Federal judges release funds for NuScale, AEHI

摘要

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Com­mission (SEC), which seldom becomes in­volved in nuclear power, recently took two unrelated actions affecting companies in the nuclear field. In early February, federal dis­trict courts in Connecticut and Idaho issued rulings allowing the companies access to assets that had been frozen as a result of the SEC actions. On February 2, Judge Janet Bond Arter-ton ruled in Connecticut that NuScale Pow­er, developer of the NuScale small modular reactor, can have access to $1.1 million in previously pledged funding from the ven­ture capital firm MK Capital, and that it can also obtain a $5-million loan from a fund managed by MK. The SEC had filed suit in January against MK officer Francisco Illarramendi, charg­ing him with various unacceptable prac­tices. NuScale Power itself is not a target of the SEC, but the resulting cutoff of funds from MK—which to date had provided about $23 million of the $35 million that NuScale had received from investors—had forced NuScale to cut back on many activ­ities aimed toward the development of the integral pressurized water reactor design (AW, Feb. 2011, p. 18). The released funds and loan allow NuScale to resume some of its suspended operations while it seeks oth­er sources of financing. The SEC's case against Illarramendi and MK continues in the court.