Skip to main content

Spiraling Around Constellation Energy

By

Constellation CNN reports that Electricite de France is in discussions with Constellation Energy to take over half its nuclear business. Now, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the French have taken an interest in the American nuclear marketplace - they have a lot of experience in making the numbers work, which has been problematic for Constellation - and a lot of experience with nuclear energy. However, there's an interesting wrinkle here - well, actually a couple. Here's the first:

Constellation's board hasn't changed its recommendation to shareholders to vote in favor of the merger with MidAmerican, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRKA), at a shareholder meeting Dec. 23, according to the release.

That's Warren Buffett's outfit and it represents Buffett's reentry into the nuclear market after his Idaho flirtation. The link to MidAmerican is to their front page - there's a news release about the merger linked from there.

And wrinkle two:

[Electricite de France] already has a 9.5% stake in Constellation and a joint venture with the company, called UniStar Nuclear Energy, established to build and operate nuclear power plants in the U.S.

This new move by EDF represents, if nothing else, a lot of potent players getting into business together and an interesting sign of what industry is thinking about the nuclear market - especially interesting in anticipation of the Obama administration. There's been some fear about the nuclear future under Obama - and some anticipation, too, given the President-elect's desire to move the primary goal of energy policy more decidedly toward carbon reduction. So we'll take leave to wonder what EDF, owned by the French government (mostly - it's been partly privatived), knows that makes this venture a viable move.

There's a lot of activity swirling around Constellation right now, and we can't pretend to guess what happens next. But something will: let's wait and see.

Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
This to me says that Buffet is not so friendly to new nuclear or at least the French flavor of new nuclear. The French would rather trump Buffet on this deal to keep the number of cooks in the kitchen to a minimum.

If the Buffet deal goes forward, then one can assume that the French will get partially hobbled in the US, since they had all of their eggs in the Constellation basket.
December 10, 2008 at 1:37 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

By
Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...
23 comments
Read more

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

By
Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...
7 comments
Read more

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

By
You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...
6 comments
Read more