One Sentence News / August 2, 2023
Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
The first US nuclear reactor built from scratch in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia
Summary: Unit 3 at Plant Vogtle located southeast of Augusta, Georgia has completed testing and come online for commercial operation, marking the arrival of the first nuclear power plant to be built from scratch in the US in more than 30 years.
Context: As the name implies, Unit 3 is the third reactor at the site (the earlier two of which have been in operation for decades), and a fourth reactor is nearing completion and is expected to be hooked up to the grid before March of next year; these new reactors were supposed to cost $14 billion in total, but are now expected to cost an aggregate of about $35 billion—the third reactor was also meant to start generating power in 2016 when construction started in 2009, so this is being seen as a positive thing, as Unit 3 alone will produce enough electricity for about half a million homes, but the cost and time overruns on the project have been substantial, which could mean this is the last large-scale nuclear power project to come online in the US for some time.
—The Associated Press
China has switched on the largest wind turbine ever
Summary: The Chinese Three Gorges Corporation has installed the largest wind turbine in the world, the MySE 16-260, which boasts a rotor diameter of 853 feet—about 26 feet longer than the previous largest-ever wind turbine, which they also installed just a few weeks ago.
Context: To put that figure in perspective, the MySE 16-260 has three rotors that are each 404-feet long, which is about the length of one and a third American football fields, goal line to goal line, and the central tower is nearly the size of the Washington Monument, almost 500-feet tall; the turbine will produce enough power each year to serve all the needs of 80,000 people, and it was built to withstand typhoon-force winds, up to 178.5 mph; in general, bigger rotors on wind turbines means more wind energy can be captured, and that means bigger turbines will tend to be more effective and efficient than smaller ones.
—Popular Mechanics
European satellite plunges back to Earth in first-of-its-kind assisted re-entry
Summary: The European Space Agency has successfully guided a satellite from orbit into the Earth’s atmosphere, demonstrating a method by which post-mission satellites can be disposed of without risk to populated areas.
Context: The satellite that was de-orbited was conceived of during a period in which there were no space debris standards, so satellites from that era and earlier kind of just sit around in orbit, taking up space and increasing the likelihood of collision with other satellites after they’ve lived out their useful life; what this demonstration shows is that it’s possible to de-orbit these older satellites, pulling them out of orbital traffic lanes, basically, in a way that doesn’t put people down on the surface of the planet at risk, managing the de-orbit so that the satellite burns up over the ocean, instead.
—Ars Technica
Streaming services have been increasing their prices (and clamping down on account-sharing) to stoke profits during a period in which only Netflix has been able to avoid losing money, and even they have to be careful not to overspend in the midst of a Hollywood strike that could truncate new offerings (potentially increasing subscriber churn) in the coming year.
—Chartr
140 million
Volume (in tonnes) of carbon emissions from this year’s Canadian wildfires (so far).
That’s a new record, and this figure is expected to climb quite a bit higher before the fires are brought under control—Canada’s wildfire season typically peaks in late July or August.
—Reuters
Trust Click
If you’ve found value in this missive, there are several things you can do to support my work:
You can become a paid subscriber to One Sentence News
Or you can support all my projects by becoming an Understandary member