Reading List 10/11/2025

Welcome to the reading list, a weekly roundup of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure, and industrial technology. This week we look at Russia’s role in nuclear fuel production, aircraft contrails, homes collapsing in North Carolina, Konrad Zuse’s Helix Tower, and more. Roughly 2/3rds of the reading list is paywalled, so for full access become a paid subscriber.

Housekeeping items:

• Folks had lots of suggestions on potential causes of the uptick in US pedestrian deaths. I’m working on a follow-up piece that looks at what I think are the most promising ones that should be out next week.

• Friend of the newsletter Tyler Pullen is hiring a full-time AEC researcher at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation. The job posting is here.

Pedestrian deaths map

When I was looking into NHTSA pedestrian deaths data, I vibe-coded a simple HTML map showing the exact location of each death, from 2001 (the earliest that location data was generally available) through 2023. I’ve made that map available on github here.

Russia and the nuclear supply chain

Concern about global demand for Russian energy resources usually focuses on Russian natural gas. But apparently Russia is also a major supplier of nuclear fuel: while most raw uranium ore is mined elsewhere, Russia is the largest producer of uranium hexafluoride gas (which uranium ore is converted into prior to enrichment), and the largest producer of enriched uranium (uranium with a higher fraction of fissile U235, making it suitable as a nuclear fuel). Via Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty:

…uranium mining is just one piece of the nuclear process. Raw uranium is not suitable as fuel for nuclear plants. It needs to be refined into uranium concentrate, converted into gas, and then enriched. And this is where Russia excels.

In 2020, there were just four conversion plants operating commercially -- in Canada, China, France, and Russia. Russia was the largest player, with almost 40 percent of the total uranium conversion infrastructure in the world, and therefore produced the largest share of uranium in gaseous form (called uranium hexafluoride).

Also on the subject of supplying nuclear fuel, CNBC has an article about the only operating US uranium enrichment facility:

Headquartered outside London, Urenco is joinly owned by the British and Dutch goverments and two German utilities. Its New Mexico