Oak Ridge National Laboratory Credit: U.S. Department of Energy

If you are designing a car from scratch, there are certain essentials to begin with. You need to start with the wheels on the corners, for example.

But when it comes to building a nuclear reactor, things are different. There are hundreds and maybe thousands of ways of doing it. The constant is that you need fissionable fuel and a moderator to collect the heat and manage the neutron flux.

That embarrassment of choice — now reflected in the number of small modular reactors (SMRs) vying for market acceptance — may be why thorium reactors, which began with promise, have been left on the shelf.

The nuclear establishment, goaded by the Nuclear Navy’s Adm. Hyman Rickover, wanted light water technology. That is what the first 100-plus U.S. civilian reactors employed.

At the dawn of the civilian nuclear age, it was a straight contest between two fuels: uranium and thorium. Thorium is fertile but not fissile: It can’t start a chain reaction unless it is triggered by a small amount of the isotope uranium-235.

Once this happens, thorium becomes uranium-232 and fizzes wonderfully with a steady stream of neutrons, producing heat in the moderator, which is where the first steps in making electricity are taken.

That heat is captured to create steam that turns a turbine.

Thorium was used in part in the first power-producing, commercial nuclear reactor: the 60-megawatt Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. With three different fuel assemblies, it ran for 25 years, starting in 1957. It used solid fuel, which was to become the standard for civilian nuclear power.

Meanwhile, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, under its director, physicist Alvin Weinberg, work went ahead on what would become a legendary fast-breeder thorium reactor, using a liquid fuel embedded in molten salt. It went critical in 1965 and operated for five years before it was closed by the Atomic Energy Commission (forerunner of the Department of Energy) in a political move.

A fast reactor uses extra neutrons to create new fuel and burn up radioactive waste. The process is akin to perpetual motion — but isn’t, of course.

Now a charismatic nuclear engineer, Yash Patel, founder and CEO of AMReactor, is planning to bring thorium back as a viable future option for space exploration, power generation and, eventually, ship propulsion.

Patel told me that his reactors – he has designs for a microreactor (under 20 MW) and for a SMR (250 MW). The planned reactors are molten salt-moderated, thorium-fueled fast reactors.

He believes they will not only be cheaper, but will also operate better than the SMRs now entering the market.

Patel’s plan for Austin-registered AMReactor is to outsource as much of the fabrication as possible.

A fast reactor is called a breeder reactor because it generates more neutrons than are needed to produce fission, and these transmute waste into additional fuel.

Patel went to school in California and while looking for a career, a break came that changed the trajectory of his life. He got an internship with NASA at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. There he worked on Curiosity, the plutonium-fueled Mars rover. His nuclear love affair, he told me, was “complete and instant.”

From NASA, he went to Texas A&M and graduated in nuclear engineering. He was well along with his Ph.D., when a family illness caused him to abandon it.

Patel lists two great blessings in his life. “The first was that I moved to America from India. The second was attending Texas A&M. That was another wonderful break.”

After a stint in biopharma, where he prospered, Patel started designing reactors in all his waking hours along with a friend, D’mitri Scott, now the chief technology officer at AMReactor.

Patel said the numbers didn’t work for their plans until they switched to thorium. It was a eureka moment.

There followed a period which he likened to Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak working on the first computer operating system. The two young men were obsessed and inspired by what they believed was extraordinary. “Our girlfriends, now our wives, saw very little of us. We sometimes worked all night,” Patel said.

With thorium, they found all they were looking for: a stable source of reliable power that was safe, couldn’t melt down, and was able to handle most of the fission products.

And it was proliferation-proof because of the presence of intense gamma radiation, which made it hard to process, steal or divert. “Thorium was the winner,” he said.

A new reactor is on the way.

• A bitcoin landlord: Crypto mining company TeraWulf has inked a 20-year lease agreement with Anthropic for a new data center campus in Kentucky (which is set to reach 400 MW of capacity by 2028). The deal is predicted to bring in $19B in revenue.

• Co-location negotiation: National Grid Ventures announced it’s investing $1.75B for a 35% stake in Joulent LLC, which builds “across-the-meter” generation for data centers that can eventually link to the grid. 

• A battery boost: Fuel cell developer Bloom Energy and investment firm Brookfield are upping their partnership from $5B to $25B. The expansion “reflects strong and sustained demand from hyperscalers and AI infrastructure,” the companies wrote in a statement. Clearly, you can put a (huge) price on speed-to-power.

