Link: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/10/safety-concerns-cloud-americas-flagship-nuclear-restart/

US regulators have issued a warning to a nuclear project critical to Donald Trump’s efforts to revive the industry, after a contractor fell into a reactor cavity and a bundle of fuel rods nearly tipped over during refueling.

Okay, where's the kakistocracy...

Holtec, which has never operated a nuclear power plant

Ah, there it is.

The nuclear industry failing to properly account for safety risks? I'm shocked!

The nuclear industry itself is just an excersize in failing to account for long term risk.

I think Holtec mostly just makes storage containers for spent fuel. They're not exactly simple, but orders of magnitude less complex than running a plant.

Tipping Nuclear Rod seems like Homer Simpson's level of blunder.

Men will do everything but switch to renewable energy sources.

Holtec, which has never operated a nuclear power plant, has secured about $2.2 billion in government support

Oh, where the fuck have we heard this shit before? Seems a little higher stakes than a reflecting pool, and yet here we are.

What's especially bad about this is that if done right, nuclear is not a bad option. It's safer than coal or gas. But if done poorly, it will absolutely not only kill us all, but any mistakes get INSTANT news coverage and are made to sound as bad as they possibly can be because hte public is wrongly terrified about nuclear. (Some fear is justified - keep me away from high voltage stuff, and nuclear stuff. But people are trained to do those jobs. Well, not in this corrupt instance, but in general)

Nuclear is amazing. It is absolutely one of our greatest energy sources we have, and it is green. It has the ability to be at peak operation 24/7 in 99% of weather, at night, on cloudy days, on windless days.

I think solar and wind energy is amazing and needs to be put up everywhere, but until we're there, nuclear has the ability to transform our energy use.

Is there a reason why you believe this?

Nuclear is a great option to assist the transition to renewables, and for places that wind and solar aren't viable, but fucking hell not when it's handing a contract to unqualified morons.

Not to mention, nuclear is GREAT for reliable baseline load. Pair that with renewable sources (which in many locations tend to be bursty) and grid-scale batteries/supercapacitors/some other energy-storage mechanism, and you’ve got a zero-carbon electric grid.

This is why people don't like nuclear. Not because it's safe when handled properly, but because humans do fuck things up, and corruption, and... I mean look at this!

There's no need to gender this particular brand of idiocracy

Good thing nobody screws up oil and spills it into the environment…

I can not like two things at the same time.

Besides that, my energy comes from hydro and solar.

Oh well, I'm sure nobody will miss Michigan.

Maybe awareness of recent history

Probably oil and gas sabotage.

Solar is pretty good, hydro has serious ecological ramifications though. We really need to un-dam a bunch of rivers and restore salmon habitat.

That sadly is true, especially because I'm from a region that was dependent on salmon. They are trying to re establish them, though, and they made some progress. The water quality went up in the last decades and more and more possibilities for them to "climb" have been established. There have been several adult salmons in the last few years, but it's not like the population grew back. We do have a growing beaver population though, which is another success. So yes, hydro has its downsides, but it's not like you could build a nuclear power plant into a natural river delta either.

Well, yeah if we had bet more on nuclear two decades ago and kept building them, this would have been relevant.

But now renewables are expanding at a rate faster than nuclear power ever did, and unlike nuclear the growth rate is not flattening out yet. I don’t see how nuclear is much more than an irrelevant distraction when it comes to new energy production (existing is another matter, please don’t shut them down).

The base load problem is essentially solved IMO. Just a few years ago the duck curve was made to be insurmountable, and now it’s basically fully solved. Long term months long storage is also partially solved for colder regions where they are the most relevant.

But most importantly, this all ties into all the work we have to do to decarbonise industry. We have to make a lot of hydrogen and build a lot of electrical industrial heat production (which comes with free energy storage). Modern gas power plants are already hydrogen ready. We just need to build lots and lots of hydrogen electrolysis plants (for steel and ammonia production) near the gas power plants, and put some aside to use during dunkelflaute. That means many places already have much of the infrastructure needed to balance 100% renewables.

As dumb as Germanys shut down of nuclear has been, I think their strategy will be considered brilliant in 30 years time. The reason they have relied so much on gas is they need a that gas for the industry they specialised in anyway. The trick now is just to transition them to hydrogen and electric heating. There are already factories and fertiliser plants with on-site hydrogen production. It has started.

Right, this is what drives me up a fucking wall about the horseshoe types. I hear people talking about how I should think it’s a good thing that turnip opened up nuclear energy again. But his incompetence and grift will ensure it lives up to all the worst public fears about it. It’s going to set back nuclear progress immeasurably.

Probably the point of this kakistoctacy though, keep the oil prices up…

Is that reactor built by the same guys that botched the reflecting pool?

It has basically the same next-century issues like oil.

I can not like two things at the same time.

Lies! Nobody can live at that speed!

