Ozone, Uprates and 456 Small Reactors

Forests absorb more than a quarter of human-caused CO2 each year, over 11 billion metric tons. Two studies published Monday add to evidence that tropical forests, the Amazon above all, are losing that capacity. More and more forest area now releases more CO2 than it takes up during droughts and heat waves.

Fires do damage twice

The first study, in Communications Earth & Environment, measures a cost of Amazon fires that carbon budgets have not counted. Fires set for agriculture and land clearing often escape control during droughts. When they do, they release nitrogen oxides that travel long distances and react with organic molecules to form ozone. The ozone damages leaves on trees far from the flames and cuts their CO2 uptake. Lead author Flossie Brown of ETH Zürich puts the lost uptake at about 24% of the carbon the fires release directly.

The team combined three data sources. Controlled-exposure experiments at the TropOz lab set ozone levels around growing trees. Satellites tracked how much light vegetation reflects. Flux towers in the canopy picked up changes in air chemistry.

One finding ran the other way. From 1997 to 2024, overall ozone damage fell. Higher CO2 lets trees photosynthesize more efficiently, so they open their stomata less and take in less ozone. More frequent and severe fire, smoke, drought and heat more than cancelled out that gain.

Extreme years becoming normal

The second study, in AGU's Earth's Future, led by Johanna Van Passel of Ghent University, looks back at the 2023–24 El Niño period. Tropical forests stayed unusually hot for about 18 months on average, and 80% were drier than normal. Three-quarters faced extreme heat and drought together for an average of six months. In the Amazon, water levels at the port of Manaus fell to their lowest in more than a century of records.

California's grid operator has approved just under $28 billion in new transmission projects over the past five years. The investor-owned utilities that are supposed to build them are falling behind. According to a November 2025 California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) report, nearly 22 GW of renewable generation and batteries depend on transmission projects that have already slipped. Of that, 13.2 GW has already been delayed or is at risk of delay.

That gap matters because, as Canary Media's Jeff St. John reports, California needs to add 7–8 GW of capacity a year for two decades to hit its climate targets. That is roughly double its current pace, and it can't happen without more power lines. A 2025 report from the CPUC's Public Advocates Office found that just under half of the transmission projects approved since 2000 have actually been built and energized.

What AB 2493 does

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2493 last week. The law has three parts:

• Investor-owned utilities and independent transmission developers must submit project schedules for major upgrades that need a CPUC permit.
• The CPUC gets a new transmission development monitor position to track whether those projects are on schedule.
• When a project falls behind, the CPUC must order "remedial actions."

The bill was sponsored by American Clean Power–California and the Union of Concerned Scientists. Alex Jackson, executive director of ACP–California, says the aim is "simply to provide more oversight," not punishment. He notes that right now, which projects move forward and on what timeline is decided entirely by the utilities.

Google has signed a deal with Constellation, the largest US nuclear operator, to get 890 megawatts of extra capacity out of 11 reactors on PJM Interconnection. PJM is the second-largest US grid, and Heatmap calls it arguably the most stressed. That works out to roughly 80 MW per reactor. The method is uprating: upgrading an existing reactor so it produces more power. Kaufman argues it is the best option for buyers who can't wait the decade or more it takes to build a new Westinghouse AP1000 or a small modular reactor (SMR).

A pattern, not a one-off

The deal is part of a run of similar ones:

• February: The Department of Energy made its largest-ever loan to Southern Company, covering up to 6 GW of uprates across its nuclear fleet.
• Last week: Amazon signed a 20-year deal with Constellation to buy power from Maryland's Calvert Cliffs plant and pay for an uprate there.
• Last week: Oracle agreed to buy $300 million of power from a NextEra nuclear plant in Wisconsin, partly to cover the plant's rising fuel costs.

Heatmap asked whether uprates can stand in for new reactors. Raiford Smith, Google's head of power and energy for cloud, said demand outpaces both: "New data centers are coming on at a gigawatt a clip… even with all the uprates, there's still more to come." Put that way, the 890 MW deal covers less than one new data center.

Robinson Meyer's Shift Key podcast interviews Kurt Kelty, GM's vice president of battery and sustainability since February 2024. Kelty ran Panasonic's battery research lab starting in 1993, then helped build Tesla's first Gigafactory. Heatmap published only a short excerpt, so the numbers here are limited.

Two trends pulling in opposite directions

Meyer starts with a split in the U.S. battery market. EV sales are weak. In the third quarter, GM sold 25,000 EVs and Ford sold 6,000. The returning Chevy Bolt sold 8,000 units, a small fraction of what Meyer calls an already limited production run. Meanwhile, the data center boom and rising electricity demand are increasing demand for batteries that don't go in cars. Kelty's job is to steer between the two.

Why GM dropped the Ultium brand

GM retired the Ultium brand in 2024 but kept the name for its cells. Meyer points out that from the outside, Ultium seemed to work. GM designed one battery and fit it into many vehicles, and that produced profitable EVs where other automakers' approaches did not. So he asks why GM moved away from it.

Kelty says that once EV volumes really grow, GM will need every major cell format: prismatic, pouch and cylindrical. It will also need several chemistries: high-nickel, LFP (lithium iron phosphate) and LMR (lithium manganese-rich). He expects LMR to end up in most GM applications. GM's approach, he says, is to design "the right battery for the right application," not to standardize.

Carbon County, Utah, mined nearly 10 million tons of coal in 2006. Cheaper renewables and gas, along with depleted seams, ended that, and no coal has been mined there since 2023. Two very large energy projects built around data centers are now planned for the same valley.

The two projects

Valar Atomics' "Project Beehive" would put 456 small modular reactors on Bureau of Land Management land, according to NPR. It would also store radioactive waste and run industrial operations. The Utah Trust Lands Administration has agreed to lease the company a square mile of state land for up to 100 years. Valar plans to process its uranium TRISO fuel there, run desalination, make steel, refine critical minerals and supply data centers. Staff estimate $35 million in lease rent over 50 years, which goes to Utah schools. In June, Valar's Ward250 microreactor reached self-sustaining criticality at a test lab in neighboring Emery County. Valar also plans a 30-MW nuclear-powered AI data center there with Nvidia. No SMR is yet in commercial use in the US. The board's chair, Mike Nelson, admitted the agency "probably still [isn't] sure of everything to ask about because this is a first."

Altigen's "Jurassic Spark" would cover 1,200 acres east of Wellington, nearly double the Valar site. It would start with a 250-MW gas plant. County commissioner Larry Jensen says it could eventually reach 3 GW. All of Utah uses about 4 GW.

The gas plant is possible because of SB 132, passed last year. It lets companies needing 100 MW or more build their own self-contained power stations, keeping their load off the shared grid. It set off a wave of permit applications for gas plants.