Recent comments

I have some mixed emotions on the issue of subsidies for any energy industry. As a libertarian leaning individual who has been working for a decade and a half to get a nuclear energy company off of the ground, I would love to play on a level playing field where there were NO subsidies, mandates or special fees. Unfortunately, the energy business is one with plenty of vested interests who have been playing the political game for a very long time. They have successfully erected many barriers to fair competition. It is grimly amusing to me that the officially sanctioned "renewable" energy industry includes such dirty technologies as waste-to-energy incinerators and paper company wood chip boilers. It is also amazing that the government provides "renewable" energy subsidies to such companies as GE (the largest US manufacturer of wind turbines), BP (one of the world's largest solar panel producers), and the infamous ADM (one of the world's largest agribusinesses). What many people do not understand about the challenges that nuclear power project developers face in terms of obtaining private financing is that VCs and investment bankers are discouraged by the very long and unpredictable lead times (4-7 years for a license approval) and the need to pay large and uncontrollable fees to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for license applications and reviews. The NRC is required by law - courtesy of the Reagan Administration - to collect essentially all of its costs from fees on the industry that it regulates. The current fee structure for new license applications includes a $250,000 initial fee and an hourly charge of $258 per hour for every billable staff hour. Imagine daily or weekly review meetings with 10-20 NRC employees around the table for a couple of hours. The cost estimate for a single license is currently between $60 and $120 million with no firm rules on what is acceptable and what is not. That is a range that is difficult to stomach for an investor who would like just a bit more certainty. Since my company's technology is a bit different from what the US regulators are used to seeing, we have the added challenge of paying fees to the US Government to teach their employees how to understand the differences between our gas cooled reactors (proven and tested in Germany and China and under development in South Africa) and the water cooled reactors that have been the primary power producers in the US nuclear industry. We expect that our fees will fall to the high end of the range and our review schedule would probably be more like 7-10 years under current rules. In contrast, there is NO federal license review for a coal or natural gas fired power plant. I know that the vast uncertainty in cost and schedule for initial start-up are THE issues for our potential investors. I have made the presentations to enough different groups to realize that they are the currently difficult-to-answer parts of our business plan. When potential investors have heard our plans for smaller, simpler plants, our plans for series production to enable quality and cost controls and our ability to produce power without any greenhouse gas emissions using a fuel that costs about 5% of the cost of oil, they get extremely interested. So far, however, we have not been able to overcome the acceptance barriers caused by regulatory financial uncertainty and cost hurdles that the establishment has erected to discourage the competition that innovators represent. Therefore, if the NEI is successful in helping congressional leadership to recognize that nuclear power has a role to play in reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and our production of greenhouse gas emissions, we will gladly modify our presentations and spreadsheets to show the benefits of provisions like project loan guarantees and carbon taxes - which would be preferable to "cap and trade" provisions that reward long time polluters. It is time to add some additional points of view to the nuclear energy debate. The people who support nuclear fission as a fossil fuel combustion competitor are not all from big companies. We are not the bogeyman; we do not want to despoil the earth for private gain; we are not trying to sell a failed technology. Please think about the people and organizations that benefit by discouraging nuclear power plants that have proven that they can reduce the need to burn coal, oil and natural gas in electrical power plants and oil on board ships. If you think about the impact to fossil fuel profitability if there really is a viable alternative, you might recognize that accepting nuclear power is a progressive position that could make a huge difference in the world's general prosperity and fair distribution of resources. Rod Adams Editor, Atomic Insights Host, The Atomic Show Podcast Founder, Adams Atomic Engines, Inc.