Tuesday, 4 March 2025 / Edition 48

Tis the time of year in Colorado where it could be 60 degrees and gorgeous, -10 and gorgeous, or a blizzard—Potentially all in the same day 😬 Those kinds of extremes can make it hard to focus on anything, let alone where to direct my professional energy.

But U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright has some clear ideas about where the United States should direct its innovation efforts. Let's take a look.

Sarah Compton

Editor, Enspired

Chris Wright’s Thoughts on Energy Innovation in the United States

Wikimedia Commons

A few days ago, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright provided some insight into where and how he feels the industry should direct our innovation efforts to bolster American energy output.

Spoiler alert: Wright wants to focus on nuclear and AI.

The nuclear piece: One goal is to “unleash an American renaissance in affordable and abundant commercial nuclear energy,” Wright says.

Why it matters: Nuclear energy has been working to expand its scope and size since the first power plants came online more than 70 years ago:

• Nuclear fusion, which we’ve reviewed a bit here and here, is working with different designs and materials to bring it out of the realm of “30 years from now.” Geoscientists play a key role in finding materials and bringing our deep understanding of magnetics into play.

• Molten salts are working their way forward as well, and I’ll run a piece next week about Kairos Power’s plans in this space.

• As with AI, the forefront of nuclear fission seems to be within smaller, nimbler, and/or potentially modular power plants.

The AI piece: Wright also visited Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee with Greg Brockman, OpenAI president and co-founder, among others.

Catch up fast: There was a “1,000 Scientist AI Jam Session” on Friday, February 28 co-hosted by OpenAI and nine U.S. Department of Energy national labs. The event explored how AI can accelerate scientific discovery.

• Participants had access to leading AI models to test research applications, evaluate model responses, and help improve future AI systems. 

• According to OpenAI, the use cases explored include models helping to accelerate scientific discovery, revolutionize disease treatment and prevention, and bolster cybersecurity, including safeguarding the national power grid.  

• Participating DOE labs included Argonne, Berkeley, Brookhaven, Idaho, Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Pacific Northwest, and Princeton Plasma Physics.

Learn more about Secretary Wright’s statements here and his visit to ORNL here.

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When Adaptability Proves Promising

Pingphuket/Shutterstock.com

Although the name is a little funny, a company called Sparkle Clean Tech (SCT) has agreed to license intellectual from Siemens Energy’s upstream oil-and-gas-related water solutions technology portfolio.

Why it matters: Although some anthropogenically induced quakes can be from the fracturing process, the vast majority of earthquakes come from re-injecting the huge volumes of wastewater that fracturing and production bring with them.

Wastewater can include:

• Water used during the fracturing process

• Formation water, which is generally a brine not safe for human consumption

Treatment protocols vary depending on which type of wastewater you have and what type of process was used during fracturing (e.g. crosslink vs slickwater fractures).

One option for mitigating wastewater is to clean it, at least enough to be recycled for another fracture or other industrial purposes.

Tech licensed from Siemens includes:

• Monosep Nutshell Filtration, which reduces the volume of backwash produced compared to other walnut shell filter designs.

  • Walnut filters were developed as an improved method of filtering free oil and suspended solids in applications where sand filters are typically used.

• Veirsep and Spinsep Flotation with Brise DGF Pumps or Eductors, which separate oil and other contaminates from produced water and wastewater streams

• The Veirsep Horizontal Flotation System, which is comprised of an inlet centrifugal coalescing device, influent and effluent surge compartments, four flotation chambers, an oil collection weir system, and Brise DGF pumps for recycling fluid and generating varying micron size air/gas bubbles

• The Liquid/Liquid Hydro cyclones with TL1.05 Liners, which separate oil and water and are used in industrial process water, industrial reuse, oil/water separation, and clarification/separation

Overall, the package they’ve licensed demonstrates SCT’s commitment to clean up industrial wastewater, and us geoscientists will be some of the ones analyzing inputs and outputs of the system(s) to confirm their efficacy.

To learn more about the deal, read here.

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