By Kennedy Maize The U.S. nuclear industry is pushing back against a possible independent National Academies scientific study of the weapons potential of new fuels for many advanced civilian reactor designs. On Jan. 2, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that it is evaluating High Assay Low Enriched Uranium (HALEU) powerplant fuels – fuels… More Nuclear industry, academics duel over HALEU and weapons

Is monopoly power coming to the independent, non-utility generating sector of the electricity business? A recent analysis from the University of California, Berkeley’s Energy Institute at Haas says the recent mega-merger of Constellation Energy and CalpineCorp. gives the combined company the ability to assert market power in several major electricity markets. On Jan. 10, Baltimore-based… More Does Constellation + Calpine = monopoly power?

Are small modular nuclear reactors so inherently safe they don’t require U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission review before they are built? That’s the claim Texas, Utah, and D.C.-based Last Energy, Inc. made in federal court late last year (Dec. 30). The two states and the developer of a 20-MW(e) reactor design asked the U.S. District Court… More Texas, Utah, and SMR developer attack NRC small reactor licensing

By Kennedy Maize Data center madness due to an artificial intelligence infection struck U.S. Last week. New President Donald Trump kicked it off with a strange White House session Jan. 21, as AI gurus announced a $500 billion plan (scaled up from an initial $100 billion bet) to use private money for a veritable plethora… More Commentary: How to end “data center madness”

By Kennedy Maize The state of Utah’s odd-ball, long-shot attempt to wrest control of federal land from the U.S. Interior Department has crashed and burned at the U.S. Supreme Court. The Beehive State sought a direct appeal to the high court, skipping the conventional legal brick road to the court, starting at a U.S. district… More Utah public land grab fails at SCOTUS

Holtec International this month (Jan. 14) got a “hold on there, Sparky” warning from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Holtec officials met with NRC staff to discuss plans for dealing with the steam generator problems at the shuttered Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan before Holtec can restart the 805-MW Combustion Engineering pressurized water reactor that… More NRC warns Holtec about its ambitious Palisades restart schedule

The world’s second largest lithium-ion battery storage facility broke into flames last week (Jan. 16) some 77 miles south of San Francisco at Vistra Corp’s Moss Landing gas-fired power plant site, prompting an evacuation order of site workers and some nearby areas. The fire initially began to subside but flared up again the next day.… More Battery storage fire hits California again

By Kennedy Maize The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday (Jan. 13) declined to hear an appeal by opponents of the Vinyard Wind 1 project off the coast of Nantucket of an April decision by the First Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeals court in 2023 refused to review a 2023 lower federal court ruling in… More Vineyard Wind gets a Supreme Court win

By Kennedy Maize When Denver energy businessman Chris Wright becomes the next energy secretary, he’s going to discover something few Americans know, including Donald Trump and his purported efficiency czars, the DOGE dopes Musk and Ramaswamy: the U.S. Department of Energy has very little to do with energy. While self-proclaimed conservative budget cutters in GOP… More Commentary: Abolish the Department of Energy

Is fusion energy, for some the holy grail of electric generation, just around the corner at a rural Virginia site? Boston-based startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems is making that claim and drawing a lot of favorable attention. The company’s claims may be hyperbolic. The young company’s announcement, highly optimistic in tone, got considerable buzz, mostly uncritical. The… More Fusion for Virginia? Big claims and serious doubts