Trump Launches Reform of Nuclear Industry, Slashes Regulation (cnbc.com) 102
Longtime Slashdot reader sinij shares a press release from the White House, outlining a series of executive orders that overhaul the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and speed up deployment of new nuclear power reactions in the U.S.. From a report: The NRC is a 50-year-old, independent agency that regulates the nation's fleet of nuclear reactors. Trump's orders call for a "total and complete reform" of the agency, a senior White House official told reporters in a briefing. Under the new rules, the commission will be forced to decide on nuclear reactor licenses within 18 months. Trump said Friday the orders focus on small, advanced reactors that are viewed by many in the industry as the future. But the president also said his administration supports building large plants. "We're also talking about the big plants -- the very, very big, the biggest," Trump said. "We're going to be doing them also."
When asked whether NRC reform will result in staff reductions, the White House official said "there will be turnover and changes in roles." "Total reduction in staff is undetermined at this point, but the executive orders do call for a substantial reorganization" of the agency, the official said. The orders, however, will not remove or replace any of the five commissioners who lead the body, according to the White House. Any reduction in staff at the NRC would come at time when the commission faces a heavy workload. The agency is currently reviewing whether two mothballed nuclear plants, Palisades in Michigan and Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, should restart operations, a historic and unprecedented process. [...]
Trump's orders also create a regulatory framework for the Departments of Energy and Defense to build nuclear reactors on federal land, the administration official said. "This allows for safe and reliable nuclear energy to power and operate critical defense facilities and AI data centers," the official told reporters. The NRC will not have a direct role, as the departments will use separate authorities under their control to authorize reactor construction for national security purposes, the official said. The president's orders also aim to jump start the mining of uranium in the U.S. and expand domestic uranium enrichment capacity, the official said. Trump's actions also aim to speed up reactor testing at the Department of Energy's national laboratories.
When asked whether NRC reform will result in staff reductions, the White House official said "there will be turnover and changes in roles." "Total reduction in staff is undetermined at this point, but the executive orders do call for a substantial reorganization" of the agency, the official said. The orders, however, will not remove or replace any of the five commissioners who lead the body, according to the White House. Any reduction in staff at the NRC would come at time when the commission faces a heavy workload. The agency is currently reviewing whether two mothballed nuclear plants, Palisades in Michigan and Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, should restart operations, a historic and unprecedented process. [...]
Trump's orders also create a regulatory framework for the Departments of Energy and Defense to build nuclear reactors on federal land, the administration official said. "This allows for safe and reliable nuclear energy to power and operate critical defense facilities and AI data centers," the official told reporters. The NRC will not have a direct role, as the departments will use separate authorities under their control to authorize reactor construction for national security purposes, the official said. The president's orders also aim to jump start the mining of uranium in the U.S. and expand domestic uranium enrichment capacity, the official said. Trump's actions also aim to speed up reactor testing at the Department of Energy's national laboratories.
Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Good (Score:5, Insightful)
>Is it a contest?
Yes of fucking course it is.
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If not nuclear, you'll just use more fossil fuels (Score:2)
The U.S. and China are fervently engaged in a dick measuring contest, and at the rate we're going I'm afraid China is going to measure many more dicks.
Nope, the real environmentalists. Greenpeace founders and such, have realized that opposing nuclear energy all these years was a mistake. That nuclear is part of the "all of the above" non-fossil fuel alternatives we should be using. Our pulling back on nuclear just perpetuated the use of fossil fuels. Europe, Germany in particular, backed off nuclear and tried switching to natural gas bought from Putin. The Ukraine war interfered with that, US coal exports to Europe then doubled.
Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously? Good luck competing technologically when you don't have enough power or it costs twice as much.
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The race is who creates ASI first. Energy will be a limiting factor in the near future.
Existential fossil fuel based environmental crisis (Score:2)
Is it a contest?
No, it's an existential fossil fuel based environmental crisis.
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I'd suggest the U.S. buy some reactors from China, but the tariffs on them would be terrible. :-)
That would be doubly ironic given most of the reactors currently being built by China were originally designed by Westinghouse.
