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Margaret Harding I feel the earth move under my feet I feel the sky tumblin’ down Carole King – 1971 Another week off of my planned strategic overview. The twin events of an earthquake near North Anna nuclear power plant in Virginia and Hurricane Irene sweeping up the coast has brought a lot of FUD (Fear Uncertainty … Read more Natural Disasters week
I went to the ANS UWC for the first time this past week. I had many excellent conversations and listened to many interesting speakers, so I’m taking a few days off from my strategic analysis series to provide a review of some of the goings on. There was an outstanding vendor technology Exhibit. The first … Read more Review of John Rowe’s Keynote Speech at ANS Utility Working Conference
The first “E” in PESTEL is for economics. In a classic PESTEL analysis of the macro environment (in this case the Nuclear Industry) one is supposed to be looking at the effects of interest rates, economic growth, inflation and exchange rates. Let’s try to take these things and review them through the nuclear lens. What … Read more PEST(EL) in the Nuclear Industry – The Economic (part 4)
Two weeks ago I discussed some of the basic political landscape affecting the nuclear industry. Last week we looked at the myriad agencies that affect the industry. This week is the final (I think) installment on Politics in the Nuclear Industry. We’re going on an international tour. There are a lot of countries out there … Read more PEST(EL) in the Nuclear Industry – The Political (part 3)
Last week I discussed some of the basic political landscape affecting the nuclear industry. This week I’m looking at the myriad agencies that affect the industry. I had tried to start a blog post series last fall on the alphabet soup of agencies out there and started out with some descriptions of DOE, NRC, and … Read more PEST(EL) in the Nuclear Industry – The Political (part 2)
I’ve read and heard a number of different assessments of Entergy’s fuel bet concerning Vermont Yankee. Unfortunately, people both for and against VY have assessed this bet incorrectly in terms of what they can and cannot do with that fuel once it has been loaded into the reactor. It happens that in one of my … Read more Entergy’s Vermont Yankee Fuel Bet
I’ve been going through some exercises to refine my consulting business model. More on that later, but a part of that was to do a high level analysis of the nuclear industry. It’s an interesting technique called a PESTEL analysis. The acronym stands for Political, Economic, Social, Technical, Environmental, and Legal. The idea is to … Read more PEST(EL) in the Nuclear Industry – The Political (part 1)
For the last two weeks, I’ve been writing about lessons learned from Fukushima. This third and final part is to look at the broader impacts and see what lessons we can learn at the political level. There are several interactions to look at between corporations, regulators, and governments, nationally as well as globally. Like the … Read more Lessons Learned from Fukushima Part 3 – Political
I started this series last week with a discussion of technical lessons learned. This week, I’ve spent at the American Nuclear Society annual meeting listening and talking about lots of different topics, but the one that reverberated most was, of course, Fukushima. ANS is a professional society dedicated to nuclear science and technology. There are … Read more Lessons Learned from Fukushima – the Corporate
The latest nuclear carnival is up for reading. Please take a look.