Nuclear power has the potential to provide inexpensive, reliable energy, but all the subsidies and tax incentives mean nothing if EPA and NRC regulators cling to false narratives that radiation is so dangerous it must be regulated to near-infinitesimal levels, the driven downward by the as low as reasonably achieveable (ALARA) rules. We are impeded not just by their dose/response error, but by all the consequent regulations that help populate the NRC library of 50 million documents. Job security means saying "no". NRC ignored the 2019 acts of Congress to create Part 53 rules. NRC now says the 2024 ADVANCE act can't undo their self-proclaimed role as protectorate by considering benefits.
The government should solicit bids from third parties for advanced reactor regulation systems, covering any reactor an order of magnitude safer than a Gen III water reactor
That should include the AP-1000 and there is no better way to reduce the number of man hours soaked up by the NRC than giving someone else the job
Jack Devanney has outlined such a thing. Power plants buy insurance against harm created by radiation, but such harm is statuatorially limited to what iis observed as a function of absorbed radiation rates. The insurance companies, like shipping insurorors, pay experts to analyze the real risks -- kind of like Underwriates Laboratores, or Germany's TUV. See gordianknotbook.com
With due respect, I disagree that the NRC should be dismantled. Like all agencies, it is in need of substantial reformation and redirection. But without a federal umbrella, states would be free to implement their own regs. Frankly, you don't want that to happen!!!!!
I've said this on other posts, but what the NRC needs to do more than anything is resurrect the kind of leadership that Ed McGaffigan provided. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Mandate is to "provide reasonable assurance of adequate protection, not absolute assurance of perfect protection.”
The NRC is broken. It's very hard to repair a large entrenched bureaucracy like that once it has been corrupted. Not impossible but it would be VERY, VERY difficult.
We are seeing the Centralized Federal Agencies, CIA, FBI, HSS, FDA, CDC, ATF, and more are corrupted and act outside of control from elected politicians.
At least with State agencies there will be competition. If one State has a rational regulator, then it will build NPPs. Another State with a corrupted regulator and no NPPs will be built. Survival of the fittest.
And a typical US State is just as large or larger than many Nuclear countries which have their own regulators, that function far more effectively than the NRC. Put it to shame.
And you can still have a centralized institution. The goal is to replace top-down, bureaucratic, autocratic control with bottom-up cooperative management. So a central entity would be controlled and nominated by the States, and it would be a central repository for information and cooperative actions agreed upon by the State regulators.
A good model for all the Federal Agencies. And much more compatible with the original philosophy of the US Republic.
I agree reforming the NRC would be extremely difficult, but that is what should be attempted. I agree with the steps Robert Hargraves suggest need to be implemented for instance. The NRC is rich in digitized data going back decades, and with the assistance of AI (see the work being done by Atomic Canyon and Oak Ridge National Labs). Todd Allen of University of Michigan has made several suggestions, like put one person in charge. Then move to a guideline pathway for regulation rather than the prescriptive approach, the current prescriptive approach has politicians instructing engineers, and the antinuclear activist examining valves and nozzles as a way to stifle any re-licensing, etc. The regulatory structure for how we manage our used fuel storage casks may be instructive. And a DOGE move of cutting a bloated Washington based staff, and move the department to ORNL or INL. The field staff for the NRA is also a great asset. Let’s try to use the positive foundational aspects of the NRC and strip the over regulation out of the process that has crippled the growth of nuclear energy in the US.
I don't know where to begin. First, the Orwellian IRA is actually causing inflation. Second, far too much of the $ went to newly minted NGOs staffed by Democrats without guardrails. Even the government org distributing the IRA $ doesn't know how to manage it - it has never been done before.
That little detail aside, new energy sources and infrastructure seem to largely mean wind, solar, batteries, and cross country power lines, all of which are thermodynamic losers hated by everyone but the elite. They all increase the cost of electricity and disproportionately hurt working class, non-college educated (I have a humble BA in math) people - you know, the folks that just the elite in the latest repudiation (election). Everywhere these "solutions" have been implemented, like California, the cost of electricity is punishing to the majority of residents. The elites driving subsidized Teslas charged by subsidized Power Walls charged by subsidized solar panels on the roof of their 3000 sq ft well insulated homes love solar. Having worked in high tech for a couple of decades these people are well represented among my Facebook friends. I love vicariously enjoying their exotic family trips to Europe etc. No worries about CO2 - they have solar.
