NEI Nuclear Notes

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum...

When a new president takes office, there is always a lot on the White House’s plate. But recently 93 members of the House of Representatives sent President Trump a letter asking him to move one particular issue higher on the list: picking new members for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, so that body can resume its crucial work of overseeing energy infrastructure. The members of Congress are correct about that agency, known as FERC, but it is not the only part of government that is short-handed. FERC is supposed to have five members, but the number had dwindled to three, and recently one of the three quit, so FERC is not able to muster a quorum . FERC does many jobs. The one most important to the nuclear industry is oversight of the Independent System Operators, the non-profit companies that run the electricity markets and operate the electric grid over most of the country. Those markets have serious problems but, with FERC out of action, proposed reforms will have to wa...

A few minutes ago, a discharge petition to bring a vote on the re-authorization of the Ex-Im Bank received its 218th signature. NEI issued the following tweets praising the action, and is now urging the House of Representatives to vote on the bill re-authorizing the Bank as soon as possible. Thanks to @RepFincherTN08 and over 200 other House members who voted in favor of Ex-Im Bank discharge petition. #ExIm4Jobs (1/4) — Nuclear Energy Inst. (@NEI) October 9, 2015 Now that HR 3611 has escaped committee, a vote to reauthorize the Bank should be scheduled ASAP. #ExIm4Jobs (2/4) — Nuclear Energy Inst. (@NEI) October 9, 2015 A vote for Ex-Im is a vote for jobs, exports & US leadership in nuclear technology. #ExIm4Jobs (3/4) — Nuclear Energy Inst. (@NEI) October 9, 2015 Bipartisan majority in both Houses supports the Bank. A vote ASAP would be an exercise in bipartisanship/good government. #ExIm4Jobs (4/4) — Nuclear Energy Inst. (@NEI) October 9, 2015 For more on t...

Ted Jones The following is a guest post by Ted Jones, Director of International Supplier Relations for NEI. Last week, the Export-Import Bank of the United States released its annual Competitiveness Report to the U.S. Congress. The report highlighted “the ballooning of export finance around the world, particularly of the opaque, non-OECD-compliant variety.” This growth of export finance on “terms more lenient than the [OECD] Arrangement, with rates below what EXIM can offer and minimal risk-related fees,” threatens to undermine U.S. competitiveness, the report warned. Perhaps no sector illustrates the threat posed by non-OECD export finance as starkly as nuclear energy. We have explained why Ex-Im Bank is essential for U.S. suppliers to be competitive in international nuclear energy markets . When the foreign competition is bound by OECD limits, Ex-Im Bank provides a somewhat level playing field for U.S. suppliers. When the foreign competition is unchecked by OECD rules, ...

Ted Jones The following is a guest post by Ted Jones, Director of International Supplier Relations for NEI . It is widely known that the U.S. nuclear energy industry is deeply involved in the broad effort to renew the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank). Hundreds of U.S. nuclear exporters, supported by the Nuclear Energy Institute, have sounded alarm at the prospect of losing the Ex-Im Bank because they know it is vital to U.S. competitiveness in the global nuclear industry . I was therefore surprised to read an argument from a noted supporter of nuclear energy, my friend Jack Spencer of the Heritage Foundation , that our industry’s belief in the vital importance of the Ex-Im is mistaken. Heritage Foundation’s advocacy arm, Heritage Action, is one of the groups leading the opposition to the Ex-Im Bank. But I take Jack seriously on nuclear energy matters, so I’ll examine his responses to the nuclear energy industry’s arguments in favor of reauthorizing the...

Ted Jones The following is a guest post by Ted Jones, Director of International Supplier Relations for NEI. For several months now, we've been shining a spotlight on the dispute in Washington over the reauthorization of the U.S. Export-Import Bank. But this week, the focus of this battle is moving outside the Beltway far away from Washington-based Tea Party groups to where real jobs are at stake - in this case on Wednesday morning in Charlotte where businesses from across the Carolinas are going to rally to support the bank and the work it does promoting exports in the region. The event will take place at the Westin Charlotte Hotel beginning at 8:30 a.m. and will include businesses from all over the Carolinas. Already confirmed to be in attendance and participating are companies like Duke Energy, Holtec, CB&I, Fluor, Curtiss-Wright, GE Aviation and Boeing. We also expect a number of smaller nuclear energy suppliers - companies who would be forced to start laying off emp...

