Business of atomic energy

  • Rod Adams and Alex Epstein on Power Hour

    On Atomic Show #230, I talked with Alex Epstein, the author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. Some of the things I told Alex during that show intrigued him enough to ask me to be a guest on his Power Hour show. That show has now been published as Power Hour: Rod Adams on…

  • Putting excitement back into nuclear technology development

    Josh Freed, Third Way‘s clean energy vice president, has published a thoughtful, graphically enticing Brookings Essay titled Back to the Future: Advanced Nuclear Energy and the Battle Against Climate Change. It focuses on Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie of Transatomic Power, but it also makes it abundantly clear that those two visionary entrepreneurs are examples…

  • Power In New England: Why are Prices Increasing so Rapidly?

    On October 20, IBM announced that it was spinning off its chip division by paying GlobalFoundries $1.5 billion. GlobalFoundaries appears to have won the deal with its geographic position of owning fabrication facilities in New York as well as in Germany and Malaysia. The move didn’t surprise many, as there have been rumors that IBM…

  • Prospective customers lining up at NuScale

    A few days ago, Dan Yurman at Neutron Bytes published a blog post that is now titled Flash: NuScale executive says firm may build SMRs at Idaho lab. It was a follow-up to an earlier post in which Dan speculated about the Idaho National Lab’s potential as a good site for a new nuclear power…

  • Terrestrial Energy – Molten Salt Reactor Designed to Be Commercial Success

    There is a growing roster of innovative organizations populated by people who recognize that nuclear technology is still in its infancy. Terrestrial Energy is one of the most promising of those organization because of its combination of problem solving technology, visionary leadership, and strong focus on meeting commercial needs. Nearly all of the commercial nuclear…

  • Another Blogger For Nuclear Energy – Power for USA

    Update: (Posted 08/21/2014 at 7:35) Donn Dears and I have continuing exchanging comments on his blog post about the destruction of nuclear energy. Atomic Insights readers might be intrigued by the way that the experienced, retired GE executive is responding to the “smoking gun” type stories I have shared with him. End Update. I was…

  • Shell Oil and Gas Company’s Perspective on Energy Future

    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…

  • 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…