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were originally designed by Westinghouse.
Hardly.
Chinese have always applied a heavily diversified approach to nuclear power generation, and have purposefully avoided reliance on any single design, licensing tech from many sources and localizing it heavily, practically to the point of technological independence usually by the time they build their second reactor.
Virtually all operational Chinese reactors are their own designs, even when based on foreign tech. The foreign tech is mostly French, Canadian or Soviet but the plants are locally built and
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Of the reactors under construction, less than half are the CAP1000. While based on the AP1000, the "Westinghouse" designs, the CAP1000s are also heavily modified and localized.
Of course the Chinese have modified the design. Mostly for the purpose of making plants more "cookie-cutter" and less bespoke like the ridiculous way they do it in the west. Just fixing that is an impressive accomplishment in itself that we don't need to wait for SMRs to emulate. The concept scales. We just can't build big things in the west anymore.
https://www.world-nuclear-news... [world-nuclear-news.org]
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We just can't build big things in the west anymore.
You misspelled "not allowed to". Also, the need to "build big" is not well justified.
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You misspelled "not allowed to". Also, the need to "build big" is not well justified.
Big, safe proven cookie cutter nuke plants are perfectly well justified, but our inability to build big things extends far beyond nuclear plants. I live in a place with much untapped hydro potential, but we can't build hydro dams anymore either. The last one was so astronomically over time and budget I can't see anyone trying again for a long, long while.
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Big, safe proven cookie cutter nuke plants are perfectly well justified, but...
...the only problem is they exist only in your imagination.
So far every reactor built has been a fairly unique enterprise. Why?
There used to be 6 where I used to work (the "greens", paid by competing interest managed to close down 4), built in the age where "we could build them". It still took three decades to get them up and running. Why?
Because each plant, 1 reactor or several, is basically a small country. Just so that you get a bit of a perspective, on the premises we have a water utility with a two lar
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Mostly for the purpose of making plants more "cookie-cutter" and less bespoke like the ridiculous way they do it in the west.
That's ironic. Firstly China doesn't do standard production of large scale projects like this, largely because attempting perfect standardisation is something that is important when you outsource production. And secondly because nuclear plants are cookie cutter already. They have a standard design by the licensor, with everything process and construction requirement specified very carefully with virtually no option to deviate. There's nothing bespoke about reactors in the west. The out of battery limits com
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Here's a list with all Chinese reactors, you can look up the reactor type and then use that site or Wikipedia or similar to track the history and specs of each type:
https://world-nuclear.org/nucl... [world-nuclear.org]
The US Navy knows a thing or two about reactors (Score:2)
I'd suggest the U.S. buy some reactors from China, but the tariffs on them would be terrible. :-)
On a more serious note, I'd point out there are some folks who never backed off of nuclear reactors in the US and they have an excellent safety record. The US Navy.
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Maybe the US can build a new nuclear plant in the next 40 years.
Maybe Russia can "gift" the U.S. one, I think they have an used one somewhere ... :-)
They'd have to steal it from Ukraine [wikipedia.org] first.
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For everyone's information, the US abandoned it's 4G Integral Fast Reactor in 1994. Russia didn't, so the BN-800 is the current gold standard in fast reactors. It burns plutonium they built up during the nuclear arms race, but could burn nuclear waste as well (which is fertile - it can be bred to Plutonium). The US could do that, too, with a fast reactor, France, too, they had one as well. Russia sold this tech to China.
On that note, private companies are developing technologies mostly based on the Molten S
Renewables + Nuclear displaces fossil fuel faster (Score:2)
another perfect example of how classism and corruption are destroying both our society and our planet, this is exactly what evil looks like
Dialing back on fossil fuel use is evil? Renewables + Nuclear displaces fossil fuel faster than Renewables alone.
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Remember when Clinton and Obama allowed the sale of Uranium to Russia?
