A Radiant Inauguration
If one word could be used to describe the inaugural events that took place these past few days in The Swamp, it might be ‘glowing.’
President Donald Trump was glowing most of all, so much so that he kept breaking out in the Trump dance all over town, at one point with a sword. It wasn’t quite Javier Milei’s chainsaw, but it was an adequate and endearing substitute.
First Lady Melania Trump was glowing almost as much, and so was the entire Trump family. Things were going so glowingly that even Republican Kentucky U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie was caught smiling at times, and he’s been cranky ever since Mike Johnson got re-elected as House speaker. The long-overdue pardon for Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht made Massie even happier.
All the crowds and indeed all the nation seemed to be glowing, or at least bathed in a sunny optimistic light, as Trump began his second term. His inaugural speech was graceful, visionary, and inspiring, if grittily realistic. There seems to be a belief that the president—along with all of MAGA nation—will indeed Make America Great Again.
There are, of course, a lot of policy battles ahead, and none will be thornier than U.S. energy policy. Right off the bat there are certain things we know. Trump wasted no time in pulling out of the Paris Climate Accords and in declaring an energy emergency. He reversed by executive order Biden’s preemptive attempt to ban oil and gas drilling in U.S. coastal waters. One of Trump’s favorite lines all day, if not the favorite, was “drill, baby, drill.”
By Monday’s end, the progressive hoaxology that is human-made climate change was taking a long walk off a short plank in MAGA world. As the president reminded us, we have more recoverable oil reserves than any other country in the world—some 264 billion barrels compared with Russia’s 256 billion, Saudi Arabia‘s 212 billion, Canada’s 167 billion, Iran’s 143 billion, and Brazil’s 120 billion—and we are going to use it.
We also know that employing our domestic energy as a workhorse to unleash our economy is the secret both to immediate prosperity and lower prices throughout the economy. Unfettered oil production will help slay inflation, boost our standard of living, and ensure our nation’s future vitality and security. The days are numbered for a United States of Weakness.
But what about the long-term? While a short- and medium-term emphasis on fossil fuels is imperative—not just for the survival of the middle class but for any reductions in poverty— there is ultimately a need for other sustainable sources of energy with minimal downsides, as Trump’s nominee for energy secretary, Chris Wright, said at his confirmation hearing last week. Wright pledged that, as secretary of energy, he would be an “unabashed steward for all sources of affordable, reliable, and secure American energy.”
It’s the all-of-the-above approach that Trump has championed in the past.
That said, take a look around the energy landscape, and one quickly realizes that, except for fossil fuels, the pickings are slim in the all-of-the-above categories. Wind power is an environmental and property rights nightmare, and not reliable or sufficient enough to boot; solar is cleaner but not any more reliable or adequate as a sustainable source of energy. And it’s a land hog, too.
So that leaves nuclear power as the most viable alternative, and, as it turned out, Wright is an advocate and more than that: He sits on the board of Oklo, a manufacturer of nuclear reactors and recycler of used uranium, or at least he did until he resigned on January 13.
So if fossil fuels have Wright’s heart, he’s at least been known to flirt with the cute red-headed reactor sitting down at the other end of the bar. So expect that, during the next four years, we are going to see significant progress in dismantling unnecessary regulatory burdens that have been wrapped around the neck of the nuclear power industry.
Here’s how Wright put it at his hearing:
“The first [priority] is to unleash American energy at home and abroad to restore energy dominance. The security of our nation begins with energy. Previous administrations have viewed energy as a liability instead of the immense national asset that it is. To compete globally, we must expand energy production, including commercial nuclear and liquified natural gas, and cut the cost of energy for Americans."
––Chris Wright, Energy Secretary
Trump said the same thing in one of his first executive orders, in which he directed a review of all agency actions that potentially burden the development of domestic energy resources, “with particular attention to oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, biofuels, critical mineral, and nuclear energy resources.”
The Republican platform, remade significantly in Trump’s image this year, also puts nuclear power on its list: “Republicans will unleash energy production from all sources, including nuclear, to immediately slash inflation and to power American homes, cars, and factories with reliable, abundant, and affordable energy.”
That the platform singled out nuclear for greater production is a positive sign for the industry and for hopes that true regulatory reform is in the making. That’s the exact opposite from when Democrats mention nuclear power, which is inevitably a knee-jerk call to shut down every nuclear power plant and drive us all back to caves and candle light.
The rationale from the progressive left is that nuclear plants are unsafe, and its waste products dangerous and dirty and forevermore—despite technological advances rendering all these arguments about as relevant as flat-earth theory—but the real reason progressives dislike nuclear power is because, fully developed and deployed, it threatens to resolve the so-called climate crisis and in the process eliminate a big part of the progressive left’s reason to exist.