If the goal is to reduce CO2 then we should go on a campaign to build existing lower CO2 technologies we know work - natural gas and nuclear. Ironically, that will happen anyway because so called "renewables" (they aren't) require a duplication of the grid to survive.
Note that Bill Gates, the smartest man in the world 🙄, isn't planning to build a wind-solar-battery power source next to his future AI server farm - he is paying $$$ for nuclear in a 20 (?) year contract.
Pay attention to what they do, not what they say.
Ok, I gotta go do chores before the 4-9 pm jump in the rate for electricity here in CA. You know, because renewables.
Sometimes it makes more sense to go for a game winning single than to swing for the fences and strike out.
"Dismantling" would be bad. "Repeal and Replace" with a set of paid-for incentives that mimic as closely as possible the effects of the tax on net emissions of CO2 that we ought to have, however unlikely, would be a big improvement.
Technological leadership arising from the innovation that is its inescapable foundation, is enabled by individual freedom and the competition that such freedom engenders.
Whatever premises you have accepted that do not recognize this fact, which then serve as the basis for many of your economic beliefs, become suspect. Check your premises while supporting drastic reductions in the size and scope of Leviathan that Trump promises - however contradictorily, foolishly, or inadequately, he and his team attempt it!D
When it comes to energy and the markets for it, for example, to the extent America reacquaints itself with individual responsibility and the rights necessary to fulfill it, assures America of unsurpassed technological leadership.
There should be near-unanimous support for air and water pollution reduction. Chris Wilson, the Secretary of the Department of Energy nominee's new book Bettering Human Lives addresses some of these themes. A no-cost download link and a form to request a no-cost printed copy are available at https://libertyenergy.com/esg/bettering-human-lives/ Chris Wright supports nuclear power.
Common sense might be the most obvious Trump answer, being practical as opposed to political. An all of the above approach would allow us to produce and create at the same time. So we use what we know and have, replacing what we now import, create with our new resource certainty, maybe even make some money supplying others more friendly, and plow it all back into the next generation of energy. Most likely, predominantly, ever evolving nuclear tech. Of course the way forward is technology, not distribution; it always has been. Common sense tells us that.
Nuclear power has the potential to provide inexpensive, reliable energy, but all the subsidies and tax incentives mean nothing if EPA and NRC regulators cling to false narratives that radiation is so dangerous it must be regulated to near-infinitesimal levels, the driven downward by the as low as reasonably achieveable (ALARA) rules. We are impeded not just by their dose/response error, but by all the consequent regulations that help populate the NRC library of 50 million documents. Job security means saying "no". NRC ignored the 2019 acts of Congress to create Part 53 rules. NRC now says the 2024 ADVANCE act can't undo their self-proclaimed role as protectorate by considering benefits.
The government should solicit bids from third parties for advanced reactor regulation systems, covering any reactor an order of magnitude safer than a Gen III water reactor
That should include the AP-1000 and there is no better way to reduce the number of man hours soaked up by the NRC than giving someone else the job
Jack Devanney has outlined such a thing. Power plants buy insurance against harm created by radiation, but such harm is statuatorially limited to what iis observed as a function of absorbed radiation rates. The insurance companies, like shipping insurorors, pay experts to analyze the real risks -- kind of like Underwriates Laboratores, or Germany's TUV. See gordianknotbook.com
I hope Vivek, part of Trumps DOGE team, gets his way and abolishes the NRC. State regulators can take over the function. Decentralization.
With due respect, I disagree that the NRC should be dismantled. Like all agencies, it is in need of substantial reformation and redirection. But without a federal umbrella, states would be free to implement their own regs. Frankly, you don't want that to happen!!!!!
I've said this on other posts, but what the NRC needs to do more than anything is resurrect the kind of leadership that Ed McGaffigan provided. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Mandate is to "provide reasonable assurance of adequate protection, not absolute assurance of perfect protection.”
The NRC is broken. It's very hard to repair a large entrenched bureaucracy like that once it has been corrupted. Not impossible but it would be VERY, VERY difficult.
We are seeing the Centralized Federal Agencies, CIA, FBI, HSS, FDA, CDC, ATF, and more are corrupted and act outside of control from elected politicians.
At least with State agencies there will be competition. If one State has a rational regulator, then it will build NPPs. Another State with a corrupted regulator and no NPPs will be built. Survival of the fittest.
And a typical US State is just as large or larger than many Nuclear countries which have their own regulators, that function far more effectively than the NRC. Put it to shame.