Every utility board and commission is wrestling with the same tension right now: bills are going up, and the reasons keep piling up faster than customers can absorb them.

Grid hardening after another rough storm season. Transmission and distribution upgrades that were deferred for a decade. And now, for some utilities and co-ops - a wave of new customers — data centers, EV charging hubs, crypto miners, electrified industrial plants — all wanting hundreds of megawatts of new capacity, fast.

None of that is optional spending. But none of it is free, either. The question every utility finance and rate team is being asked right now is simple to state and hard to answer: who pays, and how much can customers actually absorb before "reasonable rates" starts to mean something different for different people?

Why This Moment Feels Different

Affordability pressure isn't new — utilities have always balanced infrastructure needs against customer bills. What's different now is the size and speed of the newest driver. A single large-load customer can add more incremental cost to a utility's system in eighteen months than a decade of normal residential growth. If that cost gets spread across the whole rate base the way ordinary growth is, existing customers end up subsidizing infrastructure built for one company's benefit.

That's why rate design work focuses toward isolating large-load costs rather than socializing them — dedicated infrastructure riders among them, minimum-bill and take-or-pay provisions, and cost-recovery structures built specifically so growth pays for growth. Done right, this actually protects affordability for everyone else. That is what much of the reporting ignores. But, done poorly it can quietly shift real cost onto residential customers who never signed up for it.

The Other Side of the Same Coin

At the same time, rate design itself is under scrutiny for its own affordability effects. The long-running debate over fixed vs. volumetric rate structures isn't just an engineering question — it determines whether a low-usage household or a fixed-income customer ends up paying a fair share or an outsized one. Lifeline rates, LIHEAP coordination, and targeted low-income rate design exist precisely because "average" affordability numbers can hide real hardship for a meaningful slice of customers.

What This Means Going Forward

There isn't a single fix here, but there is a common thread across the utilities handling this well: they're treating cost causation seriously. Large loads that drive new infrastructure are being asked to fund a meaningful share of it directly, rather than relying on general rate base recovery. Rate structures are being reexamined with an explicit eye toward who actually bears the burden of fixed cost recovery. And regulators are asking harder questions earlier in the process, rather than discovering affordability problems after rates are already set.

None of this makes the underlying math easier — the infrastructure still has to get built, and someone still has to pay for it. But utilities that are deliberate about matching costs to the customers who cause them are in a much stronger position, both with regulators and with the public, than utilities hoping the averages work out.

This is a topic we'll keep coming back to as large-load growth accelerates and affordability stays in the headlines. If your utility or co-op is navigating either side of this — large-load cost recovery or rate design for vulnerable customers — it's worth getting ahead of it now rather than reacting to a rate case later.

About the Author

Russ Hissom, CPA is a principal of UtilityEducation.com, a firm that provides power and utilities rate and expert witness services, and on-demand professional education classes in co-op and utility accounting, finance, ratemaking, artificial intelligence, and management.

Russ was a partner in a national accounting and consulting firm for 20 years. He works with electric investor-owned and public power utilities, electric cooperatives, and gas, water, and wastewater utilities. His goal is to share industry best practices to help your business perform effectively and efficiently and meet the challenges of the changing power and utilities industry.

Contact Russ at [email protected]

The material in this article is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as legal or accounting advice provided by Utility Accounting & Rates Specialists, LLC or UtilityEducation.com. You should seek formal advice on this topic from your accounting or legal advisor.

A few years ago, I began working with a company building demand flexibility technology, the kind that lets utilities call on distributed energy resources during moments of peak demand. The technology was genuinely differentiated, but the market around it was getting crowded fast, and almost nobody outside the utility world had heard of them. Their own executives were not yet recognized voices in the conversations shaping where the industry was headed.

We spent the next stretch of time building two things at once: sharpening what actually made their approach different so it would not get lost among a dozen similar sounding competitors, and putting their executives in front of the right audiences consistently, not just when there was news to announce. Bylines in the trade press. Speaking opportunities. Real engagement with the analysts and journalists covering demand flexibility and grid modernization.

It took time, but the payoff showed up in the ways that matter most for a growing company: coverage in publications their target buyers actually read, and executives who started getting called by reporters trying to understand where the market was headed, instead of the other way around.

That is not a communications success story so much as a business one. It is what happens when a company treats visibility as infrastructure to build early, not a milestone to chase once the technology speaks for itself.

