By Sam Thernstrom Paul Saunders Todd Abrajano
As America’s electric grid faces an unprecedent strain, nuclear power has never been more promising nor more important. Nuclear energy provides clean, reliable power that is vital to our economy and national security. American companies are pioneering some of the most promising advanced reactor designs in the world, but they will not succeed without effective government support for nuclear energy.
America’s nuclear renaissance has been long delayed by regulatory and financial barriers, but that is rapidly changing. In May, President Trump signed a series of executive orders designed to accelerate reactor licensing and reform regulations, with a goal of bringing 300 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity online by 2050, effectively quadrupling the reactor fleet. A recently announced framework agreement with Westinghouse, Brookfield and Cameco to invest $80 billion in building 10 new, advanced nuclear plants in the United States is an important step towards fulfilling that vision.
The plan reflects the Administration’s understanding of two key facts: Effective government policy support is needed to jumpstart a resurgence of nuclear power; and success depends upon building new reactors in series, not just one or two. That allows companies to establish robust supply chains and secure the manufacturing scale that drives cost-reductions.
While these initiatives indicate important momentum, further federal action will be critical to our success. To evaluate policy options, we convened a bipartisan Working Group on U.S. Nuclear Energy Dominance earlier this year, comprising former senior officials, industry representatives, and subject-matter experts; they identified key priorities for the Administration and Congress to consider.
First, the federal government should provide robust support for a series of new nuclear plants. Every first-of-a-kind plant—including nuclear—entails risks of delay and cost overruns. The Westinghouse agreement recognizes that building multiple plants of the same design is essential. Other countries have achieved impressive cost reductions through sequential construction, and America’s existing nuclear fleet—the largest and most reliable in the world—was built using this model.
Beyond Westinghouse, the United States has a wealth of innovators working to commercialize advanced small modular reactors. Congress and the Administration should facilitate construction of multiple units of the most promising designs. Early federal backing for the initial plants in a series can be decisive in unlocking private capital. Reducing investor risk through targeted insurance mechanisms and measures that prevent costly delays would boost deployment. Enactment of the ARC Act would be a sensible first step in this direction.
Second, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) must license a growing number of designs and construction projects safely and efficiently. Workforce reductions at a time of potential agency restructuring and rapidly growing responsibilities will hinder progress. Congress should ensure that the NRC has adequate resources and staff to achieve President Trump’s nuclear energy goals.
Congress should also ease the licensing burden on small, innovative reactor developers. The NRC is funded almost entirely through industry fees—more than $800 million annually—while agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency use taxpayer funds to support its work regulating other power generators. Nuclear should be treated no differently.
And Congress should adopt selected reforms to ensure that licensing review is proportionate to risk. For example, amending the Atomic Energy Act so that the Advisory Commission on Reactor Safeguards reviews only new or novel license applications, rather than all applications, would streamline the process without compromising safety.
The bipartisan Refuel Act is another example of a commonsense adjustment to reflect evolving technologies. There are new technologies and processes for recycling used fuel that never isolate plutonium; it is appropriate to differentiate their regulatory review from the traditional processes that do produce plutonium.
Third, expansion of America’s nuclear industry will require a rapid build-out of our nuclear workforce and supply chain. Along with nuclear engineers, the industry will need thousands of skilled construction and maintenance workers and reactor operators. Supporting series production of both large reactors and small modular reactors will send an important demand signal to both suppliers and manufacturers. As the Department of Energy (DOE) supports series production of both large and small reactors, it should also use the Office of Energy Dominance Financing to support investments by suppliers and manufacturers. But expanding supply chains will take time; in the near term, lowering tariffs on essential imports would reduce both reactor costs and downstream electricity prices.
Fuel is equally essential, and there too, we lost our supply chain when we stopped building nuclear plants. Congress and DOE have provided initial support for uranium mining and enrichment firms and nuclear fuel fabricators, but more must be done to ensure predictable, long-term demand for suppliers. Congress should also encourage emerging private-sector efforts to recycle used fuel.
