Thank you for what you are doing and saying. I have been working as an advanced nuclear technology analyst (Generation III+ & Generation IV non-water cooled reactor technology) for almost four years via the US Department of Commerce and every single thing you have said in this piece is true. I have also done global value chain analysis on green hydrogen, offshore & onshore wind, solar, battery energy storage systems at grid-scale and books on fossil fuels and nuclear is by far the safest, most regulated and only energy source that literally cleans up after itself. It's a stunning technology and the people I have met are some of the brightest, hardest working, most environmentally conscious individuals you could imagine. They are the smartest people in the room with a technology that can give electricity almost 100 percent of the time for upwards of 100 years. You are correct as I have heard you state (and I am paraphrasing) that if aliens came down to earth they would ask - "Why aren't using more nuclear power for electricity, medicine, cancer treatments, desalinization, hydrogen, process heat, district heat, steam, etc." On top of that nuclear power deeply impacts direct, indirect, and induced job growth, wages, taxes, and supply chains. Thank you, thank you, thank you for writing about this issue! Nuclear power is the only answer for high capacity baseload electrical generation with zero emissions.
Man, i love your laundry list of uses. It is so dumb to start with intermittents for desalination, hydrogen etc when temperature is the enabler and nuclear gives us electric power and crazy industrial heat! Thank you for your work on nuclear, i wish you success in your lifetime (without knowing your age!)
There was only one death directly attributed to the Fukushima disaster (death from lung cancer four years later). However, since 2018, there has been an estimated 1200 deaths due to wind turbine accidents (source: an interaction with Grok AI). Studies estimate wind energy’s death rate at approximately 0.04 to 0.15 deaths per TWh.
I guess the NRC can stick that in their pipe and smoke it. 😒
"One option under consideration would be to designate certain A.I. data centers as ‘defense critical infrastructure’ and allow them to be powered by reactors built on Department of Energy facilities, which may allow projects to avoid review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.” Or perhaps powered by a MsNB such as the type discussed by yourself, D. Hay and R. McPherson. Thinking that would be the expedient way to go. Time to use your considerable influence and get Sec. Hegseth and Sec. Wright dialed in on MsNB. 😁
There are legal parallels here. In 2024, the US Supreme Court overturned the "Chevron Deference" doctrine. Decades earlier in Chevron, the US Supreme Court held that the judiciary was required to "defer" to regulatory agencies' interpretation of laws and the regulations they crafted, meaning that a decision by a regulator was presumed correct and could only be overturned with the clearest evidence of error. Even when such evidence existed, some courts would not step in to act.
Then, last year in a case called Loper Bright, the Supreme Court reversed itself. It essentially held that such deference amounted to an abdication of the judiciary's duty to exercise its independent judgment. Regulatory agencies are no longer entitled to any deference. If the courts think they got it wrong, then an action (or inaction) is overturned.
Substitute "judiciary" for "president and Congress" in Ms. McFarlane's comments reposted below, and you can see the parallels here:
“In the past, the president and Congress, which has oversight capacity on the regulators, stayed at arm’s length from the regulators’ decisions. This was meant to keep them isolated, ensuring their necessary independence from any outside interference. Trump’s executive order implies there are no longer independent regulators in the United States."
Simply put, the courts will no longer defer to the bureaucrats. Ms. McFarlane and the rest of the bureaucrats should not be entitled to any deference from the executive or legislative branches, either. Hopefully, her final sentence, quoted above, is accurate.
Doomy, I liked this piece and have never been accused of being a "do-gooder". Just ask my ex-wife. 🤣
So . . . we are going to channel Saul Alinsky for this essay? So be it. I suspect that if he was alive today, he would be an activist for energy and nuclear freedom. I believe he was too smart to buy into the climate change BS. However, he is remembered today for how to be a competent activist, and not for his particular beliefs. YMMV. 😏
The Malthusians have successfully wrecked the US nuclear program. Not because it was too risky, but because it would be too successful in creating an energy environment that would be antithetical to their real goal of depopulation. May they all rot in Hell (or any facsimile of it in this life or the next). 😠
I agree with you that the best move forward at this time to jump start a nuclear renaissance is let the Defense Department take it under their wing. Our nuclear status is indeed a national security issue along with AI. This will probably strengthen the military industrial complex, but the alternative will be constant (and planned) dithering in the NRC. I'm willing to make that trade-off and for others YMMV. I could be wrong, but I also believe the military will employ SMRs faster than civilian use. We'll see. At the very least we need to start building all reactors to a standard build and not making each one a bespoke which leads us into the swamp of implementation delays and budget overruns. 🙂
“Apocalypse Never” should be mandatory reading for any person who dares comment on any environmental issue. Especially the anti-nuclear lobby and here in the UK the “Just Stop Oil” and “Extinction Rebellion” zealots. However you can lead a horse to water…. I do not have high hopes. Once again Doomberg cuts to the chase. Incredibly well done.
