Russia Blasts Kamala Harris For ‘Outrageous, Boorish’ Remarks On Putin
Russia has blasted the “outrageous” remarks of US Vice President Kamala Harris when talking about President Vladimir Putin during a Howard Stern interview aired live on SiriusXM radio.
In the Tuesday show she called Putin a “murderous dictator”. If she’s elected the remarks are unlikely to ever be forgotten by the Russian side, making the possibility of improved diplomacy extremely difficult, and perhaps that’s the point.
The Russian Embassy in Washington has issued official statement Wednesday: “The recent unacceptable statements made by US Vice-President Kamala Harris towards Russian President Vladimir Putin are outrageous. However, we have to admit that such a boorish language has become a habit among the current so-called American statesmen,” it reads.
“It only shows the frustration and impotence of the ruling circles in Washington. Due to their inability to deal with the Russian Federation and inflicting ‘a strategic defeat,’ their speech apparatus channels anger and offensive rhetoric,” the embassy continued.
“The US authorities should come to terms with the fact that Russia is pursuing a policy based on its national interests. Such US escapades insult the entire Russian people, who demonstrate unwavering unity around the leader of our country,” the statement underscored.
Harris during the Stern interview was responding to questions raised about journalist Bob Woodward’s new book, which bizarrely alleges that during the height of the Covid pandemic then President Trump secretly sent coronavirus tests to Putin as a gesture of good will.
This action, even if true (the Trump campaign has slammed it as a falsehood), hardly rises to the level of a national scandal. But of course, the Democrats are trying to spin the allegations, or what essentially appears meager Trump efforts to improve diplomacy with Moscow, into big headlines.
“He admires strongmen, and he gets played by them because he thinks that they’re his friends,” Harris said. “And they are manipulating him full time.”
“[This is] just the most recent, stark example of who Donald Trump is,” Harris continued in response to the Woodward book. “People were dying by the hundreds. Everybody was scrambling to get these kits, the COVID test kits. Couldn’t get them, couldn’t get them anywhere.
But that’s when she said in reference to Putin, “And this guy who was president of the United States is sending them to Russia, to a murderous dictator, for his personal use.”
Boeing Nukes Contract Offer With Union As S&P Warns About Potential Negative Credit Rating On Prolonged Strike
Boeing’s troubles keep piling up. On Tuesday, S&P Global Ratings placed the struggling aircraft manufacturer on CreditWatch negative, with mounting risks that its investment-grade credit rating would be slashed to junk. To make matters worse, Bloomberg reported that negotiations to end an almost monthlong strike with its largest union collapsed.
Beginning with the Bloomberg report, both Boeing and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers failed to reach a deal on a new labor contract as the strike marched on to its 27th day.
Boeing withdrew a labor contract deal that would’ve allowed the over 33,000 IAM members to receive 30% raises over four years. IAM is seeking a 40% pay increase over four years.
“Unfortunately, the union didn’t seriously consider our proposals,” Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Stephanie Pope wrote in a memo, adding, “Instead, the union made non-negotiable demands far in excess of what can be accepted if we are to remain competitive as a business.”
IAM leaders said the talks collapsed when Boeing negotiators refused to increase wages over the contract’s lifespan or reinstate the defined benefit pension.
“By refusing to bargain the offer, the company made it harder to reach an agreement,” the union said, adding, “Your negotiating committee attempted to address multiple priorities that could have led to an offer we could bring to a vote, but the company wasn’t willing to move in our direction.”
Separately, S&P issued a press release indicating that Boeing’s ratings, including the ‘BBB-‘ issuer credit rating and senior unsecured debt ratings, have been placed on CreditWatch with negative implications.
“The CreditWatch listing reflects the increased likelihood of a downgrade if the strike persists toward the end of the year, further constraining the recovery in the company’s cash flow generation and the company does not raise capital sufficient to meet its upcoming needs in such a way that does not increase financial leverage,” S&P said.
S&P estimated the labor action costs Boeing $1 billion per month. They expect the target of producing 38 Max jets per month will be pushed to mid-2025.
