By Robert Bradley Jr.
“Bipartisan support for commercial fission in Congress and the White House has opened the subsidy floodgates and, to an extent, reined-in overregulation. But the information of a free market where government is neutral is needed for the first time in the history of the industry.”
Free-market energy adherents are warned to not make commercial nuclear power (fission) the new government darling in place of wind, solar, and batteries. Instead, a free-market framework needs to be established to let the market decide with government neutral.
Special government favor created this peacetime industry in the 1950s, and its heralded promise never eventualized since. At the same time, turbine technology to generate electricity put fuel oil and natural gas into the game, providing much needed (fossil fuel) competition to coal. Wind and solar as grid electricity were nowhere through the 1960s and into the 1970s.
My study, Nuclear Power: A Free Market Approach (AIER: January 20, 2026), examines the history of the 70-year-old industry. The story is as much politics as economics, and by any measure, nuclear power is the largest and most costly failure in U.S. energy history. In its simplest terms, nuclear fission is the most complicated, fraught, and expensive way to boil water to steam the turbines.
Too many on the free-market side consider commercial nuclear as the little engine that could have, with government overregulation being the problem. True, overregulation joined over-subsidization, but the latter set up the former. Take away both and nuclear power would not have been commercialized in the U.S. and probably elsewhere.
About the best that can be said is that nuclear is a successful failure. In Vaclav Smil’s words: “To whatever extent the technology can be termed a technological success, it is an economic failure.” In a world of competing ends to unlimited wants, this is a negative outcome.
Carte Blanche?
Nuclear is also a darling of the energy planners in and outside of academia. After all, nuclear fission is arguably the only mass-scale alternative to fossil fuel generation besides played-out, limited hydropower. But hope springs eternal with the ‘experts’ and would-be energy planners. The fire-ready-aim approach was forwarded by researchers at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
The United States needs to re-embrace nuclear energy and retake its role as a global leader in nuclear power technology…. Operationalizing a U.S. nuclear resurgence requires agreeing on an ambitious goal and working together to realize it. Just as Trump in his first term announced Operation Warp Speed to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to market, both parties should set aside partisan differences and back a Nuclear Operation Warp Speed with a target of building 20 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity by 2035.
The authors, Jason Bordoff, Ashley Finan, and Matt Bowen, refer to new proposed legislation, the International Nuclear Energy Act, intended to “to support the U.S. domestic nuclear energy industry’s leadership and offset China and Russia’s growing influence on international nuclear energy development.”
The bill’s sponsors were each quoted in a press release:
“If the U.S. doesn’t lead on nuclear energy development, Russia and China will. This bill will give us the tools we need to compete with these authoritarian aggressors and build long-lasting nuclear energy deals that benefit our economy and ensure America remains the leader on nuclear energy for generations to come,” said Chairman Risch.
“With the International Nuclear Energy Act, we’re not asking for a seat at the table—we’re setting the agenda on global nuclear development,” said Senator Lee. “Achieving American energy dominance will require us to streamline our nuclear exports, foster our relationships abroad, and bring the full weight of American industry to bear in out-competing our geopolitical adversaries. I’m grateful to partner with Senator Risch to ensure that America remains at the forefront of nuclear power for decades to come.”
“We need to counter Russia and China’s growing influence in nuclear energy development. That’s why I’m proud to cosponsor legislation that will boost America’s global energy dominance, unlock new partnerships and projects that will benefit American workers, and protect our national security,” said Senator Heinrich.
Government this-and-that is written all over the bill. In the words of its sponsors, the International Nuclear Energy Act would:
• Support the establishment of an office to coordinate civil nuclear exports strategy; establish financing relationships; promote regulatory harmonization; enhance safeguards and security; promote standardization of licensing framework; and create a nuclear exports working group.
• Create programs to facilitate international nuclear energy cooperation to develop financing relationships, training, education, market analysis, safety, security, safeguards and nuclear governance required for a civil nuclear program.
• Require a cabinet-level biennial summit focused on nuclear safety, security, and safeguards, and to enhance cooperative relationships between private industry and government.
• Establish a Strategic Infrastructure Fund Working Group to determine how to best structure a Fund to finance projects critical to national security.
Existing nuclear capacity, advantaged by sunk costs, can compete against new capacity from fossil fuels and from renewables. But for new nuclear capacity, the hoopla has not resulted in follow-through except in centrally planned economies where cost is not determining.
