Skip to main content

Closing A Deal in Idaho – or Maybe China

By
017 The difficulties of identifying and exploiting a market – whether to provide nuclear energy or to market a new food product – is never easy and, for a start-up, notably difficult.
To wit: A company called Alternate Energy Holdings has a pretty good idea:
A small company that's pushing a billion-dollar nuclear power plant in Idaho now says it wants to build another one at a different location.
Alternate Energy Holdings Inc. says it's asking Payette County to amend a plan that governs land use, so it can build a nuclear power plant on approximately 5,100 acres in western Idaho.
This is presumably on land where MidAmerican Nuclear Energy decided last year not to build a plant, so some of the work has been done. And why do they want to do this?
Don Gillispie, Alternate Energy's chief executive, says his projects will bring benefits to rural communities.
Well, we can’t argue with that, though the AP story is so short as to be barren on details.
So we visited AEHI’s Web site:
AEHI is an alternate energy electricity generating company focused on the construction and acquisition of green energy sources – primarily nuclear power plants and solar. The company also uses renewables and technology to essentially eliminate energy bills on houses and commercial buildings.
We’re not sure how they’d eliminate energy bills, but okay. In any event, AEHI centers its activities on Idaho, or seems to, until you get to this (small pdf):
AEHI will open an office in the Chaoyang District, central business district, of Beijing in July to facilitate institutional investors for AEHI projects and joint ventures with Asian companies for nuclear plant components and other energy-related projects with US companies.
That’s thinking big. So far, AEHI hasn’t got very far past the news release stage on any of its initiatives, but then, it’s only been around for three years. We checked our friends over at Idaho Samizdat to see what they know about AEHI. Answer: quite a lot. Start here for more, but here's the summary:
The penny-stock firm has had little success in its efforts to organize a nuclear reactor project in Idaho.
It may just be that AEHI is trying everything it can to find and develop a market and interest enough venture capital to help it stay afloat until it makes a sale – either in Idaho or China. Certainly not unusual (if a bit unusually far flung), often not successful, but that’s how it works. All one can really do from the outside is speculate. Let’s keep half an eye on AEHI and see how it goes.
Not the Yangtze River – the Snake River in Idaho.
Labels:

Comments

Space Fission said…
Here's a bit more news including interviews with a spokesperson from AEHI and some other people in Idaho who seem to have a few more facts at their fingertips.
October 20, 2009 at 9:52 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

By
Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...
23 comments
Read more

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

By
You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...
6 comments
Read more

How Much Land Does Nuclear, Wind and Solar Really Need?

By
Not too long ago, we reviewed a report that looked at nuclear energy (and other energy sources) as biodiversity agents. This had to do, in part, with the amount of land a facility needs to function. Nuclear energy and fossil fuel plants use relatively little, wind farms and solar arrays quite a lot of land . Based on an objective and transparent analysis of our sustainable energy choices, we have come to the evidence-based conclusion that nuclear energy is a good option for biodiversity conservation (and society in general) and that other alternatives to fossil fuels should be subjected to the same cost–benefit analyses (in terms of biodiversity and climate outcomes, as well as sociopolitical imperatives) before accepting or dismissing them. Writer Barry Brook, who collected 75 scientists to endorse his paper, is interested in land use as it impacts flora and fauna. Biodiversity concerns do not get as much play as they might – and, when they do, it annoys many when land is withdraw...
4 comments
Read more