The Communication Gap in Energy Innovation

Energy companies often prioritize technical milestones, such as product validation, operational efficiency, and regulatory approvals, in their early stages of growth. Communications is treated as a secondary need, something to pick up after launch or when there is news to announce.

But waiting until after key milestones to establish clear messaging leaves a critical gap. Audiences including investors, regulators, and communities form impressions with or without your input. New technologies and business models get misunderstood, which slows adoption. And the early window to shape public perception and build momentum closes whether or not you used it.

I know a cleantech founder who waited until she was in the middle of a Series A raise to start building her media presence. By then, the journalists she needed relationships with did not know her. The analysts covering her space had already published market maps without her company on them. Investors doing diligence were searching her name and finding almost nothing. She closed the round, but she told me afterward that the communications gap made everything harder than it needed to be.

What Strategic Communications Looks Like Early On

Strategic communications at early stages doesn't require big budgets or flashy campaigns. It means defining your narrative so it's clear what problem you solve and why it matters, aligning internal and external messaging so employees, partners, and investors tell the same story, and preparing leadership to speak confidently about complex solutions in ways that resonate beyond technical audiences.

Companies that embed communications strategy early are better positioned to navigate regulatory reviews, attract funding, and drive project acceptance.

Key Areas to Focus Early in Communications Strategy

• Stakeholder Mapping: Know who your critical audiences are and what they need to hear.

• Message Development: Explain your technology or solution clearly, for the audience in front of you.

• Executive Visibility: Put leadership in front of media, speaking opportunities, and community conversations before there's news to announce.

• Scenario Planning: Prepare for hard questions before someone asks them.

Build the Foundation Before You Need It

Building a strong communications foundation doesn't require a large team at the outset. It requires thoughtful strategy, consistent execution, and the discipline to anticipate how different audiences will respond to new ideas and new technologies, well before a launch date or a funding round forces the question.

The companies that treat communications as infrastructure, not promotion, are the ones still standing when the regulatory review gets tougher, the funding environment tightens, or a competitor tries to define the category first. In a sector where technology changes fast but trust builds slowly, early communications strategy isn't optional. It's an investment in long-term success.

I'd be curious how others here have seen this play out. Has anyone worked at a company that waited too long to build a communications presence, or one that got it right early? What made the difference?

Energy: what are your company's priorities?

If a company wants to stand out as a leader—including in the energy sector—it must have a clear understanding of the priorities involved. Potential priorities might include, for example:  

• Energy efficiency projects  

• On-site generation and cogeneration projects  

• Optimised energy sourcing  

• Access to higher voltage connections

Does your company have a plan with clearly defined priorities and timelines to make them happen? If so, that’s great. If not, it is certainly worth considering this opportunity!

Lilac Solutions is raising north of $350M to develop a commercial plant to pull lithium directly from Utah’s Great Salt Lake. The plant, which would be the first of its kind in the U.S., signals the growing need for critical minerals to fuel battery storage systems and data centers.

Data center load shifting is an effective demand flexibility strategy to minimize peak demand for data centers through aggregate conservation.

Last November, CNBC reported that data centers alone are projected to consume between 6.7% to 12% of total U.S. electricity by 2028. Further research suggests that data center growth can lead to 25-50 GW of additional fossil fuel generation by 2030.

These challenges are compounded by electrification efforts, increasingly erratic weather events and temperature extremes, and supply chain and tariff issues, which further challenge the infrastructure development needed to meet rising demand. Research indicates that if data centers can shift load by 25-50% during peak events, that U.S. utilities can reduce the need for costly infrastructure developments

Defining Data Centers

Data centers have existed for roughly 75 years. Starting in the 1950s, data centers were developed to support computing power, which was scarce and resource intensive. Over time, data centers evolved to satisfy several purposes, from purpose-built systems designed to support specific functionality or cloud computing.

With the advent of large language model (LLM) AI, modern data centers have taken on a new social and environmental role across the country. These centers support AI learning, which requires substantial resources to power and cool, creating fresh challenges for electric utilities.

Types of Data Centers

Below is a brief overview of the most common types of data centers.

• AI data centers – Massive and energy hungry hyperscale data centers designed to support AI products like corporate cloud-scale workloads and manage big data.

• Edge data centers – A smaller and decentralized facility located in near proximity to end users, designed to process data local and support real-time data applications.

• Colocation data centers – A co-use facility that allows smaller businesses to lease available space at lower operational cost.

• Managed services data centers – Third-party managed data centers that companies can lease rather than buy.

