Fortnightly Magazine - June 15 1996

The Nuclear Energy Institute reports that nuclear power plants are exceeding performance goals for safety and reliability. In 1995, the U.S. nuclear industry:

s Achieved the highest capability factor ever: a median value of 82.6 percent. (Unit capability is a percentage of the most electricity a plant can produce, limited by plant management.)

s Reduced unplanned automatic shutdowns or scrams by almost 90 percent since 1980.

s Met safety performance in 94 percent of the systems.

Deregulation, competition, and marketplace practices have been spreading slowly across the communications business for decades. In their wake, they have left lower prices, faster innovation, and more services, jobs, profits, and productivity.

Among the proposals for still further change, one of the most shocking is the idea that radio rights should be bought and sold on the open market, just like land or any other commodity.

First came the Pool, with its faults and virtues.

Now comes a wave of troubling takeovers.

What happens when retail supply opens up?

Much of the pressure to reform the electricity supply industry in the United States assumes that the United Kingdom's electricity experiment offers a proven model.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court has struck down as unconstitutional a state Commission rule that forced electric utilities that acquire a customer from a competitor to compensate the competitor for all associated costs and then pass such costs along to their own customers.

The court said the rule exceeded Commission authority by usurping the utility management function (em forbidding the utility to choose to absorb costs associated with switching customers.