Update: (August 2, 2013) – American Atomics is now claiming that there is no site in Detroit that is large enough to house the infrastructure that they are planning to build. Here is a link to their post. http://safereactor.org/post/57104636966/no-room-in-detroit It is a pretty incredible claim for a company that currently has no facilities. Supposedly the…
Platts Energy Week recently interviewed Mike Rencheck, the CEO of Areva Inc., about the company’s outlook on the US nuclear energy market. During the interview, Rencheck talked about Areva’s business serving the operational needs of the existing fleet of nuclear power plants, its involvement with plant uprates, the Mixed Oxide (MOX) project at the Savannah…
Jim Ferland, the CEO of The Babcock & Wilcox Company, was recently interviewed by Bill Loveless of Platts Energy Week about the company’s global business outlook. During the interview, Ferland discussed the B&W mPowerTM reactor, one of the leading small modular reactor development projects; FutureGen 2.0, a carbon capture and storage demonstration project; the impact…
I returned last night from a short vacation to Washington, DC. I am such an atomic geek that my idea of a vacation is to spend a couple of days at the Nuclear Energy Assembly (NEA) in a dim hotel conference room surrounded by a crowd of business leaders, many in dark suits who qualify…
On Saturday, May 11, 2013, the Tampa Bay Times published a lengthy piece by Ivan Penn titled Levy nuclear plant more costly than a natural gas facility that uses a detailed analysis with substantial “error bars” around cost estimates to show that under nearly all scenarios considered, the two reactor installation that has been proposed…
At the Nuclear Energy Insider SMR Conference in Columbia, S.C., Dr. Jose Reyes, a co-founder and the Chief Technology Officer of NuScale Power, announced that his team had achieved an impressive design breakthrough. Two years after the Fukushima event, NuScale is introducing a safety system for our nuclear reactor that does not require DC batteries…
Dieter Helm has generously shared an April 2013 article written for Prospect Magazine titled Stumbling towards crisis. In that article Helm points to US energy decision making as a good example that serves as a contrast to UK energy policy making. He sees chosen path in the UK as almost guaranteeing a crisis. In his…
On March 9, 2006, Shane Brown and I recorded the first episode of The Atomic Show. We formatted the show as a couple of geeks chatting about atomic energy and published it on Cameron Reilly’s The Podcast Network. On March 17, 2013, I hosted and recorded Atomic Show #200 as a roundtable discussion that included…
A colleagues who used to work in the oil and gas industry pointed me to an article from the November 2012 issue of the Journal of Petroleum Technology titled Switch: The New Documentary on Energy’s Future. The article describes a video research project undertaken by Scott Tinker, a former oil and gas company geologist who…
On February 14, 2013, my day job employer hosted a contingent from The Weather Channel who wanted to learn more about the B&W mPowerTM Reactor project. The video is quite informative and encouraging; even though there is a little poetic license taken with the story and the technical description. Though I work for B&W mPower,…
On Sunday, February 17, 2013, a group of five nuclear energy professionals gathered to share their thoughts about the current state of the atomic energy business. Participants included: Margaret Harding (@M2harding), 4 Factor Consulting Meredith Angwin (@yes_VY), Yes Vermont Yankee Andrea Jennetta (@NuclearBuzz), Fuel Cycle Week and I Dig Uranium Cal Abel (@cal_abel), PhD candidate…
Rebecca Smith asked an interesting question in a recent Wall Street Journal article titled Can Gas Undo Nuclear Power? She describes how financial analysts are wondering whether or not certain nuclear plants are at risk of being shuttered as being uneconomical in an era of cheap natural gas. It is a legitimate question for people…