Energy expert Robert Bryce has described the gulf between aspiration and reality, with such talks and essays titled “The Nuclear Renaissance Isn’t What You Think” and “Nuclear Reality Check” and “Yes Nuclear. How Much, How Soon?” He, like many others, desperately wants competitive nuclear. But ….
Optimism and hyperbola about Small Nuclear Reactor (SMPs) pushed stock valuations high several years ago, followed by reality checks. A particularly hard month was in November of last year, when Oklo, NuScale Power, Terrestrial Energy, and Nano Nuclear Energy were significantly devalued. These stocks have not recovered. NuScale, for example, from a high of $57 per share a year ago is now trading below $8.00 per share.
Conclusion
Bipartisan support for commercial fission in Congress and the White House has opened the subsidy floodgates and, to an extent, reined-in overregulation. But the information of a free market where government is neutral is needed for the first time in the history of the industry. There is an off-ramp for self-regulation, as I forwarded in my primer from early this year.
In general, a free market approach to nuclear would entail
Ending governmental research and development in the field. Abolishing public grants and tax preferences for the industry. Halting foreign-loan guarantees. Repealing the Price-Anderson Act in order to privatize safety and insurance regulation. Lifting all antitrust constraints on industry collaboration. Making waste storage the responsibility of waste owners. Removing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the US Department of Energy from civilian nuclear policy.
And more specifically, involved parties can determine risk and a proven industry organization can replace the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the ground.
And:
Investors and other financial stakeholders would judge reliance and safety, not Washington, DC. Radiation (such as the controversial linear no-threshold limit) and other standards would be determined by the parties informed by science. What would a judge or jury believe in this regard?
Free markets anyone?
“Free markets anyone?”
Yes please and while we’re at it everywhere…won’t happen as long there’s a shit disturber called “government”..sadly.
Story Tip: CNN has to shoehorn “the climate crisis” into EVERYTHING https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/13/science/leap-second-elimination-time-standard
“This wobbling stems from various factors, such as the moon’s gravitational pull, shifts deep in the planetary core, and the movement of water and ice on Earth’s surface — an effect that’s exacerbated by the melting of the polar ice caps due to the climate crisis.”
Each time I have a climate crisis, I either put on or take off a woolly jumper & ( when it’s a climate emergency) a hat !!
First of all, I hate the word “exacerbated”. It’s an ugly word used by people who can’t write or speak intelligently. And, the idea that melting glaciers will contribute to the wobbling of the Earth is so insane, such “thinkers” truly need urgent mental health treatment.
What word would you suggest instead, Joseph?
I dunno- I just hate that word. It’s like another one I dislike- “reiterate” when people mean “repeat”. Words that people don’t use when speaking but which sound sophisticated but aren’t better than plainer words.
I agree. The US definitely needs to adopt a free market economy. Or just borrow its way out of debt.
Sounds like a shill for oil and gas.
Nuclear power is actually today the cheapest and extremely simple way of boiling water for a steam turbine
The cost and complexity all come from a deliberately paranoid and oppressive regulation and licensing regime engendered to ensure its failure.
BUT you cant deny reality forever
A nuclear power station in complexity and construction materials is almost identical to a coal fired power station.
The only difference is the regulatory framework to which each is built, and the fact that the fuel cost of a fission reactor is about 1% of the cost of coal, and te radioactive content of the residue is singularly far less than that remaining in coal fly-ash
No government money need be spent on promoting nuclear. Simply stop spending it on promoting renewables and spending money on yet another layer of regulatory ratcheting to stop nuclear power.
Already large corporate interests have DoneSums™ and worked out that a small modular reactor powering e.g. an aluminium smelter or a data centre, makes sound economic sense.
And as fossil prices ratchet ever upwards due to expense of extraction and declining resources, the price of renewables will climb with them . Only nuclear can essentially break the vicious circle.
The real problem is that governments have sold themselves as being the solution to problems, for which they charge a very high price in taxation. And deliver a highly corruption prone and over bureaucratised solutions that never seem to work
In the case of nuclear fissions, the sole reason for cost and complexity is government over-regulation.
