The nuclear industry is in chaos, one of the leading companies which built nuclear power plants has filed for bankruptcy – Westinghouse. Utilities are the end customer of the nuclear power plants for they only have a few methods to generate electricity – coal, oil, gas, water, and sun. The coal produced greater pollution, but is readily shippable; oil and natural gas at the moment are less expensive than coal so they are the favored option; water is only available in a few places and those places have long been dammed; solar is a great option as prices have fallen but it is seen as longer term solution; and nuclear while the cost to build the plant and the first kilowatt hour is expensive as the nuclear material works the costs fall to the lowest option.

Westinghouse Electric has been the go to company for nuclear for it seems generations and has been one of those leading edge tech companies. Now the nuclear plants under construction for SCANA Energy in South Carolina and Georgia Power which are both over budget and behind construction, there is a concern will they be built and at what cost? The executives at Westinghouse said they will focus on maintaining existing reactors and developing reactor designs, just not building new plants.

On another story, when electricity was invented by Edison he invented Direct Current (DC), George Westinghouse invented Alternating Current (AC).  The AC is much better to send over long distance for the DC loses the energy. Edison recognized this, but his solution was to try to make AC sound the worse and he tried to get death by electricity using AC currents. The reason was to beef up his holdings and then sell them profitably. In the end, AC current is what we use.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, our society puts great faith in technology and the leader in the nuclear was Westinghouse. Given the bankruptcy filing of Westinghouse, utilities may have to go all in towards green energy, which may be a good thing.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.