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...
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I'm not saying there's necessarily a safety issue involved. However, shutting a large baseload plant twice in a few weeks, when it's supposed to run continuously for 18-24 months, is stretching the definition of "things working properly."
As far as operational issues go, they'll have to do some checking and study, but the first priority of assurring public safety was not compromised.
As far as complaining about the unavailability of installed capacity, save it for the 20-25% capacity factors of the unreliables. You know, they of the "must take" provisions?