I cover energy for The New York Times. And you might be surprised by where my beat takes me — from deep inside the earth, as far down as the Empire State Building is tall, to the middle of the Gulf of Mexico on an oil platform that floats 7,000 feet above the ocean floor.
It involves deserts and mountains; places shrouded by a canopy of towering trees and guarded by military-style security with automatic rifles; and remote locations, generally requiring flights in helicopters or charter planes.
Lately I’ve written about the drive for electricity, which has become our most critical form of energy. We even need it for clean drinking water. And still, fossil fuels play a critical role in the country’s energy supply.
Acquiring the resources to fuel power plants, as my travels on my beat have shown over time, can be beautiful, adventurous and risky. Here are a few recent reporting experiences:
Underground, in uniform, in Arizona.
The boots were heavy. Not only did they have steel in the toe, but it also lined the soles, for protection. I felt as if I had just stepped into a weird new fitness program, and it was leg day.
My mission on this August day south of the Grand Canyon in Arizona was to tour the inside of an underground uranium mine on a 17-acre site carved out of a pine forest. Uranium mining has been surging in the United States, which has shown a growing interest in nuclear power, and I wanted to help readers understand the technology and work involved.
The boots were paired with a yellow rain suit. A hard hat with a miner’s lamp topped off the outfit; gloves covered my hands and goggles protected my eyes. I was also given a pair of military-style dog tags with a number — one tag to attach to my clothes, the other to hang on a board above ground — in case of a mine collapse or some other disaster.
With this gear on, I took an elevator — known as the “cage” — with the crew for a five-minute ride underground. At the bottom, workers gave us a tour through 10-foot-by-10-foot tunnels they had created with drills and explosives.
The snaking tunnels, with mudlike, wet cement mix on the ground and pools of water that sometimes reached midcalf, led to a wall dripping with water highlighting the colors identifying copper, and the workers’ prize — uranium.
At a Georgia plant, there were armed guards.
I first held uranium pellets, which go into nuclear reactor fuel rods, last year, while visiting the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia.
Southern Company, the owner of the first new nuclear reactors in the United States in decades, led me through the second of the two new units before the company, which provides power to the southeastern United States, fired it up this year.
Plant Vogtle sits on Georgia’s border with South Carolina, southeast of Augusta. After flying into Augusta, I drove roughly 45 minutes to the power plant in a rural stretch of Georgia, an area shrouded by trees and away from main roads.
Not all nuclear plants are hidden. But all have a few things in common — including robust security teams who guard the buildings with automatic weapons.
Getting inside the facility is like gaining access to a military base. I could never move around alone. And every access door required key-card swipes with my guide’s identification and my visitor badge, so the security would know who was where at all times.
Visiting an oil platform required safety training.
My fireproof jumpsuit felt a little baggy on a reporting trip in the spring. The safety helmet was snug. The rubber clogs had proved comfortable enough. I just never thought I would jump into a 12-foot-deep swimming pool dressed that way.
I had signed up for the Tropical Helicopter Underwater Emergency Training, or T-HUET, to prepare for a flight to an oil platform in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, before summer hurricane season.
Shell and other oil companies have been launching more platforms in the Gulf recently because of the quality of the resource and the infrastructure available to produce it. Numerous helicopters have crashed over the years on their way to the platforms, so the safety training has become mandatory.
The daylong training, at a Shell facility in Robert, La., north of New Orleans, involved a classroom session and then the application of the lessons in the pool.
Dressed in my jumpsuit, helmet and clogs, I strapped myself into the seat of a helicopter-like cabin that instructors then dunked into the pool and flipped underwater. I was required to escape.
After a few practice runs, during the first test my seatbelt unexpectedly broke free while I was upside down and underwater. I was incident-free the second time — and I passed.
At receding shores in California, I glimpsed the future.
One of the hopes of clean energy percolates under the sands and dirt of one of California’s southernmost regions, Imperial County.
Roughly once a year, I drive two hours southeast from Los Angeles, where I live, through the deserts around Palm Springs to the Salton Sea, near the U.S.-Mexico border. It is California’s largest inland body of water and was once a popular recreational area. But its shores have steadily receded, leaving dust that blows as far as Los Angeles, adding to its pollution.
One environmental disaster has given rise to a climate possibility. Beneath the desert sands around the Salton Sea flow briny waters that help power geothermal plants. The aquifers contain the key mineral in electric vehicles and home batteries: lithium.
The underground liquid rises to the surface from volcanic activity that forms mud pots.
When visiting the area, I’m often warned to watch my step — the hot springs can burn and the mud can quickly dry, trapping anyone walking on the surface.
It’s one of the beauties — and perils — of covering energy.
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