Latest news with #MarkNelson
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Woodbury County Board of Supervisors vote 4-0 on budget amendment
WOODBURY COUNTY, Iowa (KCAU) — The Woodbury County Board of Supervisors just approved a more than $3.1 million amendment to the current budget. Supervisors voted 4-0 on the amendment. Supervisor Mark Nelson was absent from Tuesday's meeting. Woodbury County Board of Supervisors approves FY 2026 budget Some of the biggest changes include: A decrease of $1.5 million in revenue for the county sheriff's office, due to the delay in the construction of the new LEC. An increase of $240 thousand to the supervisors' budget, because of the need for legal and accounting consultations. A nearly $31 thousand increase to the county conservation fund due to unexpected repairs because of flood damage. The in-depth amendment can be found on page 42 of the Woobury County Board of Supervisors meeting minutes. woodburycountmin5-27Download Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Russia Today
23-05-2025
- Business
- Russia Today
US firms explore reboot of Germany's nuclear plants
US companies have been assessing the feasibility and costs of restarting Germany's decommissioned nuclear power plants, Bild reported on Friday. The EU's largest economy has been struggling with soaring energy costs and a prolonged economic slowdown. Germany shut down its last three reactors in April 2023, following a post-Fukushima parliamentary decision to phase out atomic energy. However, with the country's industrial output under pressure, calls to reverse the policy have been gaining momentum. This week, politicians and nuclear energy advocates met in Berlin to discuss the feasibility of reactivating the country's mothballed plants. Among them was US nuclear engineer Mark Nelson, founder of Radiant Energy Group, who has been analyzing how quickly and affordably a nuclear restart could happen. 'There's no cheaper way to generate electricity anywhere in the world than with your fully paid-off nuclear plants,' Nelson told Bild. Backed by a consortium of investors, he believes that nine German reactors could be brought back online. Arguments that nuclear power is too expensive, he said, are based on flawed assumptions or are politically motivated. Nelson also argued that renewable energy alone remains insufficient. In Q1 2025, renewables accounted for just 47% of Germany's electricity consumption. Germany relied heavily on affordable Russian gas to power its industry before the Ukraine conflict, and ramped up electricity imports in 2023 after shutting down its last nuclear plants. With the EU aiming to end its reliance on Russian energy, Berlin now plans to spend €20 billion ($23 billion) on new gas-fired power stations to support moving away from coal and maintain supply stability. Moscow has repeatedly said it remains a reliable supplier and is open to restarting gas exports to Europe. However, Chancellor Friedrich Merz reportedly opposes any resumption of Russian gas purchases. Germany's energy crunch has taken a toll on its economy, now in its third straight year of recession. Nearly 200,000 companies shut down in 2024 – the highest figure since 2011, according to Creditreform. In April 2025, company insolvencies exceeded levels recorded during the 2008 financial crisis. Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency (IEA), told Bild he expects 'a major nuclear comeback.' From an economic perspective, he said, Germany will need 'both storable renewables and nuclear energy.' Merz, a longtime critic of Germany's nuclear phaseout, has reportedly shown support for investing in small modular reactors and nuclear fusion technologies.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Why GE Vernova's stock is power surging after just one year of existence
Storied General Electric doubled down on fossil fuels in the power sector a decade ago with its largest industrial acquisition ever, paying almost $11 billion for the French conglomerate Alstom's electric business to dramatically grow GE Power. GE made the purchase just months before the oil and gas sector crashed and the renewable energy sector began to take off. The deal was dubbed a boondoggle and the latest misstep in GE's many struggles. Even when GE decided to split into three parts in 2021, including spinning off its power and renewables business, the focus was on clean energy. The name GE Vernova loosely translates to 'new green,' meant to reflect a new and innovative low-carbon era. But the funny thing is that green company holds GE's massive gas-turbine manufacturing business. And, thus, the once ill-fated GE Power division has hit it big. After years of seemingly poor timing, GE Vernova struck the zeitgeist when it finally launched as a publicly traded standalone in April 2024. Since then, GE Vernova's shares have surged nearly 250%, including a massive 65% spike just since the beginning of April to new highs, up to a market cap of about $125 billion. Just a few years ago, electricity demand was essentially flat, so two factors dominated investment concerns in the mature power generation business: cost and climate impact, giving wind and solar potential advantages. Now, the world is suddenly changed with new data centers for artificial intelligence spurring the fastest growth in power demand in decades. The demand for gas turbines for power plants is booming and they cannot be built quickly enough. 