The New Nuclear Golden Age

A Progress Report

I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis.[Greta, 2019]

Figure 1. Aalo’s Critical Test Reactor. 84 years of progress. No messy carbon dust.

The American nuclear establishment has an amazing ability to congratulate itself for abject failure. Every morning the GKG’s inbox is filled with clippings eulogizing all the good things that are happening in the new nuclear golden age,

MOU’s are being signed right and left. Cooperation seems to have gone viral. Nuclear power conferences are experiencing record attendance. The NRC is streamlining all sorts of processes, setting record after record. Nuclear IPO’s are over-subscribed. Billions of investor dollars have been funneled into paper designs, mostly for toy reactors. Quite a bit of this money has leaked out to the promoters. The taxpayer is being bilked at record levels to help these people out. 38 countries have “committed” to tripling nuclear power by 2050. Should be easy since most of them have no nuclear.

The World Nuclear Association just published its 2026 annual report. Here a typical quote:

This strong performance has been matched by unprecedented global engagement. Record attendance at our 50th World Nuclear Symposium and the successful launch of the World Nuclear Supply Chain Conference demonstrate the accelerating interest in nuclear energy. Coupled with our expanding presence in international forums and deeper collaboration with sectors from finance to technology, these milestones signal a structural shift in global support for nuclear.

The glossy report is full of photos of skirts and suits sitting around big tables and preaching into microphones. There are no pictures of a nuclear power plant.

Seems just about everyone agrees the USA needs a lot more dispatchable power NOW. Many people are starting to realize that fossil power costs are on the way up. This is old news to Europeans. We have a proven 60 year old, gigawatt scale technology that did produce and could produce electricity at 3 cents/kWh in today’s money. The Koreans have a current version that can get close to that in the right regulatory environment.

Figure 2. Nuclear Power Plants under Construction.

So how many commercial nuclear power plants are under construction in the US? Zero. How many have been ordered by American utilities? Zero. We have “milestones” and “frameworks” and “targets” and “goals” and “visions” and “initiatives” and no plants. That’s the new nuclear golden age.

Dow Chemical has an agreement to build 400 MW’s of X-energy’s gas reactors for its own use; but that’s contingent on X-energy’s getting through the NRC licensing process. X-energy is currently engaged in the “pre-application engagement” stage. This has involved 17 “topical reports” and 13 “white papers”, some of which have gone through 3 revisions based on NRC’s feedback, which valuable advice is costing X-energy $300 per man-hour. X-energy started the pre-application engagement progress in 2018. I don’t know when they will start the actual license application process.

Under the much ballyhooed DOE Reactor Pilot Plan, we may have a couple of tiny reactors going critical by July 4th. A toy scale, Potemkin nuclear village. As far as I can tell of the original 11 players, all but three are no longer claiming they will meet the dead line.

1) Aalo appears to be the most likely to “succeed” with its Critical Test Reactor. The CTR is vaguely reminiscent of Fermi’s original pile Figure 1. Like Fermi’s pile, the CTR will produce so little power --- we are talking watts --- that it needs no cooling.

2) Antares may also make it with its Mark 0. The Mark 0 is also a zero power test facility.

3) Oklo’s plans seem to change dramatically with each press release, and they put out a lot of press releases. The current push to first criticality appears to be Groves, which is medical isotope reactor, no electricity.

So to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary we will repeat what the Greatest Generation did 84 years ago. Expect a barrage of self-congratulatory pronouncements.

So far the new nuclear golden age has been golden for a few bureaucrats, consultants, NGO’s, and promoters. It has not been golden for either ratepayers or taxpayers. I see no sign that this is about to change.

In fact, things are getting worse. NuScale, the first of the vaunted SMR’s, has proven even more expensive than the most expensive conventional designs. The Financial Times just reported that Sizewell B will be even more expensive than the astronomically expensive Hinkley Point C, showing the value of replicating a design when the regulator is in charge. The one Free World reactor that might have been able to break through the regulatory logjam has been incarcerated in Korea. And that’s under a supposedly pro-nuclear administration. The Trump administration is a great believer in Executive Orders. It could replace LNT by an EO, but it consciously chose not to. Imagine the progress we will have under a less pro-nuclear President.

Maybe it’s time to heed Greta’s advice. Pass the Nuclear Reorganization Act.