Free Republic

Home | Politics Tags: trump | nuclear | license Trump Seeks to Fast-Track Nuclear Licenses, Overhaul Regulatory Agency Trump Seeks to Fast-Track Nuclear Licenses, Overhaul Regulatory Agency (AP) Friday, 23 May 2025 02:57 PM EDT Comment| Print| A A President Donald Trump ordered the nation's independent nuclear regulatory commission to cut down on regulations and fast-track new licenses for reactors and power plants on Friday, seeking to shrink a multi-year process down to 18 months. The requirement was part of a batch of executive orders signed by Trump on Friday that aim to boost U.S. nuclear energy production amid a...

As the artificial intelligence (AI) boom drives exponential demand for data centers, the United States’ position as an AI leader is at risk without immediate action to address growth constraints. The “transition toward cloud-based services and generative AI applications [is forecast to drive] a 37% compound annual increase in AI spending out to 2032,” according to Bloomberg. The significant growth comes at a time when supply chain constraints are limiting revenue growth among the largest U.S. data center developers—known as hyperscalers. In the past year, hyperscalers have been flagging the data center supply chain as a headwind in their growth...

Last Energy’s PWR-20 is designed for mass production to scale output to user demand... Washington-based firm has decided to build 30 microreactors in Haskell County, Texas. Last Energy has obtained control of a 200-acre site to provide power to off-takers via a mix of private wire and grid transmission. The facility is expected to serve American data center customers across the state. “Texas is the energy capital of America, and we are working to be No. 1 in advanced nuclear power,” said Governor Abbott. “Last Energy’s microreactor project in Haskell County will help fulfill the state’s growing data center demand....

I voted for President Donald J. Trump three times. I did that because I love my country, and am committed to help preserve, protect, and improve it. I admire so much about the President. Starting with his great strength of vision and the willingness to pursue it. I am one hundred percent onboard with his desire to protect the citizens of this country from those who seek... And I am one hundred percent onboard with the President’s desire to “Make America Great Again.” I am grateful that this President is quickly fulfilling a number of campaign promises to the American...

As tech companies reboot nuclear energy, the site of the famous meltdown represents both the industry’s demise and its rebirth.Jane Fonda isn't a nuclear expert, but she played one on TV. In the 1979 film The China Syndrome, Fonda portrayed Kimberly Wells, a vivacious news reporter who discovered a cover-up at a nuclear power plant. The conspiracy involved the possibility of a meltdown that could "render an area the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable." The movie's timing and location were both impeccable. Twelve days after Fonda's film hit theaters, a reactor at Three Mile Island (TMI) in central Pennsylvania...

The power needs of artificial intelligence and cloud computing are growing so large that individual data center campuses could soon use more electricity than some cities, and even entire U.S. states, according to companies developing the facilities. The electricity consumption of data centers has exploded along with their increasingly critical role in the economy in the past 10 years, housing servers that power the applications businesses and consumers rely on for daily tasks. Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence, data centers are growing so large that finding enough power to drive them and enough suitable land to house them...

Humanity has thrown the global water cycle off balance “for the first time in human history,” fueling a growing water disaster that will wreak havoc on economies, food production and lives, according to a landmark new report. Decades of destructive land use and water mismanagement have collided with the human-caused climate crisis to put “unprecedented stress” on the global water cycle, said the report published Wednesday by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, a group of international leaders and experts. The water cycle refers to the complex system by which water moves around the Earth. Water evaporates from...

The power generation sector is looking at numerous ways to provide enough electricity to satisfy demand from data centers. Bloomberg Intelligence research shows data centers, buildings filled with servers and other computing equipment for data storage and networking that supports operations and artificial intelligence, could be responsible for as much as 17% of all U.S. electricity consumption by 2030. The U.S. Dept. of Energy has said one data center can require 50 times the electricity of a typical office building. Several technology groups are looking at nuclear power, including the use of small modular reactors, to meet their electricity needs....

