The Quad Report

The US nuclear power industry, failing to produce a growing business from new civilian plants, large and small, is turning to small, mobile nukes to use on military bases in war zones and in space. It’s a concept a Republican Congress and the Trump administration have embraced, but is getting scathing reviews from nuclear non-proliferation… More US nuke industry turns to military and space electric applications for rescue

On April 17, less than a week before the Biden administration’s Earth Day climate summit April 22, which demonstrated return from the Trump administration’s distain for international cooperation in any forum and Trump’s skepticism about global warming, the U.S. and China produced a joint statement on their shared goals for reducing greenhouse gases. The word… More Earth Day warning: coal remains king in China, distorting climate response

Texas is an electrical (among other things) mess. The state features an independent grid operator that is purposefully, and stupidly, unconnected to the rest of the U.S. It has inadequate and unreliable generation, with little flexibility. It has retail rate regulators subservient to the utilities it regulates. Its ideology is autarky, which never works. Texas… More Analysis: Texas is a mess

While hydrogen has a lot going for it as a replacement for fossil fuels, its benefits are being oversold and its costs underplayed. That’s the view of Tom Baxter a senior lecturer in chemical engineering at Scotland’s University of Aberdeen. Writing recently in The Conversation (the university is a founding partner of the UK publication),… More Beware the hydrogen hype machine?

Fusion power hopes spring eternal this time of year, but there’s plenty of reason to doubt. The periodic hype for fusion always seems to start in the spring, particularly when the U.S. federal budget season is in full bud. But endless energy from smashing hydrogen atoms together, promising unlimited clean and cheap electric power, so… More New “cherry blossom” claims of fusion breakthrough

Ohio’s FirstEnergy electric utility holding company has agreed to disgorge some $26 million it collected under legislation (HB 6) passed to rescue two of the company’s uneconomic power plants with more than a billion dollars in subsidies after it became clear the legislation passed as a result of a utility-led $60 million bribery scheme. Akron-based… More FirstEnergy to refund nuclear bailout charges as DeWine repeals most of HB 6

When it comes to nuclear power plants, is smaller better? Significant players in the nuclear business have been touting small modular reactors (SMRs) for more than a decade as a way to get new nuclear plants into the U.S. electricity ecosystem. Giants such as Babcock & Wilcox and Westinghouse have touted their designs, invested millions,… More Is smaller better in Nukes? No, says new analysis

China talks the nuclear talk. But walks the coal walk. That’s the conclusion in a new article in Yale Environment 360, a publication of the Yale School of the Environment. Journalist Michael Standaert, who covers environment and energy in China and has lived there since 2007, writes, “China’s National People’s Congress meetings, which ended earlier… More China: talk nuclear, walk coal

More fallout from the failed Ohio nuclear bailout legislation. FirstEnergy, the utility that lobbied furiously for House Bill 6 to keep uneconomic Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants operating at the expense of Ohio customers, says it won’t disgorge $30 million collected so far under the subsidy.   The legislation passed after Akron-based FirstEnergy allegedly used… More Ohio nuclear bailout: a roundup of regulatory, legislative and death developments

Advanced nuclear power technologies based on designs that are not light-water reactors are not an improvement on LWR machines and may be worse, according to a detailed analysis in a new 140-page report from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Edwin Lyman, a PhD nuclear physicist and head of the UCS nuclear power program at UCS,… More UCS report critiques non-LWR advanced nuclear proposals