When Raymond Brooks and John Gay founded their power-plant inspection company in 1984, nuclear power had a bad rap that was about to get worse. In 1978 Three Mile Island power plant in Pennsylvania had given nuclear power a black eye, even though the accident resulted in no injuries.

 

Then there was the Shoreham political fiasco along Long Island, when a skeptical public helped kill construction of a new Long Island plant. The incident at Chernobyl had not even happened yet. This would occur in 1986, when the Soviet nuclear plant put radioactive particles into the sky and was the worst nuclear power accident in world history.

 

Yet, the Democrat and Chronicle’s Jim Stinson writes, this is 2009 and the business of Williamson, New York-based R. Brooks Associates Inc. is booming because of increased demand for robotic inspection of pipes, especially in nuclear power plants. The company shot up this year to No. 4 in the Top 100. Revenues at the company, based were $14 million in 2007, $28 million in 2008, and $18 million in 2009 (with the recession causing some downturn). Company officials said they expect 2010 revenues to be $30 million. The company expects to acquire a French company soon, and to get more British contracts in 2010.

 

A cleaner, greener public view of nuclear power is one of the reasons for the high revenue expectations in 2010, Brooks Associates officials said. Nuclear power plants emit no carbon into the atmosphere, unlike coal-powered plants. “The world is going nuclear,” said Gay, chief operating officer. “The Chinese are building (nuclear) plants. The French are going to be building plants for the British. … They’re turning bombs into fuel.”

 

This is good news for Brooks, because all power plants have intricate systems of pipes and systems whose internal condition is impossible to inspect by human eyes. The company has worked with all types of power generators, and nuclear power demands particularly careful inspection.