I just would like to point out that China is putting up stable reactors in less than 7 years span. https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/chinas-impressive-rate-of-nuclear-construction

I do think we need every egg in this basket to hatch though, and honestly our main focus should be renewables as you said. But nuclear is just so damn reliable. Besides a reactor can last 75+ years. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/whats-lifespan-nuclear-reactor-much-longer-you-might-think

Nuclear is also incredibly energy efficient. If you were able to power 100.00% of an 82 year life completely on nuclear, the fuel needed for that is about the size of a soda can.
https://cna.ca/2019/06/25/your-lifetime-used-fuel-would-fit-in-a-soda-can-want-proof/

I absolutely love nuclear, I think it's such a cool energy source. And it brings together so many disciplines of industry and engineering. But I am also a huge proponent of decentralization, and I recognize that nuclear plants are the epitome of central, state and corporate owned, need high security and expertise to run. Whereas, solar and wind once made can be community owned, individually owned, off grid, etc. I think there's pros to a multi layered approach.

Can you back up claims like that please? I don't think nuclear energy is causing Earth to copy Venus' atmosphere (exaggeration on scale of course).

My mom said I'm special!

Well, a society with no nuclear and no oil - if we could make it just to like solar and wind and such - would be pretty damn special, so I'll say your mom is right :)

Maybe they should hand it to an expert on nuclear.

Four seasons pool repair co.?

But how does it compare with installing a pool liner?

Nuclear is a horrible option though. It takes ages to come online (10+ years builds are the norm), is more expensive than solar/wind plus batteries right now, has to basically operate for a minimum of 40 years to turn a profit because of how expensive the build is to begin with and requires a steady output of energy so would only be good as a base load. Also, it requires big power grid infrastructure to deliver gigawatts in power from a single source, so exactly the opposite of most current renewables and even if you'd replace nuclear with a renewable and reused it's grid, you'd now have to find a place that is good for either.

Then there is the whole environmental stuff like radiation and the point that the whole earth is heading towards 2.8c higher temperatures and the fact that countries like France have to reduce their output of reactors in the summer because of water temperatures in the rivers they use for cooling.

China is still benefiting from their incredible demographic dividend. Comparing us to them is misleading. It should be said that the west built all its reactors during its demographic dividend periods as well, maybe that’s relevant, maybe not. But food for thought.

The lifespan of the reactors are not that interesting. What matters are long term costs. With renewable power plants you generally replace a larger part of the power plant when you repower the power plant. But that’s because they don’t need a huge concrete structure and building to contain them, if you replace the part doing the work that’s already most of it. Repowering a renewable power plant is significantly cheaper than building a new one from scratch. How that pans out in the long term remains to be seen. But most likely costs will fall further as the world moves to mostly maintaining/repowering what it has rather than building new sites from scratch.

The size of the nuclear fuel (end product) is not at all interesting unless you’re building a space ship. I should say that future space exploration is one reason why I hope nuclear power stays alive in some form.

This fuel comes from ore. You need ~10tons of ore for 1kg of fuel. For the HALUE fuel needed by the SMR reactor that are supposed to save the industry you need ~40tons of ore. Still much better than oil and gas, by a wide margin. But it’s fundamentally not a renewable process and there are significant concerns around the supply chain of this fuel. Read up on France’s issues and concerns with its supplies from Niger and Namibia.

Fun fact btw: nuclear power contributes directly to global warming from the heat they emit. The effect is surprisingly significant. All thermal power plants equate to about the climate gas emissions from airplane travel if I remember correctly. The only upside is the effect disappears instantly when the power plant shuts down. But this is not an effect we can afford to multiply when we’re on the precipice of ecological collapse due to a warming planet.

Not the op but...

Nuclear waste lasts a very long time, and people (governments and corporations) seem to only think in short amounts of time.

Thinking about stuff like the Tomb and dumped nuclear barrels and a third nuclear waste leak at the Hanford site

The public is right to be afraid of nuclear and the long term implications.

Looks like you understood what i meant. What to do with the highly active and highly poisonous waste is still not solved, aside from using even more energy to make it less active. Can as well just plug a generator in a geologically active area.

Nuclear is getting drastically cheaper as of late, and will likely continue to do so. Power infrastructure should not operate to turn a profit, but to provide a service. Nuclear does not take drastically different power infrastructure than current fossil fuels. Radiation is genuinely a non-issue. Waste can be stored in seismically inactive rock above the water table and be essentially ignored forever. Coal causes far more radiation contamination, by orders of magnitude, than nuclear, not to mention there has been barely any nuclear energy incidents, and we only know so much about the ones that did happen because of fearmongering. If water temperature is affecting the local rivers, the plant is mismanaged and poorly designed. My local plant only draws water from its own artificial lake, and does not affect the environment. In fact, it's lake and the surrounding area was turned into an excellent park, where I hike often.

