• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About
  • Podcast
  • Archives

Atomic Insights

Atomic energy technology, politics, and perceptions from a nuclear energy insider who served as a US nuclear submarine engineer officer

Don Gillispie, CEO of Alternative Energy Holdings, Inc. challenges Mark Cooper’s assertion that solar is cheaper than nuclear

October 5, 2010 By Rod Adams

Don Gillispie, the CEO of Alternative Energy Holdings, Inc., is an aggressive businessman who is bootstrapping a “penny stock” company on a quest to build two large, 1700 MWe nuclear power plants in Payette County Idaho. His company is also working on developing partnerships that can produce desalination plants that produce clean water using atomic fission energy as the heat source.

Though there are some nuclear industry observers who view AEHI and Don Gillispie’s plans with legitimate skepticism because they believe he is unrealistic in his evaluation of the difficulty of building a nuclear powerhouse company from scratch, there is little doubt that Gillispie has several decades worth of nuclear energy experience and is investing real money into his ventures. He has gathered a management team with some impressive credentials and his company’s stock performance during the past year has indicated that there are at least some investors who believe in his vision. (Disclosure: I am a stockholder who has been pleased with the company’s recent performance.)

AEHI Stock Price Nov 2009-Oct 2010

Gillispie is obviously a man who has a vested interest in nuclear energy. That is an attribute that makes his opinions on nuclear cost compared to other alternatives worth some consideration since he has chosen to bet his money and reputation on the validity of his evaluations. He might end up being wrong, but there are good reasons to believe that he has done the numbers to his own satisfaction.

In a recent press release that was picked up by MarketWatch.com, Gillispie took aim at the same Mark Cooper generated pronouncements on the cost comparisons between unreliable forms of energy like solar or wind and nuclear that I have attacked here on Atomic Insights. (See, for example, Gullible Reporting by New York Times on the Cost of Solar Electricity Versus Nuclear Electricity or Positive Lessons Extracted From Cooper’s Paper on French Nuclear Experience)

Here is a quote from the AEHI press release:

Most importantly, the price of nuclear plants is far lower than critics like Cooper estimate. “My company is on track to build not one, but two, large plants in Idaho for $9 – $10 billion,” Gillispie says. Reasons for the lower price tag include competition as new suppliers enter the market, which is lowering the capital cost, and the fact that key components are being built in Asia, where manufacturing costs are lower.

“The power from these new plants would cost 4-5 cents per kWh and based on today’s market, the carbon credits it creates could be sold for hundreds of millions of dollars as well,” says Gillispie, “This makes nuclear competitive with coal, with a decided clean-air advantage, since coal is the single biggest contributor of global warming in the world not to mention heavy metals like mercury and other lung damaging particles. And the price of nuclear power alone makes it a huge bargain over wind and solar. Further, we must have baseload electricity, which means large, highly reliable sources of power that renewables can’t deliver and if we don’t build clean low cost nuclear plants it will be more of the same; pollution from toxic coal plants that are already being planned because of the current nuclear plant delays.”

It would be nice if other leaders in the nuclear industry would speak out in favor of nuclear energy as aggressively as Gillispie has. That might be economically difficult for them, however, since AEHI is one of the only “pure plays” that is focused primarily on nuclear energy. Unlike other “nuclear” industry stalwarts, AEHI does not have major investments in established sources of power that would become less profitable in a competitive market where nuclear energy facilities deliver on Gillispie’s promise of abundant, reliable, clean power.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

About Rod Adams

Rod Adams is Managing Partner of Nucleation Capital, a venture fund that invests in advanced nuclear, which provides affordable access to this clean energy sector to pronuclear and impact investors. Rod, a former submarine Engineer Officer and founder of Adams Atomic Engines, Inc., which was one of the earliest advanced nuclear ventures, is an atomic energy expert with small nuclear plant operating and design experience. He has engaged in technical, strategic, political, historic and financial analysis of the nuclear industry, its technology, regulation, and policies for several decades through Atomic Insights, both as its primary blogger and as host of The Atomic Show Podcast. Please click here to subscribe to the Atomic Show RSS feed. To join Rod's pronuclear network and receive his occasional newsletter, click here.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Dan Yurman says

    October 18, 2010 at 12:20 PM

    The link that captures my skepticism about AEHI is here.
    http://djysrv.blogspot.com/2010/01/aehi-will-compress-spacetime-for.html
    For AEHO to be credible, it must stop making extraordinary claims which do not stand up to scrutiny.

Primary Sidebar

Categories

Join Rod’s pronuclear network

Join Rod's pronuclear network by completing this form. Let us know what your specific interests are.

Recent Comments

  • Eino on Oil and gas opposition to consolidate interim spent fuel (CISF) storage facilities in Permian Basin
  • Rod Adams on Can prototype nuclear reactors be licensed in the US under current rules?
  • Rob Brixey on Can prototype nuclear reactors be licensed in the US under current rules?
  • Jon Grams on Oil and gas opposition to consolidate interim spent fuel (CISF) storage facilities in Permian Basin
  • Rod Adams on Oil and gas opposition to consolidate interim spent fuel (CISF) storage facilities in Permian Basin

Follow Atomic Insights

The Atomic Show

Atomic Insights

Recent Posts

Oil and gas opposition to consolidate interim spent fuel (CISF) storage facilities in Permian Basin

Atomic Energy Wells

Enough with “renewables!”

Can prototype nuclear reactors be licensed in the US under current rules?

Atomic Show #303 – Bret Kugelmass, CEO Last Energy

  • Home
  • About Atomic Insights
  • Atomic Show
  • Contact
  • Links

Search Atomic Insights

Archives

Copyright © 2023 · Atomic Insights

Terms and Conditions - Privacy Policy