As usual with the left, it is all about power and control.
States are the key to a nuclear enriched future
Assuming regulatory reform happens under Trump, and that’s a good bet, most of the actual production of nuclear power will occur on the state level, and so states need to be ready when the regulatory time comes.
Or to say it another way, for decades now the federal government has served as a massive regulatory restraint on the state horse of nuclear power production; unsaddle the big fat federal government from the back of the horse, and nuclear energy can gallop.
To that end, two Wisconsin lawmakers, state Rep. David Steffen (R-Howard) and state Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin), launched their own effort last week to promote nuclear power in Wisconsin. The two, who sit atop their respective chambers’ energy-related committees, have introduced a resolution declaring Wisconsin’s commitment to developing and investing in nuclear energy.
Their goal, they say, is to enact a nuclear siting study and to convene a nuclear summit in the state.
“Today’s resolution sends a clear message: Wisconsin supports nuclear power and we welcome the development and investment in this clean energy source,” Steffen said in a release. “Energy demands, driven in particular by AI (artificial intelligence) data centers, are continuing to soar. Wisconsin needs nuclear to meet this challenge. Our state is equipped with the strong research and manufacturing sectors needed to lead on this revolutionary technology, and I look forward to working further on this exciting issue.”
The lawmakers point out that Wisconsin operates two nuclear reactors at Point Beach Nuclear Plant, which account for 650 jobs and that power more than a million homes. The reactors make up two-thirds of the state’s carbon-free electricity production, the lawmakers observe.
“Nuclear energy has the potential to be the clean and reliable answer to powering our future,” Bradley said. “The technology surrounding nuclear energy has developed a great deal over the past few decades; it’s safer and more efficient than ever before.”
The two say the soon-to-be introduced nuclear siting study will work to identify locations for nuclear generation sites throughout the state, while a proposal to convene a nuclear power summit will provide an information sharing opportunity and allow Wisconsin to showcase its nuclear-related research and technology.
Wisconsin is not the only state prepping for a nuclear energy revival. Not far away in Indiana, that state’s General Assembly is considering legislation that would create new incentives for small nuclear technology, including a 20-percent tax credit for manufacturers of small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs. The tax credit is a bad idea, but the lust for nuclear power isn’t.
The real state leader in encouraging nuclear power development is Virginia, where this past July Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed a bill aimed at accelerating the growth of the industry in the state. Virginia is actually where the potential of a nuclear energy renaissance becomes interesting because Youngkin is not only an advocate for nuclear power expansion but also a big-time believer in the development of those SMRs, and it’s that niche that holds out the most hope for returning nuclear power to center stage.
Here’s how Youngkin puts it:
“To meet the power demands of growing and thriving Virginia, it is imperative we continue to explore emerging technologies that will provide Virginians access to the reliable, affordable and increasingly clean energy they deserve. In alignment with our All-American, All-of-the-Above energy plan, small modular nuclear reactors will play a critical role in harnessing this potential and positioning Virginia to be a leading nuclear innovation hub. This legislation will allow us to press forward with the potential sighting of an SMR here at North Anna. Together, our potential to unleash and foster a rich energy economy for Virginians is limitless.”
––Gov. Glenn Youngkin
Youngkin had previously announced a plan to build a SMR in the state within the next 10 years, and it looks like he’s going to make it. Amazon Web Services announced in October it has signed an agreement with Dominion Energy, Virginia’s utility company, to explore development of a SMR near Dominion’s existing North Anna nuclear power station.
Think Easy Bake
All of which begs the question: Just what the hell is a SMR, or small modular nuclear reactor?
Well, according to the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), one of 17 national labs operated by the U.S. Department of Energy, an SMR is a nuclear fission reactor that features factory-built-and-assembled modules in a variety of designs. They are about a tenth to one-quarter the size of a traditional nuclear energy plant and come with advanced safety features.
It’s like replacing your conventional oven with a counter-top oven or air fryer. It gives you almost as much bang for much less buck, and it’s smaller and prettier, too. Maybe we should call them Easy Bake Reactors.
Most important, SMRs can be assembled in a factory, transported to a remote site, and reactor modules can be added as needed, INL states. SMRs can be used for power generation and an array of other industrial applications, including desalination. Because they are smaller, they require reduced capital investment and can be located in places where large traditional reactors cannot go.
In other words, they can make the sun shine in places where the sun don’t shine.
