About Social Media Today
Comments by Dan Yurman Subscribe 
On World Bank Needs to do Better on Energy Sector Investments Post South African Coal Project
Is it inexplicable to anyone else why the World Bank didn't revive the nuclear energy tender Eskom has to cancel last year?On U.S. abstains on vote to proliferate coal in South Africa
When you consider the carbon emissions from a 4,800 MW power plant, the question is what other source of energy could provide the same amount of electricity without them? The answer is nuclear energy. Four Westinghouse AP1000 reactors could do the job at a cost of $3,000/KW.
The reactor is already an international standard. China is building four of them and has begun licensed use of the design for a "local" version.
What's interesting is that South Africa had to cancel a tender for new nuclear reactors last year because it could not raise the money for them. In a carbon constrained era, why isn't the World Bank funding nuclear reactors instead of coal fired plants?
On New York takes another swing at Indian Point
There are two dissimilar forces at work in the Indian Point controversy. Like any regulated utility, Entergy’s corporate stance is to spend as little as possible for environmental compliance without getting tagged with violations from state government. As a publically traded company, the benchmark is an index of the percentage of share value which is eaten up by all forms of regulatory compliance.
Stock analysts will compare what Entergy spends to Exelon or Progress or Southern, etc. In other words, the pressure on environmental costs is a competitive factor relative to stock price. None of these publically traded utilities want to spend one dollar more than the next guy on fish screens or any other kind of environmental mitigation measures that are unrelated to NRC requirements for plant safety.
BTW: Entergy’s stock ((NYSE:ETR) was trading only a fraction off its 52-week high on April 1st. Readers should take a look to see if the publicity over the weekend has any effect when the market opens Monday.
Second, Riverkeeper is playing a power game. It doesn’t care about Entergy’s share price, but it does care about aligning itself with Andrew Cuomo and having a say in New York state environmental policies should he be elected governor.
In short, Entergy’s financial measures are irrelevant to Riverkeeper because the greens aren’t playing in that sandbox. There is no payoff for Entergy to be a “good corporate citizen” because the forces arrayed against it don’t care about it. Their objective is to close the plant by imposing regulatory burdens that will force Entergy to walk away. Knocking off a nuclear power plant is a form of cutting notches on a six gun for an environmental group. If successful, it would force political leaders throughout the NY lower Hudson region to pay attention whenever Riverkeeper had something to say.
Under the circumstances, Energy has to convince NY DEQ that improved fish screens are a “best technology” as a means of blunting Riverkeeper’s push for cooling towers. There may be other forms of leverage, but appealing to the public over rates and costs, and fossil carbon emissions relative to greenhouse gases, may not trump the usual hysteria about things nuclear.
If Entergy was serious about engaging the public in New York and Vermont, they would have opened a corporate office in the northeast and taken proactive measures to turn the public dialog around. They didn't but that doesn't make them clueless. They are operating out of the business model they understand and which works in much of the rest of their service areas. As they see it environmentalists are pests. Not taken them seriously is what has gotten the firm into real hot water this time in New York, no pun intended here.
If you were an Entergy executive, what would you do?
PS: I have no relationship with the firm and don’t own any of its stock.
On Pebble Bed’s perilous path ahead
The Pebble Bed concept as developed by South Africa is really based on a German design concept from the 1950s. For that matter, the so-called Traveling Wave design concept being developed by TerraVentures, with funding from the Gates Foundation, is based on a decades old concept first described by Edward Teller at the dawn of the atomic age.On World has much at stake in nuclear power decision - Brookings Institute and GPPI nuclear conference
Stephen Gloor
The popularity poll cited in your comment is over shadowed by the election results in which Chancellor Merkel was re-elected running on a platform of keeping the nation's nuclear power plants.
On World has much at stake in nuclear power decision - Brookings Institute and GPPI nuclear conference
The report prepared by the German government's Environmental Ministry is hardly impartial. Norbert Rottgen, the serving minister, is among the members of Merkel's "grand coalition" who wants to close the nation's 17 nuclear reactors. In doing so the nation would become hostage to the risks of relying on supplies of natural gas from Russia.
However, Merkel won the last election so Rottgen's views did not hold sway with the German people. The answer at the ballot box is a clear vote "yes" for nuclear energy.
On World has much at stake in nuclear power decision - Brookings Institute and GPPI nuclear conference
The key to cost control for construction of a new nuclear power plant is risk sharing between the EPC contractor, the reactor vendor, and the utility. This model is being developed at NRG's South Texas Project. For a merchant plant like STP, time-to-market is a critical success factor as every month of delay represents revenue that is lost. It's like an airplane that takes off with empty seats.On World has much at stake in nuclear power decision - Brookings Institute and GPPI nuclear conference
In the first year of the Obama administration, an enthusiastic admirier of energy efficiency got ahead of the headlights at the White House by declaring there is no need for new baseload electricty generation plants. The White House Science Advisor later repudiated that view.
On Feb 16 of this year the President awarded $8.3 billion in new federal loan guarnatees to the Southerm Co for its construction of twin Westinghouse 1,150 MW nuclear reactors at its Vogtle site in Georgia.
Small nukes, and large ones, will be part of the energy mix over the rest of this century.
On India expands Russian reactor deal
Both Westinghouse and GE-Hitachi have inked relationships with heavy manufacturing firms within India's domestic economy. However, the liability issue is a key element of India's 1-2-3 Agreement with the U.S. and it remains unresolved as a result of the latest legislative setback.On Protecting Taxpayers from a Financial Meltdown - Calculating the Credit Subsidy Fee on a Loan Guarantee for a New Nuclear Reactor
I enjoyed writing about the Shill-o-meter. It helps me put Romm's views in perspective.On Protecting Taxpayers from a Financial Meltdown - Calculating the Credit Subsidy Fee on a Loan Guarantee for a New Nuclear Reactor
Romm spends a long time getting to a single point. If you push the fee for the loan guarantee too high, the nuclear utilities will walk away and not build new reactors. This may be the outcome Romm and his supporters really want which is why he spends so much time on the issue. I hope Romm isn't still citing the now outdated CBO estimate of a 50% default rate. Even CBO's executive director has disavowed that number.
I'm enclosing for the benefit of readers a diagram of a newly invented device for public relations professionals called the "shill meter." 
On World Bank nixes nuclear energy
Dan Lewis gets it. He writes, "The World Bank is bettting against the continued existence of civilization . . ."
It is putting short term monetary gain ahead of long term survival of life on the planet. We're our own worst enemies in terms of continuing our gene pool.