Great analysis from Ruy Teixeira. These modern-day flat-earthers on the Left have done more to actually setback any hope of U.S. energy independence than Three Mile Island ever could have.
Forward on multiple energy fronts, nuclear foremost among them if only to play catchup with demand.
Bill Gates' nuclear company TerraPower announced it would invest in uranium enrichment through a South African company, ASP Isotopes. A term sheet between the two companies was signed in Oct. 2024. If you believe in a nuclear renaissance you can buy their stock, ASPI, on NASDAQ. It is cheap.
The flat-earthers have done much more than set back US energy independence; they have put hundreds of billions of tons of carbon in the atmosphere that would not be there today but for their successful opposition to nuclear power.
I lived through the whole thing and Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were far more impactful than Vogt's book. Without those events, nuclear would never have fallen out of fashion in the United States.
See? Now reading this entire account, understanding what happened, how it started, the events that made it worse and better has just allowed me to do something I always want to do, but can't. I am able to understand where these people are coming from, I can see myself in their cause when I was younger. Basically, it allows me to humanize people I generally write off as bonkers. I wish more topics would be covered this way. You have a way of writing that doesn't put a thumb on the scale.
Great piece--love the historical analysis and ideological genealogy. Ruy is sooo much better when he's not in 'red meat' mode. The latter clearly doesn't make proper use of his talents.
Rejection of nuclear power is a particularly dumb policy. It's like the left-wing version of, I don't know, stem cell research, except it's evangelical environmentalism rather than evangelical judaism/christianity driving it. "Can't have the considerable benefits of that technology, sorry, goes against our religious precepts." In some ways it doesn't really make sense from an environmentalist standpoint, either, considering nuclear's cleaner and more efficient than Oil and Gas.
Don't forget Shoreham, a $5.5 billion plant built by the Long Island Lighting Company in the 70s and 80s, which never produced a watt of electricity due to the locals declaring the area a nuke-free zone.
Tough to get a lender to finance a reactor with that kind of un-modelable financial risk.
"One story for the future of the climate discourse and climate change is that it's not going to go away, but it's going to fade from the center of public view like overpopulation did…."
Will the governments of North America and Northern Europe then stop wasting trillions of dollars of this?
TerraPower's Natrium reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming needs to secure a domestic source of highly enriched uranium (HALEU). Russia is currently the primary commercial supplier of HALEU.
Another contribution of the always-wrong Vogt/Erlich/Malthus religion is that, as you note, the Russians are the primary supplier of HALEU, and none is produced here. Hence, dozens of countries operating reactors have a critical trade and therefore political relationship with Putin, when they should have been (and mostly would have been) our customers, not his.
Significantly detrimental to US national security, in addition to domestic power generation considerations.
If I recall correctly, there was a nuclear enrichment plant near southern Illinois. I do not know if it still operates. It was owned by the US government but was privatized in the early 90s I believe. The privatized company went bankrupt not too long after acquiring the plant because the Russians flooded the market with fuel for nuclear reactors when they decommissioned a bunch of nuclear weapons. It seems you can de-enrich nuclear fuel as well as enrich it. I believe natural uranium ore contains about 7% radioactive material, fuel for power plants contains about 5% and bomb material is close to 100%.
HALEU is not used in the current fleet of pressurized water reactors in the West. But the proposed next generation of reactors with smaller cores will require HALEU. It can be obtained by diluting highly enriched uranium (HEU) used for nuclear weapons. So, while Putin would like to sell HALEU, there is not a market for it outside of Russia, yet.
You’re right, but my basic point stands … Rosatom is the largest supplier to countries outside the US and Europe, and Russia produces close to half of LEU worldwide, while the US produces only about 11%.
Richard Nixon in his energy independence speech to the nation, following the Arab Oil Embargo in 1973, committed the nation to 1000 nuclear power plants by the year 2000. There are now 93 operating reactors at 54 sites across the nation. Lots of promises about a nuclear renaissance have been made since. Investors and electric utilities have not been interested.
Those are very recent commitments, so of course they aren’t on-line yet. But they will be. In the meantime, and alongside the new nuclear, will be new natural gas generation. In the short run, AI data centers will build natural gas plants (in jurisdictions that actually allow things to be built), because they will be quicker and cheaper than nuclear. In the long run, nuclear is very cost-effective, due to the long life-cycles of the plants. Some of the cheapest power being produced today is from nuclear plants that have fully amortized their initial capital costs.
