Welcome to The Hill's Sustainability newsletter{beacon} Sustainability Sustainability   The Big Story  Nuclear industry tiptoes toward renaissance Step by halting step, the U.S. nuclear industry is advancing.  © AP Photo/Bradley C Bower Federal funding, corporate investments, interruption of Russian uranium exports — not to mention the national demand for on-demand, low carbon power — are fuelling a resurgence in an industry that has long been in decline. That’s raising questions about who will bear the costs of its expansion.  On Tuesday, the Department of Energy announced contracts with six companies to supply uranium fuel to what officials of both parties hope will be a new fleet of nuclear power plants — facilities that companies like Amazon and Google have pledged will help power the next generation of data centers.   That means a potential domestic boom to supply those facilities, which in the U.S. have traditionally been supplied by uranium repurposed from decommissioned Russian warheads, according to The Texas Tribune.   The potential domestic boom in nuclear mining is splitting South Texas, one of the nation’s main potential sources of the radioactive element. “We can make Texas the nuclear capital of the world,” Reed Clay of the Texas Nuclear Alliance told the Tribune. State officials, who back nuclear, have overruled objections from local groundwater officials, who have evidence that mining could pollute groundwater.  “It’s not like I’m against industry or anything, but I don’t think this is a very safe spot,” one local landowner told the Tribune.   There are also concerns at the other end of the supply chain: what to do with nuclear waste. As CNN noted, no state has volunteered to store future waste, and some have offered vocal opposition — part of the long-tail legacy of the U.S.’s creation of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal in the 1980s against the wishes of state officials and residents.   That legacy still smarts across the Southwest. “Just because we have the right geology, a low population, large land mass, does not mean that we agree to be a further sacrifice zone for the nation’s defense industry or even the power industry,” said James Kenney, secretary for New Mexico’s Environment Department.  Nuclear stocks also have crashed in the past month, with NuScale, a manufacturer of small modular reactors (SMRs) losing 30 percent of its value, and similar losses at competitors Oklo, Cameco and Energy Fuels, according to Oil Price International.   In part, that’s a metric of just how high the sector was flying until November; in part, it’s a reflection of a key liability. As Houston Chronicle columnist Chris Tomlinson reported, it’s a reflection of a key sector’s high costs and considerable reliance on public money.    That’s a big problem in Texas, where its GOP backers like Gov. Greg Abbott are publicly skeptical of both taxes and climate change — a crisis which offers the best argument for a low-carbon fuel source, but one on which state officials have pushed back hard on federal climate regulations. Nuclear isn’t the only option for round-the-clock low-carbon power generation — long duration batteries and geothermal energy are potent competitors. But the financial, climate and governmental forces backing nuclear make it likely that mining, power generation and waste disposal will all be big fights during the second Trump administration. “There’s an urgent desire to find zero-carbon energy sources that aren’t intermittent like renewables,” Colin Leyden, Texas state director for the Environmental Defense Fund, told the Texas Tribune. There aren’t a lot of options, and nuclear is one.” Welcome to The Hill’s Sustainability newsletter, I'm Saul Elbein — every week we follow the latest moves in the growing battle over sustainability in the U.S. and around the world.   Did someone forward you this newsletter? Subscribe here.   Essential Reads  Latest news impacting sustainability this week and beyond:  US West governors adopt bipartisan resolutions on environment, energy, healthcareGovernors from the U.S. West came together this week to adopt a set of bipartisan resolutions, with a goal of solidifying state and federal partnerships on environmental policies, as well as energy, healthcare and labor issues. The leaders, who convened in Las Vegas for a Western Governors’ Association (WGA) meeting, approved five new measures as part of a larger set of 29 policy resolutions — which help inform their …  Full Story  Mark Ruffalo presses Biden to act fast on ‘forever chemicals’ before Trump takes officeActor and activist Mark Ruffalo is urging the Biden administration to take decisive regulatory action on “forever chemicals,” as the return of