Today we continue our series on nuclear project financing. In this post we will discuss why it may be a desirable for customers to start making payments during the construction period rather than wait until a nuclear plant has been completed as is the more traditional approach to new plant Read more…
When discussing the future of nuclear power plant construction, there is general agreement that to control costs and risks there is a need to build a fleet of standardized designs. The 2024 US DOE Liftoff report clearly states a committed order book of 5–10 deployments of a single reactor design Read more…
As we reported last month at COP 29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, the Government Pledge to triple global nuclear by 2050 added six new signatories bringing the total number of countries who have signed the pledge to 31. Support for nuclear power to both meet countries’ clean energy and energy security Read more…
As COP 29 got underway in Baku, Azerbaijan, expanding nuclear power continued to be high on the agenda. The Government Pledge to triple global nuclear signed at last year’s COP 28 in Dubai added six new signatories this year, El Salvador, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kosovo, Nigeria, and Türkiye, bring the total Read more…
The war in Ukraine has been going on for more than 2 years now with unimaginable suffering to its people. Yet somehow the press continues to focus on the risks at Europe’s largest nuclear plant, Zaporizhzhya. On April 11, 2024, the IAEA director general reported that “direct attacks against Zaporizhzhya Read more…
In our last two posts we looked at the pledge signed by more than 20 countries at COP28 in Dubai to triple the amount of nuclear globally by 2050 and the pledge made by more than 120 companies in the nuclear industry to meet this challenge. This month we comment Read more…
In our last post we looked at the pledge signed by more than 20 countries at COP28 in Dubai to triple the amount of nuclear globally by 2050. This month we consider the pledge made by more than 120 companies in the nuclear industry to meet this challenge and support Read more…
Earlier this year, we wrote a post stating that “in 2022 the world acknowledged that net zero needs nuclear – in 2023 it will realize it needs a whole lot of it.” Well, as 2023 draws to a close, it has! This month at COP28 in Dubai, more than 20 Read more…
Making good decisions on issues of importance like climate change requires access to evidenced-based, truthful information. And yet we currently live in a world where there has never been greater effort to control people through misinformation. Unfortunately, more and more people simply don’t seem to care. Likely of no surprise Read more…
A recent article caught our eye – “Stanford study warns against overnight charging of electric cars at home” in California. This study noted that most electric vehicle (EV) owners tend to charge their vehicles at home during the evening or overnight (which should come as no surprise to anyone), leading Read more…
If you live in a relatively rich country (other than the United States), how often have you heard someone bemoaning government policies to cut carbon emissions say something like – “since we only emit about 1% of global CO2, we could cut our emissions to zero, and it would make Read more…
In our recent post on nuclear project financing, we noted the importance of reducing risk to investors to ensure projects can raise sufficient competitively priced capital needed to build them. Today we will discuss project structures. What are they and why are they important? The project structure is how the Read more…
Early last month, Vogtle Unit 3, the first new nuclear plant to be built in the United States in decades, went critical, meaning it started to nuclear fission and move down the path to producing its first electricity and becoming operational. This was great news as the project has had Read more…
In March, Kuosheng Unit 2 became the latest nuclear unit to be retired following the expiry of its 40-year operating licence in accordance with Taiwan’s nuclear phase-out policy. This is the fourth unit to be shut down in Taiwan leaving just two more operating units at Maanshan. When their licences Read more…
We often hear that financing is a major issue for nuclear projects that creates significant impediments to new projects moving forward. There are myriads of thoughts and ideas on how to fix this, from various clever project contractual structures to identifying new non-traditional sources of funds. But other than stating Read more…
On December 15, 2022, the Ontario Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) issued ”Pathways to Decarbonization – A report to the Minister of Energy to evaluate a moratorium on new natural gas generation in Ontario and to develop a pathway to zero emissions in the electricity sector”. This report considers a Read more…
With COP27 in Egypt coming to a close, there is broader acceptance of the role for nuclear power in solving the climate crisis, as it is one of the few electricity generation options that positively impacts all three dimensions of the energy trilemma. What is the energy trilemma? It is Read more…
In its 2022 report on the role of nuclear power in fighting climate change, “Nuclear Power and Secure Energy Transitions”, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says “Nuclear energy can help make the energy sector’s journey away from unabated fossil fuels faster and more secure.” It goes on to clearly lay Read more…
We previously talked about energy security and the impact on global energy markets resulting from the crisis in Ukraine. In that post we discussed energy security from the traditional perspective of risk of disruption in global energy flows as a result of geopolitical issues. Today we will expand upon the Read more…
I recently returned from making my modest contribution to the World Nuclear University (WNU) Summer Institute (SI) in Spain. I was so excited to be able to attend in person!! I wrote about this great program after the last summer institute in Romania back in 2019. At that time who Read more…