Skip to main content

Closing A Deal in Idaho – or Maybe China

By
017 The difficulties of identifying and exploiting a market – whether to provide nuclear energy or to market a new food product – is never easy and, for a start-up, notably difficult.
To wit: A company called Alternate Energy Holdings has a pretty good idea:
A small company that's pushing a billion-dollar nuclear power plant in Idaho now says it wants to build another one at a different location.
Alternate Energy Holdings Inc. says it's asking Payette County to amend a plan that governs land use, so it can build a nuclear power plant on approximately 5,100 acres in western Idaho.
This is presumably on land where MidAmerican Nuclear Energy decided last year not to build a plant, so some of the work has been done. And why do they want to do this?
Don Gillispie, Alternate Energy's chief executive, says his projects will bring benefits to rural communities.
Well, we can’t argue with that, though the AP story is so short as to be barren on details.
So we visited AEHI’s Web site:
AEHI is an alternate energy electricity generating company focused on the construction and acquisition of green energy sources – primarily nuclear power plants and solar. The company also uses renewables and technology to essentially eliminate energy bills on houses and commercial buildings.
We’re not sure how they’d eliminate energy bills, but okay. In any event, AEHI centers its activities on Idaho, or seems to, until you get to this (small pdf):
AEHI will open an office in the Chaoyang District, central business district, of Beijing in July to facilitate institutional investors for AEHI projects and joint ventures with Asian companies for nuclear plant components and other energy-related projects with US companies.
That’s thinking big. So far, AEHI hasn’t got very far past the news release stage on any of its initiatives, but then, it’s only been around for three years. We checked our friends over at Idaho Samizdat to see what they know about AEHI. Answer: quite a lot. Start here for more, but here's the summary:
The penny-stock firm has had little success in its efforts to organize a nuclear reactor project in Idaho.
It may just be that AEHI is trying everything it can to find and develop a market and interest enough venture capital to help it stay afloat until it makes a sale – either in Idaho or China. Certainly not unusual (if a bit unusually far flung), often not successful, but that’s how it works. All one can really do from the outside is speculate. Let’s keep half an eye on AEHI and see how it goes.
Not the Yangtze River – the Snake River in Idaho.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Space Fission said…
Here's a bit more news including interviews with a spokesperson from AEHI and some other people in Idaho who seem to have a few more facts at their fingertips.
October 20, 2009 at 9:52 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wednesday Update

By
From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fluor Invests in NuScale

By
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...
1 comment
Read more

Nuclear Utility Moves Up in Credit Ratings, Bank is "Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy"

By
Some positive signs that nuclear utilities can continue to receive positive ratings even while they finance new nuclear plants for the first time in decades: Wells Fargo upgrades SCANA to Outperform from Market Perform Wells analyst says, "YTD, SCG shares have underperformed the Regulated Electrics (total return +2% vs. +9%). Shares trade at 11.3X our 10E EPS, a modest discount to the peer group median of 11.8X. We view the valuation as attractive given a comparatively constructive regulatory environment and potential for above-average long-term EPS growth prospects ... Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy. SCG plans to participate in the development of two regulated nuclear units at a cost of $6.3B, raising legitimate concerns regarding financing and construction. We have carefully considered the risks and are comfortable with SCG’s strategy based on a highly constructive political & regulatory environment, manageable financing needs stretched out over 10 years, strong partners...
Post a Comment
Read more