These zealots are truly dangerous. When I look at them I see aged grandmothers from the flower power age and young, so often bespeckled, late teens or 2O somethings who just don't look like they come from the working classes.
These are not achievement oriented individuals. They are "me too" people, who ride the coattails of the organization "thinkers". Let's face it. Most environmental groups are cults and their membership is made up of people who are prone to be in cults. These are lonely people who see themselves as joiners to give their life meaning. These folks could easily be found in a group waiting for the moon to split into equal parts. 🤣
ALWAYS and NEVER are 2 things that categorically NEVER happen in societies! And in the world of nuclear regulations controlled by the NRC, the enemy of good is the idea we can achieve ZERO radiation risk. Until the Pro nuclear experts and talking heads win the argument on what the real risks are vs. the unlimited positive tradeoffs, the DO GOODER's at the NRC and their Green surrogates in Congress and the media will continue to control the buildout of all future Nuclear powerplants. Hopefully, as DOOMY says, physics always WINs out eventually!
Nuclear power is as perfect a bogyman as it is a power source. Odorless, tasteless, and will come for you in the middle of the night and there is nothing you can do to stop it. It's perfect terror fuel. And that just how they use it in their propaganda.
Contrasting nuclear's zero deaths, car accidents kill like 120 people a day in the USA and no one gives a second thought to driving. Humans terrible, emotionally-driven risk assessment skills are the fuel to my contrarian attitude and nearly all of my stock market returns. So much easy money to be made during the green "post fossil fuels" era of the market of yore. I need to find something else to be contrarian about.
One may be the loneliest number, but I learned today that zero is the most emotional number!
Experience shows that governments (and especially unaccountable commissions) want to grow power and reduce oversight. NRC is a great example. Thanks for the insight and glimpse at a well-powered future.
The Allison McFarland statement gives the leftist game away. The left favors empowering of regulators to "ensure their necessary independence from outside interference".
The name for that "outside interference" is called democracy and the will of the people.
In an analogy akin to sanctuary cities, the left simply believes in violating laws they disagree with- rather than changing them through the democratic process (although in this case they wish to simply dodge making law through the democratic process in the first place). Nevertheless, the same mindset is at work- the elite ought to control the people through unaccountable government power. Bottom line- the Democrat Party believes in Washington based control of all American life.
Ms. MacFarlane and her "blue ribbon commission" gave us the community consent construct, which has frustrated siting for waste disposal for 12 years now!
I know this is a very misleading and troll comment, but it is also a literally true one, so
> Zero is an emotional number and when any amount of radiation is viewed as inherently bad, the complete absence of exposure is treated as inherently good, regardless of the positive tradeoffs foregone as a consequence.
Actually the complete absence of exposure to ionizing nuclear radiation will kill you. From Vitamin D deficiency. Fortunately, the sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace, and it provides what we need.
But just, it's actually factually false that 'absence of radiation is good'. Your body needs that UV to synthesize Vitamin D
As a radiologist, I can confirm that concerns over radiation exposure from medical imaging are often overblown. The range in annual background ionizing radiation exposure between different jurisdictions within the US for example can be higher than the radiation exposure from a CT scan, but I have never heard of someone not being willing to move to Colorado because of its higher background radiation. In the vast majority of cases, the immediate benefits of an indicated CT far outweigh the essentially hypothetical risk from radiation from that scan.
In very few cases do I consider alternative tests; I mostly reserve this decision for younger patients with chronic illness like Crohn disease who are likely to undergo many CTs over their life in the emergency room.
There are many other cases in medicine where hypotheticals and/or historical precedent guide management more than evidence-based medicine.
Thank you for what you are doing and saying. I have been working as an advanced nuclear technology analyst (Generation III+ & Generation IV non-water cooled reactor technology) for almost four years via the US Department of Commerce and every single thing you have said in this piece is true. I have also done global value chain analysis on green hydrogen, offshore & onshore wind, solar, battery energy storage systems at grid-scale and books on fossil fuels and nuclear is by far the safest, most regulated and only energy source that literally cleans up after itself. It's a stunning technology and the people I have met are some of the brightest, hardest working, most environmentally conscious individuals you could imagine. They are the smartest people in the room with a technology that can give electricity almost 100 percent of the time for upwards of 100 years. You are correct as I have heard you state (and I am paraphrasing) that if aliens came down to earth they would ask - "Why aren't using more nuclear power for electricity, medicine, cancer treatments, desalinization, hydrogen, process heat, district heat, steam, etc." On top of that nuclear power deeply impacts direct, indirect, and induced job growth, wages, taxes, and supply chains. Thank you, thank you, thank you for writing about this issue! Nuclear power is the only answer for high capacity baseload electrical generation with zero emissions.