President-elect Trump to the White House looms near. “The EPA has worked their butts off, against all odds, to get a drinking water standard on this particular chemical class,” Ruffalo said at a Monday webinar, hosted by the Environmental Working Group. “Now …  Full Story  EV batteries may last much longer than expected: StudyThe shelf-life of electric vehicle (EV) batteries may be as much as 40 percent greater than previously assumed, a new study has found. Stanford University scientists uncovered this possibility by changing the way they evaluate the life cycles of such batteries: Instead of conducting customary tests that involve a constant rate of discharge followed by recharge, they assessed the batteries under everyday, stop-and-go conditions. …  Full Story  Extreme heat-related deaths may be affecting the young more than the old: Study Young people may be at much greater risk of dying from climate change-induced extreme heat than the elderly, a new study has found Those under the age of 35 years old made up about 75 percent of recent heat-related deaths in Mexico — with a significant share falling in the 18 to 34 range, according to the study, published on Friday in Science Advances. The findings upended existing assumptions that older people are particularly …  Full Story   Circular Economy  Recycling feces can help clean up agriculture: Study© Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP Spreading the world’s human and domestic animal feces and urine on fields could nourish more than 10 percent of global crops, while cutting the need for minerals like nitrogen and potassium by more than a third, according to a new study.  Moving that waste onto fields would be a significant step toward a circular economy for agriculture, according to findings published Wednesday in Nature Sustainability.  But in addition to reducing the need for elements like nitrogen — which is largely generated using fossil fuels — another significant benefit to the feces-as-fertilizer model would be redirecting waste that currently ends up in rivers and lakes.  “It doesn’t make any sense to pollute our environment, especially our waters and soils, and then have not enough fertilizer for agriculture,” coathor Johannes Lehmann, a professor of plant science at Cornell University, said in a statement. “We need to close the loop from poorly utilized nutrients, wherever they come from.”    On Our Radar  Upcoming news themes and events we're watching: The oil and gas industry leaders who backed President-elect Trump in his successful bid for the presidency are now divided among themselves between factions in favor of stability — which means keeping the Biden-era regulations and climate subsidies intact — and those in favor of deregulation. Starting next week, Saul will be in the fossil fuel epicenter of West Texas, reporting on how a wave of technological advances and mergers have transformed the region — and what the Trump transition will mean for the nation’s nearly 2 million fossil fuel workers.  In Other News  Branch out with different reads from The Hill:Scott could be latest casualty in House Democratic committee leader shake-up House Agriculture ranking member David Scott (D-Ga.) could become the latest Democrat in the chamber to lose a committee leadership spot in the wake of the 2024 election. Full Story   Biden doubles tariffs on Chinese solar panel componentsThe Biden administration will double tariffs on certain solar panel components that are made in China, it announced Wednesday. Full Story   Around The Nation  Local and state headlines on sustainability issues: This county has an ambitious climate agenda. That’s not easy in Florida. (Grist) Why Gov. Gavin Newsom's electric vehicle mandate is in trouble (Los Angeles Times) Arctic tundra has long helped cool Earth. Now, it’s fueling warming. (The New York Times)   What We're Reading  Sustainability news we've flagged from other outlets: Extreme heat is forcing farmers and fisherfolk to work overnight, an adaptation that comes with a cost (Grist) US Meat, Milk Prices Should Spike if Donald Trump Carries Out Mass Deportation Schemes (Wired)Monarch butterflies a big step closer to protection under Endangered Species Act (Chicago Tribune)   What People Think  Opinion related to sustainability submitted to The Hill: Elon Musk and Donald Trump: A modern-day Teapot Dome scandal waiting to happen    You're all caught up. See you next week!  Check out The Hill's Sustainability page for the latest coverage.Like this newsletter? Take a moment to view our other topical products here 📩 Close Thank you for signing up! Subscribe to more newsletters here The latest in politics and policy. 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