Google is partnering with Kairos Power. Kairos has made progress with the NRC. In November 2024, the NRC issued construction permits for a demonstration. Amazon has partnered with X-energy. They are preparing a construction permit application to submit to the NRC. The NRC approval process for this design is expected to take several years. It is still a long-haul to economic commercial operation. One question is how long are the Google and Amazon leashes ($$$).
They have not been interested due to the potentially absurd political risk, as the next commenter points out, and the impossibly expensive and time-consuming approval process imposed by the NRC, which was long ago fully infiltrated by the anti-nuclear lobby.
Google, Microsoft and Amazon are interested in nuclear and have made investments. Other than the re-start of the non-damaged reactor at Three Mile Island for Microsoft, there is little to show for their interest. The amount of increased load from data centers is still very uncertain. More so with China's advancements using less computing power for AI.
With respect to nuclear waste—France recycles spent fuel, we don’t. That would reduce the volume to manage.
There is actually a startup in Janesville, WI that is developing a process using a particle accelerator to further reduce the volume of waste. Hopefully they make it work. See https://www.shinefusion.com/phase-3.
Great analysis that explains why nuclear power is at least temporarily a purple issue.
Note that the NRC has active rule makings to create new procedures for small modular reactors and micro reactors, recognizing that the same rules that make it time consuming and expensive to build reactors have also kept America safe. Three pilot fusion plants have also been proposed—the technology is still unproven but seems much closer than ever before.
Hospitals use nuclear energy. This is one example. There are probably more. My questionable angst comes back to the question of exactly how are we actually disposing of nuclear waste. Are we selling it to other countries?
A quibble - late quibble. I believe when one decomposes Strongly and Somewhat, one
A second quibble is that there is a real issue on nuclear in pricing, LCoE (Levelised Cost of Energy) - that remains eye-watering.
Now - LCoE problems are heavily impacted by the Lefty Green NGO anti-nuclear NIMBY actions that in at least Anglo markets massively delay and drive-up cost. But not solely due to those.
This said, there is almost certainly (I say almost as one shouldn't be cavalier about the engineering issues / challenges - nor the political oness) with a sustained investment and prudent streamlining a potential to bring down cost - through scaling via repetition. That is after all what has brought down both Solar PV and on-shore wind, and in European context, off-shore wind down to unsubsidized LCoE that beats fossil (depending on specifics, even NatGas last gen for solar PV and onshore wind). Economies of Scale. Of course this is in both Mfg and it is installation as the LCoE that beats fossils is not Greeny crunchy granola produce solar on my rooftop, it's utility scale installations which allow economies of scale on instalation and servicing - for the same reasons centralised power plants in fossil fuels replaced household wood-burners... no matter the romantiism of the later).
The small-scale modular reactors present an interesting opportunity if given the chance of scale - although the Biden administration characteristically couldn't get itself out of the way to actually oblige genuinely streamling and standarisation on permitting
- but that is the overall story of the Biden Administration, while their economic vision at the 10,000 Feet Level was qutie okay, Biden & Co were unable to break any eggs to get things done and they got every action bogged down by the various Interest Groups so made no progress at all.
The RE installations of course can't really achieve LCoE savings maximisation without scale of which both the installaiton but also as the Smil interview notes, the Grid which nothing pragmatic was done, much High Level Thinking... (of course this at least is superior to Trump with both High level and operational level incompetence and stupidity)
I had not by the way read Vaclav Smil interview in the NYT previously. Czechs who grew up under the Sovs ended up with much wisdom. One of my colleagues is of this profile - engineering side. Great wisdom in the Czechs, and old fashioned central european pragmatism.
Great analysis from Ruy Teixeira. These modern-day flat-earthers on the Left have done more to actually setback any hope of U.S. energy independence than Three Mile Island ever could have.
Forward on multiple energy fronts, nuclear foremost among them if only to play catchup with demand.
Bill Gates' nuclear company TerraPower announced it would invest in uranium enrichment through a South African company, ASP Isotopes. A term sheet between the two companies was signed in Oct. 2024. If you believe in a nuclear renaissance you can buy their stock, ASPI, on NASDAQ. It is cheap.