There’s also concern the planemaker will need to raise money via public equity markets (read more about dilution fears) with its cash balance dwindling:
Boeing will likely seek incremental funding. We anticipate that Boeing will end 2024 with a cash balance below its $10 billion target if the strike continues through the fourth quarter and the company typically uses cash in the first quarter due to seasonal working capital build. Boeing also has approximately $4 billion of debt maturities due in April 2025. We believe the company will need to seek external capital to meet these demands. Based on its public comments, we assume Boeing is also open to potentially issuing additional equity. However, we believe the company remains exposed to higher-than-expected cash usage and adjusted debt for the next year or two, which could further delay the expected recovery in its credit measure to levels we view as consistent with the rating.
S&P concluded:
The CreditWatch with negative implications placement reflects our view that we could lower our ratings on Boeing if the strike continues, increasing costs and delaying the company’s recovery in aircraft production and cash flow generation. We could lower ratings if the company fails to preserve its target cash balance, fund operating and working capital, and meet debt maturities without increasing leverage. We intend to resolve the CreditWatch placement by the end of the year.
In markets, Boeing shares are down 1.6% in premarket trading around the $152 handle, which has served as a multi-year support level since shares crashed from $450-ish to $100 during March 2019 and December 2020 Max jet crashes.
It’s only a matter of time before Boeing turns to public markets to strengthen its balance sheet, as the company faces a significant risk of a credit downgrade to junk status if the strike prolongs.
Kamala Harris reverted to her default position when talking to the cackling hags on The View about FEMA’s disastrous hurricane relief efforts.
She attempted to blame Donald Trump.
“He puts himself before the needs of others. I fear that he really lacks empathy,” Harris said of Trump, also describing his criticism of her as “callousness.”
In today’s dose of unrivaled stupidity, Kamala blames President Trump for the FEMA failure with Hurricane Helene.
Trump hasn’t been in office since 2020, yet somehow a woeful federal government response to a hurricane that occurred in 2024 is his fault because he said some mean words.
Why is Kamala blaming Trump for FEMA’s response to the hurricane?
Trump left office 3.5 years ago and she is on The View instead working to help people impacted by this. pic.twitter.com/qATWDfomkZ
Trump has zero to do with this. The view and Kampala are twisting reality again. He didn’t redirect FEMA funds to migrants. He used it to remove migrants from the US.
From CNN on 8.29.2019 “In late July, President Donald Trump’s administration informed Congress of its…
She repeated the same script on Colbert’s propaganda parade.
Kamala Harris on Trump’s hurricane misinformation, “Have you no empathy, man? For the suffering of other people. Have you no sense of purpose? If you purport to be a leader, to understand that being a leader means lifting people up in a time of need and not manipulating them.” pic.twitter.com/QCsxxDzDz6
While Harris is on The View, Stern and Colbert, Trump is giving out free accommodation to first responders prepping for the massive storm heading toward Florida, yet he’s the selfish one with no empathy according to her.
President Trump is giving free rooms at Trump Doral hotel to the lineman getting ready to help the people of Florida during the Hurricane.
Harris also claimed that Trump is using the hurricane to play political games, yet she outright lied Monday in claiming that Florida governor Ron DeSantis wouldn’t take her calls.
Let’s also not forget that while Americans were begging for help, Kamala was appearing on a sex podcast, laughing about tampons.
She showed up for 20 minutes. Trump went to area and donated his own money. How is FEMA his fault when they fall under her direction?
Her response is always either laugh inanely, talk about her mother, or blame Trump.
The fact that Kamala Harris is appearing on The View instead of being on the ground in the Southeast is clear evidence that she prioritizes herself over the victims.
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Afghan National Who Entered US On Special Visa Charged With Plotting Election Day Massacre
A 27-year-old Afghan national who entered the US shortly after the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan has been arrested for allegedly planning an Election Day massacre in the name of the Islamic State.
Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, who’d been living in Oklahoma, was arrested Monday aftertraveling to a ranch to obtain two AK-47 rifles, 10 magazines and hundreds of rounds of ammunition he’d purchased from an undercover FBI informant. Tawhedi is also accused of recruiting a co-conspirator who hasn’t been named because he’s under 18 years old.
