You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap...
Former blog for NEI featuring news and commentary on the commercial nuclear energy industry. Head to NEI.org for the latest blog posts.
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In defense of the rest of the people who are opposed to the project, however, there are many reasons other than spoiling views why they are worried.
I have actually spent some time out on the water very close to the area where the wind turbines will be built. Their presence would have had a detrimental effect on our ability to move through the water since we were on a sailboat.
Though there have been people harnessing the wind for power in the sound for hundreds of years, the Cape Wind project has somehow convinced some people that it has a right to take that wind from those people. (Sailing in a wind farm would be exceedingly frustrating because of all of the turbulence and reduction in energy of the wind.)
Another group of people that are opposed to Cape Wind are the fishermen who have been working the prolific sound for generations. They are not sure what the effect will be, but they are pretty sure that massive construction projects for foundations and transmission infrastructure will not have the effect of making their fishing grounds more productive. They are also worried about the vast increase in navigational hazards especially for conditions of reduced visibility (fog).
The fact is that massive wind farms are a classic case of "tragedy of the commons". Their success is based on a small group taking what used to be public property (views, fishing grounds, wind) and turning into private property without compensating the public.