By Kennedy Maize The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week approved NuScale Power’s evolutionary small modular reactor design, a 77-MW light water cooled and moderated pressurized water reactor in a six-reactor package. The “US460” SMR is a scaled-up design based on the NRC’s 2020 approval of NuScale’s original 50-MW machine. The NRC staff, in the… More NRC Oks NuScale’s 77-MW SMR design
“Future electricity needs for artificial intelligence (AI) are wildly uncertain—shaped by unproven concepts, disputed performance, limited trust, volatile markets, unpredictable adoption, and technical efficiency that quadruples roughly each year.” That warning comes from Amory Lovins, one of the legendary energy gurus of the 1970s and 1980s. In a May 10 paper from his firm, Lovins… More Amory Lovins on AI hype and electricity realism
By Kennedy Maize Offering an implausible rationale, the Trump administration has ordered a private-sector electric utility to delay plans to shut down a large coal-fired power plant in Michigan from the planned closure this Saturday (May 31) until at least August 21. The order last Friday (May 23) from the Department of Energy bigfoots Michigan-based… More Unbidden, DOE cancels long-planned coal plant shutdown
By Kennedy Maize The Trump administration is proposing to create a government-owned corporation to manage much of the civilian nuclear power fuel cycle, including previously banned atomic bomb fuel plutonium to be recovered from reprocessed spent nuclear fuel. This audacious proposal comes in another of Trump’s avalanche of executive orders. On Friday (May 23) he… More Trump EOs push nuclear reprocessing, slam the NRC
By Kennedy Maize The most mature technology for storing energy to generate electricity when power supply is limited is water: pumped storage. The concept is straight forward: use power when it is plentiful to pump water to an elevated reservoir, then run the water downhill through turbines to make power when needed. It’s simple, it… More Getting pumped: Hydro storage promises and problems
By Kennedy Maize The on-again, off-again, Trump-again administration has reversed course and told a large, halted offshore wind project to resume construction. The Interior Department has told Norway’s Equinor to get back to work on its multibillion-dollar, 800-MW Empire 1 wind project some 14 miles off the shore of Long Island just a month after… More Wind wars: The Empire comes back
By Kennedy Maize The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week (May 13) rejected a rate proposal by three major investor-owned utilities for a $3 billion, 417-mile high-voltage electric transmission line running through Virginia and West Virginia and into a small portion of Maryland. The transmission line would be in the footprint of the PJM regional… More FERC nixes $3 billion Mid-Atlantic transmission line
By Kennedy Maize Pennsylvania-based Air Products, the world’s largest producer of hydrogen, is moving away from basing much of its business on the a “clean” version of the first element on the periodic chart. As the elementary element, a building block of life, hydrogen has long been a promising path to a clean, powerful, adaptable… More Hydrogen: Long on promise but short on delivery
By Henry Sokolski With President Trump’s latest announcement that Iran’s centrifuges either will “blow up nicely in a deal” or “viciously without one,” the odds of a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program just shot up. This raises the question: if negotiations in Oman this fail, what might Israel or the United States target? Would they just hit the centrifuges?… More Guest Commentary: Nuclear Power Reactors and the Next War
By Kennedy Maize Wyoming Republican Gov. Mark Gordon wants to ship the Cowboy State’s plentiful coal to Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, according to a recent account in Cowboy State Daily. Gordon recently returned from an Asian trip with what the statewide online news service calls “an idealistic vision.” Wyoming is the nation’s largest coal… More Coal pile: Wyo. coal exports? Miners push back on safety. Open or shut?