“As part of the plot, the defendant allegedly took steps to liquidate his family’s assets, resettle members of his family overseas, acquire AK-47 assault rifles and ammunition, and commit a terrorist attack in the United States,” the Department of Justice said in a statement issued Tuesday.
The federal criminal complaint doesn’t indicate where Tawhedi and his recruit planned to carry out their mass murder. After being arrested, he told investigators that he planned to target a large gathering of people, and that he and his accomplice expected to die in the attack. In a message to a man Tawhedi identified as an ISIS member, Tawhedi wrote, “God willing, with the help of God, we will get ready for the election day.”
Investigators say that, on July 25, Tawhedi did an internet search for “how to access Washington DC cameras,” and also viewed the White House and Washington Monument‘s webcams. He allegedly saved ISIS propaganda on his internet accounts, conversed in pro-ISIS Telegram groups, and gave money to a charity that funnels money to ISIS.
The DOJ said its evidence against Tawhedi includes a video in which he’s seen cuddling with his daughter and another child, and reading them a list of rewards that martyrs receive in the afterlife. According to the criminal complaint, he “stated that martyrs will be exempted from the sufferings of the grave, placed in heaven, get married to 72 virgins, and receive a crown full of jewels.”
“The Justice Department foiled the defendant’s plot to acquire semi-automatic weapons and commit a violent attack in the name of ISIS on U.S. soil on Election Day,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland. (Note Garland’s transparently political, scaremongering emphasis on “semi-automatic weapons.” Such weapons are legal and commonplace throughout America — with perhaps 70 million or more of them in citizens’ hands — but are increasingly targeted by leftist gun-control schemers.)
The US military completed its calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan on August 30, 2021. Just days later, on Sept. 9, Tawhedi entered the United States with a special immigrant visa — apparently of the type granted to Afghans who had assisted US forces.At the time of his arrest, he had not yet had his immigration proceedings fully adjudicated. Under questioning, Tawhedi said he’d planned to move his family to Afghanistan so they could, as paraphrased by investigators, “live according to pure Islam.”
It’s worth noting that Tawhedi’s first exposure to the FBI-orchestrated arms deal came after he’d listed a computer for sale, and an FBI “confidential human source” inquired and told Tawhedi he wanted the computer for a gun business he was starting. Time will tell the degree to which Tawhedi was truly a self-motivated terrorist capable of readying for an attack without FBI assistance — or whether he’s the latest in a long line of individuals nudged and tugged along by Feds and their profiteering informants.
President Joe Biden will be in Wisconsin on Oct. 8 to announce a $2.6 billion investment to replace lead pipes, according to senior administration officials.
The funding was allocated under the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which set aside $15 billion over five years for replacing lead pipes. The Clean Water State Revolving Fund under the bill gives an additional $11.7 billion that can be used toward this effort.
While in Milwaukee, Biden will also announce a finalized Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule that requires water systems nationwide to replace lead service lines within a decade. The new standard for the action level—or how much water in a water system is contaminated—of pipes will be 10 parts per billion. The current standard is 15 parts per billion.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), who is running for reelection, will not be with the president as he makes the announcement.
“Senator Baldwin had a previously scheduled event at a family farm in Eau Claire to receive the American Farm Bureau Federation’s ‘Friend of Farm Bureau’ award recognizing her leadership fighting for America’s hardworking farmers, growers, and producers,” the senator’s communications director, Eli Rosen, told The Epoch Times.
One senior administration official said Baldwin is “an amazing partner in this administration and leading the charge in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.”
Under the EPA rule, at least 49 percent of the funding must be provided to disadvantaged communities as funds that do not need to be repaid. The rule updates what is called the Lead and Copper Rule, which was first enacted in 1991.
“The EPA’s new lead rule will begin to reverse the massive public health disaster of lead-contaminated tap water that has affected generations of our children. Every person has a right to safe and affordable drinking water, no matter their race, income, or zip code,” said Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council, in a statement obtained by The Epoch Times.
Additionally, the EPA announced a $35 million grant program to address lead in drinking water.
