Newsroom Archive

In an ambitious move to bring its carbon emissions to zero, Xcel Energy Inc. has announced a clean energy vision that will deliver 100 percent carbon-free electricity to its customers by 2050. The plan is the most aggressive to date in the electric power industry.

On a family visit with my 12-year-old niece to Philadelphia recently, my niece, Helen, solved climate change. She suggested that we, on Earth, find a planet in our galaxy with a species that breathes in carbon dioxide and exhales oxygen and that we trade with them. Brilliant idea, but until we find that planet with “Carbon Breathers,” Pennsylvania state legislators have mapped out a smart plan to keep the state’s nuclear plants (which avoid 37 million tons of carbon dioxide every year, the equivalent of 8 million cars) up and running.

Energy storage technologies—and batteries in particular—are often seen as the “holy grail” to fully decarbonizing our future electricity grid, along with renewables and nuclear energy—which provides more than 56 percent of America’s carbon-free electricity.

This week, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee discussed a bipartisan bill designed to help America recapture its lead in nuclear energy technology in the face of increasing global competition. At a packed hearing on Capitol Hill, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) praised the Nuclear Energy Leadership Act.

NASA’s impressive landing of the Insight probe on Mars this week has drawn new attention to the next step: manned missions to the planet. While there are many challenges in sending humans to the Red Planet and getting them home, one of the biggest is something that nuclear technology can help with: generating electricity, heat, water and rocket fuel.

Korsnick participated in a Washington Post Energy 202 Live panel discussion on the future of energy across several sectors.

Start out with a really new idea, and it can lead you to a lot of good places. The engineers at NuScale Power talked about those places one day recently when they held an open house at the company headquarters in Corvallis, Oregon, to talk to energy experts about their progress toward deploying a small modular reactor (SMR).

Anyone who has worked in the nuclear industry knows how prevalent and influential Navy veterans are in the community. The journey from the Nuclear Navy to the nuclear industry is one of the most common military-to-civilian talent pipelines. This seemingly natural transition into the civilian nuclear industry is in part because the technical training transfers directly over to a commercial nuclear plant. An even more important factor is that the nuclear Navy offers a real-world, big-picture experience that is very difficult to replicate in a university.

On Tuesday, voters in 46 states headed to the polls to fill over 6,000 legislative seats, choose 36 new governors and consider more than 160 ballot measures. Although nuclear energy was not explicitly on the ballot, several state initiatives considered energy issues with an impact on the technology. NEI Director of State Governmental Affairs and Advocacy Christine Csizmadia, an expert on state legislative affairs, shared her analysis of the midterm elections, and the consequence for energy policy and its impact on statehouses across the country.