This is a call to action. The Department of Energy is soliciting comments on its excess uranium management plan. The deadline for comments, initially announced as August 18, 2016, has been extended until September 19. That is just 4 days away. Here is a quote from the Federal Register request for information: The U.S. Department…
Joe Romm recently wrote a piece for Climate Progress titled Nuclear Power Is Losing Money At An Astonishing Rate. In that post Romm exaggerates the amount of support that the New York Zero Emissions Credit (ZEC) will provide, absolves the massive build out of industrial scale wind and solar from any responsibility for contributing to…
The US environment and electrical supply system measurably improved yesterday. That is something worth celebrating. The New York State Department of Public Service (NYSDPS) took a small, but significant step forward yesterday. By a vote of three yeses and one concur, the commissioners decided to implement a clean energy standard that includes zero emission credits…
British voters have spoken; they want to leave the EU by a margin of 52% to 48%. The split should provide a boost for the UK’s nuclear energy program. It should also improve the UK’s energy resiliency and improve the effectiveness of its effort to reduce CO2 emissions. As an island nation, the UK doesn’t…
The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) and the Virginia Nuclear Energy Consortium (VNEC) hosted a half day summit in Richmond on Monday, June 6 for government officials and industry leaders from the fields of research, education, power generation, defense, and security to discuss the role and value of nuclear energy in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The…
Reprinted with permission. Original published on Forbes.com on May 20, 2016. On Thursday, May 19, the Department of (DOE) hosted a four-hour, invitation-only summit in a meeting room in the Senate Office building. Billed as an action-oriented forum for a variety of stakeholders to discuss what they can do about the economic challenges facing nuclear…
A few minutes ago, Exelon employees received an email from Chris Crane, the company CEO, announcing the company’s decision to permanently close three nuclear reactors that each produce 7-8 billion kilowatt hours of electricity each year without dumping a molecule of CO2 into the atmosphere. Even though the company reported 2015 after-tax earnings of approximately…
Exelon, a corporation that I publicly “unfriended” in 2009, has apparently failed to receive the assistance it demanded by the May 31st deadline it imposed on the Illinois legislature. Aside: For reasons that aren’t obvious, Exelon’s public communications about financial difficulties affecting its nuclear plants rarely, if ever, mention the magnitude of the cost increases…
Recently, the below email to Diablo Canyon workers landed in my in-box. Aside: I subscribe to a lot of different mailing lists. End Aside. It’s from Michael Shellenberger, the founder of Environmental Progress. Michael is a tireless and vocal advocate for nuclear power as a valuable tool for solving some of the world’s most wicked…
Communications professionals have often counseled nuclear professionals to stop sounding so much like scientists and engineers. We often purposely avoid emotion because we like to think of ourselves as rational people that make decisions based on hard facts, numbers and quantifiable metrics. Many of the people who have sought and obtained positions of responsibility and…
On Saturday, April 30, Leonard Hyman & William Tilles published an opinion column on Oilprice.com headlined Lets (sic) Stop Pretending Nuclear Power Is Commercially Viable. Aside: Leonard Hyman is an accomplished electricity industry analyst and historian. I have a dog-eared copy of his 1983 work titled America’s Electric Utilities: Past, Present and Future on my…
On Friday, April 29, 2016, the Energy and Power subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing to discuss H.R. 4979 and a draft discussion bill with the unfortunate acronym of NUKEPA (Nuclear Utilization of Keynote Energy Policies Act). Though at different stages of the legislative process, both documents are efforts to…