The administration has already allocated approximately $30 million from the signature legislation for Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to replace all 3,400 of its lead pipes within a decade.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan warned about the effects of humans drinking water from lead pipes as “there is no safe level.”
“In children, lead can severely harm mental and physical development, slow down learning and irreversibly damage the brain. In adults, lead can cause increased blood pressure, heart disease, decreased kidney function, and cancer,” Regan told reporters on a call.
In May, the administration announced $3 billion to replace toxic lead pipes in Wilmington, North Carolina.
As many as 9 million homes, many of which are in underprivileged neighborhoods, receive water coming from lead pipes, according to the EPA.
“This is a matter of public health, a matter of environmental justice, a matter of basic human rights, and it is finally being met with the urgency it demands,” Regan said.
According to another senior administration official, 99 percent of cities with lead pipes will have them replaced within 10 years.
Finally, the EPA said that the new rule meets legal muster and will be beneficial.
“If you look at protecting up to 900,000 infants from being born with low birth weight for the reducing of 1500 cases of premature death from heart disease, the cost benefits are at a 13 to one ratio,” the official said.
“This is an opportunity to reduce lead exposure to millions of families all across the country, and we believe we’ve done it in a very strategic way, a legally sound way, supported by the science and the health benefits of this rule are undeniable.”
US Antitrust Officials Consider Google Breakup As ‘Trustbusting Era’ May Return
The US Department of Justice and a group of states submitted a document detailing a proposed remedy framework in the ongoing antitrust case against big tech giant Google. The case centers around Google’s violations of Section 2 of the Sherman Act for illegally maintaining monopolies, including general search services and text advertising.
On Aug. 5, US District Judge Amit Mehta, Washington, DC, ruled that Google violated antitrust law by spending billions of dollars to create an illegal monopoly as the world’s default search engine on smartphones, computers, and tablets. The ruling paved the way for antitrust enforcers to submit a 32-page document on Tuesday that explained the potential remedies for the judge to consider as the case moves into the remedy phase.
On page 9 of the remedy framework document, the DoJ specifies the government has a “full range of tools previously identified such as structural and additional behavioral remedies as well as term extensions” to restore competition in the marketplace that would modify Google’s business from using products such as its Chrome browser or Android operating system to create advantages for the big tech firm’s search engine.
“Fully remedying these harms requires not only ending Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensuring Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow,” DoJ said.
Antitrust enforcers said Google colluded with other big tech companies to make its search engine the default option on devices.
Google Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland wrote in the post that the DoJ’s remedy framework is “radical” and could have “negative unintended consequences for American innovation and America’s consumers.”
Google’s market capitalization (as of Tuesday’s close) of just a little over $2 trillion makes it the world’s fourth-largest company. Mounting legal pressure sent shares down around 1% in premarket trading in New York.
Antitrust pressure has been building, with multiple cases being pushed against Google. It also faces the threat of breakup in a separate government lawsuit centered around its online advertising business.
Across the Atlantic, European Union watchdogs have voiced similar concerns with antitrust enforcers in the US about the need to break up Google’s businesses. EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager recently said that “divestiture is the only way” to settle these worries with the big tech firm.
Daniel Ives, managing director and senior equity analyst at Wedbush Securities, commented on Google’s potential breakup, indicating it’s “unlikely at this point despite the antitrust swirls,” adding, “Google will battle this in the courts for years.”
There has been a four-decade lull in the government breaking up major companies. The last major one came with the 1984 breakup of AT&T. Before that, the 20th century was considered the ‘trustbusting era’, with Standard Oil, American Tobacco, and a railroad trust known as Northern Securities forced to spit up by the government.
There’s So Many Single-Stock ETFs, We’re Running Out Of Ticker Symbols
“Competition for them has never been fiercer. In a way similar to ‘cybersquatting,’ we can see market participants constantly grabbing tickers, especially as certain sectors or themes become more crowded.”
Those were comments by Gavin Filmore, chief revenue officer of white-label firm Tidal Financial Group, to Bloomberg, addressing the accelerating depletion of ticker symbols for use by ETFs on U.S. markets.
As a new article notes, securing a catchy ticker for ETFs has now become a “high-stakes” challenge in the $10 trillion market, especially for funds tracking individual stocks.
