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Electric utilities and power grid operators increasingly are looking at ways to diminish and avoid disruptions from extreme weather. The power sector also has experience with the financial impacts of wildfires, both with damage to assets and losses incurred when equipment is found liable for causing those events.

Undergrounding lines, in addition to enhancing safety, also can improve the performance of transmission infrastructure, by mitigating hazards such as impacts from trees and other vegetation. A report from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Grid Deployment Office, along with Berkeley Lab in California, notes a “key advantage of underground transmission and distribution lines is substantially reduced vulnerability to disruption from extreme weather and wildfires [by preventing initial ignition as well as propagation], resulting in both reliability and resilience improvements.” Several electric utilities and other agencies have noted that undergrounding offers protection against lightning, animal incursions, high winds (including thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, and derechos), and ice and snow. It also eliminates the chances of fallen power lines caused by auto accidents (Figure 1), or simply due to aging infrastructure.

Read more in Power Magazine here.

Growing Grid Strategy: Undergrounding Power Lines to Withstand Weather

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Developing and commercializing new metal alloys is a slow and expensive process. As a result, companies in sectors such as aerospace, defense, and energy often rely on established materials, even when they lack the performance required to build next-generation products. 

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To address this challenge, Foundation Alloy is developing a new class of advanced alloys based on metals such as steel, aluminum, nickel, molybdenum, and tungsten. Among these materials, molybdenum has emerged as a key focus area. 

Molybdenum is a critical transition metal widely used in metallurgy to enhance the strength and performance of carbon and low-alloy steels, while improving the corrosion resistance of stainless steels. Building on these properties, Foundation Alloy is developing proprietary molybdenum and molybdenum-alloy formulations through its MetalsFIRST manufacturing platform.

An MIT spinout, Foundation Alloy was founded by former MIT professor Chris Schuh and other MIT researchers. The team developed a solid-state metallurgy system that bypasses the traditional melting phase, enabling faster and more energy-efficient production of advanced alloys compared to conventional manufacturing methods.

The process begins with powdered raw materials that are mechanically alloyed into a homogeneous metal powder. The material is then shaped using techniques such as metal injection molding, pressing, or 3D printing before undergoing a final sintering step in a furnace. During sintering, the particles are heated just enough to bond together and form a fully dense metal component without ever melting.

>>>READ: Can this Company Disrupt the Metals Market?

According to the company, its novel approach can accelerate alloy development cycles tenfold while producing materials twice as strong as traditional metals. The technology also creates crystal grain structures up to 100 times finer than those found in conventional materials, unlocking improved strength and performance levels. 

Since the company’s powders are easier to sinter than standard powders, engineers also have better control over the metal’s internal structure. This allows them to tailor mechanical properties such as strength, toughness, ductility, heat resistance, and fatigue performance. 

By achieving the desired component density and microstructure with less energy, Foundation Alloy can further forgo many of the costly heat-treatment and post-processing steps that manufacturers typically rely on to ensure material quality. 

The result is reduced energy consumption, lower costs, and shortened production timelines. 

What once took a matter of years can now be achieved in a couple of months.

>>>READ: Researchers from Northwestern University Discover Metal-Free Alternative for Battery Production

“This is an entirely new approach to making metals,” says CEO Jake Guglin, one of the MIT co-founders. “It gives us a broad set of rules on the materials engineering side that allows us to design a lot of different compositions with previously unattainable properties.”

High-performance materials are essential to the aerospace, defense, energy, and advanced manufacturing sectors, where components must withstand extreme temperatures, stresses, and operating environments. By modernizing metal manufacturing, advanced materials companies like Foundation Alloy are helping kickstart the next wave of industrial innovation. 

This U.S. Company is Putting Metal Manufacturing Back on the Map

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The Energy Department says a small nuclear reactor under development at a national lab has reached a crucial milestone that could allow it to produce electricity within a few years.

The microreactor being developed by Antares Nuclear Inc. at the Idaho National Lab reached “criticality” on Thursday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said. The milestone occurs when a nuclear reactor achieves a self-sustaining chain reaction capable of producing a steady release of energy.

