Above, clip from a presentation by Dr Joseph Romm of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media. He refers to a few of the major stumbling blocks to Small Modular Nuclear development.
Nuclear energy has emerged as a rare point of agreement between some Democrats and Republicans, and even between some climate advocates and the Trump administration. The greenhouse gas emissions of nuclear power are low, and it produces a constant hum of power, unlike solar and wind.
And public support has turned a corner in recent years: About 60 percent of U.S. adults now say they support building more nuclear power plants, up from 43 percent 2020, according to a recent survey by Pew Research Center.
Despite the vibe shift, the U.S. has fallen far behind China in the development of new nuclear plants, Brad Plumer and Harry Stevens report today.
“China is quickly becoming the global leader in nuclear power, with nearly as many reactors under construction as the rest of the world combined,” they write. Since 2013, the U.S. has built just two nuclear reactors. Over the same time period, China has built 13, with an additional 33 in the works.
Previous efforts to build S.M.R.s in the United States have stalled, in part because of out-of-control costs. An Energy Department pilot program aims to have at least three advanced nuclear reactors located outside the national labs reach the milestone of criticality by July of 2026.
Professor Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that the deadlines were ambitious and were just a first step. He compared the criticality milestone with turning on the ignition on the prototype of a new car: The vehicle is technically running, but it’s years away from passing the safety tests and other hurdles before it can hit the market.
The Trump administration has been explicit about its efforts to speed up the development of new nuclear facilities. One executive order calls for the industry’s safety regulator to approve applications in no more than 18 months. It also instructs the same group to revise its rules.
But Buongiorno said regulations weren’t really the biggest bottleneck holding back new nuclear plants. Money is a big issue: It costs $10 billion to build a nuclear reactor, he said.
President Donald Trump is eager for the United States to build large nuclear reactors again — with Japanese money.
Administration officials are pulling every lever they can. They’re using trade deals, pulling the China card, and even elbowing into the boardroom of the largest U.S.-based reactor maker: Westinghouse Energy.
“The world is wanting to go and embrace nuclear power,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said last week. “And guess who’s building their reactors? The Russians or the Chinese.”
The president and his loquacious Commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, unveiled two agreements during their trip to Asia this week that, at least on paper, would lead to a nuclear buildout in the United States and could boost U.S. reactor sales overseas.
— One is a $550 billion investment package folded into a U.S.-Japan trade deal. Under that, Japan will help finance $80 billion worth of U.S. nuclear projects.
— Under a second deal, the Trump administration and Pennsylvania-based Westinghouse effectively became business partners this week. If government investment leads to profits at Westinghouse, the deal opens the door to American taxpayers getting a large equity stake in the company.
Building Westinghouse into a nuclear juggernaut ties into another front: an effort to keep Russia and China from elbowing the U.S. out of the global market for reactors, Francisco “A.J.” Camacho and Brian Dabbs report.
The history of nuclear power in the US makes it a tough investment proposition. In particular, the long lead times, and propensity for overruns and delays, mean taking on a ton of risk and expense for years before any new plant starts producing power. By then, power prices and expectations can change dramatically
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Nuclear power’s expense and risks mean it has always relied on government support in some form, be it cheap financing, regulatory help or funneling the cost into ratepayer bills. China’s breakneck reactor construction rests on such foundations. In this American, and specifically Trumpian, version, there is also the concept of potentially making a killing. With the US incentivized to tee-up a win, and every bank incentivized to lead an IPO, I suspect valuation models for Westinghouse would reliably spit out numbers north of that.
The far right has delayed renewable energy for decades for several reasons:
1) Financial ties to the fossil fuels industry
2) Pwn the libs
3) The psychological significance of dominating nature by burning things and smashing atoms for energy and of dominating people through centralized production and monopoly. Probably the most important reason by far.
4) Connections to nuclear weapons is important for financial and psychological reasons including aggression (and low IQ, both caused by burning fossil fuels) and nihilism.
And now,
5) to pwn the Chinese.
6) to pwn the Japanese by extorting support as part of a trade deal including refraining from tariffs—der Gropenführer’s trademark move now. More domination.
7) to justify nukes and to convince the public nukes are justified and the only possibility. More extortion.