DOGE Guts NRC
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Just a quick drive-by post to note that Silicon Valley demands more electrical power for their artificial intelligence ambitions. The fuddy-duddy Nuclear Regulatory Commission wasn’t moving fast enough for them, so they DOGEd it. The NRC has now been told to approve reactors, period.
The resurgence of nuclear power is rooted not just in bipartisan interest, but in the emergence of companies building small modular reactors, or SMRs. The advanced reactors by developers including TerraPower, X-energy, General Electric Hitachi Nuclear Energy, NuScale Power and Kairos Power are factory-built and meant to bring down the daunting development costs of large, conventional nuclear power plants.
Big tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta are also signing long-term agreements with utilities that own nuclear reactors and SMR startups for future purchases of electricity to power their AI data centers.
The NRC is assessing a plan to reopen a closed unit at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. And last month, the agency received a combined license application from Fermi America, a Texas-based company led by former Energy Secretary Rick Perry that plans to build the nation’s largest nuclear power complex. The “HyperGrid” site is in Amarillo, Texas, near the largest U.S. assembly plant for nuclear weapons known as Pantex.
“The Chinese are building 22 nuclear reactors today to power the future of AI,” said Perry, the former Texas governor. “America has none. We’re behind, and it’s all hands on deck.”
One of the three people with knowledge of the May meeting and Blake’s “rubber stamp” remark said the influx of nuclear license applications — and from politically connected people — is adding pressure and scrutiny to the process. “This is where the rubber hits the road,” the person said.
They also forced out the longtime NRC Director of Operations.
What could go wrong?