There was a time when the Royal Dutch Shell corporation demonstrated strong interest in nuclear energy. In 1973, it was approached by Gulf Oil Company, the owner of Gulf General Atomics, as a capital partner for an aggressive expansion program. GA had spent the better part of two decades developing an innovative high temperature gas-cooled […]
Business of atomic energy
Modest proposal to Chris Crane, CEO of Exelon
Dear Mr. Crane: According to Exelon’s power struggle, your company is searching for a strategy that will restore the glowing prospects that it faced in the period from 2004-2008. That is the period that an Exelon leader called “the boom years for nuclear.” During that time, Exelon’s stock price reached an all time high of […]
Hollande’s proposed “cap” on nuclear electricity capacity
France’s President Francois Hollande and his Socialist Party ran on a platform that included scaling back France’s dependence on nuclear energy. It was not a very popular part of his campaign pitch, but Sarkozy was such a flawed candidate that Hollande won anyway. Hollande is trying to follow through on his promise, but there are […]
Mark Cooper is wrong about SMRs and nuclear energy
Mark Cooper of the Vermont Law School has published another paper in a series critiquing the economics of nuclear energy; this one is titled The Economic Failure of Nuclear Power and the Development of a Low Carbon Electricity Future: Why Small Modular Reactors are Part of the Problem and Not the Solution. It is not […]
Existing nuclear plants are valuable and worth saving
Many currently operating nuclear plants are in danger of being permanently shut down due to temporary conditions including low, but volatile natural gas prices, improperly designed markets that fail to recognize the value of reliable generating capacity, quotas and mandates that result in certain types of electrical generators receiving direct monetary payments in addition to […]
Nuclear-Powered Trans-Ocean Shipping – 3rd place in New York Advanced Energy contest
I received an update from Benjamin Haas, the SUNY Maritime student who has been working on nuclear powered ship designs from a complete systems perspective for the past three semesters. He and his team have not just focused on the technical aspects of designing a power plant and a ship that could take full advantage […]
B&W mPower cover story about lack of interest is bogus
Update: (June 20, 2014) Here is the chart of B&W’s stock price during the past year. It is interesting to note the 10% drop between May 9, 2014 and May 18, 2014 and the fact that the stock continues to trade in a range centered around the new, lower price established after that drop. End […]
Vermont Yankee and B&W mPower – Victims of Wall Street Greed
Though it has been a little quiet here on Atomic Insights in the past few days, I have been working on some stories documenting financial maneuvers in the US energy industry — especially as it related to nuclear energy. You might be interested in reading Save Vermont Yankee. If not you, who? If not now, […]
China Nuclear IPO discussion from WSJ
The Wall Street Journal has published an article titled China National Nuclear to Raise $2.6 Billion in IPO that describes the plan for a major nuclear power plant owner to go public. Here is a quote from the article: China aims to reach 200 gigawatts of nuclear capacity by 2030, up from 14.6 gigawatts last […]
Deadliest adversary of antinuclear movement – guiltless men and women proudly sharing nuclear knowledge
For the past few months, I have been rereading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Though the book was first published more than 50 years ago, it is remarkably prescient about some of the risks that society can face when too many people forget how to produce items of real value and quality. It is a book […]
Nuclear Energy Is Cheap and Disruptive; Controlling the Initial Cost of Nuclear Power Plants is a Solvable Problem
Many of the most virulent anti-nuclear activists have begun focusing almost exclusively on spreading the assumption that nuclear energy means expensive energy. They have been helped in this effort by statements from the established nuclear industry who claim that new plants are so expensive that they require government assistance and incentives in order to get […]
Unfriending Exelon – I take back all of the positive articles I have written about the company
Social media sites like Facebook and LiveJournal have added several new words to our American lexicon; one that I want to explore today is “unfriend”. In the Facebook vocabulary, that is a term that means quietly striking someone off of your computerized list of “friends”. Those are the people that you care enough about to […]
