NEI Nuclear Notes

Ted Jones The following is a guest post by Ted Jones, Director of International Supplier Relations for NEI. This week, the U.S. Congress received for review a renewal agreement for nuclear energy cooperation with Norway. When the pact comes into force, it will restore nuclear cooperation that lapsed when the original agreement expired in July 2014. Commonly known as a Section 123 agreement after the part of the Atomic Energy Act that governs international nuclear energy cooperation, a bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement secures nonproliferation guarantees and provides a framework for nuclear energy commerce. Given that Norway has no plans to operate a commercial nuclear power plant, some may ask, “What is the importance of Norway to the U.S. nuclear industry?” The answer lies 75 miles southeast of Oslo in the town of Halden, where the United States helped to build a 20 megawatt test reactor in 1958. Now supported by 19 member countries and partly financed by the OEC...

Here at NEI, we try to keep an eye out for any television program or film that involves nuclear energy . As we've written in the past, the results can be something of a mixed bag . That's part of the reason that Pandora's Promise was such a pleasant surprise. After seeing nuclear energy viewed through a lens darkly most of the time, it was something of a shock to the system to see it described with optimism and hope. In Occupied , Norway is all in on thorium reactors. Enter Occupied (or Okkupert for my Norwegian relatives), a political thriller that debuted on European television last Fall and is now available here in the U.S. on Netflix . So what's the plot? Warning, minor spoilers ahead . Sometime in the near future, Norway is struck by a climate-related natural disaster, paving the way for the election of a Green Party government. Once in power, the new prime minister (Henrik Mestad) decides his nation needs to lead by example and stop using fossil fuels...

Get the scoop from Cosmos .

This time, the company interested is Statkraft . Previously, we've seen reports of interest from both Thor Energi and Bergen Energi . For more from our archives, click here .

Details from Reuters .