and oil.

Cleveland-Cliffs abandoned its plans to build a green steel plant and instead doubled down on coal. Things are probably going great for th--

In Heatmap AM today: 🌬️ Orsted’s offshore wind projects back on schedule 🌞 Tesla launches recruitment for solar manufacturing push 🇵🇷 Bad Bunny’s halftime show referenced Puerto Rico’s grid woes Kick off your week with the latest from @alexckaufman.bsky.social: heatmap.news/am/trump-rev...

Just a few weeks ago, the administration cancelled all remaining department of energy grid resilience projects in Puerto Rico. All of them. www.latitudemedia.com/news/the-end...

For once, Puerto Ricans mostly all had electricity access to watch the Super Bowl halftime show. Live data from the grid operator LUMA shows just 746 households without a grid connection.

Puerto Rico hasn't had reliable power in a decade. The grid sends occasional surges through the wires that fry appliances. Electricity rates are among the highest in the entire U.S. Heat waves are getting intense in the summer, and outages mean A/C is no guarantee for an aging population.

This is a good moment to note that Daniel Immerwahr's "How to Hide an Empire" is fast read and does a good job of contextualizing the last 128 years of U.S. rule over Puerto Rico.

Don’t mess with the Ainu

The bearish take on TerraPower #energysky www.eenews.net/articles/nuc...