'One of the pinnacle technologies underlying the modern world is the high-temperature, high-efficiency gas turbine, and only a few companies on Earth can make the highest efficiency turbines,' said Mark Nelson, the managing director of the consultancy Radiant Energy Group. 'GE Vernova is one of the few.' The company's combined backlog of orders for new gas turbines and maintenance services for its existing customers now totals $123 billion. GE Vernova reported first-quarter earnings of 91 cents per share from sales of $8 billion, easily beating Wall Street analysts' estimates of 45 cents on $7.6 billion. Highlighting the dramatic speed of its growth, GE Vernova posted a loss of $106 million, or 47 cents per share, at this point last year. 'Sitting here today, '26 and '27 are largely sold out, we are approaching filling out '28, and starting to sign agreements for later years,' GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik said on last month's earnings call. 'I give that context to just frame that I continue to see this market normalizing to a higher-for-longer gas market. The world needs more dispatchable power generation to support economic growth and national security.' GE Vernova declined Fortune's request to interview Strazik, but said: 'We are just getting started, and the best is yet to come.' Notably, the company said its backlog of orders for turbines and maintenance service grew by nearly $4.5 billion in three months. 'Rising electricity demand is good for anybody who produces power generation equipment, and GE is a leader both on the natural gas turbine side and also on the wind side,' said Brett Castelli, an equity analyst for the research firm Morningstar. Power demand looks set to grow for decades to come as the country transitions to using more and more electricity for manufacturing, vehicles, heating and cooling, he said. 'While electric vehicles are a 20-year thing, the biggest thing in the next five years is all these AI data centers,' Castelli said. 'That's why the stock has become so data center-centric.' The company's signature 7F heavy-duty gas turbine takes just 11 minutes to reach full capacity. The machine—essentially a giant jet engine—is designed with specially-cast blades made with single-crystal alloys and precisely punctured holes that allow turbines to reach temperatures that would typically melt metal, harnessing huge amounts of energy. Unlike the wind turbines from GE Vernova's weaker-performing renewables arm, the gas turbines take up relatively tiny amounts of land and can run virtually anytime regardless of the weather. And while GE Vernova is pinning hopes on building next-generation nuclear reactors in large numbers in the 2030s, gas power plants are constructed now in just a few years—still not quickly enough for demand forecasts. Just last week, and in conjunction with President Trump's Middle East visit, GE Vernova announced power generation and grid initiatives in Saudi Arabia worth up to $14.2 billion, primarily focused on gas-fired power. But those nuclear dreams show sparks as well. Earlier in May, Canadian regulators gave the company the green light to start construction of its first small modular reactors—essentially a smaller, modernized version of the large-scale boiling water reactors it once built in Japan and the United States—with Ontario's state power company. In the U.S., the Tennessee Valley Authority this week submitted the application to build the first American project using GE Vernova's BWRX-300 reactors. While Trump has sought to block new wind projects in federal waters and on public lands, Strazik says his company's two turbine divisions go hand-in-hand, with the gas turbines providing critical backup to wind turbines when the air is calm. 'Ultimately, gas is the force multiplier for more wind and solar to get built,' he said in an appearance on Jim Cramer's CNBC show last month. 'Without gas, you can't get to renewable penetration rates that the world is looking for.' This broader movement to build power generation—gas and renewables—is now defined by the same forces that underpinned the U.S. economy after the Second World War, including national security, Strazik said in the earnings call. 'To put today's investment super cycle into perspective in terms of energy needs and decarbonization, the scale of load growth we're seeing in North America is the most significant since the post-World War II industrial build-out,' he said. 'But, unlike then, the growth is global.' This story was originally featured on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
ABC News
21-05-2025
- ABC News
Hampden Bridge load limit to send truck drivers on hours-long detours
The decision to reduce the load capacity of an aging, heritage-listed bridge linking the south coast to the southern highlands could add millions of dollars to transport costs a year, according to Nowra transport operator Mark Nelson. Transport for NSW announced at the start of May that by the end of the month Kangaroo Valley's historic Hampden Bridge would have its load limit reduced from 42.5 tonnes to 23 tonnes. It said the decision was made to relieve the pressure larger vehicles put on the 127-year-old timber-decked suspension bridge and reduce the amount of maintenance work required, while investigating options for the future. Mr Nelson said the reduction would see over 100 truck movements a week diverted up to Macquarie Pass or Mount Ousley at an extra cost of $750 per load. "Transport costs will double in and around the valley to get these jobs done … from concrete quarry products, timber, steel, everything will be affected," he said. He said it would devastate any earth moving jobs he currently had on the western side of the bridge, creating a four-hour round-trip detour up through Wollongong's Mount Ousley. "It will make work unviable on the western side of the bridge because I will be fronting customers with something in the order of a $1,200 to $1,500 float charge to get machines via Mount Ousley into Kangaroo Valley," Mr Nelson said. The stress was echoed by local Kangaroo Valley dairy farmer Graham Cochrane who has property on both sides of the bridge. He said the changes would add a three-hour round trip to his work day at a cost of almost $1,000 per week. "There's been no planning as far as I am aware," Mr Cochrane said. "It's our of our control." Transport for NSW regional director Cassandra French admitted the decision was made, with no consultation, after "extensive monitoring and testing over the last 12 months" revealed "significant wear and tear getting harder to predict". Transport for NSW has extended the deadline for impacted business for an additional month and now have until the end of June to map out new transport routes. Mr Nelson accused the department of knowing about load issues since 1968, when they first proposed a reduction, and said it was "amazing" that alternate options do not yet exist. "They're saying now they'll start to explore options. They didn't say 'we're doing this, it's going to be 12 months until we implement a new bridge'," he said. "They have no idea what they're going to do." Transport for NSW submitted a peer reviewed paper on managing the suspension bridge for the Austroads Bridge Conference in 2022 where it said the 1968 proposal to implement a limit of 20 tonnes was "not feasible due to traffic demands". The report said the bridge had been exceeding its design load of a 14-tonne steamroller which had led to "complex behaviours" including "bouncing up and down, swaying and twisting". In 2010 the nation's only surviving timber-decked vehicular suspension bridge from the 19th century saw major rehabilitation and repairs when timber was replaced with steel, more stringers were added, and new timber decking was laid. The transport department report said the improvements reduced the risks of the bridge breaking in two halves, one end of the bridge jumping off the abutments, stringers breaking, and diagonal rods falling into the river and harming people canoeing below. The improvements added 50 tonnes of weight, or dead load, to the bridge. With Kangaroo Valley Road a critical route for around 150 years between coastal and regional producers Mr Nelson said it was time for a new bridge and fast. Transport for NSW's Ms French said a new 77-metre-long bridge would require significant investment and would need to be prioritised against other statewide projects. "We've got the team working on lots of different options at the moment and we're also doing maintenance there over the next few months," Ms French said. She said the department was looking at options to potentially reinstate the load limit but encouraged drivers to also look at the national heavy vehicle route planner which helped people depending on the loads they were carrying. Transport for NSW said farmers and businesses impacted by the halving of the load limit could talk to the government authority about possible compensation through the public liability team.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Europe turned its back on nuclear. Now it's racing to build reactors
Credit: Getty Images/Dóra Bíró In the end, it took Denmark just minutes to scrap a ban on nuclear power that had stood for 40 years. The totemic change – rammed through in a parliamentary vote – passed with only a few murmurs from the country's MPs, two thirds of whom supported it. 'It was so fast I thought I'd missed it,' says Mark Nelson, an energy consultant who was invited to watch the vote on Thursday. 'I was texting a parliamentarian, and I'm like, 'Was that it? Did it pass?'' The historic nature of the vote should be in no doubt. Denmark's ban has been in place since 1985 and was so draconian that it forbade the government from even considering atomic energy as an option. It is a sharp change for a country that has pioneered green energy in Europe. Around 60pc of Denmark's annual power needs are already met by wind farms and the country has set itself a target to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2045 – five years earlier than Britain. The country's focus on renewables has so far failed to deliver cheap electricity. Out of all the countries in the European Union, Danish households pay the second-highest prices at about €0.38 per kilowatt hour (£.32 kWh). Only Germany is more expensive, according to official figures from Eurostat. Now, the Danes will formally investigate whether they should, for the first time, add nuclear power plants into that mix, as a way of bolstering the overall stability of the system. 