As electricity demand rises and global competitors accelerate their own nuclear programs, restoring U.S. leadership in nuclear energy is essential to ensuring reliable, affordable, and resilient power for decades ahead.
Sam Thernstrom is head of the Energy Innovation Reform Project
A former, State Department energy official, Paul Saunders is President of the Center for the National Interest.
Todd Abrajano the President & CEO of the United States Nuclear Industry Council.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I don’t believe that anything will change in the nuclear power industry until we have SMRs that can be authorised as a group, and then deployed.
Unfortunately, nobody would be wise to invest in any large installations in any developed country, when the political landscape can become diametrically opposed within a few years. Any investment could easily be completely wiped out by new regulations.
The inherent capital cost of nuclear, not NRC regulation, is the major stumbling block to a Nuclear Renaissance 2.0 here in the US.
Bringing down the capital cost of nuclear from its current $18,000/kw to a more rational $8,000 per kw will require firm initial orders for possibly ten AP1000 size reactors, or possibly between fifteen and twenty 300 Mw SMR reactors.
Private investors will not step up to order that many reactors as a means of bringing down nuclear’s capital costs. Only the federal and state governments have that kind of money available to them.
NRC regulations are the biggest factor in “inherent” capital costs. There is nothing “inherent” in them.
Mactoul: “NRC regulations are the biggest factor in “inherent” capital costs. There is nothing “inherent” in them.”
Total BS. I’ve been involved in nuclear construction and operations for almost four decades now, including cost analysis for new-build nuclear projects. The real costs of all forms of heavy-duty industrial construction in the United States, not just nuclear, have tripled since the end of the 1980’s.
Taking a cue from the political gnome James Carville, “It’s the industrial base, stupid!”
The cost of cement, steel rebar, structural steel, access to skilled labor, access to experienced project managers, availability of suitable land, access to civil infrastructure, construction consumables such as wire and fasteners, OSHA workplace safety requirements, environmental compliance requirements in general. The list of cost factors goes on and on.
If the NRC’s regulations all went away tomorrow, these cost factors would still be present.
It’s a chicken-or-egg situation here. A nation’s nuclear industrial base rests upon a nation’s larger industrial base. Reducing the cost of nuclear in America can only be done through reestablishing America’s larger industrial base in general, and America’s nuclear industrial base in particular.
If we want to use nuclear construction as one catalyst among several for bringing industry back to America’s shores — making ourselves an industrial nation again — we have to find the money somewhere needed to pay for the new reactors. I don’t see this happening unless the federal and state governments step up to the plate and pay for the initial series of reactor projects needed to make that industrial revival begin to happen.
I spent a few decades in the industry as well.
The turning point was Three Mile Island in 1979. The core of one reactor melted down.
After that, costs went through the roof, due to excessive rules and regulations AND high interest rates AND high insurance rates.
Bank did not want to finance, insurance companies did not want to insure, unless backed by federal guarantees.
So there’s lots of factors- time to start solving all these problems, now.
When the TMI problem occurred, I was traveling with an engineer who had been on officer on a USN nuclear sub. When he heard of the TMI accident, he concluded that it had to be human error. He was intimately familiar with Naval and civilian nuclear power systems. He knew that the safety systems would have to overriden for such an accident to occur. He was correct.
GPU, the operator of TMI, did not have a public information team to hold news conferences to explain what was going on to the press. The first press conference was set up by the NFC, but this was days after the accident. The press sent many teams to the site to cover the story. For days no one was available to explain the facts. The press created stories from very little information. The incident was sensationalized, not explained by the press. By the time that the NRC got the facts out to the press, it was too late to counter the initial sensationalized media reports.
b-b-b-b-but Jane Fonda!!!!
And certainly some of those material costs should decrease with cheaper energy gotten with fossil fuels and nuclear energy- a beneficial cycle that should get started ASAP.
Beta Blocker “The real costs of all forms of heavy-duty industrial construction in the United States, not just nuclear, have tripled since the end of the 1980’s.”