Antares is the first private company to bring an advanced reactor to criticality under a pilot program begun last year by the Trump administration meant to supercharge nuclear energy production in the U.S. The demonstration was conducted in partnership with the Energy Department and other contractors with support from the U.S. Army.

Read more in AP News here.

Energy Department says advanced nuclear reactor first to reach critical milestone

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The Trump administration is in “active dialogue” on creating a petroleum reserve in California, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told POLITICO on Friday, a move that would boost oil infrastructure in the state and undermine Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s bid to shrink the state’s fossil fuel footprint.

A June 2 document that lawyers for Sable Offshore Corp., which owns a trio of oil platforms off the California coast, sent to the Energy Department and seen by POLITICO shows the company has proposed a West Coast Strategic Petroleum Reserve “in response to the inquiries made by the Trump administration and in the furtherance of Sable’s ongoing discussions with the Department of War for the supply of oil and gas to California.”

Read more in Politico here.

Trump administration in ‘active dialogue’ on strategic petroleum reserve in California

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Urenco USA, operator of the only U.S. commercial-scale uranium enrichment facility, will expand low-enriched uranium (LEU) capacity at its National Enrichment Facility (NEF) in Eunice, New Mexico, by nearly 50% through a privately funded, multibillion-dollar investment that includes construction of a new enrichment plant. The project will add 2.1 million separative work units (SWU) of new enrichment capacity.

The expansion, announced June 2, will install up to 24 gas centrifuge cascades at the licensed New Mexico site. While construction is slated to begin at the new plant in 2029, the first cascades are scheduled to begin production in 2032, and additional cascades are slated for installation through 2036. The NEF site is already licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for up to 10 million SWU of capacity—well above the projected buildout, Urenco told POWER.

Read more in Power Magazine here.

America’s Only Commercial Uranium Enricher Is Privately Building a New Plant Amid a Widening Nuclear Fuel Supply Gap

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The Trump administration on Friday auctioned off rights to drill in a pristine wildlife refuge in Alaska, but the lease sale attracted only two bidders on a few tracts of land.

Of the about 60 tracts of land opened up for leasing by the Trump administration, only five received bids. Only Hex Energy and the state-owned Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority bid on tracts.

Overall, the lease sale netted about $3.7 million, half of which will go to the state of Alaska.

Read more in The Hill here.

Trump auctions off rights to drill in Alaska wildlife refuge, but gets few bidders

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large data center

This piece was initially published in the MS Biz Journal.

With the AI and data boom underway, electricity has become the top economic infrastructure for growth. Electricity has long been foundational to our society, powering our homes and businesses, but now, it is the primary infrastructure on which the digital economy, advanced manufacturing and an American industrial resurgence depend.

In an era of data centers, AI, and electrified production, the ability to generate and deliver large quantities of reliable power is quickly becoming the difference between regions that grow and those that struggle.

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The unprecedented electricity demand growth rate has critics claiming electricity bill increases will be the result of it all. Such claims ignore how electric systems trended prior to 2020, especially in Mississippi. From 2000 to 2020, U.S. electricity consumption only increased 11%, and in Mississippi, the growth was only about half that. Over the next 10 years, U.S. electricity demand growth is projected at an astronomical 40%.

Electricity is a capital-intensive business. When we pay for kilowatt hours, what we’re actually paying for is the vast infrastructure required to make and deliver it—generation plants, high-voltage transmission lines, substations, local distribution lines, transformers and a specialized workforce. A system is built for growth, so when there is little or no growth in sales of kilowatt hours, those same kilowatt hours, or us consumers, must bear the increasing costs of maintenance and replacement.

That’s why data centers can be ideal additions to an electric system and good for the other customers on the system. When more electricity is flowing over the same lines, the fixed costs of the entire system are now spread over many more kilowatt hours, just by adding one or several large customers.

That’s precisely what’s happening with Mississippi Power Company serving the Compass Data Center under construction in Meridian. Compass will be consuming surplus electric capacity already available on Mississippi Power’s system. By picking up such a large-load customer in Compass, existing Mississippi Power customers will benefit in the future as costs are spread over more kilowatt hours.