Other nations – Canada with ots CANDU – France with its original PWR range have shown how if you want to do it, it can be done at extremely competitive costs
The problem with gas turbines, is the order backlog on the turbines. No such backlog exists for steam turbines per se.
Nuclear fission will be the next power source of civilisations. Because there is no other realistic alternative
Governments that get in the way will be custodians of nations sliding back into barbarism
The USA is fortunate in that by the time it runs out of cheap fossil fuel, the rest of the world will be able to sell it tried and tested nuclear technology.
Although at what big beautiful import tariff, is unknown…
There are centuries of available hydro-carbon fuels that can be reasonably extracted. aside from the regulatory structure, the problem is distribution. Pull up enough rail or deny/damage pipelines and things fall apart fast.
That is why I’m excited about the K culture. Similar to a K economy, the K culture has, broadly speaking, two directions: up for those who are embracing and expanding the tech and reaping the benefits, and down, for those retards that burning things in the streets and have embraced NIMBY and BANANA for any development.
It creates easily visible demarcations: Nihilists who are on the lower arm of the K and futurists who imagine colonizing Mars. It isn’t just building the data centers, its the Can-Do attitude of circumventing the impediments imposed by the Nihilists & Destroyers. Can’t use the grid? Ok, we’ll build our own and when yours collapses you can look over the fence at our fully lit and operating facilities. You made your choice.
The Pareto Principle has changed its ratios as the Replacement Population is more entrenched, instead of 80/20 its probably now 95/5. The 5% have AI Boost, so things should progress fine as long as reasonable people avoid the X – separate themselves from the 95% who are smoking dope, making raunchy TikTok videos and/or burning down civilization.
There are centuries of available hydro-carbon fuels that can be reasonably extracted
All the evidence than I have been able to access suggest that is more an opinion, than an established fact, Since your whole point is based on a questionable premise that I simply cannot accept as factual I can say no more than ..
Utter Bollocks
With that said, a free market that picks up those ideas and examines them truthfully from every angle – from every conceivable angle would be no threat.
“In the case of nuclear fissions, the sole reason for cost and complexity is government over-regulation.
Other nations – Canada with ots CANDU – France with its original PWR range have shown how if you want to do it, it can be done at extremely competitive costs”
Exactly so. The fatal flaw in Bradley’s argument is that he assumes that nothing outside Washington and the United States is relevant. He further assumes that US political problems are relevant anywhere else. He assumes that US regulatory idiocy is mirrored anywhere else. Bradley’s national myopia is sufficient to dismiss any of his positions on pretty much anything.
The World Nuclear Association say currently there are 440 operating reactors in 31 countries worldwide, 80 reactors under construction in 15 countries and a further 120 plants planned.
South Korea has built 13 nuclear reactors since 1996 at an average build time of 4.5 years – the more recent ones faster than that.
“the rest of the world will be able to sell it tried and tested nuclear” Really? Name the “rest of the world” China mostly steals tech from others and has a declining aging population. Czar Ras-Putin is destroying Russia which has a declining population. Name that country and I will tell you their problems.
Any politician using that phrase today is lazy since this isn’t the 1950s. The West no longer has anything that resembles a homogeneous society. There is no mono culture, there is no “We”, because the West has turned into an amorphous cultural, ethnic, religious blob that is well on its way to social autophagy.
The reason to do nuclear is because it fits a use case. Satellites are the most complicated, fraught, and expensive way to communicate but tens of thousands of them are being hurled into orbit.
The problem I see with nuclear fission is that the West is devolving into a society that doesn’t have the intellectual heft, the culture that is compatible with operating such technology, nor does it have a population that understands it other than what is believed from nuclear disaster movies.
These retards burning things in the streets are not the people you want managing a nuclear fission power plant.
Maybe there is wisdom in Wind and Solar. Its too simple to screw up by the lazy, moronic degenerate neo-luddites that are replacing a technology based society.
“…Wind and Solar. Its too simple to screw up”
I suppose you are right, except for the fact that wind and solar simply do not work to maintain an always-available grid. In fact they begin life as a screw up, they are parasitic to the grid and impose all manner of additional costs to consumers with very questionable CO2 emission reductions because of backup needs.
I agree about wine and solar. They do not belong on the grid because of their inability to be dispatchable and must be backed up with real power generators.