Once upon a time, a physicist I know spoke about a day when people would have their very own tiny nuclear reactors in their backyards, the size of a doghouse (or maybe an Easy Bake?), she would say, and I just smiled, such a dreamer she was. Well, we’re still light years from that, if it ever happens—she is a dreamer, after all—but I no longer think she was in la-la land. The industry is definitely headed in that direction.
That’s a good thing, both for the future of nuclear power and politically. I say politically because while Trump and his new secretary of commerce are on board, Trump has expressed some reticence to go all in for traditional reactors.
Specifically, while Trump is all for dismantling the industry’s over-regulation, he has also expressed some reservations, and he did so most explicitly on the infamous Joe Rogan podcast right before the election. He cited nuclear projects that went south and their red-tape realities: “They get too big, and too complex and too expensive. I think there’s a little danger in nuclear.”
Trump did use that language, which is what the corporate media focused on, but the words were part of a larger conversation and by themselves not representative of what the president was actually saying, which was mostly a point about overregulation driving up costs. The conversation wasn’t entirely specific, but it pointed to the place where Trump is headed—not away from nuclear but away from those big expensive plants that are too complex.
Toward SMRs, in other words.
Indeed, Trump told Rogan that, while very clean, large nuclear reactor projects currently have a tendency to go over budget and implode: “They did one in Alabama. They did one in, I think, South Carolina. They do them wrong. They build these massive things. Then the environmentalists get in.”
And you know you’re in a stink shop whenever environmentalists get in.
Anyway, responding to Rogan’s question about over-regulation, Trump pointed to small modular reactors as a potential answer: “But here’s the story. So—France does it. France is largely nuclear, and they build small little compact plants, and if they need more, they build the same thing and they hook it up and they hook it up because they get too big and too complex and too expensive. And it is very clean.”
Another point to make is that Trump may be more reticent about subsidies for the industry than about the industry itself. He should be because there should be no subsidies. Indeed, ending subsidies, or not providing them in the first place, will not hamper the industry so long as subsidies for renewable energy sources also end, and that strangling regulations are unwound.
Let nuclear compete on its merits, and it will do so.
Nuclear: The best Energy Drink
The bottom line line is, the future of nuclear is, well, glowing, both nationally and in Wisconsin. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Energy released a report showing that more than 300 existing and retired coal power plant sites could convert to nuclear, and in that report four prime sites for SMRs were here in the Badger state. Already entities in Wisconsin are eager to take another look, including Dairyland Cooperative.
What’s more, the nuclear future may not only be bright but imperative, not because it’s necessary to move to net-zero carbon emissions—it is, but that’s frankly irrelevant—but because they are needed to power data centers and to provide sufficient energy for a world fast embracing AI and other energy gulping technologies.
However it’s done, state lawmakers need to follow up aggressively on Steffen’s and Bradley’s missives and move the mission forward.
There's a couple of caveats. The first is there should be a dedicated focus on SMRs, for pursuit of large-scale reactors will fail politically. They are dead on arrival in the environmentally-infested Evers administration, and they likely won’t get a much better reception from the Trump administration, with its proper disdain for bureaucratic red-tape.
The second is that lawmakers need to not only work with the private sector on siting but conduct a thorough review of Wisconsin’s nuclear regulatory regime to pare back burdens, as well as work with the Trump administration on deregulatory efforts at the federal level.
Finally, and this is especially important for Republicans hoping to hop on the nuclear horse and clip-clop away: Resist the temptation to put government’s thumb on the scale by lathering the industry with tax breaks and subsidies. Again, the better response is to remove subsidies that favor any renewable energy, and to make sure that door stays closed by shuttering Evers’s Office of Sustainability and Clean Energy, which is just another bureaucratic way to funnel tax dollars to various pet green energy projects, and jettisoning his Green Energy Fund, another slush fund for environmental grifters.
Here’s a start: This past year then state Republican lawmakers John Macco (R-Ledgeview) and Ellen Schutt (R-Clinton) introduced a bill that would have prevented farmers from getting farmland preservation tax credits if any part of the fields housed solar farms were not directly used to support farming. That bill was passed but vetoed, so a 400-acre solar farm on a 1,000-acre farm will still net the landowners a 100 percent farmland preservation tax credit (more than 50 percent of the land must be farmed for the credit). That is perverse; the correct tax credit in that situation should be zero.
There should be no tax credits, period, and especially not for solar or wind, and not for nuclear energy. The prescription is simple: End all state government bias and incentives toward renewable energy such as solar and wind, and dismantle oppressive nuclear power regulations on the state and federal level.
Just open that barn door and let the nuclear horsepower run in an open and level playing field.
The market demand for energy will do the rest. Get government out of the way, and life will be as tasty and affordable as an Easy Bake in your backyard.
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