>>>READ: AI can lower energy bills with data centers that power themselves

In the case of Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) multiple campuses in Canton, Ridgeland, Clinton and Vicksburg and AVAIO in Brandon, all within Entergy Mississippi’s service area, there are unprecedented infrastructure additions underway to meet the new capacity needs but still to the benefit of other customers on the system.

Three new natural gas generating plants are being in Greenville, Ridgeland and Vicksburg. Plants in Greenville and Vicksburg were 50+ years old needing replaced, where AWS is picking up a huge share of the cost while paying for their added electric power needs. Existing Entergy customers will benefit for decades from the new, more efficient plants, at a far lower cost than what would have been without the large industrial customers.Due to the data projects, Entergy recently announced a projected $5 billion in savings over 20 years to existing customers across their multi-state system with $2 billion of that to Mississippi customers. Further, Entergy Mississippi announced a $300 million upgrade to system reliability and storm strengthening efforts entirely due to new revenue from data centers.

Considering the path electric systems were on just a few years ago, large-load data centers are just the thing needed to take pressure off of rising electricity rates. Over the last few years, you may have noticed, electricity rates have risen, but why? Not data centers. Not higher natural gas prices. Inflation. The cost of just about everything rose much more sharply than normal from 2022-2025, and electricity followed.

Still, Mississippi comes in with electricity rates 16% lower than the national average. We want to keep it that way, right? The best way to do that is by growing the system, making the pie bigger and spreading costs across a growing consumer base. By the way, the same principle applies to taxes and public revenue, of which data center development can be a tax windfall, especially locally.

>>>READ: Blocking Data Centers Won’t Make Electricity Cheaper

The benefits of electricity-based development are just too great to turn away, and to turn away likely means to fall behind. Whether data centers or advanced manufacturing, forward thinking and more energy development could continue to pay off for years to come.

Patrick Sullivan is President of the Mississippi Energy Institute in Jackson.

How Data Centers Can Help the Grid

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A year ago, President Donald Trump issued four executive orders aimed at restoring America’s lost global leadership in nuclear energy—a worthy goal. Over 80 years ago, the United States unlocked the secrets of atomic fission through the Manhattan Project and then, pursuant to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s historic Atoms for Peace vision, harnessed that awesome power to benefit humanity through abundant clean energy.  

In the 1950s, Admiral Hyman Rickover launched the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus. The nuclear Navy laid the groundwork for the world’s first commercial nuclear reactor at Shippingport, Pennsylvania. By the late years of the Cold War, over 300 US commercial and naval reactors were operational, and the United States was the world’s unquestioned nuclear leader. US designs underpinned the reactor deployments in Europe and Asia.  The United States also dominated the world market in supplying the enriched uranium required by most of the world’s reactors.

Read more in The National Interest here.

America Doubles Down on a New Nuclear Energy Future

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The U.S. has announced a new partnership with Japan on science and artificial intelligence.

Energy Department Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil told reporters Thursday that each country would invest $500 million in the joint venture.

“This is the defining moment for the next era of science,” he said. “We’re linking our brightest minds and the most advanced tools — both in the U.S. and in Japan, and around the world — into a cohesive engine of discovery.”

The announcement comes as part of the administration’s “Genesis Mission”, which seeks to advance the use of AI for scientific research. 

Read more in The Hill here.

US announces science and AI partnership with Japan

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The Trump administration’s push to expand oil and gas development in Alaska faces a new test Friday, with the latest lease sale set for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Opponents of drilling in the refuge’s coastal plain have pointed to a lack of industry interest in the prior two sales held there and ongoing changes in Alaska’s arctic region due to climate change as proof the region should be off-limits to drilling. But supporters of drilling see the coastal plain, which is roughly the size of Delaware, as a potential untapped resource that could boost U.S. oil production and generate new revenue and jobs.

Read more in AP News here.

US set to hold latest oil and gas lease sale for Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

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