With US exchanges allowing only four-character tickers, the potential combinations are vast—456,976 in theory, according to Bloomberg. But for single-stock ETFs, the options shrink drastically since the ticker must incorporate the stock symbol it’s based on.
One example is MSTR-related ETFs, where MST- should be in subsequent ETFs to identify them (since MS is taken), leaving just 52 choices – placing 1 of 26 letters before or after the ‘MST’.
The Bloomberg report says that in the crowded ETF space, a snappy ticker is more than just branding—it can lead to lower spreads and better liquidity. That’s why issuers are scrambling to secure unique symbols, sometimes resorting to hoarding, as the competition heats up.
Matthew Tuttle, chief executive officer of Tuttle Capital and most famous for his SARK anti-Cathie Wood ETF, told Bloomberg: “There are guys who are going to stockpile symbols — maybe me, for example — and on the good names, you are potentially going to run into an issue.”
“You also really want like the ‘U’ or something like it for the bull, and a way to discern between the bull and the bear if you do both sides,” he added.
Will Rhind, CEO of GraniteShares, says it’s getting tougher to secure tickers for single-stock ETFs as exchanges increasingly reject their requests due to reserved or delisted symbols. Some believe expanding the character limit could offer issuers more flexibility, as four-letter tickers have dominated new ETF launches for nearly 15 years, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
But that doesn’t seem to be in NASDAQ’s plans.
“I don’t think there are any concerns today around a ticker shortage. We do occasionally get questions from companies saying, hey, how can I get more creative on these tickers? Can I include numbers in addition to letters?” said Jeff Thomas, its chief revenue officer and global head of listings.
Rhind concluded, talking about the idea of adding numbers to tickers: “I personally think that would be a good addition. Certainly for leveraged products, that makes all the difference in the world. All our products in Europe follow that naming architecture, so I think that does help and would add some additional breathing space for people who find it difficult to find tickers.”
In the midst of growing demand for low-carbon base-load electricity, nuclear power is increasingly regarded as a clean, reliable option; but multi-year regulatory approval processes, a dearth of capital, and chronic cost overruns when constructing new plants have made utilities reluctant to build.
For many in the nuclear power industry, one way to address these issues is to become smaller.
Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are nuclear reactors assembled from pre-manufactured components, which are generally 300 megawatts or less in size. They are designed to be cheaper and more flexible than larger-scale nuclear power plants, with enhanced safety features such as automatic shut-down technology.
By contrast to most existing nuclear reactors, which are uniquely designed for each site, SMRs offer the potential to expedite regulatory approvals and construction time, bringing costs down substantially.
“They bring more regulatory certainty and an ability to get through that process much more quickly,” Todd Abrajano, CEO of the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council, an industry advocacy group, told The Epoch Times.
“The fact that these designs can be modular,” Abrajano said, “that most of the construction can be done in-house, in a factory, and then assembled at the site, requires much less work and much less bespoke design.”
According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), due to the smaller size of SMRs, they require less capital to build and can be sited in locations that are not possible for larger nuclear plants.
“Accordingly, the Department has provided substantial support to the development of light water-cooled SMRs, which are under licensing review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and will likely be deployed in the late 2020s to early 2030s,” the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy states.
While Russia and China have taken the lead as the only countries currently operating SMRs, western nations are racing to catch up, envisioning huge new markets for both domestic energy production and exports. Today, there are more than 80 SMR designs in development across 19 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, and South Korea, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
A report by Natural Resources Canada projects that the global market for SMRs could exceed $150 billion by 2040. According to Valuates, a market analytics firm, the global market for SMRs was $4.13 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $10.23 billion by 2030, an annual growth rate of approximately 14 percent.
In March 2023, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) announced that its SMR model BWRX-300 had “achieved a significant pre-licensing milestone” toward regulatory approval in Canada, and that deployment of this model is in various stages of planning or contracting in Estonia, Poland, as well as the United States.
Private Companies, Military Want SMRs
While power generation has to date been the domain of electric utilities, SMRs may also see demand from private companies.
