The Nuclear Year 2015

Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) / Nuclear Power - Economics, Design, & Industry

Date posted: 01/07/16

In a look back at 2015, the editors opine that the value of nuclear energy to U.S. energy policy became clearer than ever in 2015, but the struggle to have that value properly recognized became one of the key issues of the year and will continue into and well beyond 2016. Determining that value is not nuclear science, the shorthand equation is that every nuclear energy facility represents an emission-free economic powerhouse. But its value has been neglected to the point that facilities are allowed to shutter as economically unviable. At any time, but especially in 2015, following the signing of the Paris Agreement on climate change, that is clearly shortsighted. Keep this in mind as we move into year 2016 because almost everything relates to the value of nuclear energy, enhancing it, but most definitely not degrading it. So, 2015. These events impacted the nuclear energy industry but had wider application. If you read about them in the news, nuclear energy might not even have been mentioned in the stories. But it was there, sometimes in an important role. For example, reauthorization of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, NEI was a central player in a coalition of manufacturing and trade interests that overcame significant political differences on Capital Hill to the reauthorization of this important institution that enables U.S. trade around the world. Whatever the political squabbles that engulfed the Ex-Im Bank, it has proven an essential tool for American companies trading abroad. So essential, in fact, that the Depression-era bank has counterparts in virtually every country with serious trade ambitions. With the continuing boom of nuclear energy development worldwide, the U.S. bank importance has only become more manifest. To have it shuttered and revived in the course of a single year was an astounding political feat, triumph snatched from defeat as rarely happens. .very interesting.