Nuclear Street - Nuclear Power Plant News, Jobs, and Careers

On February 27, NEI launched the new NEI.org . We overhauled the public site, framing all of our content around the National Nuclear Energy Strategy. So, what's changed? Our top priority was to put you, the user, first. Now you can quickly get the information you need. You'll enjoy visiting the site with its intuitive navigation, social media ...read more

If you think that there is plenty of electricity, that the air is clean enough and that nuclear power is a just one among many options for meeting human needs, then you are probably over-focused on the United States or Western Europe. Even then, you’d be wrong. That’s the idea at the heart of a new book, “Seeing the Light: The Case for Nuclear Power ...read more

For more than 100 years, the shape and location of human settlements has been defined in large part by energy and water. Cities grew up near natural resources like hydropower, and near water for agricultural, industrial and household use. So what would the world look like with a new generation of small nuclear reactors that could provide abundant, clean ...read more

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the body that sets the rules for the competitive energy markets around the country, will soon take up a proposal from the Department of Energy (DOE) to adjust the pricing system, to ensure the survival of electricity generators that keep at least 90 days of fuel on hand. The department believes the current trend ...read more

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut ...read more

Using the short-term energy markets to make long-term decisions about the electric grid will irreversibly damage the system’s diversity and resiliency, the nuclear industry told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Monday, as the Commission prepared to take up a request by the Secretary of Energy to reform the rules for regional electricity pricing ...read more

One of the strengths of the electric system is its diversity, with energy flowing from generators that use a variety of fuels. But conflicting government policies and poorly constructed markets are reducing that diversity, and the result will be electricity that is more expensive, more prone to price spikes, and less reliable, according to a new study ...read more

There's an invisible force powering and propelling our way of life. It's all around us. You can't feel it. Smell it. Or taste it. But it's there all the same. And if you look close enough, you can see all the amazing and wondrous things it does. It not only powers our cities and towns. And all the high-tech things we love. It gives us ...read more

The South Texas Project As Hurricane Harvey battered southeast Texas over the past week, the devastation and loss of life in its wake have kept our attention and been a cause of grief. Through the tragedy, many stories of heroics and sacrifice have emerged. Among those who have sacrificed are nearly 250 workers who have been hunkered down at the South ...read more

The Energy Department’s study of the power grid is 187 pages long but it can be summarized in five words: the energy markets are failing us. "Society places value on attributes of electricity provision beyond those compensated by the current design of the wholesale market," the study found. Economists like to say that markets "optimize" ...read more

Millions of Americans traveled long distances in hopes of getting a front-row seat for the dance of the heavens today, watching the moon eclipse the sun, from Portland, Oregon, to Charleston, South Carolina. Hundreds more had spent months preparing for an odd complication of the event: the very sudden loss of up to 9,000 megawatts as solar panels were ...read more

Did you see the movie The Martian ? The hero, Mark Watney, an astronaut given up for dead by NASA, uses a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), a sort-of "space battery," to keep warm during his trek across Mars. The movie is science fiction but these devices are real- NASA has been using RTGs to power satellites for nearly forty years ...read more

Nuclear plants occupy an unusual spot in the towns where they operate: integral but so much in the background that they may seem almost invisible. But when they close, it can be like the earth shifting underfoot. Lohud.com, the Gannett newspaper that covers the Lower Hudson Valley in New York, took a look around at the experience of towns where reactors ...read more

Energy experts are at war over a radical assertion that by mid-century the United States will be able to meet all its energy needs with wind, solar and hydro power. The claim was made in 2015 by four academic researchers , led by Mark Z. Jacobson, for the continental United States, and it asserts that those renewables will replace not just the coal ...read more

A group that includes oil and gas companies in Pennsylvania released a study on Monday that argues that twenty years ago, planners underestimated the value of nuclear plants in the electricity market. According to the group, that means the state should now let the plants close. Huh? The question confronting the state now isn’t what the companies that ...read more

Researchers at the Penn State College of Medicine recently published a study claiming that analysis of thyroid tumors showed tissue differences, based on where the patient lived. People who lived near Three Mile Island at the time of the 1979 accident had tumors more likely to have come from radiation exposure than people who developed thyroid cancer ...read more

If Isaiah had been a nuclear engineer, he’d have loved this project. And the Trump Administration should too, despite the proposal to eliminate it in the FY 2018 budget. The project is a massive factory near Aiken, S.C., that will take plutonium from the government’s arsenal and turn it into fuel for civilian power reactors. The plutonium, made by the ...read more

With 50 different state legislative calendars, more than half of them adjourn by June, and those still in session throughout the year usually take a recess in the summer. So springtime is prime time for state legislative activity. In the next few weeks, legislatures are hosting hearings and calling for votes on bills that have been battered back and ...read more

Nuclear power is working for America. On May 22, hundreds of engineers, scientists, plant operators, entrepreneurs and students will gather in Scottsdale, at the annual Nuclear Energy Assembly , to talk about the multiple benefits that our technology provides, and the challenges and opportunities ahead. In preparation, NEI's Matt Wald sat down recently ...read more

Here in a Washington that's preoccupied with political spectacle, it can be easy to miss important details about the business of government that really matter. One of those is coming up next week when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) holds a two-day technical conference about electricity markets in the Northeastern U.S. Since policymakers ...read more

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the ...read more

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past ...read more

Matt Wald An exceptionally successful twenty-year nuclear-powered mission is about to enter its grand finale. The Cassini-Huygens mission will begin its final phase on April 26, when the Cassini probe now orbiting Saturn makes a course adjustment to swing through the 1,500-mile gap between the planet and its rings, an area not yet explored. Presuming ...read more

Matt Wald Storage of used nuclear fuel today is safe and secure, but scattered. However, a consolidated “interim storage” facility appears likely in the next few years, where the material would cool slowly inside sealed casks while the government prepares a burial spot. Holtec International , one of the builders of those casks, will discuss later today ...read more

When a new president takes office, there is always a lot on the White House’s plate. But recently 93 members of the House of Representatives sent President Trump a letter asking him to move one particular issue higher on the list: picking new members for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, so that body can resume its crucial work of overseeing ...read more