In March 2017, at a small summit in Washington, DC, two Harvard professors, David Keith and Frank Keutsch, laid out plans to conduct what would have been the primary photo voltaic geoengineering experiment within the stratosphere.

The fundamental idea behind photo voltaic geoengineering is that by spraying sure particles excessive above the planet, people may replicate some quantity of daylight again into house as a way of counteracting local weather change. However critics have argued that an intervention that might tweak your complete planet’s local weather system is just too harmful to check in the true world.

The only, small balloon experiment got here to characterize all of those fears—and, in the long run, it was greater than the researchers have been ready to tackle. Final month, a decade after the undertaking was first proposed, Harvard formally introduced the undertaking’s termination. So what went mistaken? And what does that failure say concerning the latitude that researchers should discover such a controversial topic? Learn the complete story.

—James Temple

Why the lifetime of nuclear vegetation is getting longer

The typical age of reactors in nuclear energy vegetation around the globe is creeping up. Within the US, which has extra working reactors than every other nation, the typical reactor is 42 years outdated. Almost 90% of reactors in Europe have been round for 30 years or extra. 

Older reactors, particularly smaller ones, have been shut down in droves as a consequence of financial pressures, significantly in areas with different cheap sources of electrical energy, like low-cost pure fuel. However there may nonetheless be a number of life left in older nuclear reactors.