Trump’s executive orders will be the most consequential endorsement of nuclear by a US president since Eisenhower’s Atoms For Peace speech 72 years ago.
I have great respect for what was achieved in France, but that model ultimately failed to advance nuclear, and would be a disaster in the US. The fact is, none of the SMRs today are worth standardizing on. We should just fix the regulation so we can build AP1000s (or other licensed designs) at what they should cost. That is the first half of sensible nuclear policy, but they offer no evolutionary path to the truly cheap and scalable high temperature reactors needed for industry and export.
China is already developing the best option (which we gave them), and nothing else will come close to competing. Once they start deploying, our potential export market will be zeroed; our one advantage, that could allow us to leap ahead on thorium, is our abundant spent fuel. That resource could be used to start > 1,000 GWe such molten salt breeders (with some being a fast spectrum variant to continue ramping production of the U-233 seed, as needed for optimal scaling). Curio is focused on this, and it is the only processing method that makes sense without subsidy.
We should aim to have factories producing 100GWe a year by 2045, and then quadrupling nuclear would be trivial. Not just one company, but several with competing designs and sizes; all can share the same molten salt supply chain, which will mostly be bulk commodities needed in relative small quantities. This is the supply chain we should incentivize, if any, because thorium MSBRs scale up and down without substantial change in their exceptional efficiency. See Copenhagen Atomics in Denmark or Flibe Energy in the US. Many other companies are a bit further behind, but on this path as well, and would also benefit from the common supply chains.
People say reactors are too expensive, consider this. In 1966 20 reactors were ordered by US utilities. These were all built with an average construction time of 6 years. Sixteen of these were still operating in 2024, I have not checked in 2025. The four that were shut down did so after an average of 45 years of operation. These early reactors produced electricity cheaper than coal, when coal was cheap. In 1974, 28 reactors were ordered by US utilities, none of them were built - regulatory and societal pressures forced cancellations of all of them. It is not physics, or risk, or engineering that stops nuclear. About 75 reactors were cancelled in the US before TMI due to regulatory and societal pressures.
It is nice to get politicians on the side of sanity, but before we can get too far we must do two things. First, demonstrate to the public that the environment and public health benefits from nuclear. Right now press/public do not believe that. Second, we must demand that the regulators balance risks from nuclear with risks from other technologies. Currently they demand that society spend any amount of time and money on a risk no matter how small.
I share your optimism, partly because I think the NRC has been slowly moving in that direction already. Regarding Vogtle, the 4-part interview of James Krellenstein on the DeCoupled podcast makes a compelling case that most of the delays were not result of the NRC, but of Westinghouse being unprepared. this was shown by the long construction time even in China for the FOAK, but they have drastically reduced that since then. There's still gobs of room for improvement at the NRC, especially with newer technologies, but the structure seems to be there for LWR's with an existing license and engineering finished, and at least one reactor under their belt. Unit 4 went a lot faster and cheaper than Unit 3. With just a handful more reactors on order, I think that they would be able to bring construction cost & time into very reasonable levels.
Thank you for this good news, Robert. The four nuclear power EOs were released on Friday, May 23, 2025. Californians for Green Nuclear Power (CGNP) has a long string of successes in the deep blue state of California. We focus on the lack of air and water pollution from the Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP,) which is California's last nuclear power plant. We support repowering the SONGS site with two or more AP-1000s. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2016/07/21/pro-nuclear-green-group-bring-back-san-onofre/
CGNP remains concerned regarding Warren Buffett's sneaky, indirect plan to shut down DCPP, based on a unanimous 2016 U.S. Supreme Court Decision, Hughes v. Talen Energy. Buffett has bankrolled California SB 540 advocacy (his 6th attempt at CAISO grid regionalization) with the third highest 2024 California lobbying expenditures. CGNP continues to fight Buffett with multiple visits to Sacramento to educate lawmakers and testify against SB 540. Learn more at CGNP's GreenNUKE Substack.... https://greennuke.substack.com/
As Shellenberger and others have pointed out, we don’t need new nuclear reactor designs. We should plan to build more of the good old standards, for which there are years of manufacturing and operations experience.
The "billing by the hour" for regulation is interesting because the US Supreme Court recently ruled against the government for billing fishermen for the salaries of the Gov't inspectors! Sounds like the same case to me. We call that collateral estoppel.
