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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The political climate concerning energy here is actually rather scary. Our state is full of environmental groups, that as far as I can tell, have both jumped on the renewable bandwagon and are anti-nuclear. Some may say they are neutral, but publish anti-nuke propaganda nonetheless.
We now have a renewable mandate of 25% by 2025. I was talking with a spokesperson for Great River Energy about this and we both felt this was dangerous policy. Keep in mind Minnesota also has a moratorium on new nuclear builds. Now we're taxing carbon? All we're going to get is more expensive energy.
But one thing I also wonder about. Doesn't all that renewable energy require back-up generation? So, doesn't the 25% renewable mandate translate into a 25% natural gas mandate? Or do people not understand how these things work?