Yes, inflation has driven costs higher over the past half Century. Construction material costs have increased dramatically. A substantial portion of these cost increases can be attributed to the massive increase in regulatory costs which have been added in that same time frame. It is not only the construction process much has been burdened by excessive regulations, it is the entire supply chain which has been burdened by massive regulatory costs.
Perhaps it is time to evaluate the cost/benefit of these regulations. Some regulations have been valuable. Other regulations have drastically increased costs and added delays with questionable benefits.
A perfect example of over-regulation is the Palisades Fire rebuilding. As of next Tuesday, it will be one year since over 6,000 structures were destroyed in Pacific Palisades. In a meeting in January, 2025, LA Mayor Karen Bass promised to expedite permits for rebuilding the Palisades. She didn’t follow through. Since that meeting, the number of homes lost in the fire which have been permitted, rebuilt and occupied is ZERO. LA was crowing about a new home that was occupied in the Palisades, however it received its building permit in 2024 (before the fire).
I have also worked in construction. I’ve built semiconductor fabs in the US and six other countries.
China builds complete, latest generation, 2000 MW plants at a turnkey cost of about $10 billion in about 5 years.
Russia’s cost is slightly higher, but Russia provides A to Z services and very low cost long-term financing.
All those plants are designed to last 60 years and can be upgraded to last 80 years.
There are reasons Europe is no longer competitive on domestic and world markets, one being the idiocy of super expensive, short life, wind, solar, batteries, two not fracking, three closing down perfectly good nuclear and coal plants, four having an outrageous quantity of rules and regulations, which it wants to impose on other countries for colonial control reasons.
wilpost: “China builds complete, latest generation, 2000 MW plants at a turnkey cost of about $10 billion in about 5 years.”
The Chinese can do this because their nuclear projects are funded and manged through a system based upon state corporatism; because as a nation they have a robust industrial base as a whole at their beck and call; and because they have a well-experienced nuclear construction industrial base and workforce which rests upon the larger national industrial base. Everything they need to keep costs under control is present and accounted for in their nuclear program.
China also had trade surpluses of $1 trillion in 2024 and 2025, despite sanctions and tariffs
Don’t forget China and Russia fund groups who demand we hobble ourselves with more rules and regulations. Smart tactics, bad for the west.
You are dreaming.
The US, and especially Europe, are very able to shoot themselves in the foot.
Look at all the fraud, crime and chaos perpetrated by walk ins from shit hole countries that keep no records for vetting
Russia, the Gas Station
Russia, the “gas station,” under the most comprehensive sanctions regime in modern history, now ranks as the fourth-largest economy in the world by purchasing-power parity.
However, the war-mongering UK, uncompetitive, with an in-shambles industrial base, an economy in zero-growth GDP mode, with super-expensive wind/solar/batteries systems, beset by millions of indigenous-culture-destroying, mostly Muslim walk-ins from all over: 1) cannot publish a defense investment plan on time;
2) cannot field a functioning armored vehicle without injuring its own troops;
3) has an economy that cannot sustain rearmament in spite of private finance gimmicks and accounting contortions;
4) has a political class that cannot reconcile its war talk with its industrial capacity;
5) increasingly resembles a heritage museum, complete with a gift shop, living off past glories while subcontracting its future.
Wars are won by output — steel, shells, access to critical minerals, drones, logistics, and the brutal arithmetic of throughput.
Russia’s military-industrial base, bureaucratically compressed, hardened, and scaled under pressure, now outpaces NATO’s collective ammunition production by a multiple.
In sum, while Russia produces, the UK 1) reviews glorified mission statements; 2) delays indefinitely out of impotence; 3) Russia fields game-changing adaptations learned from battlefield within months, while the UK commissions another inquiry.
Some of our trillion dollar Pentagon budget should go for this purpose- especially if we can figure out how to tame China so they’re not a threat.
Some of our $0.93 trillion budget for all defense spending might be spent for this purpose – especially if we can figure out how to tame our continuing massive deficit spending, where just the annual interest on our national debt ($0.98 trillion) now exceeds our defense spending. (Ref: https://www.usdebtclock.org )
Some can see the immediate threat . . . and it is us.