The flat-earthers have done much more than set back US energy independence; they have put hundreds of billions of tons of carbon in the atmosphere that would not be there today but for their successful opposition to nuclear power.
I lived through the whole thing and Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were far more impactful than Vogt's book. Without those events, nuclear would never have fallen out of fashion in the United States.
See? Now reading this entire account, understanding what happened, how it started, the events that made it worse and better has just allowed me to do something I always want to do, but can't. I am able to understand where these people are coming from, I can see myself in their cause when I was younger. Basically, it allows me to humanize people I generally write off as bonkers. I wish more topics would be covered this way. You have a way of writing that doesn't put a thumb on the scale.
Great piece--love the historical analysis and ideological genealogy. Ruy is sooo much better when he's not in 'red meat' mode. The latter clearly doesn't make proper use of his talents.
Rejection of nuclear power is a particularly dumb policy. It's like the left-wing version of, I don't know, stem cell research, except it's evangelical environmentalism rather than evangelical judaism/christianity driving it. "Can't have the considerable benefits of that technology, sorry, goes against our religious precepts." In some ways it doesn't really make sense from an environmentalist standpoint, either, considering nuclear's cleaner and more efficient than Oil and Gas.
Outstanding article!
Don't forget Shoreham, a $5.5 billion plant built by the Long Island Lighting Company in the 70s and 80s, which never produced a watt of electricity due to the locals declaring the area a nuke-free zone.
Tough to get a lender to finance a reactor with that kind of un-modelable financial risk.
Permitting reform (i.e. overhaul of NEPA) is a prerequisite for all clean energy initiatives: nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, hydro.
Yes, ridiculous public policy choice.
Plant built, turn it on, and a small group was able to prevent it.
"One story for the future of the climate discourse and climate change is that it's not going to go away, but it's going to fade from the center of public view like overpopulation did…."
Will the governments of North America and Northern Europe then stop wasting trillions of dollars of this?
Bill Gates and friends are building a small one in Kemmerer Wyoming. It's projected to open in 2030, six years to build.
Enough to power 400,000 homes, costing billions but our govt is helping out for now.
I think the intent is to power a data center for AI, not 400,000 homes. Some tech oligarch is looking to reanimate TMI for the same reason.
I used the home measurement as it's easier for most to understand than megawatts.
TerraPower's Natrium reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming needs to secure a domestic source of highly enriched uranium (HALEU). Russia is currently the primary commercial supplier of HALEU.
Another contribution of the always-wrong Vogt/Erlich/Malthus religion is that, as you note, the Russians are the primary supplier of HALEU, and none is produced here. Hence, dozens of countries operating reactors have a critical trade and therefore political relationship with Putin, when they should have been (and mostly would have been) our customers, not his.
Significantly detrimental to US national security, in addition to domestic power generation considerations.
If I recall correctly, there was a nuclear enrichment plant near southern Illinois. I do not know if it still operates. It was owned by the US government but was privatized in the early 90s I believe. The privatized company went bankrupt not too long after acquiring the plant because the Russians flooded the market with fuel for nuclear reactors when they decommissioned a bunch of nuclear weapons. It seems you can de-enrich nuclear fuel as well as enrich it. I believe natural uranium ore contains about 7% radioactive material, fuel for power plants contains about 5% and bomb material is close to 100%.
HALEU is not used in the current fleet of pressurized water reactors in the West. But the proposed next generation of reactors with smaller cores will require HALEU. It can be obtained by diluting highly enriched uranium (HEU) used for nuclear weapons. So, while Putin would like to sell HALEU, there is not a market for it outside of Russia, yet.
You’re right, but my basic point stands … Rosatom is the largest supplier to countries outside the US and Europe, and Russia produces close to half of LEU worldwide, while the US produces only about 11%.
Richard Nixon in his energy independence speech to the nation, following the Arab Oil Embargo in 1973, committed the nation to 1000 nuclear power plants by the year 2000. There are now 93 operating reactors at 54 sites across the nation. Lots of promises about a nuclear renaissance have been made since. Investors and electric utilities have not been interested.
