Alexander C. Kaufman

Trying to eliminate the possibility of more siblings to split the inheritance with

My Friday morning newsletter:

When you forget to unschedule the tweet

Spain is the only major country still embarking on a nuclear phaseout. There’s a growing recognition that this is unwise.

But national and regional govts and utilities are all fighting over who should pay for extending the lifespan of the nuclear plants and what concessions should come with that.

This is such a great topic and you're hands down one of the people I'm most interested to read a whole book from on it. Congratulations!

We have 30 million acres in the US growing corn for ethanol. | Landon Brand We have 30 million acres in the US growing corn for ethanol. That's the size of Ohio. We have ~1 million acres in the US turning sunlight into electricity thanks to solar farms. NREL estimates we ne...

Source on this. Appears he’s using NREL data www.linkedin.com/posts/landon...

Interior Launches a Witch Hunt on Pro-Renewable Policies On FERC’s ‘disastrous misstep,’ the World Court’s climate ruling, and 127 SMRs

In a secretarial order on Tuesday, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum directed his department to eliminate policies that give “preferential treatment” to wind and solar.

Read more in today's climate briefing from @alexckaufman.bsky.social:

The British government picked its winner and now we see a loser: French nuclear startup newcleo is quitting its lead-cooled fast reactor project.

www.reuters.com/business/ene...

Republican Rep. Chuck Fleischmann just took a firm stance against privatizing the TVA.

www.knoxnews.com/story/news/p...

I didn’t make the chart

Solar has real land-use considerations but this graphic does a good job of contextualizing that demand compared to what we devote to ethanol, which is good for farmers' bottom line but does not at all accomplish its climate raison d'être.

Nominations Sent to the Senate Thomas Albus, of Missouri, to be United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri for the term of four years. Timothy Dill, of Ohio, to be an

Ho Nieh is nominated to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Neih was the former Director of the NRC Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, and is currently working for Southern Company and INPO. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

Scientists Say New Government Climate Report Twists Their Work A new Department of Energy report “fundamentally misrepresents” climate research and leaves out key context, multiple scientists cited in the report tell WIRED.

NEW: i spoke to nine (!) scientists across several disciplines whose work was cited in the new Department of Energy report that downplays the severity of climate change. all of them say their work was misrepresented, cherry picked, and/or lacked context —

Resignation of a top US nuclear regulator seen as an attack on agency independence NRC Commissioner Annie Caputo "apparently resigned rather than be compromised by politics."

Very cool: @motherjones.com has republished the scoop in my newsletter yesterday about the a top regulator resigning from the NRC.

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

AccuWeather on tsunami warning in the Pacific: “This earthquake is likely to be in the top 10 strongest ever recorded.”

Palau's president said that, once he came into office, China more or less immediately tried to bribe him into abandoning Taiwan.

www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

I guess it does kind of qualify since it's less than 300 MW but I doubt it's as modular as they say

I agree but the issue is that the governor said the plant would be upstate

Send me the Wikipedia! That’s wild.

I got a copy of NRC Commissioner Annie Caputo's resignation letter.

Updated on my initial scoop:
kaufman.substack.com/p/a-top-us-n...

Big scoop in the newsletter:

Annie Caputo, a Republican initially appointed by Trump, is resigning from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission amid the Trump administration's dramatic overhauls to the agency, a source with direct knowledge told me.

kaufman.substack.com/p/a-top-us-n...

Extremely useful graphic

An Oil Giant Makes a Contrarian Bet on Clean Energy On abandoning Antarctica, an EV milestone, and this week’s big earnings

Inside this morning's climate briefing:

✅ An oil giant bucks the majors by betting on green energy
✅ The U.S. abruptly ends vital Antarctica research
✅ The U.S. is finally getting EV charging stations

Read the full briefing from @alexckaufman.bsky.social below:

Under the hood of CAISO’s AI outage management pilot California will be the first state to actively manage power outages with AI.

Really good deep-dive by @maeveallsup.bsky.social into the California grid's plan to use AI in its outage management system.

www.latitudemedia.com/news/under-t...

ICYMI: my first piece for @nysfocus.bsky.social published over the weekend:

Meant to write “after China”

Bhutan is the No. 3 country in the world for installed new hydropower capacity.

A new kind of manmade acid is showing up in rain.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

This is cool.

Too bad there’s no connection to the growing bioluminescent play push, fun synergies there.