'We all know that of course we can't have an electricity system based on solar and wind alone – there has to be something else to support it,' Lars Aagaard, the country's climate minister, said recently. It follows an about-turn by prime minister Mette Frederiksen, who previously supported prioritising the expansion of renewables rather than nuclear. Public attitudes have also been shifting, according to polling. The change in Denmark underscores a broader shift taking place across Europe, as previously nuclear-sceptical countries reassess plans to rely on renewables and batteries alone to reach their net zero targets. Several had previously announced plans to wind down their nuclear fleets following the 2011 Fukushima accident in Japan. Even in France, where two thirds of electricity comes from atomic energy, Emmanuel Macron had proposed plans to close nuclear plants and focus more on wind and solar power. But after the energy crisis that erupted following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and with the growth of data centres creating an explosion in demand for electricity, a renewed focus on secure and 'always on' supplies is driving a nuclear renaissance. Blackouts in Spain, the cause of which is still unknown but which may have been linked to the way wind and solar farms work, also underline the value of having multiple sources of energy to rely on. Instead of shutting plants down, Macron is now set to expand French nuclear fleet and has aped Donald Trump's 'drill, baby, drill' mantra by telling investors: 'Here there is no need to drill. It's just plug, baby, plug.' 'The mindset in Europe for a long time was reduction of energy supply on an absolute basis, not growth,' says Nelson, an American whose consultancy Radiant Energy Group has worked with nuclear developers and Danish MPs. 'But they have to get out of that mindset – because it's just crippling.' Spain, Germany and Sweden are among the European countries revisiting nuclear shibboleths along with Denmark. Ebba Busch, the Swedish energy minister, has not just backed nuclear at home but also urged other EU member states to invest in new reactors and criticised Germany's decision to shut down its fleet of large power plants. 'Europe must now create an energy sector that secures our independence,' she said in March. 'Instead of opposing it, the European Commission must make a path for new baseload power in Europe.' Like the Danes, the Swedes have changed their minds about nuclear significantly over the last decade. Support climbed to 75pc last year, compared to 45pc a decade earlier, polls show. Even in Germany, which has a long heritage of anti-nuclear sentiment, new chancellor Friedrich Merz is thought to be open to restarting mothballed reactors or collaborating with France on new, mini reactors. That would represent a handbrake turn on the policies of his predecessors. After Fukushima, former chancellor Angela Merkel vowed to decommission all German nuclear power stations. The final three – Isar 2, Emsland and Neckarwestheim 2 – closed two years ago under her successor Olaf Scholz. Yet Germans are concerned about energy security and calls for these plants to be restarted are growing. 'Germany obviously switched off its plants, and I think in parts of the political spectrum, that's now considered a mistake, because it's seen as a reliable source of energy,' says Sander Tordoir, the chief economist at the Centre for European Reform. It is a shift that could have broader implications for the EU. It was Germany that previously fought the bloc's attempts to classify nuclear as 'green' energy – an important distinction that can unlock extra funding. 'If Germany is no longer the nuclear-sceptical voice in the European energy debate, then presumably there would be more openness to explore it as part of the future energy mix,' Tordoir says. In another sign of the transformation in European attitudes, the Italian government cleared the way for the return of nuclear power in the country more than 40 years after it was banned by referendum. Prime minister Georgia Meloni said the move would help to guarantee Italy's independence. Belgium has also overturned its anti-nuclear policy and wants to build new plants. Henry Preston, of the World Nuclear Association, says the change in mindset is mostly down to pragmatism. Governments are increasingly taking a view that while intermittent renewables supported by batteries can account for the majority of future power generation, at least some needs to come from readily dispatchable sources such as nuclear. At the moment, demand for this kind of 'firm' power is met primarily by gas-fired plants that will eventually be phased out under net zero. 'If you look at clean, reliable, resilient energy grids around the world, they tend to have a component which is either nuclear or hydropower, and that does help with having a resilient and stable grid,' Preston says. The International Energy Agency in January said global interest in nuclear energy has now reached its highest level since the 1970s, when an oil crisis prompted western countries to search for ways to cut their dependence on the Middle East for energy. Yet the nuclear industry has had false dawns before – and talk is cheap. Despite Thursday's vote in Denmark, a ban on new grid connections for nuclear plants remains in place and would need to be lifted to make a new atomic age possible. Moreover, cash-strapped European governments – who already face demands for higher defence spending from Donald Trump's US administration – will have to back strong words with hard commitments, cutting cheques for real nuclear projects. Even still, Steffen Frølund, a Danish MP from the pro-nuclear Liberal Alliance party, is optimistic. 'The darkness has been lifted, so now we can actually start having a discussion about nuclear on a more factual basis in Denmark,' he says. 'I think that's a good starting point.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