Per some other blog… I was researching to write a response but this guy’s post says it anyway
https://neutronbytes.com/2025/05/24/1st-thoughts-four-executive-orders-on-nuclear-energy/
Main idea:
“This is the story of how the ill-fated GNEP program under President George W. Bush collapsed due to congressional push back on funding. Like the current batch of executive orders, GNEP offered a vast menu of big ticket items including new reactors, a big emphasis on spent fuel reprocessing programs, and involvement of federal facilities to host them.”
Trump has gotten more done in one year (inside USA) than Bush did in 8 years, but I don’t see a big difference in Bush’s and Trump’s intent. In both cases any number of executive orders is nothing without congress agreeing to take an unpopular decision.
The energy landscape is very different one though with power demands rapidly rising due to increased electrification and datacenters popping up all over the place. Trump’s tariffs also push towards increased domestic industrial production which will also increase energy demand. It’s also paramount to analyse the mistakes of previous nuclear agencies in order to avoid repeating the errors that were committed as mentioned below (Beta Blocker). Technically it’s now possible to build inherently safe installations, with completely different waste treatment options (much shorter half-life of nuclear waste). There’s enough partially spent nuclear fuel around to meet energy demands for hundreds of years if one can seriously tap into it.
There is only one thing standing in our way for reliable, safe, clean and plentiful power. Everyone knows what it is, crappy dishonest government. Remove the government roadblocks and we can enjoy plentiful and affordable power.
Undoing Carter era sabotage is critical. To put it in brief, Jimmy Carter was much more concerned with nuclear weapons proliferation than having a functioning nuclear power program.
Add that to Paul Ehrlich type Greens, (having cheap and abundant power is like giving an idiot child a machine gun), and it is no wonder the rules were cooked to make it very expensive to build anything nuclear.
What difference does it make? Maybe looking after yourself, and not worrying too much about whether you are “winning” or “losing”, might be a more productive course.
There isn’t much point in “winning” if it costs you more than the prize is worth. A fixation on “winning” at all costs might result in “losing” in the long run. If envy is the basis for wanting to “win”, it seems counter productive. Envy is one of the seven deadly sins, after all.
“There isn’t much point in “winning” if it costs you more than the prize is worth.”
What are the costs if we don’t “win”?
Either you have no idea, which makes you ignorant, or you’re just trying to be a smartass for no particular reason.
Either way, your question is remarkably stupid. Entering a race where you don’t know what the reward is, or the costs involved, is a fool’s enterprise.
If you simply believe “the Government must know what it’s doing”, then you are gullible as well as ignorant. The sort of person who believes that adding CO2 to air makes thermometers hotter, because “a scientist said so”.
If you are trying to appear intelligent, you are making a poor fist of it.
I’m surprised that addressing the linear no threshold regulations has not been mentioned. The “as low as reasonably achievable” (ALARA) has cost companies and the government untold fortunes without really protecting people as advertised. The Health Physics Society ran a series of articles about the development of today’s radiation exposure limits on their web page(HPS.org). Perhaps yet another example of where a few people may have corrupted the system with their bias. I worked for years in the field and consider it a waste of a hard earned PhD. Revamping these regulations would go a long way towards making nuclear power affordable.
Having been a direct witness to what happened with failed nuclear projects in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s — painful examples are Zimmer, Marble Hill, four of the five WPPSS projects, etc. — by far the greatest cause of nuclear project cost and schedule overruns was the failure of project managers to follow the quality assurance programs they had agreed to in their license applications, with the consequence that much rework of systems and components was needed to correct those QA deficiencies.
LNT and ALARA have had their cost and schedule impacts, for sure. But reducing ALARA and eliminating LNT will only go so far in reducing nuclear’s costs.
Here is the hard reality which the NRC’s critics refuse to acknowledge. The NRC’s quality assurance requirements cannot be reduced, and will not be reduced. Because a nuclear power plant which has not been constructed to its approved design specification is an inherently dangerous nuclear power plant.
The legacy mega scale Westinghouse $80 billion announcement is the worst thing that happened to NuScale Power and Oklo this year. That $80 billion should be directed to building one each NuScale and one each Oklo assembly line factories.
