Earlier today President Trump held a nuclear energy innovation event in the White House and highlighted the next phase of U.S. energy development via small critical nuclear reactors. The media questions begin at 8:44 of the video below.
.
Posted in Big Government, Donald Trump, Economy, energy, media bias, President Trump, Press Secretary - Trump, Uncategorized, USA
These small nuclear reactors will be the next big thing.
Quicker development cycle, faster fabrication with more standardized parts, and a comparatively smaller upfront capital cost than for a larger bespoke design.
There is a lot going for it.
Haven’t paid any attention to it but maybe it’s a natural for the power hungry data centers that threatens to gobble up our existing grid. California is about due for our mid summer rolling “brown outs” thanks to wild fires and Nuclear plant closings. Wild thought just include one of these reactors as part of the data center construction. Self contained, no impact to the local grid and less/no sensitivity to an EMP event from a high altitude nuclear event.
Wonder how the power demand for a data center would compare to say a Ford Class Aircraft carrier? We certainly know how to build those and allow people to live in close proximity. Just thinking like an Engineer again! Been retired for 15 years but can’t break that old “what if” thought process.
Yes, they should be!
And what about Fusion Reactors?
For 40 years, they have been 10 years away! 🙂
(Much like Brazil, for 60 years, the next “big thing,” the next “superpower” ! 🙂 )
But who knows?
You can find various articles about how “close” we are now: supposedly just a few more years!
All of those experimental fusion reactors funded with taxpayer monies provided a lot of job security and retirements for a bunch of PhDs at big universities though.
Spending a lot of resources to iterate tokamak and stellarator designs that are likely a technological dead end, not the best idea.
Check out TAE Technologies. They have the leading fusion design.
I suspect we already have that technology, as well as anti gravitic tech, zero-point energy tech, but it’s all contained/siloed within Special Access Programs at the DOE and illegally farmed out to select private industry.
Rep. Burlison has even suggested as much:
Small modular reactors will also make our grid less vulnerable to attack by allowing us to decentralize power sources.
One of the major reasons I favor this development. Data centers sharing a reactor sounds like a win/win situation to me.
It will be even better for the grid as it will provide much needed grid inertia.
The microgrid approach seems to have a lot of advantages. To me, also a better way to integrate solar and wind. Instead of massive installations of solar panels/turbines, you do that a lot more local (and small) where it makes sense.
Solar at the home level is an example. Wind would likely have to be more community level since it usually requires height for the turbines. And only in areas where wind would actually make sense.
Gen IV nuclear is very promising and could open up a whole new era of electricity. It’s really the only way they’ll ever continue down this heavy data center path IMO. But I’d also expect innovations that will lower the power needs for those data centers over time.
And yes, a lot less vulnerable to attack and centralized outages.
The grid needs baseload quality power. Nuclear, both at scale and SMRs, are a great option. As are Hydro and gas.
Intermittent sources such as wind and solar cannot fit the bill. People say “but backup batteries…” however there aren’t anywhere near the quantities of critical minerals readily available on the planet to manufacture ebouthem.
And even if there were, it would take us hundreds of years to mine enough of them.
https://nitter.net/JohnLeePettim13/status/1614178348694904837#m
Oh, btw, guess which company owns stakes in several leading Nuclear and SMR players, and the Uranium to power them?
Yep, Mark Carney’s America-domiciled Brookfield. 😉
It can’t just be the small reactors; deployment of larger gen3+ reactors are still going to be needed for base load operations.
The two US designs are the AP1000 (Westinghouse) and the ESBWR (GE/Hitschi).
Two AP1000s have been built in GA already; one was started in SC but a greedy CEO and a few others halted that one (they are in jail). The one in SC is beginning to move forward again.
SMRs (snall modular) are farther along in development than Gen 4 MMRs (Micro). Holtec, NuScale, and BWXT are leading the way. Holtec is building two SMR-300s in Michigan while BWXT chose the Darlington site in Canada. NuScale the only licensed one has very little interest.
@PaulReveresHorse
🏆
The hold up is, as always, Government. While the people Trump put in place to facilitate the deployment of SMRs and larger reactors have done wonderful things in moving forward, they are running up against the embedded bureaucracy which believes Nuclear Energy to be evil and do all they can to sabotage and delay things until such time as they run out the clock on the Administration.