Increasingly, tech companies are signing contracts to ensure a steady, reliable supply of electricity, and they are often choosing nuclear energy as that source.
In September, Microsoft inked a deal with Constellation Energy to restart the Unit 1 reactor at Three Mile Island, which famously shut down its Unit 2 reactor after an operating accident in 1979.
This reactor will provide power exclusively to Microsoft for the next 20 years. And while Three Mile Island uses standard-size reactors, other tech companies are looking to SMRs to power their data centers, including Amazon and Google.
Oil and gas companies, steel companies, and chemical companies are also potential customers. In March 2023, Dow and X-energy signed a joint development agreement to install an SMR at the company’s Seadrift industrial site in Texas.
SMRs are the ideal choice for companies that want a smaller, dedicated power source on-site versus being dependent on the electric grid. However, these companies typically lack the expertise to operate plants, nor do they want to take responsibility for waste disposal or assume the liability that comes with owning a nuclear reactor.
“The one thing I’m consistently hearing from industrial application end users is that they don’t want to own and operate a nuclear plant,” Abrajano said. “So there’s going to have to be a utility that’s running these, or there are a number of other companies that are now starting to pop up which are pure-play development companies that are looking to find sites and find customers, and then they will either own and operate those reactors and do long-term power purchase agreements or figure out another way to bring these things online going through a utility.”
The military is another market for SMRs.
A White House fact sheet issued on May 29 stated: “Small modular nuclear reactors and microreactors can provide defense installations resilient energy for several years amid the threat of physical or cyberattacks, extreme weather, pandemic biothreats, and other emerging challenges that can all disrupt commercial energy networks.”
While SMRs can be used to provide uninterrupted power to large military bases, microreactors can power forward operating bases. Microreactors are currently in use for submarines and aircraft carriers, and can be transported in an 18-wheel truck.
“When you think in terms of the size of a nuclear reactor, most people don’t think, as they’re driving down the highway, that they could be driving past a reactor that could be operational, but certainly that’s the case,” Abrajano said.
The portability of SMRs and microreactors means that they could be transported to natural disaster sites that have lost power. While the grid is being restored, smaller reactors can power essential facilities like hospitals and grocery stores.
Regarding regulatory approvals, the nuclear power industry anticipates a faster process due to a new bipartisan consensus, in which the left regards nuclear as a low-carbon energy source and conservatives see it as a means of providing continuous base-load power to meet the escalating demand for electricity.
Both the Biden and Trump administrations have been supportive of nuclear power, and Congress has recently thrown its support behind the industry as well.
Streamlining Approval Process
In July, the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act was signed into law and is designed to streamline the approval process at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for new nuclear plants. Two issues that have plagued the nuclear power industry are the multi-year process of getting regulatory approvals, and construction that chronically exceeds budget and deadlines once approvals are in place.
Among the few recent nuclear reactors to be built in the United States, Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia began commercial operations in July 2023 and April 2024, respectively. These reactors, designed by Westinghouse, were built with modules manufactured off-site and then assembled onsite, but were completed seven years behind schedule and went $17 billion over budget.
Together with Units 1 and 2, they comprise the largest nuclear power plant operating in America and provide a highly dense, reliable, and carbon-free energy source. By comparison, a wind farm that could produce the same amount of energy as Plant Vogtle would cover an area of more than 1,000 square miles, with a capacity factor—the amount of electricity it actually produces as a fraction of its installed capacity—of about one-third that of a nuclear power plant, due to its weather dependence.
According to Abrajano, the average time for the NRC to approve new nuclear plants has been about five years, but he estimates that, with the passage of the ADVANCE Act, regulatory approvals could be completed within 18 to 24 months. New, modular designs are already getting fast-tracked approvals.
In December 2023, a modular plant built by Kairos Power in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, received regulatory approval in just over two years. This plant, called Hermes, is a low-power reactor that uses a TRISO fuel pebble bed design with a molten fluoride salt coolant; it is expected to be operational by 2027.
