We Can Make Nuclear Cheap Again Now Downloadable

Figure 1. Still available for a coffee table near you

Only a crisis --- actual or perceived --- produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That I believe is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.[Milton Friedman, 1982]

My attempt to get publicity for the Nuclear Reorganization Act by writing a best seller has been an abysmal flop. We Can Make Nuclear Cheap Again has sold less than 200 copies. I’ve now made the PDF downloadable for free. Go to the Gordian Knot Group website, click on Books in the top left corner, select We Can Nuclear Cheap Again from the drop down, click on the Download button. The PDF is about 20 MB. The latest version is vO. If you have an earlier version, you still may want to check out the PDF.

The only consolation I can give the poor souls who shelled out 30 bucks for the hard copy is that your money, or at least GKG’s $5/copy, went to sending out about 100 free copies to people who we thought could be influential in making the necessary changes to nuclear power regulation. This too has been a flop. We received a total of one response, a polite thank you, probably auto-generated.

Of course, this is deeply disappointing. I was at least hoping to start a discussion. Far worse, my hope that Trump would shake things up in a positive manner have also been dashed. Instead the Trump administration has doubled down on picking winners and ripping off the taxpayer. That was supposed to be the Democrat’s game. And of course they have picked really lousy winners. A cramped, unmaintainable big PWR built by a company that has a proven record of disasters, and a couple of toy reactors whose economics are even worse. Still worse, along the way they have hamstrung the only real hope the West had of competing with the Russians and the Chinese, using some really ugly tactics. At this point the Biden policy of bumbling stagnation looks pretty good.

I suppose all we can do is fall back on Milton Friedman’s position. One thing is for sure. The Trump Administration’s further screwing up nuclear power has guaranteed the crisis.