The reasons why nuclear makes a ton of sense, at least right now:

• Power storage technology is not ready for 100% renewables on most grids, so some level of base power needs provided
• Nuclear can replace existing fossil fuel plants, since they provide nearly the same service
• Renewables are not available everywhere. In places where the solar flux is too low for significant parts of the year, both wind and solar can suffer. If the power grid is entirely reliant on them, this could cause catastrophe. Nuclear bridges that gap without affecting CO2
• Nuclear is already nearly at the point where plants can be built on-site for power supply on power hungry infrastructure with relative ease, and is only getting better and cheaper.
• Until we have other options and better power storage, some base load power is necessary, and nuclear is infinitely preferable to fossil fuels

Nuclear won't be a forever solution for large grid power, and will eventually be replaced by mature renewable infrastructure. That time is not going to be in the next decade, or even two, most likely. In the temporary, it can largely replace the fossil fuel industry that is killing the planet. In the long term, on-site reactors will allow power hungry infrastructure to avoid affecting the local power grid, like research institutions, large scale manufacturing, and data centers. You're totally right in that renewables are far preferable to nuclear, but they simply aren't swap in, swap out replacements for each other. Nuclear isn't really competing with renewables, it's competing with fossil fuels. They're both critical parts of what we need to get off fossil fuel dependence.

Edit: For the record, coal plants can take upwards of 8 years to construct and typically multiple decades to "break even." We don't operate power infrastructure because it's profitable, but because we need it.

Generally it's not the technology, it's the profit first externalization of cost mindset.

Tell Trump he's the only one smart enough to insert the Uranium tablets.

Source on nuclear getting cheaper to build?

Also, solar and wind plus storage is cheaper, faster online, does not need artificial lakes, nor 1000 year storage that has historically been horrible. Plants also historically didn't need to update security. It's literally the worse option. Even with green hydrogen and storage.

Your coal argument is a strawman/whataboutism. I'm saying skip nuclear unless you're around the artic circle.

I live near an abandoned nuclear plant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNP-3_and_WNP-5

It was too expensive to get started. I think about this often when people tell me nuclear is cheap.

My spouse broke into those in HS. Apparently, the echo inside the empty tower is amazing.

Source on storage that has historically been horrible? Our storage facilities are pretty simple. Just a salt mine in the desert. My source on nuclear getting cheaper to build is that many, many companies are choosing to plan on-site nuclear plants rather than other options, and Eastern countries building it cheaper year over year. In the West, nuclear cost per kWH has dropped significantly over time, but construction costs have moderately increased (mostly due to mismanagement). I agree, nuclear isn't super applicable outside of certain areas, but even in metropolitan areas that have good access to sun and wind, you still need extensive storage capacity for periods of less activity, which just doesn't exist on the scales we need yet. It's not a funding or adoption issue, we literally just haven't figured out good solutions for efficient power storage on the necessary scales yet. We either need better battery tech or more efficient potential energy solutions. Artificial lakes are already present and usable, and can provide protected habitats and natural areas. Nuclear is a good option. There is a reason China and India are making such a transition, even when they're aiming for full renewables. We need base load, for now, and nuclear is the best of bad options.

I wonder if we can get RFK to convince him to start drinking out of these. There is already at least one MAHA person on YouTube/Tiktok doing so for the supposed "health benefits"

I drink radium water every day for that healthy glow in my skin and urine.

Nuclear is cheap. It is handicapped by our refusal to invest in research to make it better. Do you think batteries have always been small and cheap?

How can you call it cheap when we’re discussing a specific project that ran out of money? I can’t think of a more hard and fast example of something being “not cheap.”

I’m not supporting any particular alternative technology or narrative, so I dunno what your point is about batteries. Those aren’t even an electrical production method so IDK how it relates at all. What I’m saying is, it is straight up mind-numbing that people keep telling me nuclear is cheap when I drive past the “expensive local boondoggle” failed nuclear plant pretty regularly. And here you are, in my replies, recursively reaffirming the “nuclear is cheap” gospel in response to me linking a specific example of nuclear being too expensive to even turn the dang thing on. I don’t even know what else to say.

Nuclear is cheap.... if you dont account the construction of the plant and the remediation process after the plant was closed... if one takes into account the whole process as an inversion (and still does not account decommissioning), one starts to get positive numbers nearing the end of the original life span of the plant... then, normally one or two life extensions are feasable.

It could be made cheaper

English isn't my first language, so i may have fucked up technical words.

Im thinking the self contained ones might make the most sense if we do more. I do feel we kinda missed the period where we should have bulked up on it because wind and solar are so fast and cheap to get going and im hoping geothermal takes off. Especially for home heating. I would love to at some point someone going. Oh this does not have geothermal heat pumps. Man this must be from early in the millenium.

You mean Michigone?

Look into what China is doing with Thorium Molten Salt Reactors. That's the future of nuclear.