SCANA has produced a terrific short video that provides an update on the progress they and their suppliers have made in building VC Summer units 2 and 3 during 2013. It’s hard not to be encouraged and impressed by the people, the machinery and the equipment being assembled into two powerful new clean energy sources….
Russia has announced plans to lend Hungary $14 billion at below market rates to finance the construction of additional nuclear energy production units at the existing Paks nuclear power station. The announcement is one more piece of evidence showing that Russia continues to diversify its income by exporting nuclear power stations to as large a…
A California-based correspondent shared the following vignette to a private email list early this morning. An aside — had dinner with a Stanford biz prof teaching entrepreneurship. His 15 Chinese students were at the table too (big table). A few spoke English. One is international marketing head for China Nuclear Power Engineering Company — largest…
On December 27, 2013, Matt Wald published a piece in the New York Times titled New Energy Struggles on Its Way to Markets that points to the predictable consequences of having too many energy options chasing too few customers. When there is excess supply compared to demand, prices tend to fall rather dramatically. Falling prices…
Finns are pragmatic people who love their country, but also recognize its geographic limitations. “Finland is a very cold and dark country. Electricity is very important to us. We are a kind of island in Europe, we have take care of ourselves. No one will help us if we run out of power.” Way back…
On December 12, 2013, the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced the selection of NuScale as the winner of the second round of funding under the Department of Energy Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). That announcement, which had been due since sometime in September, must have been quite welcome to a lot of really talented and…
President Obama should task John Richardson with a mission similar to the one that President Dwight Eisenhower gave Hyman G. Rickover. Richardson is the current leader of Naval Reactors (NR), the organization that Rickover built. If directed, NR could begin a new assignment to show others how to manufacture complete nuclear fission power systems starting…
Jane Velez-Mitchell concludes this segment by saying: “If you ever thought you knew anything about nuclear power plants, think again.” She then extolls the CNN audience to tune in and watch Pandora’s Promise.
By Timothy Maloney, PhD Editor’s note: Timothy Maloney has written a number of text books about electrical circuits, electricity, and industrial electronics. The below is a copy of a letter that he wrote to Ralph Nader in response to an opinion piece published by CounterPunch under the headline Why Atomic Energy Stinks Worse Than You…
In the past half dozen years, the term “small modular reactor (SMR)” has entered the nuclear energy lexicon. Numerous projects have been initiated to develop various concepts, all aimed at producing nuclear reactor based power plants that are small enough to be built in a factory setting to take advantage of concepts like series manufacturing…
John Horgan and I had another conversation on Bloggingheads.tv about nuclear energy. He asked a lot of good questions; I hope that you find my responses worth considering. In the above embedded video segment, we talked about the causes of low natural gas prices in the US. I explained how I believe that the situation…
The House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy held a hearing on July 31, 2013 titled Oversight of DOE’s Strategy for the Management and Disposal of Used Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste. It has taken me a couple of days of intermittent watching to work my way through…