Ted Jones The following is a guest post by Ted Jones, Director of International Supplier Relations for NEI. A spokesperson for Americans for Prosperity told The Hill last week that Congress should allow the U.S. Export-Import Bank to expire when its authorization ends in June. If a particular sector like the nuclear sector needs Ex-Im to survive, “the fact that your industry has grown dependent on taxpayer-backed loans doesn’t mean that it needs to continue forever,” Russell said. While that sounds like a principled free-market argument, a closer look at the realities of international trade demonstrates that it is a mistaken premise for ending the Ex-Im Bank. To the contrary, the conservative principles of fiscal responsibility and American leadership in global affairs should lead Tea Party groups to support Ex-Im. Ex-Im Bank serves a crucial role for nuclear exporters that the private sector cannot. U.S. nuclear exporters turn to Ex-Im precisely because financing alte...

Industries are dynamic entities that are always in process. That means they don’t lend themselves to top 10 lists, which work better for finished objects such as movies and books. We may say that Godzilla was the best 2014 movie to feature Yucca Mountain (built not for used fuel but to imprison a malevolent insect), but that’s a different kind of judgment. Some of the items we’ll include here started earlier than 2014 or started in 2014 but will not reach a milestone until 2015 or beyond. That’s how it goes. With that in mind, let’s look at 2014: From a financial  viewpoint, two items stand out: the President’s  request to revive the Decommissioning and Decontamination tax on nuclear plants was turned back in the appropriations bill that passed for 2015. The industry has no problem paying that tax – in fact, it’s paid the full amount two times over. It just was not eager for a third go-round – and Congress agreed. Similarly, the court-ordered end of the Nuclear Waste Fe...

NEI CEO Marv Fertel will be participating in a press conference on the U.S. Export Import back today at 1:30 EDT in Room S. 115 at the Capitol. Also participating will be: Sen. Cantwell Sen. Manchin Sen. Kirk Sen. Graham Ms. Kavia Kusum, President, Combustion Associates Inc. Mr. Michael Richard, Director of Government and International Affairs, Westinghouse Electric Company Mr. Dan Pfeiffer, Vice President of Government Affairs, Itron, Inc. Mr. Patrick Wilson, Director of Federal and Government Affairs, Babcock & Wilcox Mr. Steven Wilburn, CEO, FirmGreen

Ted Jones The following is a guest post by Ted Jones , Director of International Supplier Relations for NEI. Certain foes of Ex-Im Bank have claimed that it only benefits a handful of companies, and that no one else would notice if Congress allows its charter to expire on September 30. But the economic impact of Ex-Im Bank is far broader than its ideological foes are willing to admit, extending deep into the supply chains of the larger companies. Many of the Bank’s indirect beneficiaries are unaware of its importance to their business. To show the indirect impact of Ex-Im Bank, today we are holding a roundtable discussion with business leaders in North Carolina, where a concentration of the U.S. nuclear supply chain represents a vital part of the state and regional economy. A 2013 study conducted by Clemson University valued the direct and indirect impact of the nuclear supply chain in the Carolinas at $20 billion , employing 29,000 people. Lindsey Crisp, CEO of Carver Mach...

Seth Grae The following is a guest post from Seth Grae, president and CEO of Lightbridge Corporation , a leading innovator of nuclear fuel designs and provider of nuclear energy consulting services. There is a notion among some members of Congress that one way to shrink the U.S. government is to allow the U.S. Export-Import Bank to cease to exist at the end of September by refusing to reauthorize it. Allowing the Ex-Im Bank to die would actually increase the federal deficit by about a billion dollars per year and would be devastating to small businesses across the country. Overall, about 85% of Ex-Im’s transactions support US small companies . Lightbridge Corporation (NASDAQ: LTBR) is a small company that has a world-class team of experts advising governments that are starting or expanding nuclear energy-generation programs. We have the opportunity to see the bid specs these countries use in procuring nuclear power plants. From what we’ve seen, if the US loses the Ex-Im Bank,...

Later today, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) will be holding a briefing for House members on the Ex-Im Bank. Recently, the majority staff at Hensarling's committee published their list of " 5 Things to Know About the Export-Import Bank ." We think the title of the blog is something of a misnomer. Instead, the piece should have been titled, " 5 Myths About the Export-Import Bank ." Here's our point-by-point rebuttal: 1. The Ex-Im Bank doesn’t create jobs. Why this is wrong : The Ex-Im Bank supports just 2 percent of all U.S. exports, which from 2007 to 2014 amounted to $240 billion of export assistance. In terms of jobs, that’s support for 1.5 million U.S. employees. According to the Bank, every $1 billion in export assistance supports 6,390 U.S. jobs. Countless testimonials by large, medium, and small businesses state that their ability to export would simply not occur without the Bank's ass...