The Supreme Court just affirmed executive control over all federal agencies except the Federal Reserve. Does this mean the president could fire the entire NRC tomorrow? Hope so. This legal development would be a great subject for Robert Bryce to pick up ASAP.
So, a “report by ISO New England … found that nuclear power can reduce emissions more cheaply than wind and solar.” I mean, did it really take that report for anyone to know that? I mean 1+1=2, right?
Well all nice points but still a bridge too far for the USA. I spent a 40 year career in the nuclear power industry both in the US and internationally. The VC Summer/Vogtle debacle to build new nuclear revealed all the barriers to any renaissance. Maybe a few new units are possible with heavy government support and a COMPLETE reorganization of the NRC.
Agree, there are many barriers. But I'm optimistic. The US has led the world on nuclear energy in the past, it can do so again. But the NRC must be overhauled and nuclear sector needs long-term bipartisan support from Congress and the White House.
Well I’m not. There are many other reasons that we can’t grow the industry back to anything significant. Here are 2: There aren’t trained construction craft available any more. Two generations have passed by for welders, pipe fitters, carpenters, electricians etc. Also no pipe line for operators or nuclear trained engineers. When I left the Navy in ‘75 we had 35 units under construction. In 2010 a DOE study showed max capability of 6 to 10. It’s lower now.
Thank you for your ongoing efforts to make energy matters common sense.
One thing I truely wonder: if not mistaken, you never mentioned DUAL- FLUID REACTOR, developed by a team of german scientists that's fully patented meanwhile.
The sadest part about it - the pioneer sample is built/has been started in a tiny african state.
I am impressed by the website of dual fluid - it seems remarkable in such an increase of return on investment and the 1.5c cost for the largest ones. The only lack is some indication of pricing.
To economically build new nuclear plants, we cannot allow the utilities buying them to tweak the design for what their engineers and scientists desire. This tweaking was allowed in the past and it resulted in no two plants being alike, which drives up maintenance costs. For the most part, the French avoided such tweaking, making it less expensive to operate their fleet.
I have great respect for what was achieved in France, but that model ultimately failed to advance nuclear, and would be a disaster in the US. The fact is, none of the SMRs today are worth standardizing on. We should just fix the regulation so we can build AP1000s (or other licensed designs) at what they should cost. That is the first half of sensible nuclear policy, but they offer no evolutionary path to the truly cheap and scalable high temperature reactors needed for industry and export.
China is already developing the best option (which we gave them), and nothing else will come close to competing. Once they start deploying, our potential export market will be zeroed; our one advantage, that could allow us to leap ahead on thorium, is our abundant spent fuel. That resource could be used to start > 1,000 GWe such molten salt breeders (with some being a fast spectrum variant to continue ramping production of the U-233 seed, as needed for optimal scaling). Curio is focused on this, and it is the only processing method that makes sense without subsidy.
We should aim to have factories producing 100GWe a year by 2045, and then quadrupling nuclear would be trivial. Not just one company, but several with competing designs and sizes; all can share the same molten salt supply chain, which will mostly be bulk commodities needed in relative small quantities. This is the supply chain we should incentivize, if any, because thorium MSBRs scale up and down without substantial change in their exceptional efficiency. See Copenhagen Atomics in Denmark or Flibe Energy in the US. Many other companies are a bit further behind, but on this path as well, and would also benefit from the common supply chains.
Polis is still an idiot. It took three attempts to get this law passed and when it did, he signed it in secret.
People say reactors are too expensive, consider this. In 1966 20 reactors were ordered by US utilities. These were all built with an average construction time of 6 years. Sixteen of these were still operating in 2024, I have not checked in 2025. The four that were shut down did so after an average of 45 years of operation. These early reactors produced electricity cheaper than coal, when coal was cheap. In 1974, 28 reactors were ordered by US utilities, none of them were built - regulatory and societal pressures forced cancellations of all of them. It is not physics, or risk, or engineering that stops nuclear. About 75 reactors were cancelled in the US before TMI due to regulatory and societal pressures.
It is nice to get politicians on the side of sanity, but before we can get too far we must do two things. First, demonstrate to the public that the environment and public health benefits from nuclear. Right now press/public do not believe that. Second, we must demand that the regulators balance risks from nuclear with risks from other technologies. Currently they demand that society spend any amount of time and money on a risk no matter how small.
Not so fast, that order has holes you could fly a 747 through
https://open.substack.com/pub/jackdevanney/p/trumps-nrc-executive-order?r=23kggy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
About bloody time!