As the nuclear power industry gears up to bring this new technology to market at scale, it is also assessing whether it still has the physical infrastructure and the human talent it needs, particularly given that America has built few new nuclear plants during the past 50 years. Despite initial ambitions in the 1970s to build as many as a thousand nuclear plants across the United States, only 54 plants, containing 94 nuclear reactors, are currently in operation, with an average age of 42 years old.
By contrast, China has been aggressively moving forward in building out its nuclear fleet.
Over the past decade, China added more than 34 gigawatts of nuclear power capacity. It now has 55 operating reactors, with 23 additional reactors under construction, according to a report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
“The United States has the largest nuclear fleet, with 94 reactors, but it took nearly 40 years to add the same nuclear power capacity as China added in 10 years,” the report states.
Does the US Have the Resources to Manufacture?
U.S. industry insiders say that, with so much manufacturing, including key energy infrastructure components like transformers, largely existing outside the United States, the nuclear industry currently lacks the resources it needs to produce at scale. Of the top 10 transformer manufacturers, General Electric is the only one that is based in the United States.
“We still have a lot of manufacturing as it relates to work done at SpaceX, and I would say we still produce a lot in terms of engine manufacturing,” Juliann Edwards, chief development officer of The Nuclear Company, told The Epoch Times. “And you see an increase of grant money coming out of the Department of Energy to serve universities as they invest more into nuclear engineering and the surrounding engineering functional areas, like materials and chemical and mechanical.”
The Nuclear Company plans to build nuclear plants according to a “fleet-scale model [that] combines using proven, licensed technology and a design-once, build-many approach,” a company press release states.
According to the U.S. News 2024 university rankings, the top-rated schools for nuclear engineering are the University of Michigan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, North Carolina State University, University of California, University of Wisconsin, Texas A&M, University of Illinois, University of Tennessee, and Georgia Institute of Technology.
For younger students, the American Nuclear Society has established several K–12 programs to educate grade school students and teachers about opportunities in the nuclear energy field. This includes a science curriculum called “Navigating Nuclear,” and a “Nuclear Ambassadors” program to bring nuclear professionals into schools for classroom discussions.
“We have a foundation, but we’re behind right now and we’ve got to onshore a lot of the capabilities that we’ve lost,” Edwards said.
More than 11.5 million customers of privately owned utility companies in California will automatically receive an average credit of $71 on their October utility bills, Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an Oct. 2 statement.
The climate credits are intended to help “offset increases while preserving the incentive for customers to conserve energy and reduce [greenhouse gas] emissions,” according to the California Public Utilities Commission’s website.
Funding comes from the state’s cap-and-trade program, which regulates the amount of carbon produced by companies and requires those that exceed limits to pay fees.
Credit amounts vary for utility providers. The more than 5 million households that rely on the largest energy company in the state, PG&E, will receive $55.17.
About 46,000 Californians served by Pacific Power—an energy company operating in the far northern part of the state—will see the largest credits of $174.25.
Bear Valley Electric Service—offering power to 23,000 residents in the Alpine County region known for its ski area—customers will receive the smallest credit at $32.24.
“Not only does this credit provide much-needed relief for families, it’s helping Californians make the switch to cleaner energy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in the statement.
A similar credit was applied to customers’ bills in April, with the total for the year averaging $217.
Households have received an average of $971 in climate credits since 2014, amounting to more than $14 billion across the state, according to the governor’s office.
Some critics have said the state’s climate policies amount to high-priced fees that negatively affect consumers.
“To reduce greenhouse gases marginally in this state, we have this very expensive program called cap-and-trade, which is a hidden tax on energy,” Susan Shelley, a journalist based in Southern California, told EpochTV’s “Leaving California” documentary last year.
“It’s on utilities, it’s on refineries, it’s on manufacturing, it’s on everything.”
A study titled “Zapped: How California’s Punishing Energy Agenda Hurts the Working Class” published in 2022 found that higher utility prices were affecting millions of Californians.
“There is nothing unique about California that should cause the state’s electricity rates to be significantly higher than the rest of the country,” Wayne Winegarden wrote in a report analyzing the study.
“Instead, the results are the expected and desired outcome from … Sacramento’s energy policy agenda of recent years.”
The regulator in charge of overseeing the industry said the state’s green energy policies are, in part, responsible for rising electricity prices.