The Atlantic has an article called Is Nuclear Energy Ever Coming Back?. Aside from the fact that five new reactors are opening before the turn of the decade, the question seems a bit moot, but writer Celeste Lecompe does an exceptionally good job looking at subject wholly – I mean, with the Union of Concerned Scientists and NEI in the mix. We may take some pleasure in how much like sourpusses UCS seems, but it’s a fair look at different views. And Lecompte give due to new developments, such as small reactors and Transatomic’s revived interest in molten salt. A taste: In the meantime, TerraPower, the Bill Gates-backed startup, has opted to focus its attention abroad. “There are plenty of countries or regions that really are looking to nuclear as one of the ways to solve their energy needs without putting more carbon into the environment,” said Kevin Weaver, TerraPower’s director for technology integration. TerraPower is exploring opportunities to deploy its reactor design in R...

At 10:00 a.m. tomorrow morning the House Financial Services Committee will be holding a hearing of the reauthorization of the U.S. Export-Import Bank . The chairman of the committee, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), is a long-time opponent of the Bank and the hearing will be stacked (mostly) with witnesses who agree. To get the other side of the story, we've compiled a number of links and resources for you to consider. Earlier this year, our own Ted Jones laid out the reasons why NEI supports reauthorization of the bank, listing his top 5 reasons why exporters continue to need the critical help it provides in international markets . On Monday, NEI, along with over 800 other organizations, sent an open letter to the U.S. Congress urging them to support reauthorization of the bank . Here's an excerpt on why we believe eliminating the Ex-Im Bank amounts to unilateral disarmament in international trade: Failure to reauthorize Ex-Im would amount to unilateral disarmament in the ...

Ted Jones The following is a guest post by Ted Jones, Director of International Supplier Relations for NEI. For decades, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im) has quietly enabled U.S. exporters to win foreign tenders and create American jobs by financing and insuring foreign purchases of U.S. goods. Ex-Im’s benefits to the U.S. economy have been tremendous. By providing financing and guarantees for about $50 billion in U.S. exports in 2012, Ex-Im supported a total of more than 250,000 jobs. In the process, Ex-Im’s fees reduced the federal deficit by hundreds of millions of dollars. In the fiscal year ended September 30, 2012, Ex-Im returned more than $803.7 million in revenue to the U.S. Treasury. For these reasons and others, the Bank long enjoyed consensus support. Only during the Bank’s most recent reauthorization, in 2011, did ideological groups decide to make it a target for a campaign against “corporate welfare” and “socialism.” These misguided attacks...

The Senate approved reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank this week. This made the first page of the Washington Post, but largely because it showed a level of comity not always seen in the Senate. As a subject, the Ex-Im bank is a little dry for many. So what does the bank do? The bank, which takes no money from taxpayers, last year provided export-financing support for about 2 percent of U.S. exports, about $32 billion in loans, loan guarantees and credit financing. Some $11 billion of that supported Boeing sales of large commercial aircrafts. Countering critics who say it is “Boeing’s bank,” the bank says that 87 percent of its transactions last year directly benefited small businesses and that its financing supported 290,000 jobs, including 85,000 in the aerospace industry. I’ll let you read about the Boeing-Delta dustup at the link – not really our brief – but the bottom line is that bank can enhance, well, the bottom line by easing the financial aspects of expor...

It has been an exciting week in loan guarantees. Last Thursday, the U.S. Export-Import Bank decided not to provide loan guarantees to support the sale of $310 million in mining machinery by Bucyrus International, Inc ., to Reliance Power Ltd., of India. The sale was contingent upon the Indian firm receiving Ex-Im Bank-supported financing. The Ex-Im Bank said its decision was based on consideration of environmental impacts of the deal, as mandated by a carbon-intensity policy implemented this spring. The machinery was to be used to mine coal for a 3,960 megawatt power plant coming on line in 2012 and the Bank did not wish to promote the use of coal. The coal-fired plant would emit about 27,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. Howls went up across the land citing negative impacts on the economy of Milwaukee and the U.S. The Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce estimated that the Bucyrus sale would support over 300 jobs in the Milwaukee region and more than 650 jobs among s...