I share your optimism, partly because I think the NRC has been slowly moving in that direction already. Regarding Vogtle, the 4-part interview of James Krellenstein on the DeCoupled podcast makes a compelling case that most of the delays were not result of the NRC, but of Westinghouse being unprepared. this was shown by the long construction time even in China for the FOAK, but they have drastically reduced that since then. There's still gobs of room for improvement at the NRC, especially with newer technologies, but the structure seems to be there for LWR's with an existing license and engineering finished, and at least one reactor under their belt. Unit 4 went a lot faster and cheaper than Unit 3. With just a handful more reactors on order, I think that they would be able to bring construction cost & time into very reasonable levels.
Off topic. We're talking about nuclear ENERGY here. Atoms for Peace in the Old Skool terminology.
Thank you for this good news, Robert. The four nuclear power EOs were released on Friday, May 23, 2025. Californians for Green Nuclear Power (CGNP) has a long string of successes in the deep blue state of California. We focus on the lack of air and water pollution from the Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP,) which is California's last nuclear power plant. We support repowering the SONGS site with two or more AP-1000s. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2016/07/21/pro-nuclear-green-group-bring-back-san-onofre/
CGNP remains concerned regarding Warren Buffett's sneaky, indirect plan to shut down DCPP, based on a unanimous 2016 U.S. Supreme Court Decision, Hughes v. Talen Energy. Buffett has bankrolled California SB 540 advocacy (his 6th attempt at CAISO grid regionalization) with the third highest 2024 California lobbying expenditures. CGNP continues to fight Buffett with multiple visits to Sacramento to educate lawmakers and testify against SB 540. Learn more at CGNP's GreenNUKE Substack.... https://greennuke.substack.com/
As Shellenberger and others have pointed out, we don’t need new nuclear reactor designs. We should plan to build more of the good old standards, for which there are years of manufacturing and operations experience.
We need both the old and the new.
The "billing by the hour" for regulation is interesting because the US Supreme Court recently ruled against the government for billing fishermen for the salaries of the Gov't inspectors! Sounds like the same case to me. We call that collateral estoppel.
Here's the NYT's grumpy coverage. But for now, off with their heads! https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/us/supreme-court-trump-agency-firings.html
The Supreme Court just affirmed executive control over all federal agencies except the Federal Reserve. Does this mean the president could fire the entire NRC tomorrow? Hope so. This legal development would be a great subject for Robert Bryce to pick up ASAP.
That's news to me. I don't know how it would impact the NRC. But it's clear the NRC needs reform ASAP.
So, a “report by ISO New England … found that nuclear power can reduce emissions more cheaply than wind and solar.” I mean, did it really take that report for anyone to know that? I mean 1+1=2, right?
Well all nice points but still a bridge too far for the USA. I spent a 40 year career in the nuclear power industry both in the US and internationally. The VC Summer/Vogtle debacle to build new nuclear revealed all the barriers to any renaissance. Maybe a few new units are possible with heavy government support and a COMPLETE reorganization of the NRC.
Agree, there are many barriers. But I'm optimistic. The US has led the world on nuclear energy in the past, it can do so again. But the NRC must be overhauled and nuclear sector needs long-term bipartisan support from Congress and the White House.
Well I’m not. There are many other reasons that we can’t grow the industry back to anything significant. Here are 2: There aren’t trained construction craft available any more. Two generations have passed by for welders, pipe fitters, carpenters, electricians etc. Also no pipe line for operators or nuclear trained engineers. When I left the Navy in ‘75 we had 35 units under construction. In 2010 a DOE study showed max capability of 6 to 10. It’s lower now.
Thank you for your ongoing efforts to make energy matters common sense.
One thing I truely wonder: if not mistaken, you never mentioned DUAL- FLUID REACTOR, developed by a team of german scientists that's fully patented meanwhile.
The sadest part about it - the pioneer sample is built/has been started in a tiny african state.
"The prophet in IT's own Country.......
https://dual-fluid.com/
Cheers
I am impressed by the website of dual fluid - it seems remarkable in such an increase of return on investment and the 1.5c cost for the largest ones. The only lack is some indication of pricing.
They are on there way to find out
To economically build new nuclear plants, we cannot allow the utilities buying them to tweak the design for what their engineers and scientists desire. This tweaking was allowed in the past and it resulted in no two plants being alike, which drives up maintenance costs. For the most part, the French avoided such tweaking, making it less expensive to operate their fleet.