In March 2017, at a small summit in Washington, DC, two Harvard professors, David Keith and Frank Keutsch, laid out plans to conduct what would have been the primary photo voltaic geoengineering experiment within the stratosphere.
The fundamental idea behind photo voltaic geoengineering is that by spraying sure particles excessive above the planet, people might replicate some quantity of daylight again into house as a way of counteracting local weather change. However critics have argued that an intervention that might tweak your complete planet’s local weather system is just too harmful to review in the true world.
The one, small balloon experiment got here to signify all of those fears—and, ultimately, it was greater than the researchers had been ready to tackle. Final month, a decade after the mission was first proposed, Harvard formally introduced the mission’s termination. So what went fallacious? And what does that failure say concerning the latitude that researchers need to discover such a controversial topic? Learn the total story.
—James Temple
Why the lifetime of nuclear crops is getting longer
The common age of reactors in nuclear energy crops around the globe is creeping up. Within the US, which has extra working reactors than every other nation, the common reactor is 42 years outdated. Almost 90% of reactors in Europe have been round for 30 years or extra.Â
Older reactors, particularly smaller ones, have been shut down in droves as a result of financial pressures, notably in areas with different cheap sources of electrical energy, like low-cost pure fuel. However there might nonetheless be lots of life left in older nuclear reactors.Â
