Duggan Flanakin: Mining the oceans for fresh water – and Uranium

About 450,000 residents in the Corpus Christi (Texas) metropolitan area are primarily served by fresh water from two severely threatened reservoirs, but the city has become increasingly reliant on water sent via the Mary Rhodes Pipeline from Lake Texana and the Colorado River. The city remains under stage 3 water restrictions despite recent heavy rains. Lake Corpus Christi is only a third full, while the rains raised Choke Canyon Reservoir’s water level to 20% full.

Duggan Flanakin: Is America on the verge of a nuclear renaissance?

It has been more than seven years since President Donald Trump signed the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act (NEIMA) into law – and it has taken all seven years (including four during the Biden Administration) for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to issue a final rule implementing its provisions.

Duggan Flannakin: Forging and vaulting ahead for critical minerals

While the nation was focused on an ongoing personal tragedy and the Super Bowl, representatives of 54 nations met last Wednesday in Washington, DC, at the request of Secretary of State Marco Rubio to plot out a pathway to mutual independence from the Chinese stranglehold on access to critical minerals and rare earths.

Duggan Flanakin: The U.S. re-enters the rare-earths race

Hardly anyone in 1972 saw President Nixon’s decision to reopen diplomatic relations with the Peoples’ Republic of China as the beginning of a half-century of America surrendering its mining and manufacturing superiority to the fledgling Communist regime.

Successive administrations did little or nothing to halt the export of American skilled labor jobs, or even to promote skilled American labor as vital to national security. Unlike his predecessors, President Trump determined to promote American labor and restore mining and manufacturing as the pathway to a stronger nation and a prosperous economy.

Duggan Flanakin: Japan tries out osmotic energy

Residents of the Japanese coastal city of Fukuoka are pioneering the world’s first full-sized osmotic power plant — which generates electricity by mixing fresh water with saltwater. The plant, which opened on August 5, generates about 880,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, enough to run a nearby desalination facility and supply about 220 nearby homes.

Duggan Flanakin: Are we on the threshold of commercial fusion?

For how many years have we been told that nuclear fusion energy is just 20 or 30 years down the road? It is hard for the average guy to imagine human technology has advanced to the point that we are ready to generate the energy of the Sun and stars in much smaller doses – and control that energy without burning us in eternal fire.

But the ultimate alchemy (turning lead to gold is chicken feed by comparison) is, according to multiple private companies, much closer to reality than the timeline espoused by the myriad of international nuclear scientists building Europe’s ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) or even China’s artificial sun.

Duggan Flanakin: The U.S. Rediscovers a Valuable Trading Partner — Indonesia

In the throes of the summer, the Trump administration announced an Agreement on Reciprocal Trade with the Republic of Indonesia — the world’s third largest democracy — that builds on the 1996 U.S.–Indonesia Trade and Investment Framework Agreement. Key features of the agreement relate to tariffs and other barriers to bilateral trade, environmental protections, and labor rights.

Duggan Flanakin: Regulating CO2 has led to global imbalances

The global push to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, based on the questionable premise that increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere threaten to trigger a global climate catastrophe, has wreaked havoc on energy and economic development in the United States, Europe, and Africa while giving so-called “emerging” nations like China and India a virtual free pass.

Duggan Flanakin: Russia flexing nuclear energy muscles in Africa

Through its state-owned nuclear energy company Rosatom, Russia under Vladimir Putin has extended its tentacles deep into Africa. Early in this century, Russia began escalating its outreach, offering its significant expertise in nuclear energy to emerging African nations eager to utilize the continent’s ample uranium resources to power their futures.

Duggan Flanakin: China’s stolen mineral wealth – a product of genocide

When the fledgling People’s Republic of China in 1949 annexed the central Asian region now known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Chairman Mao’s government gained direct control over the region’s great wealth of mineral resources, thanks to capitulation by the Soviet Union. Indeed, Soviet investments in surveys, extraction and processing equipment, and transport infrastructure had created a blueprint for Chinese investment and economic planning.

Duggan Flanakin: The Fusion Race Heats Up

Nobody is saying it, but the advent of artificial intelligence and machine learning may be springboarding the increased intensity of the competition for nuclear fusion — which many are now saying is far less than “30 years away.” The burning question among the few who are fully aware of the stakes in this race is: “Who will get there first — and does first matter more than best?”

The greatest obstacle to fusion supplying the world with limitless electricity is learning how to maintain a balance between magnetic confinement and the severe heat (100 million degrees Celsius). Fusion produces cleaner energy than fission (its only byproducts are helium and other greenhouse gases—not radiation), and its fuels—deuterium and tritium—can easily be sourced from seawater and lithium. Scientists today are trying multiple ways to skin this cat.

Duggan Flanakin: Can the U.S. retake the lead in new nuclear energy?

As of 2023, nearly one-quarter of the world’s nuclear reactors generating electricity were in the United States, which also boasts over a quarter of worldwide generation capacity and over 30% of actual nuclear electricity generation. But the average age of the 92 U.S. operational nuclear reactors, the world’s third oldest fleet, was 41.6 years. The Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia are the only new U.S. reactors in the past 40 years.

Duggan Flanakin: Greta versus the volcano

As America’s “greenest” President (Joe Biden) fades into the sunset, one is reminded of the 1990 Tom Hanks blockbuster Joe Versus the Volcano. Our salvation may be near.

In the movie, Joe Banks (Hanks) is told by a doctor he is dying. He is then duped by an unscrupulous billionaire into throwing himself into a volcano. The billionaire (and crony of the lying doctor) needs a sucker to appease the gods of the native Pacific islanders who control access to a mineral essential for manufacturing superconductors.

Duggan Flanakin: Net-Zero Is the Real Climate Catastrophe

 

Maybe Vladimir Putin SHOULD get the Nobel Peace Prize after all.

To be sure, Putin’s bloody invasion of Ukraine is an affront to humanity, given his targeting of civilians. Russia even fired upon medical and humanitarian aid convoys and is using a nuclear power plant as a shield for his military operations.

But Putin’s invasion may be saving Europe – and other nations – from their blind devotion to the “climate catastrophe” movement and the worldwide push to “Net Zero by 2050.” Even before Putin’s war disrupted European energy supplies vastly increased energy costs, Europeans were suffering from senseless “green” energy policies imposed in the name of “saving the planet.”