There is a large group of people who understand the nuclear technology because the US Navy keeps training them. I was in the Navy from 1972 to 1981 and operated the nuclear plants on a startup experimental reactor outside Saratoga Springs and then in two different subs as a Reactor Operator.
Ther is a point hidden in your post:
“These retards burning things in the streets are not the people you want managing a nuclear fission power plant.”
The widespread repudiation of real science (not climate science) by people, and their faith in their opinions, religions and prejudices, and their entitlement, arrogance and in the end arrant stupidity – and that’s on all sides of the political divides – is only possible in a world in which their lives have been insulated from the harsh realities of life by the very learning, science, and technology that they reject as boring, racially prejudiced or just plain wrong.
I posit this as an interesting philosophical conundrum…
“Free-market energy adherents are warned to not make commercial nuclear power (fission) the new government darling in place of wind, solar, and batteries. Instead, a free-market framework needs to be established to let the market decide with government neutral.”
Unfortunately, the woke states won’t be neutral. They’ll continue to support and subsidize ruinables to the detriment of the citizens and landscapes of those states.
JZ, fully tracking with your statement above. In the Pacific Northwest, the leftist/neocommies are considering baseload generation destruction by proposing hydroelectric dam removals on the Columbia and Snake rivers, all for sake of salmon populations (so they say). They exhibit a duality in that they will not control the resident sea lion populations that have adapted to the dams’ presence, where the salmon have had to aggregate prior to swimming up the fish ladders, and the mammals feast upon them until gorged. Effectively and drastically reducing salmon counts at those very fish ladders. Is not an existing hydroelectric dam the one source that can prop up the ‘ruinables’ variable power generation that they want as the replacement fir any hydrocarbon driven generators? The brains of leftists/neocommies, if ever charted out would not be a logic if/then flow chart of logic, but a chaotic, emotion driven cesspool of illogic!
Or whatever “pet project” comes long next.
They’ll continue to support and subsidize ruinables to the detriment of the citizens and landscapes of those states….Until they realise that it is to their detriment and vote out the wokery…
This is why the woke has to capture the centralised power structures – the EU, or the US government in order to enforce policies that disallow free market competition and thereby disguise their effects and maximise their profits.
Sadly there is an old market adage – ‘the markets can remain irrational longer than you can afford to lose money waiting for them to change’. People en masse have a huge inertia in their thinking. No one got sacked for following the herd, even if in so doing, (as the saying goes) all the could ever see was the assholes ahead of them…
The way I see it, the value of an energy supply should be determined by the people using it, as long as the people are honestly informed.
There are benefits to coal because the supply could be uninteruptable by having a big pile of it on site.
There are benefits to gas via pipeline, as long as pipelines can be protected from weather variations and the costs stay low.
Nuclear has benefits in that it only needs occasional refueling.
Solar has benefits for small loads that the intermittency won’t cause a problem.
I can’t think of a benefit for windmills other than subsidy farming.
All of the power generators have a niche that is beneficial to the consumer and should be applied without government intervention (other than safety) or subsidies. Let the market decide rather than the uninformed and overhyped.
Selling another book I see – Where were these individuals when the reality of the cost to build one wind turbine is more than it will produce in the lifetime? Second the environmental screed comes from an entirely oblique political process. Taking the automobile for example the first were admittedly while intersting and at my age, wish I had collected them when I hd the opportunity, the perfect example of the BS here. As military and with some non-sheep dipped environmental hangers on, the ability of nuke power would kill the issue of energy and also the depopulation narrative – WHAT? Anyone read the contractor Deaglle report done in 2015, or this little factoid? – 1928 – Origin of Environment fear as genesis of the Totalitarian New World Order. This through Environmental mental fear application. At the Sixth Party Congress held in Moscow in 1928, Communists wrote and approved “The Program” to bring in the New World Order. What most Americans cannot comprehend is the real nature of this diabolical criminal scheme. The Program of the Third International called for a global environmental program for transformation of all human beings on earth to accept the New World Order. These and other facts are brought to light by General Benton Partin in his videotape, Globalism: The Program. This through the above 1923-6 continuing Rockefeller Psychopolitics education program. Now think; 1892, 1904,1913,1923,1926,1934, 1945 and on.
As I understand it, some large data centers are planning to use dedicated SMRs for power. That seems to be a practical example of free market adoption of fission power plants. In addition, the military’s adoption of micro-nukes for remote power should enable further development of an infrastructure for component manufacture to help generate an industrial base.