Exciting possibilities!
Man, i love your laundry list of uses. It is so dumb to start with intermittents for desalination, hydrogen etc when temperature is the enabler and nuclear gives us electric power and crazy industrial heat! Thank you for your work on nuclear, i wish you success in your lifetime (without knowing your age!)
I agree with you, Todd.
There was only one death directly attributed to the Fukushima disaster (death from lung cancer four years later). However, since 2018, there has been an estimated 1200 deaths due to wind turbine accidents (source: an interaction with Grok AI). Studies estimate wind energy’s death rate at approximately 0.04 to 0.15 deaths per TWh.
I guess the NRC can stick that in their pipe and smoke it. 😒
Gonna pin this comment
This article clinched the radiation argument for me. 90% reduction in cancer due to radioactive steel! https://www.jpands.org/vol9no1/chen.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com
"One option under consideration would be to designate certain A.I. data centers as ‘defense critical infrastructure’ and allow them to be powered by reactors built on Department of Energy facilities, which may allow projects to avoid review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.” Or perhaps powered by a MsNB such as the type discussed by yourself, D. Hay and R. McPherson. Thinking that would be the expedient way to go. Time to use your considerable influence and get Sec. Hegseth and Sec. Wright dialed in on MsNB. 😁
First I’ve heard of MsNB tbh. Will do a deeper dive.
i was referring to this discussion that i watched about Molten Salt Nuclear battery technology https://youtu.be/EnDy6SGoG00
I want us to do well and prosper
Same
There are legal parallels here. In 2024, the US Supreme Court overturned the "Chevron Deference" doctrine. Decades earlier in Chevron, the US Supreme Court held that the judiciary was required to "defer" to regulatory agencies' interpretation of laws and the regulations they crafted, meaning that a decision by a regulator was presumed correct and could only be overturned with the clearest evidence of error. Even when such evidence existed, some courts would not step in to act.
Then, last year in a case called Loper Bright, the Supreme Court reversed itself. It essentially held that such deference amounted to an abdication of the judiciary's duty to exercise its independent judgment. Regulatory agencies are no longer entitled to any deference. If the courts think they got it wrong, then an action (or inaction) is overturned.
Substitute "judiciary" for "president and Congress" in Ms. McFarlane's comments reposted below, and you can see the parallels here:
“In the past, the president and Congress, which has oversight capacity on the regulators, stayed at arm’s length from the regulators’ decisions. This was meant to keep them isolated, ensuring their necessary independence from any outside interference. Trump’s executive order implies there are no longer independent regulators in the United States."
Simply put, the courts will no longer defer to the bureaucrats. Ms. McFarlane and the rest of the bureaucrats should not be entitled to any deference from the executive or legislative branches, either. Hopefully, her final sentence, quoted above, is accurate.
Agreed
Doomy, I liked this piece and have never been accused of being a "do-gooder". Just ask my ex-wife. 🤣
So . . . we are going to channel Saul Alinsky for this essay? So be it. I suspect that if he was alive today, he would be an activist for energy and nuclear freedom. I believe he was too smart to buy into the climate change BS. However, he is remembered today for how to be a competent activist, and not for his particular beliefs. YMMV. 😏
The Malthusians have successfully wrecked the US nuclear program. Not because it was too risky, but because it would be too successful in creating an energy environment that would be antithetical to their real goal of depopulation. May they all rot in Hell (or any facsimile of it in this life or the next). 😠
I agree with you that the best move forward at this time to jump start a nuclear renaissance is let the Defense Department take it under their wing. Our nuclear status is indeed a national security issue along with AI. This will probably strengthen the military industrial complex, but the alternative will be constant (and planned) dithering in the NRC. I'm willing to make that trade-off and for others YMMV. I could be wrong, but I also believe the military will employ SMRs faster than civilian use. We'll see. At the very least we need to start building all reactors to a standard build and not making each one a bespoke which leads us into the swamp of implementation delays and budget overruns. 🙂
Can’t disagree with anything you wrote
Nice to see some good Trump news.
He is many things 😂
I work at a Nuclear Generating Station Doomie.
My Mom once asked me, "Are you worried you'll get cancer."
My answer, "No more than I was before I took the job. But let me ask you...are you worried that my brother will get cancer from his job?"
She said, "No. He doesn't work with radiation."
My brother is a pilot and the airline tracks his accumulated dose. For more than a decade he has received a higher dose than I have.
I had to explain this all to my mother.
