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White House “Accelerating” Nuclear Power With Executive Orders
- CGMthrowaway 1y agohttps://archive.is/Odyi3 https://archive.is/Odyi3
- tw04 1y agoCurious how they’re planning on doing this after letting DOGE gut the agencies that will need to follow through. It’s like they think that science happens through happy thoughts and fairy dust and not by employing… you know… actual scientists.
- cantrecallmypwd 1y agoNRC, are you know, just unnecessary, bureaucratic red-tape. The guy down the way with a truck in Times Beach said he'd remove it cheap.
- Havoc 1y agoBy privatizing the ground level work. Doing this with minimal regulation and move fast break things ethos was always the plan.
- Muromec 1y agoYou can always accelerate the acceptance timeline by running emergency shutdown procedure on a reactor already in operation. I saw a movie about it -- apparently you can even get promoted to making it work.
- BobbyTables2 1y agoSo they’re trying to accelerate the acceleration of fission? One could wonder if such plans will just split apart…
- Muromec 1y agoLook, this is a serious discussion, so it's better to moderate those accusations, so they don't woosh to fast above everybody's heads
- MichaelNolan 1y agoEven if they bypass the NRC by having the DOD build/regulate the plants, I'm just not seeing how any nuclear gets built in the US when natural gas, solar, and wind are so damn cheap. Unless the feds pay for the whole thing, nuclear still won't be competitive. And I'm skeptical that the plan will survive the political backlash. Rightly or wrongly, no one wants to live next to a reactor that *isn't* regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Just imagine the tv ads...
- refulgentis 1y agoSpot on IMHO as far as my understanding of the economics goes, going back years. Only real argument is "but you need _something_ for base load" and wishcasting re: SMRs.[1] IMHO Microsoft and Facebook's odd PR rounds around it in service of their AI stories didn't help public policy at all [1] I'm an odd duck and extremely bullish on fusion and bearish on SMRs, Commonwealth fusion keeps hitting milestones, whereas I haven't heard of any SMRs shipping in any quantity
- lazyeye 1y agoYes you do "need _something_ for base load", obviously. And noone appears to have any reliable solution to this apart from nuclear. So commonsense is playing a part here (not something you often see, particular in the HN comments section).
- refulgentis 1y agoI'm kind of stunned how much extra effort you put into being condescending over and over during a contribution whose idea is "only nuclear is reliable for base load" Kinda shocking we have a power system then, no? :)
- lazyeye 1y agoNo it's not shocking. For base-load 24/7 power the only option is nuclear (as part of the mix) if we want to go fully carbon-free. I'm not explaining anything complicated here.
- exabrial 1y agoUltimately, I hope the plans work.