In 1957, legendary Calypso singer and civil rights activist Harry Bellefonte recorded “Jamaica Farewell,” which became a major hit in the U.S. The song’s chorus: “Sad to say, I’m on my way, won’t be back for many a day.” That looks like the theme song for nuclear power in the U.S. (and perhaps Western Europe […]

Fuel diversity is a topic that comes up often in discussions of electricity policy, generally thought to be a worthwhile, even indispensable, attribute in an energy system. A new analysis by R Street, a Washington free-market think tank, questions the conventional fealty toward fuel diversity, arguing that “a diverse fuel supply is not, in and […]

An old saw among Washington’s large class of political cynics, reflecting decades of gridlock, goes, “Democrats can’t be trusted to govern. Republicans are incapable of governing.” The Trump administration so far is proving the cynics right. Exhibit 1 is the obscure but powerful Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, nominally part of the Department of Energy but […]

The Trump administration has still not nominated candidates to fill three vacancies at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. While hardly the stuff of Washington Post A-section attention, the inability of Trump to unlock FERC, which currently has no quorum, holds up important U.S. infrastructure projects, including natural gas pipelines and liquefied natural gas export terminals. […]

A major dustup over national energy policies is brewing between state governments and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. It’s about basic regulatory authorities, with the states emboldened by Trump administration rhetoric about states’ rights, and the feds handcuffed by the apparent unwillingness (or incompetence) of the White House in filling vacant FERC seats. If FERC […]

Could the software technology that is the backbone behind the cryptocurrency Bitcoin provide a path for electric utilities to accommodate the swirling financial transactions that accompany distributed generation and micogrids? The software technology is “blockchain,” a transaction recording software that, according to its advocates, provides “an incorrubtible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be […]

While doing some research for a book I’m working on, I came across a June 5, 1953 memo by Hyman Rickover, head of the naval reactors branch of the Atomic Energy Commission. For those readers who don’t know, Rickover is the father of nuclear power for electricity in the U.S., both for the U.S. Navy […]

It was an astonishing event when two MIT nuclear engineering graduate students at the end of 2015 announced they had come up with a revolutionary design for a molten salt nuclear reactor that could solve many of the technological problems of conventional light-water reactors. Cofounders of the firm Transatomic – Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie […]

Harold Denton, a career federal civil servant who helped prevent panic during the nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island March 28, 1979 and days after, died February 13 at his home in Knoxville, Tenn. He was 80. The cause of death was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease coupled with complications from Alzheimer’s disease. Denton was an […]

The threat of a catastrophe at California’s Oroville Dam appears to be over. California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) lifted the evacuation order that last week moved some 180,000 residents out of the area that could be flooded if the water level topped the 770-foot dam. But the dam’s troubles have also temporarily brought down […]