December, 2008

What's in store for the nuclear energy industry? With the financial world in turmoil and a new president coming into office in January 20, the outlook for 2009 is anything but business as usual. In fact, the unstable natures of the U.S and global economies are causing anyone with large investment...

What's in store for the nuclear energy industry? With the financial world in turmoil and a new president coming into office in January 20, the outlook for 2009 is anything but business as usual. In fact, the unstable natures of the U.S and global economies are causing anyone with large investment...

The answer is yes with some caveats In 2008 the nuclear renaissance finally began to bloom. In a six week period spanning September and October of this year, six plants have filed COL applications with the NRC and seven filed in the preceding six months for a total of 13 applications and 19 reactors...

A few instances where things went haywire in 2008 Covering the global nuclear energy industry requires a certain amount of restraint. Otherwise it would not be possible to offer straight-faced reportage of some of the absurdities that crop up wherever people are involved in nuclear energy, whatever their...

They can sing but can they dance? President-elect Obama has picked a sterling team to head up the federal government's energy  and environmental agencies.  The group as a whole has outstanding credentials and all of them can sing from the same hymn book on the urgent need for change in...

Mining media reports and press releases for useful stuff. This is an edited version of an article originally published in Fuel Cycle Week , V7N307 on 12/10/08 by International Nuclear Associates, Washington, DC. This is the last publication of this column for 2008. The column will resume in January 2009...

NRC public meeting is rally point for 'Eagle Rock' uranium enrichment plant On a cold winter night in Idaho more than 400 people turned out  in Idaho Falls packing a hotel conference room to standing room only in a show of support for Areva's planned $2.4 billion 'Eagle Rock'...

Lack of money for light water reactors impacts commercial development of advanced nuclear fuel concept The South African government's inability to fund conventional LWR reactors will significantly slow down development of the new pebble bed technology. The announcement by Eskom last week that it...

Betting the company, even with insurance, is a bad idea Advocates of loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants have  argued that federal insurance for 100% of the loans and 80% of the cost of the new plant will provide confidence to investors.  The idea is that by reducing lender exposure...

"It's too big. We can't do it," says the utility Another casualty of the world wide credit crunch in the nuclear  industry was record Friday Dec 5. Eskom, the troubled South African electric utility, canceled its plans to build two nuclear power plants worth $12 billion. Bloomberg...

Change occurs in the blink of an eye and also over a lifetime Two months ago when Nitin Pai, the editor of Pagati, a political journal in India, asked me to write an article on that nation's entry into the nuclear renaissance, I had no idea it would publish in the context of international turmoil...