Costs of regulation are a huge part of the cost of current nuclear build out. Implementation of designs that are inherently safer, including automatic shut-down for loss of cooling, molten salt, and other technologies should enable better regulation.
Regulation and lawfare cripple modern industrial growth in the Western world. In the US, Congress needs to work on consolidating multiple agency reviews into a single framework with an overall time limit on getting a final decision. Similarly, the law should be modified to consolidate legal challenges under different regulations into one master challenge for any specific project. Environmental groups, unions, citizen groups and tribal groups often collaborate to bring serial challenges (sue on under a new theory just as one set of objections is resolved) with the explicit goal of delaying the projects until developers abandon them. The result is that regulatory costs and delays cost more than the projects themselves; and 3year projects balloon to 10-15 years.
“…by any measure, nuclear power is the largest and most costly failure in U.S. energy history.”
Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in southern Maryland (two PWR reactors around 1,800 MW capacity) sells electricity for a penny or two per KwH. This doesn’t sound like a failure to me.
As to SMRs, I cannot understand how a bunch of SMRs feeding the grid as opposed to one large plant has any chance at all of being successful. Economy of scale is real, not fictitious. NuScale couldn’t do it with a dozen or so plants in Idaho and can’t find anyone else to build them – too expensive to build and operate and that is with a proven PWR plant. Many other SMR programs are built around reactor designs that have numerous fatal problems and are simply being promoted to suck up the available money for a while.
There was a several billion dollar nuke plant project a few years ago that was undone by fraud in the construction. The bills kept increasing year after year until bankruptcy.Thorium liquid salts cooled reactors https://www.copenhagenatomics.com is a better way to go. Hindsight is 20/20 and the nuclear accidents….Chernobyl…. …..the mentality of just increasing the size of the original submarine reactor w/o exploring new designs…..the connection to bombs – look at Iran today……all contributed to slow development. SMRs do not need huge power lines cross country….units can be added or subtracted at a location or moved to another location……and less of a terrorist target.
Thorium liquid salts cooled reactors https://www.copenhagenatomics.com is a better way to go.
Of course. Why not take ten years to design and get a better mousetrap approved instead of simply building more mousetraps that are perfectly adequate anyway.
Your incoherent word salad is refreshingly fact free
As to SMRs, I cannot understand how a bunch of SMRs feeding the grid as opposed to one large plant has any chance at all of being successful. Economy of scale is real, not fictitious.
You contradict yourself in that one paragraph. Economies of scale means that insteasof one massive hand built reactor you can build several small modular ones on a factory production line this reducing the cost massively. And achievce better redundancy with – say three SMRS against one big PWR
The other advantages are that the physics of a reactor changes at around 500MWe – below that it is possible to build a PWR that does not need auxiliary pumped cooling under SCRAM conditions. Natural convection alone is enough to keep the shut down reactor cool until its decay heat runs out. Accidents like 3MI or Fukushima become impossible and so the multiple redundant systems to prevent them, become unnecessary – a further saving in cost and regulatory barriers complication
SMRs are designed to be simpler, mass produced and type approved meaning that you can put one up under current regulations in less than three years
It’s called ‘economy of scale’
SMRS are primarily designed to address the problems of building large reactors on site under the current regulatory environment.
The economy of scale argument is as specious as saying we all need to be driving single cylinder cars, because the economies of scale of one large cylinder override the advanteges of having more than one
Ultimately the game is to make an SMR a component – and a cheap one at that – that is just another part of an overall power station, like a steam boiler or steam turbine.
Once you have ‘lots of the same’ its cheaper than ‘one hand built one’ every time., Ask Henry Ford
The advantage of multiple smaller reactors is that some can be left on line while others are taken down for maintenance rather than having to shut down the whole plant for a period.
Lesson from the past.
Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.
Build more mousetraps that work perfectly well ten years ahead of the better mousetrap, and the world will ignore it.
And fusion is even more expensive, making it the stupidest way to generate electricity ever proposed.
Since no one has yer constructed a viable fusion reactor at all, you claim that it is ‘the most expensive way of all’ is based purely on …
…opinionated ignorance
I bet you support things like wind and solar. Ethanol fuel. Biodiesel, All fusion powered.
You lose.