The future has to be assembly line manufactured SMR’s. Nuclear opponent organizations are too sophisticated and well financed. They have demonstrated their time tested and proven talent to use activist judges for obstruction and delay to kill long construction time nuclear. We need to have learned that lesson and face that reality.
SMR’s require an assembly line factory to capture economy of scale by volume. Investment banks and manufacturing corporations alone can’t be expected to build the first one or ideally two such factories. We need two corporate consortium’s to partner with the DOE and begin SMR assembly plant construction by early 2028. If we don’t capture the moment China will once again capture the market.
Legacy mega-scale nuclear attempted to achieve economy of scale by size and failed. Mega-scale nuclear in the U.S. is as obsolete as coal, wind, and solar. Combined Cycle Gas Turbine’s are so incredibly efficient (68% conversion efficiency and 90+% capacity factor) and natural gas from horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking so inexpensive (<$4/MCF) and prolific (>100 years of proven reserves) that nothing can compete with it
……. until >100/year small scale modular reactors (<100 MW each) are coming off the assembly line, transported fully assembled on semi-trailers to the pre-built generating station jobsite ready for the reactor to plug and play. Connect, test, commission and In operation in months, not years.
Nuclear is the least mineral and space intensive, and the most energy dense. It can’t miss, it’s simply a question of when not if.
Perhaps.
But I suggest that before that assembly line is started, there be a real-world demonstration of a SMR to show that its particular design & construction has sufficient safety, reliability, energy conversion efficiency, and unit life cycle costs to make it competitive with existing fossil-fuel power plants, or failing that to make it at least life cycle cost competitive with existing utility-scale uranium-fueled nuclear power plants rated at about 1 GWe per reactor.
If we start building nuclear in a big way, we will do so recognizing that we are consciously paying a premium over what gas-fired generation costs for the benefit of gaining long term energy security and reliability for the nation’s power grid.
The question here isn’t whether or not new-build nuclear can somehow be made truly cost competitive with gas-fired technology. It can’t be, not for another fifty years at least. The question to be asked is how much of a premium we should be willing to pay for nuclear’s long-term energy reliability and security benefits.
One benefit of nuclear is that because of VC Summer, Vogtle 3 & 4, and the failure of US-DOE’s MOX effort, it is no longer possible to blatantly ignore what the true cost and schedule of a nuclear construction project will be.
Anyone who is promoting a specific nuclear project to a specific customer must now be completely honest and transparent concerning what that project will actually cost, and how long it will take to construct it. Which is a good thing, is it not?
Agree with you that not even SMR nuclear can compete with CCGT here in the U.S. for decades. But we need an alternative to unworkable wind and solar for those voters who are afraid of plant food (CO2).
.
Wind and solar, when the new FLCOE (Full Levelized Cost) that includes firming, gap filling, and cost to dismantle, landfill, and pay the capital cost for replacing systems that last 20-30 years instead of nuclear 60-80 years: Wind and solar are at least 2-3 times more expensive than SMR. SMR competition in the U.S. isn’t CCGT it’s wind/solar/battery.
The biggest motivation for an early start on SMR manufacturing is industrial growth and jobs in the U.S. We have a $trillion export opportunity marketing SMR’s to countries without our horizontally drilled and hydraulically fracked natural gas bonanza.
Please get back to me regarding this assertion once we have SMR design that has demonstrated the required features that I stated above.
One thing to note: All current designs of U.S. nuclear plants depend upon offsite power from the grid to supply the equipment that removes decay heat from a reactor that has tripped offline. (This prevents a fuel meltdown.) In fact, they have relays that monitor offsite power frequency and voltage constantly. If they fall below certain values, they trip the reactor. The emergency diesel generators only have enough oil to run for approximately 7 days, then a new fuel supply must be brought in. The unit cannot be restarted until the low voltage/frequency condition is cleared.
Think about this when larger and larger parts of grid power are from intermittent sources. For this reason, larger and larger amounts of power need to be from stable sources like nuclear. The danger is the transition period with rising nuclear supply if we continue to use wind and solar. We may not be able to depend on nuclear to restore us from a blackout.
