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President Donald Trump told Reuters on Wednesday that he is considering withdrawing the United States from the 76-year-old alliance after European allies declined to send warships to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to global shipping. "Wouldn't you if you were me?" he asked. Earlier this week, in an interview with Britain's The Telegraph, he called NATO a "paper tiger" and said Russian President Vladimir Putin shared the assessment. The spat has a straightforward trigger. The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow chokepoint between Iran and Oman through which…
The effective blockage of the Strait of Hormuz has thrown the world’s continued dependence on fossil fuels into sharp relief. The interruption to the waterway, which accommodates one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas, has thrown global energy markets into turmoil. The blockage represents the single-largest interruption to global oil trade in history. But it’s not causing nearly as much pain as past oil crises thanks to a much more diverse global energy mix. “There is little sign that the war with Iran will cause the kind…
Nuclear energy is once again at the center of fierce debate between European leaders as a new energy crisis sweeps the world, leaving the import-dependent European Union scrambling for alternative energy sources. The bloc still imports more than half of its energy needs, leaving it extremely vulnerable to global market shocks, like the unprecedented interruption to oil and gas supplies currently taking place in the Strait of Hormuz as the United States and Israel continue to wage war with Iran. In order to keep the lights on and prevent huge numbers…
Tech giants Microsoft and NVIDIA are collaborating on an artificial intelligence project designed to accelerate the development of nuclear energy – in order to feed the growing energy needs of AI. The project aims to develop an “ecosystem of AI-powered digital engineering tools” that will be used to shorten the considerable timelines of nuclear power plants and bring them online a lot more quickly as the rate of energy demand growth continues to skyrocket around the world. The nuclear power sector in the United States is beset…
Coal is back with a bang in Asia’s power generation, as countries scramble to contain the LNG supply shortage due to the war in the Middle East. Coal hasn’t really left most Asian economies, which rely on the fuel for much of their power generation. Amid the squeeze of natural gas supply due to the de facto closed Strait of Hormuz and the sky-rocketing LNG prices that few buyers in Asia can afford, nations are scrapping previous restraints to the use of coal-fired power generation. Developed economies like Japan and South Korea are…
