Jessica Lovering
@lovering.bsky.social
4.2K followers 460 following 360 posts
Researching the future of nuclear in Sweden at Uppsala University. Senior Fellow w/ Nuclear Innovation Alliance; Fellow w/ Energy For Growth Hub; PhD in Engineering & Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon. https://jlovering.substack.com/
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lovering.bsky.social
We’re on a spot price electricity plan in Sweden, which is great because I finally got my husband to geek out over energy prices. Now he says stuff like, ”It’s going to be really windy tomorrow, we should do laundry.”
Reposted by Jessica Lovering
mchammond.bsky.social
🚨New nuclear tech alert! So proud of the DISA and Pillsbury teams for getting this license. This game changing process will revolutionize the ability to treat over 15,000 abandoned uranium mining sites in the west including many on the lands of the Navajo Nation. www.pillsburylaw.com/en/news-and-...
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman
Across the western U.S., more than 15,000 Cold War–era abandoned uranium mine waste sites remain—many of which are located on or near tribal lands—posing long-standing environmental and health risks. ...
www.pillsburylaw.com
lovering.bsky.social
I said the study was good, but the design was flawed by today’s standards, even if it had been published! But for a lot of these other links, the published studies rely on bad statistical methods and are not well-controlled
lovering.bsky.social
But that’s an example of a good study, albeit still flawed by today’s standards. RFK Jr. isn’t uncovering hidden studies like that, his reports cited totally fabricated studies! Yes, our understanding of nutrition evolves over time. But people believe lots of things now based on junk science
lovering.bsky.social
In well-controlled studies, what looks like an effect from reduction in seed oils or ultra-processed foods is actually just less calories. You are very much proving my point with your, ”I don’t need science, I have my personal anecdote” 😀
lovering.bsky.social
There *are* lots of people who want to restrict seed oils or put warnings on fructose, etc. And that’s not based on good nutritional science. That’s all I’m saying!
lovering.bsky.social
No one is denying anyone anything. But to say this decision is based on science is just not true. The studies are not well-designed.
lovering.bsky.social
This is not about personal choice at all. I was talking about people coting junk scientific studies to support policy changes. The studies saying seed oils are bad for you aren’t much better than Tylenol causes autism in their quality
lovering.bsky.social
So, I think everyone in my social feeds was rightfully mocking the tylenol-autism link, without really grasping that it's the exact same kind of poorly-designed studies behind a lot of the links they do still believe. It may not have the same harms, because tylenol is a harm reduction tool, but...
tamarhaspel.bsky.social
If you think high-fructose corn syrup is worse than sugar, or artificial sweeteners are harmful, or genetically modified foods are bad for you, or organic vegetables are better for you, you're engaging in the same kind of evidence-blindness that RFK Jr. is.

Not at the same scale! But same idea.
lovering.bsky.social
These are my only pets at the moment…
Toddler and baby sucking their thumbs on the floor Toddler and baby riding bouncy cows. Toddler and baby sucking their thumbs in bed
lovering.bsky.social
Hmmm, is nuclear generation shrinking? 2024 generation was higher than the previous few years, and 2025 expected to be higher with Vogtle-4 online.
lovering.bsky.social
That's great! But hard to distill that into a simple metric when you are aggregating across thousands of projects, some are net positive and some net negative for the landscape.
lovering.bsky.social
Sorry, was *not* to provide a conclusive final number
lovering.bsky.social
The point of this paper was to provide a conclusive final number, i.e. this is how much land each technology needs. But to provide a range to community planners and policy-makers to help them in their local decision-making. They will have a much better sense of what type of land is being impacted
lovering.bsky.social
Yes! Dams are used for lots of things! One choice we had to make with the data is we only looked at dams where the primary purpose was electricity production. There were many more dams where the primary purpose was flood control, or irrigation...and they also made some electricity
lovering.bsky.social
That's why we included the rooftop solar metric, so that you can see. The reality is that most utility-scale solar doesn't do anything with the land underneath; it would be difficult to, and a majority of the solar is large-scale, ground-mounted. But we have both metrics, because both are useful!
lovering.bsky.social
We calculated both footprint and spacing, because both are useful metrics of impact on landscape. Sure, the land between wind turbines *can* be used for agriculture, if they are on agricultural land. But if they are in a sensitive wildlife area, you want to know the full extent
lovering.bsky.social
We talk about that in the paper, but it's very hard to incorporate something like that into a metric as it will be different for every project and landscape. Utility-scale solar projects can greatly disturb the land, or not. We tried to capture this by including rooftop solar metric & wind footprint
lovering.bsky.social
Ugh, this is the worst. When we moved to Europe I thought we would take trains everywhere (and we do try to!), but for work trips it is often 2-3x the cost and takes 5-6x longer. The extra time is not so bad on vacation, but for a family of four that cost is tough to bear
europeangreens.eu
😢 How are flights so much cheaper than trains?
Indeed, why are we forced to pick between cheap & polluting and expensive & sustainable?

Well @greenpeace.eu has the answer: subsidies and MASSIVE tax breaks.
A bright green poster with bold white and pink text at the top: “TRAINS ARE TOO OFTEN MORE EXPENSIVE THAN FLIGHTS.” Below it reads: “Sustainable travel shouldn’t be a luxury.” A color-coded map of Europe shows the proportion of cross-border train routes that are more expensive than flights for the same journey. Colors: green (0–20%), yellow (20–40%), orange (40–60%), red (60–80%), purple (80–100%). For example, Spain, Portugal, and the UK are shaded purple (80–100%), while countries like Poland and Czechia are shaded green (0–20%). At the bottom, source text reads: “Greenpeace, Ticket Prices Of Planes Vs Trains, 2025. Only countries for which at least 4 cross-border routes met the methodological criteria are included in the Scorecard.” Green background with bold text: “WHY ARE TRAINS MORE EXPENSIVE THAN PLANES?” Below is a comparison table with icons of a plane and a train at the top. Two rows:
VAT on international travel: Plane = “NO” (pink), Train = “YES” (yellow).
Kerosene/energy tax: Plane = “NO” (pink), Train = “YES” (yellow).
The chart highlights that flights avoid taxes trains must pay. Source: Greenpeace, Ticket Prices Of Planes Vs Trains, 2025.