“This all comes at a cost,” Alice Reynolds, president of the California Public Utilities Commission, said during a March hearing of the Assembly’s Utilities and Energy Committee when questioned by lawmakers about energy prices.
“Any investment in clean energy technology … is funded through electricity bills.”
Lawmakers began discussing the cap-and-trade program in 2006, with an agreement reached in 2012, and the law took effect the following year.
Since then, energy prices have increased significantly in the state with more than a dozen increases since 2019. Californians paid about 67 percent more than the national average for electricity in 2022, and some Golden State residents pay more than five times the rate per kilowatt hour charged in the lowest-priced areas in the country, according to statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Agency.
Utility companies, including PG&E, included comments in rate request filings noting that some added costs are attributed to the state’s decarbonization strategy.
“We are also experiencing the impact of the State’s decarbonization strategy, particularly on our gas distribution system,” PG&E said in the 2021 filing.
“Numerous cities have adopted ordinances prohibiting gas appliances in new construction. The projected decline in throughput may lead to a declining base of core customers who will pay for our gas system costs, with rate increases needed to cover that gap.”
Legislators on both sides of the aisle pointed to the state’s climate agenda as contributing to the high cost of living in California.
“These energy mandates jacked up utility rates,” Republican Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher told The Epoch Times on Feb. 26.
“All of this stuff has a cost.”
He said the state is forcing taxpayers and electricity and fuel consumers to pay for inefficient climate policies.
“All of this stuff we’ve been doing on climate is super-expensive, and it’s just going to get more expensive,” Gallagher said in March.
Lawmakers from the Democratic Party have also spoken about calls they were receiving from constituents concerned about energy prices jeopardizing their finances and the unintended consequences of some legislative policies.
“Rates are skyrocketing in California. The harsh reality is that millions of Californian families are at the breaking point right now,” Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, chair of the energy committee, said during the March hearing while highlighting statistics that showed California has the highest utility rates in the nation. “Our constituents want to know what’s going on and more importantly, they want to know what we, as their elected officials, are doing to address this issue and contain costs.”
Businesses are also paying the price, she said.
“High energy prices are also a major challenge for California businesses, particularly our small businesses, who are struggling to keep their doors open, and, quite literally, keep their lights on,” Petrie-Norris said.
More than a million small businesses will also receive credits on their October bills, according to the governor’s Oct. 2 statement.
Denmark looks to commission a cross-border green hydrogen pipeline to Germany in 2031, three years later than the previous timeline, the Danish government said on Tuesday.
Denmark has been working with local transmission system operator Energinet to have the timeline to commissioning shortened to 2031, from 2032 as Energinet’s latest plan says, according to a statement from the Danish Ministry of Climate, Energy, and Utilities.
Energinet has been cooperating with Gasunie on the development of the Danish-German hydrogen network as part of a cooperation agreement. Initial plans envisaged that a cross-border transmission connection between Denmark and Germany would enable the transport of green hydrogen from 2028.
However, after Energinet’s market dialogue on the hydrogen infrastructure ended, the booking requirement was recalculated and the schedule updated, the operator said today.
“Several activities on the critical path have proven to be more extensive and time-consuming than originally anticipated. Therefore, Energinet now assesses that the ‘Lower T’ can be commissioned by the end of 2031 at the earliest, and the interconnections to Holstebro and Lille Torup by the end of 2032 and 2033,” the system operator added, referring to the initial and follow-up branches of the hydrogen network.
“We are still ready to bring state co-financing to the table if the industry commits to booking capacity in the pipeline,” said Lars Aagaard, Denmark’s Minister for Climate, Energy and Utilities.
The Danish Government will work on measures to support the possibility of commissioning the first part of the hydrogen backbone in 2031, it said today.
Green hydrogen has seen several setbacks in Europe recently, due to a lack of customers.
Most recently, Shell and Equinor have ditched plans for low-carbon hydrogen production and transportation in north Europe, due to a lack of demand.
Uncertainty around demand and incentives coupled with cost pressures are weighing on the global adoption of low-carbon hydrogen despite an uptick in final investment decisions in the past year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report last week.