Re:The US still imports uranium from Russia (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.npr.org/sections/t... [npr.org]
But the truth doesn't matter anymore. What matters is stigginit. Whether you have food and shelter or your kids have clean air and water or your grandkids have a future none of that matters in the face of stigginit.
On the bright side.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Building a nuclear reactor takes so long simply from a construction standpoint Trump will be out of office and we can reverse all this before the U.S. has its own Chernobyl.
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Trump with be out of office? And you think that would end MAGA?
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Our God Lord will never be out of office. All Hail Pope and God Lord TRUMP.
If you don't see sarcasm there, sorry.
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Vance is already being groomed for 2028.
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Since when was that a requirement?
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It's him or DeSantis.
Vance is a weird couch fucker (Score:3, Insightful)
He won't make it out of the primary but at the same time if Trump isn't dead I fully expect him to run again and to win the primary.
Then I fully expect the corrupt supreme Court to rule that because his terms aren't consecutive he can run again.
Finally voter suppression means Trump will win that election.
Even though the economy will be a smoldering mess by 2028.
I don'
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After 2016 and 2020, who will oppose him? MAGAts want an anointed successor, and they love JD Vance.
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I don't think we need to get a Chernobyl (Score:2)
10 years. That's how long the city needed to be evacuated before the radiation levels were safe enough for people.
Imagine in this housing market if the local reactor has a disaster and you are forced to flee the city. You lose everything except the possessions you can quickly stuff in your car and go. Most notably you lose your house.
The corporation responsible for the disaster pays basically nothing. FEMA has been gutted to Make Way for 5 trillion dol
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"Removing regulations" the trump way is a good way to start having a Chernobyl.
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"More regulation" vs "less regulation" is too simplistic. The answer is "Yes, we need more good regulation," and "Yes we need less bad regulation." Without a detailed analysis, you can't know if it's good or bad. Most likely here there is some good and some bad.
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Sure, look at the education history of the officer who is presenting the EOs. A BA in Greek political drama!
White House Office of Science and Technology Director Michael Kratsios
Inspires confidence.
I'm asking myself why did I waste 8 years on a doctorate in nuclear power engineering, when I could have done a liberal arts BA instead.
Re: On the bright side.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yea we know you will stop at nothing to destroy America, and as first order of business the few good things Trump manages to do will be axed along with all the bad ones.
The world is gonna have to use nuclear power eventually.
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What makes you think he is going to leave?
He's quite old and the immortality serum is yet to be discovered.
Trumpism will stay on, though.
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Building a nuclear reactor takes so long simply from a construction standpoint Trump will be out of office and we can reverse all this before the U.S. has its own Chernobyl.
The worst that can happen with modern nuclear reactors is Three-Mile Island: no casualties, at most minor radiation leaks, all the fuel contained within the designated structure.
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You know, those containment structures take a long time to build. All that concrete. It's silly. Just look at Walmart, now they know how to build. Some steel girders, bit of sheet metal and a week later there you go! Now that's how you build. Smart!
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TLDR; if they build plants without containment, it still won't cause Chernobyl v2.0
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Some modern designs can run without a containment vessel and can even be buried for 10+ years without refueling or engineer interaction. That is designs without reprocessing, like Russia's BN-800 (they abandoned reprocessing due to proliferation concerns - the US killed the whole IFR mostly on the same grounds).
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Building a nuclear reactor takes so long simply from a construction standpoint Trump will be out of office
Trump keeps claiming he will run for a third term, and I have no reasons left to doubt him about that. If something removes Trump from office, it will be his arteries, rather than any of the suggestions (no longer rules) written into the Constitution.
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Building a nuclear reactor takes so long simply from a construction standpoint Trump will be out of office and we can reverse all this before the U.S. has its own Chernobyl.
The problem with the Republican party is that they are their own worst enemy, not thinking things through before they open their mouths and propose solutions to problems.
For example, the reason modern nuclear power plants aren't available in the U.S. is largely because modern designs haven't been approved by the NRC. Why haven't they been approved? Budget cuts that the Republicans insisted on. So now to fix what they screwed up, they'll rip out the regulations and leave us with a risk of dangerous, poorl
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Unlikely to be Chernobyl, the US has negative coefficient requirements. I don't know what that means, specifically, but in layman's terms, no chance of going boom.
