Soare Stralucitor Energy Company
The Soare Stralucitor Energy Company, or SSEC, is a Nova Caradian corporation that mainly operates multiple different power production plants in Nova Caradia, but also is responsible for the harvesting and manufacture of fuels, including natural gas, hydrogen (the production of which is the primary use of the corporation's reserves of natural gas), and, rarely, uranium.
The company's main headquarters is in the Nova Caradian frontier city of Draguți, to which it was moved from the capital city of Rorfast after the discovery of reserves of natural gas underground near the frontier city. Previous to this move, the company had been most notable for its involvement in the construction of multiple different renewable energy farms, including solar and wind power farms, which were built nearby and supplied Nova Caradia's four largest cities at the time. The company is also currently involved in the construction of the Apă Electrică power plant, a tidal power plant off the coast of Rorfast.
The republic's energy needs, however, continued to climb, and it was determined that the renewable energy plants, while they might eventually provide enough power for the republic, could not be built at a rate that matched the growth of the republic's population, especially considered the power production had started at nothing, and so the SSEC began its search for new sources of power. The old Duchy had mainly relied on fossil fuels, utilising a small amount of nuclear power as well, though large-scale hydrocarbon power as was seen in the Duchy was not considered to be viable to the republic, given its goal to retain as much farmland as possible in its early days and the memories of the fields of infertile land surrounding Caradian cities due to their many coal power plants and the pollution they produced. The SSEC was originally searching for uranium to fuel fission reactors, but settled for the production of hydrogen fuel when natural gas was discovered near Draguți. Hydrogen was chosen, rather than burning natural gas on its own, because it produces zero emissions and contains more energy, though the energy expended in refining the hydrogen from the natural gas and then subsequently converting part of the resultant carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide for use in chemical products reduces the energy efficiency of hydrogen to near that of natural gas. However, since the actual burning of hydrogen produces no emissions (other than water), and it can be used in fuel cells (the research of which is ongoing), it was considered a better source of energy than natural gas.
The company has a policy of wasting as little material as possible, both to reduce the amount of actual waste in the environment and damage the usability of the republic's territory as little as possible, and out of a desire for efficiency. This can best be seen in its use of exhaust gasses from its production of hydrogen, a process that produces carbon dioxide and some carbon monoxide. Both of these gasses are valuable assets to the company for their industrial uses, and are as such captured during the refining process, an action that serves a dual purpose as it also reduces pollution.
The SSEC has continued the search for uranium, and, though it has found small deposits here and there, it is unlikely that any uranium will be found within or near enough to the republic for the company to establish any meaningful mining operation. For this reason, the company has actively petitioned the government to allow it to send exploration teams back to the island of Caplona, where the old Duchy was, which is known to contain high quantities of uranium. These requests have yet to be granted, and the company has directed some of its funding toward research into nuclear fusion in hopes of a future breakthrough to allow the construction of fusion plants, which would cut down on the land usage of the renewable energy plants already in large use by the republic, should the company be unable to secure workable quantities of uranium in the near future.
