Forbes reports: Nuclear advocates see a vast market for reactors in carbon capture and carbon-based products, not only for the next generation of reactors in development, but also for the aging dinosaurs they evolved from... The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in San Luis Obispo, California, for example, is slated to shut down in 2024 and 2025. "If the waste heat from that plant was being combined with electricity production you could be removing 20 million tons per year of carbon from the atmosphere," said Kirsty Gogan, co-founder of Energy for Humanity, at an EarthX panel on Wednesday. "Right now what's happening is these big gigawatt-scale depreciating assets — they're making baseload, clean, emissions-free power, but we're just throwing away the heat, right? Those nuclear plants could be more useful, making a big contribution toward that responsibility we all have to go negative. "We all try to be neutral, but it ain't good enough. We have to take responsibility for the carbon that's already in the atmosphere and go negative." That's just one possibility. For example, the article also suggests nuclear energy could be used to generate sustainable aviation fuel (currently made mostly from biomass) from smokestack carbon. Slashdot reader ogcricket notes the article is based on an hour-long EarthX panel that's now available on YouTube.

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