A “Reduction In Force” of about 80% of the DOE and NRC bureaucracy would be in order, were I King…
Too many people are still haunted by Three Mile Island. The industry learned from it and current large reactors are much safer because of it. But bureaucrats and activists, many with their fingers deep in the wind and solar pie, still spread fear that every nuclear reactor is another Three Mile Island just waiting to happen. And if that doesn’t make people sufficiently afraid of nuclear power, they will bring up Chernobyl and Fukushima, both examples even less relevant to the current U.S. nuclear industry and potential than Three Mile Island. President Trump’s efforts to promote nuclear power should be applauded and supported and not held back by outdated fears.
Was anyone injured by the 3 Mile Island incident?
Depends on who you listen to. No one was killed or injured at the time that in any way was attributable to the accident or the release of radioactive material, but there have been many studies and assertions about people who down the road got cancers that they attribute to the radiation. Maybe some of the illnesses were due to it and maybe some of it wasn’t. Don’t suppose we will ever know for sure.
And every AI data center should be required to have at least one to supply power to their “warehouse” and not disrupt the lives of Americans to satisfy the warehouse’s insatiable lust for power!
Great company to own– SMR– NuScale Power. Only company certified for use in the US. Great place to use them– military bases. Secure, each one can supply power for a city of about 55,000 homes.
Another good place to implement them would be desalination plants especially in California. A lot of the west could use the water and those plants require a lot of energy to run.
Running desalinization at that scale may have fringe benefits in what metals can be extracted from seawater over time as a minor byproduct. Lithium and manganese come to mind here.
Interesting that you mentioned that. I just read this article earlier about Japan mining for rare earth minerals from the sea. They are mining the sea floor though.
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20260724/p2g/00m/0bu/037000c
There are 25 million tons of gold in the ocean .
Good luck with that with the gold concentration in parts per trillion.
New breakthrough nuclear technologies: Common sense and innovation are finally being allowed triumph over ignorance and hysteria.
Russian Federation has nuclear power agreements with ~20 African countries. Rosatom (ie Russia) constructs the plant; then manages the project from conception to decommissioning, including providing the nuclear fuel and taking the waste.
A possible partnership:
The Deal: The US and Russia split the work to dominate Africa’s energy market, deliberately freezing Europe out of the picture.
US Role: Supplies the advanced small reactors and digital control systems. Leverages the recent “criticality” breakthrough (July 2026) to guarantee rapid deployment.
Russian Role: Provides nuclear fuel, waste removal, and site security. Uses existing political influence in nations like Niger and Mali to secure locations and manage long-term operations.
EU Exclusion: Europe is locked out. By using the BRICS New Development Bank (or alternative) and direct sovereign guarantees, the partnership bypasses EU regulations and financing. No European components, fuel, or money are involved.
@Rocket
🏆
Thorium-based reactors…….
Power baby, Power! 👏
Carbon tax/climate change grifters going to need therapy.
Except for Mark Carnage.
Brookfield has stakes in large scale nuclear and SMRs as well as Uranium providers.
GE engineers had nuclear plants that would render the fuel rods to harmless cigarette type ashes. They were never used. When we have smaller plants, energy costs will plummet, thorium reactors will spread and real energy and economic freedom will be available to the world!
As per usual, the press generally ignored the topic of the meeting-nuclear power.
I’m not surprised, but sure wish there had been more discussion and questions to those gathered experts about the innovation, impact, regulation, reliability, design, cost, advantages/disadvantages, and implementation of different modes and sizes of nuclear energy plants.
Dang! The was quite the run on comma filled sentence, now wasn’t it!
Sorry about that.
🤣 Relax Paprika! I don’t think anyone noticed.
Besides, I’ve written more of those on here than you’ve had hot dinners, and managed to get away with it which is quite a feat, especially as I always strive to eschew obfuscation, which in turn can result from such ludicrously verbose presentation. 😉
Thank you, kind Sir, for your reply and a delightful example! <smiles>
I would very much doubt that the assembled Media has any idea what Nuclear Power is.
For anyone who’s not yet familiar….
TAE Technologies is merging with Trump Media And Technology.
TAE has the leading nuclear fusion reactor design and tech.(neutral beam FRC)
Construction begins this year on their first commercial power plant(50 MW). Energy production slated for 2031. They will build 350-500 MW reactors after that.
Fusion should supercede fission rea ctors in the next decade.
Search Rumble for Devin Nunes interviews, where he likens this technology to a second Manhattan Project.
IMO, Micro Nuclear Reactors should be manufactured in volume for electrical generation throughout the world, reserving fossil fuels for internal combustion engines and chemical manufacturing. Were this plan to be implemented the world economy would explode overnight. (However, the power of politicians would suffer. Prosperity is the enemy of the political cabal.)