Those are very recent commitments, so of course they aren’t on-line yet. But they will be. In the meantime, and alongside the new nuclear, will be new natural gas generation. In the short run, AI data centers will build natural gas plants (in jurisdictions that actually allow things to be built), because they will be quicker and cheaper than nuclear. In the long run, nuclear is very cost-effective, due to the long life-cycles of the plants. Some of the cheapest power being produced today is from nuclear plants that have fully amortized their initial capital costs.
Google is partnering with Kairos Power. Kairos has made progress with the NRC. In November 2024, the NRC issued construction permits for a demonstration. Amazon has partnered with X-energy. They are preparing a construction permit application to submit to the NRC. The NRC approval process for this design is expected to take several years. It is still a long-haul to economic commercial operation. One question is how long are the Google and Amazon leashes ($$$).
They have not been interested due to the potentially absurd political risk, as the next commenter points out, and the impossibly expensive and time-consuming approval process imposed by the NRC, which was long ago fully infiltrated by the anti-nuclear lobby.
Google, Microsoft and Amazon are interested in nuclear and have made investments. Other than the re-start of the non-damaged reactor at Three Mile Island for Microsoft, there is little to show for their interest. The amount of increased load from data centers is still very uncertain. More so with China's advancements using less computing power for AI.
With those wild fluctuations in approval, I don't know why any prudent investor would have anything to do with it.
With respect to nuclear waste—France recycles spent fuel, we don’t. That would reduce the volume to manage.
There is actually a startup in Janesville, WI that is developing a process using a particle accelerator to further reduce the volume of waste. Hopefully they make it work. See https://www.shinefusion.com/phase-3.
Great analysis that explains why nuclear power is at least temporarily a purple issue.
Note that the NRC has active rule makings to create new procedures for small modular reactors and micro reactors, recognizing that the same rules that make it time consuming and expensive to build reactors have also kept America safe. Three pilot fusion plants have also been proposed—the technology is still unproven but seems much closer than ever before.
Hospitals use nuclear energy. This is one example. There are probably more. My questionable angst comes back to the question of exactly how are we actually disposing of nuclear waste. Are we selling it to other countries?
Ho
A quibble - late quibble. I believe when one decomposes Strongly and Somewhat, one
A second quibble is that there is a real issue on nuclear in pricing, LCoE (Levelised Cost of Energy) - that remains eye-watering.
Now - LCoE problems are heavily impacted by the Lefty Green NGO anti-nuclear NIMBY actions that in at least Anglo markets massively delay and drive-up cost. But not solely due to those.
This said, there is almost certainly (I say almost as one shouldn't be cavalier about the engineering issues / challenges - nor the political oness) with a sustained investment and prudent streamlining a potential to bring down cost - through scaling via repetition. That is after all what has brought down both Solar PV and on-shore wind, and in European context, off-shore wind down to unsubsidized LCoE that beats fossil (depending on specifics, even NatGas last gen for solar PV and onshore wind). Economies of Scale. Of course this is in both Mfg and it is installation as the LCoE that beats fossils is not Greeny crunchy granola produce solar on my rooftop, it's utility scale installations which allow economies of scale on instalation and servicing - for the same reasons centralised power plants in fossil fuels replaced household wood-burners... no matter the romantiism of the later).
The small-scale modular reactors present an interesting opportunity if given the chance of scale - although the Biden administration characteristically couldn't get itself out of the way to actually oblige genuinely streamling and standarisation on permitting
- but that is the overall story of the Biden Administration, while their economic vision at the 10,000 Feet Level was qutie okay, Biden & Co were unable to break any eggs to get things done and they got every action bogged down by the various Interest Groups so made no progress at all.
The RE installations of course can't really achieve LCoE savings maximisation without scale of which both the installaiton but also as the Smil interview notes, the Grid which nothing pragmatic was done, much High Level Thinking... (of course this at least is superior to Trump with both High level and operational level incompetence and stupidity)
I had not by the way read Vaclav Smil interview in the NYT previously. Czechs who grew up under the Sovs ended up with much wisdom. One of my colleagues is of this profile - engineering side. Great wisdom in the Czechs, and old fashioned central european pragmatism.
Great article Ruy!
I for one, think we could use a few radioactive pigs here in my neighborhood…
This is a wonderfully written, tight article Ruy. I am saving it for future reference. Thanks.