Memories (Score:5, Insightful)
Congress can delegate authority to the president (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is the three branches of government are supposed to be co-equal and Congress is supposed to oversee what the president does along with the courts.
And frankly that's not happening.
What really upended and killed our politics once and for all was when Elon musk came out and said that anyone who crossed him and Trump would face a primary Challenger fully funded by Elon musk's unlimited money.
Of course that really only applies to the Republicans but the fact of the matter is if musk drops 15 or 20 million on a race as small as a House of Representatives primary then whoever he backs is almost guaranteed to win.
That doesn't necessarily work for the Senate and it can backfire if he's not careful about keeping his nose out of it like what happened with that state supreme court seat he basically gave to the Democrats in Wisconsin.
But I will give musk credit for this he does learn from his mistakes and he is stepping back from overt politics. He will of course continue to do nasty little back room deals but he'll do nasty little backroom deals instead of being out in the open where it's obvious he's buying the election.
voters don't like it when they see that but as long as you're not rubbing their nose in it like a dog that just shit on the rug they don't really care about corruption.
All this means that Congress as long as it's in the hands of the Republican party is basically owned Lock stock and barrel by Donald Trump and though him Elon musk. Therefore one of the fundamental checks and balances on Presidential power is just gone.
That leaves the supreme Court but our court is openly on the take. Most notably Clarence Thomas and alito routinely accept bribes in the form of multi-million dollar vacations and in Clarence Thomas's case they bought him a house for his mom and a luxury motor Coach which he is very very proud of. Just don't call it an RV.
The final check in balance on unchecked Presidential power was the voters and well, they blew it. Voter suppression really did it to. So it's not entirely to voters fault but there is still 77 million people who didn't understand that letting a handful of billionaires take absolute control of everything was a bad idea...
And of course talking about politics openly like I am is considered a social faux pas so I'm going to get modded into pulp and it's unlikely the things I've said and the ideas I've put out here, all of which are actually true and readily verifiable, aren't going to go anywhere.
And honestly even if I get modded up this is a dying forum. If by some miracle I became a successful journalist and started to say these things on primetime TV I would be fired. I know this because during the election I watched several longstanding journalists trying to do exactly this and watch them dog walked.
And that was the other check and balance, the 4th estate. Journalism was supposed to inform us so we would know better and that failed because the billionaires just bought everything and anyone who didn't do exactly what they wanted to got fired.
Every single institution designed to protect you from unchecked political power has failed. Bad things are going to happen and there is no longer anything that can be done to stop it. Shit is going to get real bad. Makes me wish I didn't have a kid. That was a fucked up thing to do
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>"Remember when the US used to pass laws through Congress like it's supposed to..."
Yes, it was a time before Congress intentionally gave up more and more and more of their power, responsibility, and control to the zillions of agencies they created, which are controlled by the Executive branch. Why? So they couldn't be blamed or held accountable for anything. It is the same reason we end up with multi-thousand page bills with all kinds of totally unrelated crap in them. So nobody can or will read or u
SWEET! (Score:1)
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Since you mentioned it:
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/20... [npr.org]
Good. Hope they get Thorium too. (Score:5, Interesting)
When Sagan briefed Congress on anthropogenic climate change in 1985, this is what he recommended, specifically safe nuclear tech. The original scientific solution, that also advances nuclear research and gets us closer to fusion. Nothing in the numbers including meltdowns comes close to the danger posed by old school coal plants without even considering climate change, but it has become the most feared thing in the world.
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Has anyone actually overcome the salt corrosion problem that plagued earlier thorium reactor designs?
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Unfortunately the linked article doesn't mention how (or if) Chinese researchers have dealt with corrosion. I have to wonder how well self-sealing pipes will work in the long run. Seems like key cooling components would need to be replaced on a fairly regular basis.
