Nuclear energy will “absolutely” be politically palatable, billionaire philanthropist, technologist and climate change evangelist Bill Gates recently told Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” Nuclear power has to overcome a baneful reputation garnered by association with the atomic bomb and radioactive disasters, but it’s a necessary, worthy and surmountable challenge to correct the naysayers, …

Nuclear power plants in the EU produced about 26% of the total electricity generated in the Union in 2019, according to data from the specialized Eurostat survey. Thirteen Member States, including Bulgaria, operated a total of 106 reactors, which generated 765,337 GW/h of electricity. The largest producer of nuclear energy in the EU is France …

Ukraine’s electricity grid needs the construction of new nuclear power units, Yuriy Boyko, the country’s deputy energy minister said last week. Speaking to delegates at Atomic Energy: The Future of the Industry on 17 February, Boyko described the importance of at least three new units. Nuclear power plant operator Energoatom published  Boyko’s comments on its website. Energoatom …

Estonia needs to put in place the necessary legislation and competencies if a small modular reactor (SMR) is to be in operation by 2035, speakers at a conference organised by Fermi Energia agreed yesterday. The Baltic country aims to stop generating electricity from oil shale by 2035, but has yet to officially launch a nuclear …

Over the past two decades, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has been captured by the nuclear power companies it is supposed to regulate. The process of capture and resulting erosion of regulation has been driven in part by the increasingly poor economics of nuclear energy as companies struggle to avoid large costs due to …

A national referendum on activating the long-mothballed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei will be held on Aug. 28, after the Central Election Commission (CEC) confirmed the date that was already set in stone in the Referendum Act. The Referendum Act stipulates that national referendums can only be held once every two years starting …

A daylong Nuclear Regulatory Commission meeting Thursday will revolve around discussion of any technical issues that could arise if nuclear power plants were licensed to operate for 100 years. When a nuclear power plant is first licensed by the NRC, that license permits a plant to operate for 40 years. After that, owners of nuclear …