• Enterprise data centers – Company owned and operated data centers often located on corporate campuses and designed to serve internal users.

The Value of Load Shifting

Load shifting refers to efforts taken by electric utility professionals to aggregate and shift load to off-peak hours of usage. Load shifting manifests in demand flexibility initiatives like virtual power plants (VPPs), demand response, or EV managed charging.

These strategies function by aggregating distributed energy resources (DERs) like solar, battery energy storage systems (BESS), electric vehicles, EVSE chargers, and smart home devices like thermostats or water heaters. These DER assets are controlled through a distributed energy resource management system (DERMS).

Likewise, time-of-use (TOU) rates or behavioral demand response represent alternative forms of load shifting, both of which operate by strategically leveraging customer participation in decreasing energy usage to avoid higher costs.

Reliable Energy is Critical

As noted, data centers serve many functions, many of which require a continuous load to realize. Because of that, some data center operators may be hesitant to participate in load shifting demand flexibility initiatives.

Software like Topline Demand Control (TDC) support those concerns by combining AI, model predictive control (MPC), forecasting, and Grid-Edge DERMS to allow for real-time granular device optimization. With TDC, data centers can participate in load shifting grid-events with the confidence that load shed does not interfere with device output. Put differently, data center operators, program managers, and grid operators can rest assured that through TDC, they can bank on a reliable load shifting outcome, without compromising functionality.

Defining the Data Center Challenge

According to the Pew Research Center, there are currently around 3000 data centers in operation in the U.S., with projects for about 1500 more. These projects are complicated by factors including:

• A grid interconnection queue – Currently the grid interconnection queue has 7,954 projects in the works, accounting for nearly 1.74 TW of projects upon completion and connection to the grid.

• Supply chain constraints & tariffs – Between supply chain constraints that have led to wait times on critical devices like transformers of up to 4 years, and tariffs on materials, new infrastructure development is both costly and takes longer than it used to.

• Public response – Broadly speaking, Americans don’t want data centers, which has led to political and regulatory challenges for utilities, and even lengthier wait times on data center projects in development.

Demand Flexibility Defers Infrastructure Costs

Research indicates that even an energy curtailment of 10% of total demand, could unlock 76 GW of capacity in the U.S., or, put differently, 10% of total U.S. peak demand. Demand flexibility programs achieve this curtailment, by aggregate DER control, load shifting energy consumption to off-peak periods of usage —typically 4 PM – 8 PM— to decrease energy demand through conservation. Further studies indicate that the aggregate load shifting possible through demand flexibility initiatives can lead to estimated savings on capital, operational, and energy market costs ranging between $40-$150 over the next decade.

Data Center Load Shifting Conclusion

Due to rising costs, logistical constraints, and public feedback, data centers have opened up to the potential for the use of load shifting demand flexibility initiatives… if that expedites their operational deployment. For utilities, these pressures may lead to more opportunity to engage data centers and potentially more commercial and industrial (C&I) clients to participate in load shifting strategies.

By solving these pressures, utilities can help data centers to lower costs and accelerate development, while simultaneously decreasing customer rates and energy market purchases, and enhancing grid resiliency.

By Kennedy Maize

The U.S. Supreme Court on June 29 redefined the fundamentals of how the federal government works going back some 144 years and the creation of the now-defunct Interstate Commerce Commission, which regulated railroads.

The court ruled 6-3 with the usual partisan divide that hitherto “independent” federal agencies are not independent. The president can fire members of commissions with Congressionally determined fixed appointments apportioned by political party at will.

In Trump v. Slaughter, with Chief Justice Roberts writing for the Republican majority, the court ruled Trump could can two Democrats appointed to fixed terms from the Federal Trade Commission because they disagreed with his policies, Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya. They sued in federal court, although Bedoya later dropped out of the case.

A 1935 Supreme Court decision overturned Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt’s firing of a 1933 Republican FTC appointee, William F. Humphrey, based on a policy disagreement. The 1914 law that established the FTC said the president could remove commissioners only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” The case became known as “Humphrey’s Executor.”

The federal courts upheld Humphrey in numerous cases over the years while whittling away at it on the margins. Last month the Republicans delivered a death blow. Roberts wrote, “We hold that such protection from removal is contrary to the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.”

 The decision could have implications for many nominally-independent agencies, including two important energy regulatory bodies, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. An analysis by the Sheppard law firm commented, “As Justice Sotomayor noted in dissent, dozens of independent commissions—such as Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Chemical Safety Board, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Merit Systems Protection Board—are now likely to become purely executive agencies, shifting tremendous power into the President’s hands.”

