NEI Nuclear Notes

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, ...

Nuclear energy, you may have heard, is not universally beloved and some countries would like to banish it from their shores. ( Switzerland is an outlier , of course, having no shore.) It has always been disfavored in a few countries (Australia, for example, though not as strongly these days ), some of which used it anyway and some of which never did. So be it – try as you might, that’s how it goes. After the accident at Fukushima Daiichi, there were plenty of stories anticipating a wide-scale abandonment of nuclear energy or at least a dramatic slow down. From April of last year : The future of nuclear power was bleak, even before the Fukushima disaster, said energy expert Mycle Schneider Wednesday at a press conference in Berlin, where he previewed an upcoming Worldwatch report on the outlook of nuclear power. "The industry was arguably on life support before Fukushima. When the history of this industry is written, Fukushima is likely to introduce its final chapter," s...