At the end of it she says "Well thanks. Now I have to worry about BOTH of you."
"Or neither of us..."
Ha love it. Thanks for sharing.
How would these efforts to advance fission affect current investments in fusion?
Fusion is an unnecessary distraction from fission that hopes to solve fake problems but is perpetually decades away from doing so.
“Apocalypse Never” should be mandatory reading for any person who dares comment on any environmental issue. Especially the anti-nuclear lobby and here in the UK the “Just Stop Oil” and “Extinction Rebellion” zealots. However you can lead a horse to water…. I do not have high hopes. Once again Doomberg cuts to the chase. Incredibly well done.
Agreed on the book, and thank you!
These zealots are truly dangerous. When I look at them I see aged grandmothers from the flower power age and young, so often bespeckled, late teens or 2O somethings who just don't look like they come from the working classes.
These are not achievement oriented individuals. They are "me too" people, who ride the coattails of the organization "thinkers". Let's face it. Most environmental groups are cults and their membership is made up of people who are prone to be in cults. These are lonely people who see themselves as joiners to give their life meaning. These folks could easily be found in a group waiting for the moon to split into equal parts. 🤣
ALWAYS and NEVER are 2 things that categorically NEVER happen in societies! And in the world of nuclear regulations controlled by the NRC, the enemy of good is the idea we can achieve ZERO radiation risk. Until the Pro nuclear experts and talking heads win the argument on what the real risks are vs. the unlimited positive tradeoffs, the DO GOODER's at the NRC and their Green surrogates in Congress and the media will continue to control the buildout of all future Nuclear powerplants. Hopefully, as DOOMY says, physics always WINs out eventually!
Nuclear power is as perfect a bogyman as it is a power source. Odorless, tasteless, and will come for you in the middle of the night and there is nothing you can do to stop it. It's perfect terror fuel. And that just how they use it in their propaganda.
Contrasting nuclear's zero deaths, car accidents kill like 120 people a day in the USA and no one gives a second thought to driving. Humans terrible, emotionally-driven risk assessment skills are the fuel to my contrarian attitude and nearly all of my stock market returns. So much easy money to be made during the green "post fossil fuels" era of the market of yore. I need to find something else to be contrarian about.
Now do hydro dam collapses in China…
One may be the loneliest number, but I learned today that zero is the most emotional number!
Experience shows that governments (and especially unaccountable commissions) want to grow power and reduce oversight. NRC is a great example. Thanks for the insight and glimpse at a well-powered future.
Zero is also a philosophical construct!
“I may not be able to define zero, but I know it when I see it.”
The Allison McFarland statement gives the leftist game away. The left favors empowering of regulators to "ensure their necessary independence from outside interference".
The name for that "outside interference" is called democracy and the will of the people.
In an analogy akin to sanctuary cities, the left simply believes in violating laws they disagree with- rather than changing them through the democratic process (although in this case they wish to simply dodge making law through the democratic process in the first place). Nevertheless, the same mindset is at work- the elite ought to control the people through unaccountable government power. Bottom line- the Democrat Party believes in Washington based control of all American life.
It was a remarkable thing to say
Ms. MacFarlane and her "blue ribbon commission" gave us the community consent construct, which has frustrated siting for waste disposal for 12 years now!
Crazy
I know this is a very misleading and troll comment, but it is also a literally true one, so
> Zero is an emotional number and when any amount of radiation is viewed as inherently bad, the complete absence of exposure is treated as inherently good, regardless of the positive tradeoffs foregone as a consequence.
Actually the complete absence of exposure to ionizing nuclear radiation will kill you. From Vitamin D deficiency. Fortunately, the sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace, and it provides what we need.
But just, it's actually factually false that 'absence of radiation is good'. Your body needs that UV to synthesize Vitamin D
Correct, and that's part of what we meant when we wrote the statement. You'll notice we didn't endorse either element of it.
I had a sneaking suspicion you thought of that when you chose your particular diction 🤣
As a radiologist, I can confirm that concerns over radiation exposure from medical imaging are often overblown. The range in annual background ionizing radiation exposure between different jurisdictions within the US for example can be higher than the radiation exposure from a CT scan, but I have never heard of someone not being willing to move to Colorado because of its higher background radiation. In the vast majority of cases, the immediate benefits of an indicated CT far outweigh the essentially hypothetical risk from radiation from that scan.
In very few cases do I consider alternative tests; I mostly reserve this decision for younger patients with chronic illness like Crohn disease who are likely to undergo many CTs over their life in the emergency room.
There are many other cases in medicine where hypotheticals and/or historical precedent guide management more than evidence-based medicine.
Evidence-based is all that really matters
Not to the Malthusian way of thinking!