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When Sagan briefed Congress on anthropogenic climate change in 1985
If Sagan briefed Congress today he wouldn't repeat this. Sagan is someone who knows we need viable solutions that can be implemented in a short timeframe, and few scientists would advocate an approach that boots the problem 40 years down the road. Existing climate models and "deadlines" don't even take into account a "do nothing for the first 20 years" approach. Which is precisely what you get with nuclear.
One of Trump's issues (Score:3, Insightful)
We need next gen Nuclear power to help stabilize the grids while renewables do their thing.
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I generally find that taking my news from a news aggregator like ground news helps to reduce the spin on his actions. To a degree he definitely has a messaging problem, and to a degree it is a media spin problem and to another degree he does just sometimes do weird stuff. It helps me to keep outside of the flame bait.... some day I will actually pay a subscription.
I don't know how I feel about Nuclear, but I think we keep inventing things that just need more power, for better or worse. America is built ar
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Nuclear is NOT cheap! It's expensive and I've yet to see proof these next gen solutions actually work out; as is often the case, they play games figuring the problems will be fixed later by people in the future. It is not hard to find data on the net costs for nuclear and how we ignore the socialized RISK it has always had. Nobody will insure the things for good reason. If the government is essentially the insurer; then it should own and operate it like the military does! If we required this, then we'd not
It’s a good start. (Score:1)
This is a good start. But somebody has to pay for it. Make tech companies pay for reactors to power their massive data centers. Either that or tax tech bro billionaires and use the money for reactors.
Thank Goodness (Score:1)
Lots of compelling reasons presented. Watch it yourself and judge, don't let the media distort it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
We need nuclear. It's just the way it is.
Even a stopped clock is sometimes right (Score:3)
The US has too much nuclear regulation relative to the risks when compared to fossil fuels.
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The US has too much nuclear regulation relative to the risks when compared to fossil fuels.
Then you don't understand the concept. The risk is the result of the regulation. You can't have too much regulation relative to risk. You can have an unreasonable amount of regulation driving risk, but remember if you're happy with the nuclear risk now it is *the result* of that regulation.
I like this (Score:2)
As someone who despises just about everything about this admin there's nothing in the EO I object to and I think nuclear power is a good thing and we should have more of it so you know, a W in my book. All that said do I think this will mature into anything? It'll be good but marginal, I think the NRC needs a big reform but this is something you do want smart, motivated people focused on the goal and not the ideology to get there and Trump is antithetic to staffing smart, capable people.
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I think a good example of nuclear power done right is the US Navy. They've been running nuclear reactors on ships(!), 24/7/365, with no safety incidents since 1954.
Their secret? They aren't trying to "maximize sharedholder value", so they don't have any incentive to cut corners on safety. Also, they have excellent training programs and hundreds of nuclear experts with decades of expertise and the authority to exercise it.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration just hires random people straight from Fox News
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I mean we can trace so much of American nuclear program both naval and civilian right to Admiral Rickover and I think overall the whole thing lost its steam and a steady, reasonable hand like that. I've been pretty convinced the surest way forward is the French model, just have the state own and operate it. Changing regulation is good and will get some progress but not enough.
The best I can hope for is this pro-nuclear directive carries through to the next hopefully more competent admin.
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Faster Reactions (Score:1)
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He's not wrong, nuclear power is probably the one reason I oppose Democrats agenda. That said, I think Trump is a dumbfuck, so take what you can from that, lol.
Betcha $500 (Score:2, Funny)
Yes, we know (Score:2)
Like nothing you've ever seen, biggest ever in the history of the universe, yes, we know. Just put it on the pile over there with the others...
Do the math! (Score:2)
Nuclear Fission, the only functioning form of nuclear power we have right now, isn't cost-effective. The Germans did the math, came up short and decommissioned their ambitious Fission related projects such as the Kalkar Fast Breeder and the Wackersdorf Replenishment Plant. And eventually Fission in general. And after closing down all Fission plants and after 5+ decades of searching they still haven't found a place to put their nuclear waste.