Making It Easier To Build Nuclear Reactors
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Donald Trump likes nuclear energy, or at least he’s willing to push it for his Silicon Valley friends. And others; it’s by no means only a Silicon Valley favorite, but they are currently some of the loudest advocates. They need it for their massive AI processor farms. Which are a ridiculous waste of matter and electricity, but let’s leave that aside for this post.
Both volunteer and paid advocates of the technology have been screaming about regulation of nuclear reactors forever. The Trumpified DOE has given them some of what they wanted.
They changed a bunch of DOE rules, called orders, to make them less onerous. One of Trump’s pet projects is to have three new reactors go critical by July. That’s, er, ambitious. One of the maxims of the profession is “Safe, cheap, quick: choose two.”
The author of the NPR article, Geoff Brumfiel, explains what is kind of a wonky issue in a Bluesky thread starting here:
Or you can read the full article. Basically, the DOE has loosened up safety, security, and environmental restrictions so that the new reactor developers can move faster. And maybe break things. Most of the new reactor companies are tied to Silicon Valley, after all.
DOE is not required to request public comment on changes to the orders, so they didn’t. But they shared them with the companies.