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Court Dismisses Westinghouse Claim for $2B Recovery from CB&I

July 1, 2017

More grim news emerged for financially strapped Westinghouse after the Delaware Supreme Court reversed a chancery court decision that the company was counting on to recoup $ 2 billion from an acquisition dispute with Chicago Bridge & Iron (CB&I).

The court rejected Westinghouse’s contention of CB&I’s calculations of its final purchase price—even though it paid nothing for the company up front. In favor of CB&I’s pleading, the court also ruled that nearly all of Westinghouse’s claims would not be presented to an independent auditor.

A Contentious Relationship

Westinghouse took the desperate step of filing for bankruptcy protection in March 29, crippled by financial setbacks stemming from half-built AP1000 reactor projects in Georgia and South Carolina. In documents associated with the filing, Westinghouse pointed to compounding delays associated with federally mandated design changes to the Vogtle and V.C. Summer projects, as well construction challenges, all of which played into the exorbitant cost increases that ultimately caused its financial debacle (for more, see How Westinghouse, Symbol of U.S.…

U.S. Nuclear: From Hope to Despair

March 30, 2017

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A decade ago, the annual Platts nuclear energy conference in Washington was brimming with optimism over a coming “nuclear renaissance,” as licensing requests poured into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and companies announced ambitious plans for new nuclear construction. Ten years later, the not-so-under-the-surface theme of the conference was nuclear survival.

“The question is survival,” former Entergy nuclear executive Bill Mohl told attendees at the annual Platts nuclear energy conference in Washington, D.C., in early February. Mohl, who led Entergy’s merchant power business and retired February 28, went on to explain that Entergy’s long-term strategy of buying up single-unit nuclear plants at bargain-basement prices and bidding them into the regional transmission operator (RTO) and independent system operator (ISO) competitive wholesale markets was a miserable failure.

It seemed like a really good idea at the outset, but a combination of factors undercut the strategy, and Entergy is now exiting merchant nuclear power in as big a way as it entered. Vermont Yankee is shuttered.…

Learning from the Clean Air Act’s Tragic Flaw

June 5, 2016

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“Why are you picking on the Clean Air Act?” That’s a question we’ve heard more than once while traveling the country to talk about our new book, Struggling for Air: Power Plants and the “War on Coal.”

The book focuses on what we see as the “tragic flaw” of the Clean Air Act of 1970 (CAA): its exemption of existing industrial facilities—most notably, coal-fired power plants—from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) nationwide performance standards for soot- and smog-forming pollutants. Starting in 1971, new plants had to reduce their sulfur dioxide emissions by either installing multimillion-dollar pollution “scrubbers” or burning pricey low-sulfur coal. In 1978, scrubbers became mandatory regardless of the type of fuel burned, as did additional technology for controlling nitrogen oxides emissions. But existing plants could continue polluting in unlimited amounts. This “grandfathering” gave utilities a perverse incentive to keep old, dirty facilities running decades longer than they otherwise would have, stymieing state efforts to meet the CAA’s air quality goals.…