Datacenters coming online in the next 15 months will need to supply at least some of their own powerUpdated As the saying goes, everything is bigger in Texas, but as datacenter footprints explode amid the AI boom, regulators fear even the Lone Star state's utilities won't be able to keep up for much longer. The Texas' Public Utility Commission is now warning datacenter operators looking to set up shop in the US state within the next 12 to 15 months that they won't be able to rely entirely on the local grid and will have to supply at least some...

Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid. In Georgia, demand for industrial power is surging to record highs, with the projection of new electricity use for the next decade now 17 times what it was only recently. Arizona Public Service, the largest utility in that state, is also struggling to keep up, projecting it will be out of transmission capacity before the end of the decade absent...

The Fed is becoming quite crafty when it comes to digital currency. They’re aware that it’s not popular, mainly because Americans are wary about handing control of their finances over to a government that could cut them off with a flick of a switch. So, in typical globalist fashion, they plan to “coax” you into using it by introducing the infrastructure as an option they know you’ll love. That’s precisely what they’re doing as we speak with this new FedNow program. This payment system, recently rolled out by the Federal Reserve, sets the foundation for the US government to essentially...

The Central Bank of Nigeria announced it will begin, effective in January, restricting cash withdrawals from banks and ATMs to just $45 per day as part of a push to move the country toward a cashless economy. If this were a one-off, I wouldn’t bother writing about it. But it comes on the heels of mega-banks announcing similarly creepy new policies in recent months in China, India, Russia, Brazil, Sweden, the U.S. and many other nations, all pointing to an imminent switch over to a global digital money system. In the U.S., the Federal Reserve put out an announcement in...

The debate over bitcoin's environmental footprint has shaken its price, and prompted a public discussion about the environmental footprints of various industries, from oil & gas to tech to Wall Street. In a gauge of the public's interest in the environmental footprint of various industries vs. crypto, one chart that sought to offer some context for the bitcoin network's energy usage went viral.Still, as Bloomberg concedes, all those emails, memes, videos, PDFs and photos need to be stored somewhere. And with most companies increasingly reliant on cloud providers like AWS and Microsoft Azure, these companies are building data centers like...

* Google plans to open new offices in Houston and Portland, CEO Sundar Pichai said Thursday. * Google unveiled plans to spend $7 billion on offices and data centers across 19 states. * Pichai said the expansions would create at least 10,000 new full-time jobs in the US this year. Google plans to ramp up its real estate by investing more than $7 billion in offices and data centers across 19 states, despite the growing momentum for companies to let employees work from home permanently The tech giant's investment plans, announced Thursday, include spending more than $1 billion in the...

* Data centres range from vast warehouses in Iowa to a converted paper mill in Finland * Buildings are so large Google even provides bicycles for engineers to get around them * Street View tour of North Carolina facility reveals Stormtrooper standing guard Google has given a rare glimpse inside the vast data centres around the globe that power its services. They reveal an intricate maze of computers that process Internet search requests, show YouTube video clips and distribute email for millions of people. With hundreds of thousands of servers, colourful cables and even bicycles so engineers can get around...

Decision - Matter of: Technosource Information Systems, LLC; TrueTandem, LLC Finally, our Office also held a hearing in this protest. During the hearing, we again requested that GSA explain the basis for its data center location requirements. In response, GSA repeated that the solicitation had originally limited data center locations to the continental United States, but that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the USTR [United States Trade Representative]considered the limitation restrictive of trade, and advised GSA to permit data centers located in foreign countries. Transcript at 13-14. During the hearing, the contracting officer testified that GSA expressed...

To save money, the U.S. government will shut down hundreds of data centers across the country and consolidate their services into its remaining data centers. The White House Office of Management and Budget recently announced that it would be shutting down 373 U.S. government data centers by 2012. Over the last two years, the number of U.S. data centers has quadrupled, and yet they are running at only about 27 percent utilization, according to the Office of Management and Budget. The maintenance costs of these data centers, including backup power supplies, air conditioning, fire-suppression and special security devices, has been...