Those agencies are now beginning to ponder how to cope with the court’s decision in Slaughter. Former FERC commissioner and chairman Mark Christie, a Trump appointee and a decidedly independent (and sometimes irascible) force at the commission, commented on LinkedIn: “The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Slaughter case was a correct interpretation of the Chief Executive’s constitutional authority to supervise and dismiss those officers exercising executive powers.”

Christie, who now directs the Center for Energy Law and Policy at William & Mary Law School and is a veteran Virginia state utility regulator, added, “The practical and constitutional problems are that FERC and similar commissions, such as the FCC, FTC, and SEC, also exercise legislative and judicial powers not delegated to the President in the Constitution. So the Slaughter ruling effectively transferred legislative and judicial powers to the Chief Executive, a transfer that itself violates the Constitution’s fundamental separation of powers principles.

Congress created this mess by unconstitutionally combining legislative, executive and judicial powers in single agencies. But Congress can fix it by reclaiming its own legislative powers, including with regard to FERC specifically, the power to set rates.”

Rates that affect consumers’ power bills should be set based on facts in the public record, not by calls from executive branch officials outside the record. Consumers deserve nothing less.”

Christie’s prescription echoes the concurrence in Slaughter by Justice Neil Gorsuch. He asked, “Would Congress have delegated so much power, including legislative and judicial power, to independent agencies had it known that the President would come to control them? How will Congress respond now—if realistically it can? And what, if anything, will this Court do about it?”

Gorsuch’s answer: “From here, the only sure path is to finish the journey we start today and restore legislative and judicial powers to where they belong: in Congress and the courts. We have tolerated adventurous theories long enough. It is time to return, all the way, to the Constitution.”

Looking at the impact on the NRC, the Union of Concerned Scientists, which has long been a key watchdog over the NRC, predictably expressed broad concerns over the Slaughter ruling. UCS accused the court of “weakening longstanding safeguards designed to insulate agency decision-making from political influence and preserve the role of independent expertise in guiding policymaking and serving the public.”

Jennifer Jones, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at UCS, said, “The effects of this decision will extend beyond any single administration. If presidents have the power to replace agency leadership at will, agencies risk losing the continuity, institutional knowledge and experience necessary to carry out their missions effectively.”

Veteran energy attorney and former NRC commissioner Peter Bradford (1977-1982), who has also been chairman of the Maine Public Utilities Commission (1982-1987) and New York Public Service Commission (1988-1995), told The Quad Report in an email, “Assuming though that the NRC is exercising executive powers, the implications under Trump are pretty awful, as in would you want the wizards of science who turned the reflecting pool into Mountain Dew to be calling the shots as to nuclear safety….The former NRC had to adhere to certain minimums to keep the minstrel show credible.  Now those are very much in doubt.”

The Quad Report, covering energy policy and politics

The end of federal clean energy tax credits could mean higher PPA prices, experts warn.

• July 4 meant more than fireworks: Independence Day was the deadline for wind and solar projects to kick off construction in order to secure investment and production tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act.

• Meaning? The price of PPAs for projects no longer eligible for IRA tax credits could spike, according to industry experts. “It’s kind of a shift from the taxpayer to the ratepayer to make up that delta,” one analyst noted to Utility Dive.

• Putting the pressure on utilities and developers: Camelot Energy Group said a 200-MW solar facility with a 30% investment tax credit would need a PPA “in the $40 to $45 per MWh range. But if you’re non-tax advantaged, no ITC basis, then you’re basically pushing mid-to-high $60s.”

Weekend wind and storms pummeled the Northeast and Midwest—and thousands still don’t have power.

• The numbers: 454K customers across PA, NY, NJ, CT, and MI were still without power Sunday night after severe weather took down trees and power lines this weekend. Thousands more in the midwest and southeast are facing power outages due to severe heat, bringing the total close to 1 million homes and businesses without power across the country. 

• On Friday, PJM directed customers in emergency electricity-reduction programs to limit their power use amid generator outages, overloaded transmission lines, and surges in A/C usage as temps soared.

• By the way: The $6 billion Champlain Hudson Power Express transmission line (which started delivering power from Quebec to New York on June 1) went down Wednesday and Thursday. The line isn’t yet essential to the state’s power—but NYISO certainly needs all the power it can get, especially during extreme heat.