All US nuclear plants have emergency generators to run critical system to avoid any damage to the plant, by law.
In an emergency, the plant can be totally isolated from the grid, and still provide power for critical systems.
True, but as I stated above, they have to be refueled and that could be a problem during a catastrophe.
Stop spouting nonsense!
One of the reasons I like the NuScale SMR design is that it is capable of black start without needing a connection to offsite power to keep it stable while its output is ramping up. It is also better at load-following in general in being able to quickly increase and reduce its output.
A ganged NuScale reactor complex composed of either four or six 77 Mw SMR units housed in a single containment structure can be refueled one unit at a time while the other units are operating. And from a nuclear safety perspective, the emergency response zone extends only to the plant fence.
The four or six individual SMR units themselves use natural circulation for cooling and reside in a common pool of water inside the containment building. Meltdowns ala Fukushima are therefore highly unlikely.
How does a 300 MW Ge-Hitachi BWRX-300 do the same thing? The answer here is that it doesn’t do load-following directly as does the NuScale design. If an installed GE-Hitachi SMR carries load-following responsibilities, it is paired with a 75 MW gas-fired plant supplied as part of a package deal.
Thanks, BB. I was unaware of the black start capability of the NuScale design. Unfortunately, none of them are built.
Not built but a half dozen NuScale Power reactors are in the later stage of fabrication in a plant in South Korea.
One thought is to equip nuclear plants with a small turbine generator that would run off the steam provided by the decay heat. This heat has to be removed so why not make use of it to provide power during shutdown?
“The NRC is funded almost entirely through industry fees—more than $800 million annually”
Wow, why do hey need THAT much $$$ for regulation? They must do more than merely regulate.
“America’s nuclear industry will require a rapid build-out of our nuclear workforce and supply chain”
Since AI is about to wipe out a lot of white collar jobs- there should be no shortage of workers for the industry.
I live in a fairly sparse population area that has a huge construction capabilities as they are building Data Centers faster then I ever believed possible. I’m thinking if this can be done where population is so sparse it can be done nationally. As for an actual nuclear workforce, the area is crawling with ex Navy Nucs hired to work at the Data Centers just chomping at the bit for an actual nuclear job.
Some “laughers” from the above article:
1) “First, the federal government should provide robust support for a series of new nuclear plants.” That this follows the article’s earlier acknowledgement that Trump “signed a series of executive orders designed to accelerate reactor licensing and reform regulations, with a goal of bringing 300 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity online by 2050″ can logically be interpreted as a call for taxpayer monies—”robust”, at that—subsidizing nuclear power plant developers. Apparently, the deal is not so economically sound that it can stand on its own feet . . . you know the play, pretty much the same as with wind and solar.
2) “Other countries have achieved impressive cost reductions through sequential construction, and America’s existing nuclear fleet—the largest and most reliable in the world—was built using this model.”
Well, with the possible exceptions of the totalitarian nations of China and the former Soviet Union, I don’t believe this is true . . . and it certainly is NOT TRUE for the US since about 1970. If anything in terms of dollars-adjusted-for-inflation, the cost-per-MWe capacity for designing, siting, constructing, testing and bringing on-line new power plants has steadily increased since 1970. See
https://ifp.org/nuclear-power-plant-construction-costs/ that states:
“The story of nuclear power plants in the U.S. is one of steadily rising costs to build them. Commercial plants whose construction began in the late 1960s cost $1000/KWe or less (in 2010 dollars); plants started just 10 years later cost nine times that much. Today the Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors are likely to come in at around $8000/KWe in overnight costs ($6000/KWe in 2010 dollars), with an actual cost of nearly double that due to financing costs.”
Then too, the rate of construction of power plants in democratic nations outside the US, for the period of, say, 1970 to 2010 was so low as to establish there wasn’t anything that reasonably could be called “sequential construction” in any of those other non-totalitarian countries.
3) “Reducing investor risk through targeted insurance mechanisms and measures that prevent costly delays would boost deployment.”
