The Half-Life Report - August 14, 2024

Welcome to The Half-Life Report, the weekly nuclear newsletter that gets right to the point and gives you golden nuggets from the world of nuclear.

Here’s this week’s biggest news:

#1: Major developments in Canada

Ontario Power Generation (OPG) announced a major development in its Darlington New Nuclear Project:

• Project goal: build Canada’s first grid-scale Small Modular Reactor (SMR), the BWRX-300

• Why? The project is critical for Ontario’s goal of achieving net-zero emissions and will provide 300 megawatts of clean energy, enough to power 300,000 homes

• So what’s the news? They just received one of the most important early components—the boring machine that will be used to dig and allow water from Lake Ontario to cool the components. This is one of the key features of CANDU reactors!

• Construction starts 2025, and the SMR is expected to be operational by 2029

In other Canadian nuclear news: Bruce Power, one of the largest nuclear operators in the world, announced plans for the Bruce C Project, an expansion of their existing nuclear facility in Ontario, which includes reactors Bruce A and Bruce B. Why? Ontario needs more energy, and this boosts nuclear capacity + supports the province's climate goals.

#2: Elon and Trump talk nuclear

Elon Musk and Donald Trump had a live discussion on X.

Among other topics, they chatted about nuclear power.

Here are the important nuggets of what they said:

• Musk is pro-nuclear energy: “I think, nuclear electricity generation is underrated. And it’s actually, you know, people have this fear of nuclear electricity generation, but it’s actually one of the safest forms of electricity generation.”

• AI needs energy: Trump mentioned how AI advancements require a lot more energy —that’s how the discussion came to nuclear power

• Musk said he visited Fukushima and said it’s completely normal there today, more than a decade after the accident

• Rebranding? Trump joked that maybe the field needs a new name, since the word tends to scare people off

#3: ($B)ig radiopharma moves

In the last year or so, companies have been pouring billions into radiopharmaceuticals —whether that’s in R&D or just flat-out acquisitions of smaller companies.

The latest such case is Eli Lilly buying Radionetics Oncology for $1B, who specialize in drugs targeting G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) for cancer treatment.

For context, radiopharmaceuticals have the potential to deliver more precise cancer therapies.

Recent advances = FOMO for the heavy hitters.

That’s it for this week!

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