And you can still have a centralized institution. The goal is to replace top-down, bureaucratic, autocratic control with bottom-up cooperative management. So a central entity would be controlled and nominated by the States, and it would be a central repository for information and cooperative actions agreed upon by the State regulators.
A good model for all the Federal Agencies. And much more compatible with the original philosophy of the US Republic.
I agree reforming the NRC would be extremely difficult, but that is what should be attempted. I agree with the steps Robert Hargraves suggest need to be implemented for instance. The NRC is rich in digitized data going back decades, and with the assistance of AI (see the work being done by Atomic Canyon and Oak Ridge National Labs). Todd Allen of University of Michigan has made several suggestions, like put one person in charge. Then move to a guideline pathway for regulation rather than the prescriptive approach, the current prescriptive approach has politicians instructing engineers, and the antinuclear activist examining valves and nozzles as a way to stifle any re-licensing, etc. The regulatory structure for how we manage our used fuel storage casks may be instructive. And a DOGE move of cutting a bloated Washington based staff, and move the department to ORNL or INL. The field staff for the NRA is also a great asset. Let’s try to use the positive foundational aspects of the NRC and strip the over regulation out of the process that has crippled the growth of nuclear energy in the US.
I don't know where to begin. First, the Orwellian IRA is actually causing inflation. Second, far too much of the $ went to newly minted NGOs staffed by Democrats without guardrails. Even the government org distributing the IRA $ doesn't know how to manage it - it has never been done before.
That little detail aside, new energy sources and infrastructure seem to largely mean wind, solar, batteries, and cross country power lines, all of which are thermodynamic losers hated by everyone but the elite. They all increase the cost of electricity and disproportionately hurt working class, non-college educated (I have a humble BA in math) people - you know, the folks that just the elite in the latest repudiation (election). Everywhere these "solutions" have been implemented, like California, the cost of electricity is punishing to the majority of residents. The elites driving subsidized Teslas charged by subsidized Power Walls charged by subsidized solar panels on the roof of their 3000 sq ft well insulated homes love solar. Having worked in high tech for a couple of decades these people are well represented among my Facebook friends. I love vicariously enjoying their exotic family trips to Europe etc. No worries about CO2 - they have solar.
If the goal is to reduce CO2 then we should go on a campaign to build existing lower CO2 technologies we know work - natural gas and nuclear. Ironically, that will happen anyway because so called "renewables" (they aren't) require a duplication of the grid to survive.
Note that Bill Gates, the smartest man in the world 🙄, isn't planning to build a wind-solar-battery power source next to his future AI server farm - he is paying $$$ for nuclear in a 20 (?) year contract.
Pay attention to what they do, not what they say.
Ok, I gotta go do chores before the 4-9 pm jump in the rate for electricity here in CA. You know, because renewables.
Sometimes it makes more sense to go for a game winning single than to swing for the fences and strike out.
"Dismantling" would be bad. "Repeal and Replace" with a set of paid-for incentives that mimic as closely as possible the effects of the tax on net emissions of CO2 that we ought to have, however unlikely, would be a big improvement.
Technological leadership arising from the innovation that is its inescapable foundation, is enabled by individual freedom and the competition that such freedom engenders.
Whatever premises you have accepted that do not recognize this fact, which then serve as the basis for many of your economic beliefs, become suspect. Check your premises while supporting drastic reductions in the size and scope of Leviathan that Trump promises - however contradictorily, foolishly, or inadequately, he and his team attempt it!D
When it comes to energy and the markets for it, for example, to the extent America reacquaints itself with individual responsibility and the rights necessary to fulfill it, assures America of unsurpassed technological leadership.
There should be near-unanimous support for air and water pollution reduction. Chris Wilson, the Secretary of the Department of Energy nominee's new book Bettering Human Lives addresses some of these themes. A no-cost download link and a form to request a no-cost printed copy are available at https://libertyenergy.com/esg/bettering-human-lives/ Chris Wright supports nuclear power.
Common sense might be the most obvious Trump answer, being practical as opposed to political. An all of the above approach would allow us to produce and create at the same time. So we use what we know and have, replacing what we now import, create with our new resource certainty, maybe even make some money supplying others more friendly, and plow it all back into the next generation of energy. Most likely, predominantly, ever evolving nuclear tech. Of course the way forward is technology, not distribution; it always has been. Common sense tells us that.