GovernmentTaxpayer “loan guarantees” (a la Solyndra) or exemptions from usual accounting/transparency standards will smell as sweet.4) “The NRC is funded almost entirely through industry fees—more than $800 million annually—while agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency use taxpayer funds to support its work regulating other power generators.”
Seriously? The authors of the above article want to equate the unique life cycle issues of using chain reactions of refined uranium and plutonium and their radioactive “daughter” products and their subsequent long term storage (isolation of SPNF from the environment) with those associated with fossil fuel, stored hydro, wind and solar power plants? . . . Of course they do! /sarc.
The inevitable nuclear renaissance requires assembly line cookie cutter identical, one SMR NRC design approval fits all, delivered to the jobsite on semi-trailers for plug and play.
Yes, tax credits and mandates and other incentives are essential for getting that factory in operation but unlike wind and solar that continues to require a wealth of incentives 40 years later, SMR can go it alone after more like 4 years. Transfer all those wind/solar/batery incentives to SMR and we’ll have an industry and power source that is economically net positive, in contrast to RE (Ruinous Energy).
Got any objective, factual data . . . any at all . . . to support that assertion, given that no practical SMR design has yet been demonstrated in real world conditions?
In this regard, I note with keen interest that the SMRs said to the world’s first to be connected to a grid, at the Shidaowan power plant in Shandong province in China, comprised of two PBMR units, each of 250 MWt capacity, which began providing power at commercial levels in December 2023, have not had any associated news releases in over two years as to (a) how trouble-free these reactors have been, or (b) what their overall realized MWt-to-MWe conversion efficiency has been. Hmmmm . . .
TYS. Are you trying to kid yourself or other readers? The Shidaowan high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) project online in December 2023 couldn’t be more unlike than NuScale’s SMR.
Shidaowan is never before attempted commercial gas cooled vs Nuscale convention water cooled. Shidaowan is new technology pebble fuel, NuScale is the same fuel used for decades in all light-water pressurized reactors,
Shidaowan is two each on site assembled 250 MW reactors. NuScale is 77 MW factory assembled, semi-trailer delivered for plug and play.
Calling your comparison apples and oranges would give the failed error filled comparison way too much credit. NuScale is NRC design approved technology. The first 6 reactors are in a late fabrication stage at a plant in South Korea.
You asked for:
“objective, factual data . . . any at all . . . to support that assertion” . There it is, more than enough to meet your data requirement. I report, you decide .I don’t debate, I educate and inform.
No, just attempting to inform them.
Exactly . . . the two Shidaowan HTGR’s have gone on-line in terms of producing electricity fed into a grid, whereas the NuScale SMRs exist only as design drawings and nice PowerPoint sales pitches. Please tell me how many NuScale SMRs, to date, have been “delivered for plug and play”?
As with US Government PTO-awarded patents, there is a wide, often-insurmountable, gulf between “approved (really just proposed) technology” and practical application. For example, need I mention the uncountable number of patents “approved” for contained, self-sustaining nuclear fusion reaction “technology”?
You are, of course, free to call such that if you wish. IMHO, it is more deserving of a two-letter acronym that begins with “B” and ends with “S”.
Thorcon and Copenhagen Atomics are 2 companies ready to proceed with SMRs. Government approvals and access to radioactive fuel is the roadblock.
“Well, Jane, it just goes to show you, it’s always something — if it’s not one thing, it’s another.”
— Roseanne Roseannadanna commentary, SNL
Anybody else see the humor between the title of the above article “Seizing the Moment for U.S. Nuclear Energy Dominance” and this phase in the last sentence of the fifth paragraph of that article:
“. . . and America’s existing nuclear fleet—the largest and most reliable in the world— . . .”
The United States has the most commercial nuclear power plants and the most operational nuclear reactors, with around 94 reactors across 54 plants as of 2024-2025, making it the world’s largest producer of nuclear electricity, followed by France and China.
And the comparison gets even more lopsided if one includes operating nuclear power plants used by the military naval fleets of each nation.
Now, about that word “dominance” . . .
ROTFL.