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Oklo and Siemens Energy Sign Agreement to Accelerate Power Conversion System for New SMR in Idaho

LCG, November 19, 2025--Oklo Inc. and Siemens Energy announced today that the parties have signed a binding contract for the design and delivery of the power conversion system for Oklo’s Aurora-INL (Idaho National Laboratory) nuclear small modular reactor (SMR). The agreement authorizes Siemens Energy to begin engineering and design work to expedite procurement of long-lead components and to initiate the manufacturing process for the power conversion system. Oklo’s expertise in advanced fission technology will be combined with Siemens Energy’s extensive industry experience with steam turbine and generator systems, with the ultimate goal of generating carbon-free, reliable electricity.

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NERC's New Winter Reliability Assessment Raises Concerns for Elevated Risk of Insufficient Supplies to Meet Demand in Extreme Operating Conditions

LCG, November 19, 2025--NERC yesterday released its 2025–2026 Winter Reliability Assessment (WRA), which concludes "much of North America is again at an elevated risk of having insufficient energy supplies to meet demand in extreme operating conditions." The WRA does state that resources are adequate for normal winter peak demand, but extended, wide-area cold snaps will be challenging.

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Industry News

California Utilities Tottering on Brink of Bankruptcy

LCG, Dec. 14, 2000--California's two largest utilities acknowledged yesterday that they are flirting with bankruptcy and may soon not have enough money to pay for electricity which they deliver to their retail distribution customers.

"We continue to have the ability to make power purchases on behalf of our customers," said Pacific Gas & Electric Co. spokesman Ron Low. "But we cannot go on indefinitely borrowing money topay for our customers' electricity."

PG&E and Southern California Edison Co. are now in an $8 billion hole that gets deeper every day as the two companies are forced to pay market prices for power which they deliver to customers protected by rates frozen at a level 10 percent lower than they were paying in 1997.

So far in December, electricity prices have averaged about $330 per megawatt-hour, with a spike yesterday to $1,407 on the spot market. PG&E has since May paid around $4.6 billion more for power than it has collected from its customers. For SoCal Ed the figure is some $3.5 billion.

As a part of electric deregulation in California, the state's three investor-owned utilities (San Diego Gas & Electric Co. is the third) sold off their non-nuclear power plants. They were also enjoined by the state's restructuring law from entering into long-term power purchase agreements with the companies that bought their plants, and forced to purchase all of their power through a quasi-public agency, the California Power Exchange.

Yesterday, some operators of the state's power plants were declining to sell electricity to PG&E or SoCal Ed unless they received cash on the barrel head, a sure sign the power producers are worried about the possibility of bankruptcy.

Financial markets are beginning to take notice of the financial plight of the utilities, with Standard & Poor's placing both PG&E and SoCal Ed on its credit watch with "negative implications." But S&P said it expected that the two companies would eventually be allowed to collect most of their power costs from customers.

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