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The Story NEI’s Maria Korsnick Will Tell Wall Street

There’s a lot going on in our world, and this Thursday at 8:30 a.m. EST, the Nuclear Energy Institute will be making its annual presentation to dozens of Wall Street analysts.

NEI's 2017 Wall Street Briefing

The United States continues to operate the world’s largest fleet of reactors, and is the technology leader. Maria G. Korsnick, our president and chief executive, will talk about how we plan to embrace that leadership role, and how we are part of the nation’s critical infrastructure.

Nuclear power is increasingly recognized at the state level as providing tremendous value, not all of it compensated in the markets. The reactors provide diversity to the system, always-on, 24/7 power, with no air emissions. They are impervious to pipeline glitches, frozen coal piles, droughts and other interruptions. New reactors marching toward completion in South Carolina and Georgia will be part of those states’ energy backbone for a long time, probably the remainder of the century.

We are also moving towards second license renewal, which will allow today’s plants to run beyond 60 years.

We’ve got a start-up with an exciting new concept, a reactor with tremendous safety enhancements. The company, NuScale Power, just filed an application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to have its design approved. It’s a small modular reactor that can be built in a factory and trucked to where it’s needed. Because of its geometry, it’s got much lower demands on the operator – in fact, none at all for the first 30 days it’s online. It opens up new markets to nuclear power.

We’ve got a mature industrial base but we’ve also got a lot of smart, innovative engineers with lots of ideas. Capital is flowing into nuclear start-ups right now.

And the fleet continues to run with extremely high reliability. In addition, its costs are falling.

Ms. Korsnick will give the presentation in New York, with one eye on Washington. We are about to see major turnover at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and we are hopeful about a new determination in Washington to achieve efficient, good-sense regulation.

Catch us live on NEI’s Facebook page or (if you’re over 35 years old) YouTube.

The above is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior communications advisor at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald.

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