SUN DAY CAMPAIGN

Note: News story headlines provided below do not necessarily reflect the views of the SUN DAY Campaign or any of its respective members.

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DOGE Told Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ‘Rubber Stamp’ Nuclear:

E&E News, by Daniel Cusick, July 14, 2025

https://www.eenews.net/articles/house-republicans-buck-trump-on-noaa-cuts

• higher market electricity prices driven by higher demand and marginal costs of gas
• higher capacity market clearing prices, due to both higher peak loads from data centers and Constellation's market power in withholding some capacity and upbidding some capacity in the capacity auctions. Constellation has been doing this for years with its nuclear fleet in PJM, but once the Calpine acquisition goes through, it will have even greater market power.

LA TIMES (4/18/25)

Small nuclear reactors are no fix for California’s energy needs

On Monday, the Natural Resources Committee of the California Assembly will consider a bill to repeal a longstanding moratorium on nuclear plants in the state, which was meant to be in place until there is a sustainable plan for what to do with radioactive waste. Defeated multiple times in the past, this bill would carve out an exception for small modular reactors, or SMRs, the current pipe dream of nuclear advocates.

SMRs are typically under 300 megawatts, compared with the combined 2.2 gigawatts from Diablo Canyon’s two operating reactors near San Luis Obispo. These smaller nukes have received so much attention in recent years mainly because modern reactors are so costly that the U.S. and Europe have all but stopped building any.

The sad truth is that small reactors make even less sense than big ones. And Trump’s tariffs only make the math more discouraging.

I’ve been analyzing nuclear power since 1993, when I started a five-year stint at the Department of Energy as a special assistant to the deputy secretary. I helped him oversee both the nuclear energy program and the energy efficiency and renewable energy program, which I ran in 1997.

So I know all too well that the hype is built on quicksand — specifically, a seven-decade history of failure. As a 2015 analysis put it, “Economics killed small nuclear power plants in the past — and probably will keep doing so.” A 2014 journal article concluded many of those “building support for small modular reactors” are putting forward “rhetorical visions imbued with elements of fantasy.”

But isn’t there a nuclear renaissance going on? Nope. Georgia’s Vogtle plant is the only new nuclear plant the U.S. has successfully built and started in recent decades. The total cost was $35 billion, or about $16 million per megawatt of generating capacity — far more than methane (natural gas) or solar and wind with battery storage.

As such, Vogtle is “the most expensive power plant ever built on Earth,” with an “astoundingly high” estimated electricity cost, noted Power magazine. Georgia ratepayers each paid $1,000 to support this plant before they even got any power, and now their bills are rising more than $200 annually.

The high cost of construction and the resulting high energy bills explain why nuclear’s share of global power peaked at 17% in the mid-1990s but was down to 9.1% in 2024.

For decades, economies of scale drove reactors to grow beyond 1,000 megawatts. The idea that abandoning this logic would lead to a lower cost per megawatt is magical thinking, defying technical plausibility, historical reality and common sense.

Even a September report from the federal Department of Energy — which funds SMR development — modeled a cost per megawatt more than 50% higher than for large reactors. That’s why there are only three operating SMRs: one in China, with a 300% cost overrun, and two in Russia, with a 400% overrun. In March, a Financial Times analysis labeled such small reactors “the most expensive energy source.”

Indeed, the first SMR the U.S. tried to build — by NuScale — was canceled in 2023 after its cost soared past $20 million per megawatt, higher than Vogtle. In 2024, Bill Gates told CBS the full cost of his 375-megawatt Natrium reactor would be “close to $10 billion,” making its cost nearly $30 million per megawatt — almost twice Vogtle’s.

All of this has played out against a backdrop of historically cheap natural gas and a rapid expansion of renewable energy sources for electricity generation. All that competition against nuclear power matters: A 2023 Columbia University report concluded that “if the costs of new nuclear end up being much higher” than $6.2 million per megawatt, “new nuclear appears unlikely to play much of a role, if any, in the U.S. power sector.” R.I.P.

SMRs are just one of several wildly overhyped false promises on which the world is poised to spend hundreds of billions of dollars by 2040, including hydrogen energy and direct air carbon capture.

But nuclear power is the original overhyped energy technology. When he was chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis Strauss — the Robert Downey Jr. character in “Oppenheimer” — predicted in 1954 that our children would enjoy nuclear power “too cheap to meter.”

Yet by the time I joined the Department of Energy in 1993, nuclear power costs had grown steadily for decades. Since then, prices for new reactors have kept rising, and they are now the most expensive power source. But solar, wind and battery prices have kept dropping, becoming the cheapest. Indeed, those three technologies constitute a remarkable 93% of planned U.S. utility-scale electric-generating capacity additions in 2025. The rest is natural gas.

China is the only country building many new nuclear plants over the next five years — about 35 gigawatts. Less than 1% of this projected capacity would be from small reactors — while more than 95% will be from reactors over 1,100 megawatts. Now compare all that to the 350 gigawatts of solar and wind China built — just in 2024.

For the U.S., President Trump’s erratic tariffs make small modular reactors an even riskier bet. If the U.S. economy shrinks, so does demand for new electric power plants. And the twin threats of inflation and higher interest rates increase the risk of even worse construction cost overruns.

Also, China, Canada and other trading partners provide critical supply chain elements needed to mass-produce SMRs — and mass production is key to the sales pitch claiming this technology could become affordable. That logic would apply only if virtually all of the current SMR ventures fail and only one or two end up pursuing mass production.

So, can we please stop talking about small modular reactors as a solution to our power needs and get back to building the real solutions — wind, solar and batteries? They’re cheaper and cleaner — and actually modular.
 

Joseph Romm is a former acting assistant secretary of Energy and the author of “The Hype About Hydrogen: False Promises and Real Solutions in the Race to Save the Climate.”

Why the US must protect the independence of its nuclear regulator

By Stephen Burns, Allison Macfarlane, Richard Meserve | July 7, 2025

Credit: US NRC, modified by François Diaz-Maurin

The White House has introduced radical changes that threaten to disrupt the effectiveness of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The agency was formed in 1975 to be an independent regulator, separating it from the promotional role pursued by its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission. The NRC has set safety requirements that have become the global gold standard for nuclear regulation. The White House actions threaten to undermine this record.

Conversations with fellow former NRC chairs and retired NRC experts reveal a shared concern that the changes will have unintended, dangerous consequences. In February, the White House issued an executive order that intruded on the traditional autonomy of independent agencies, thereby giving the White House the capacity to control NRC regulatory actions and allow politics to infect regulatory decision-making. A series of executive orders on nuclear matters issued in late May compounded the challenge. One of the executive orders focuses on the reform of the NRC. It would establish arbitrary deadlines for decisions on construction permits and operating licenses, regardless of whether the design offers new and previously unevaluated safety challenges. Other provisions demand the review of all the extensive NRC regulations within 18 months. The other executive orders allow the construction of nuclear power reactors on federal lands—sites belonging to the Energy Department and the Defense Department—without any review by the NRC.

Then, on June 13, the Trump administration fired Christopher Hanson, an NRC commissioner and former chair, without any stated justification. These actions all serve to weaken protections for those who work in or live near reactors. Given the anticipated expansion of reliance on nuclear power, the drastic staff reductions contemplated by the White House come at the wrong time.

There is always room to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the regulatory process and adapt it to the evolution of nuclear technologies and their implementation. Recognizing that, past and current NRC commissioners and technical staff have set in motion changes to reduce the regulatory burden and speed the deployment of reactors at a lower cost. The changes are prudent and reasonable and support the promise of expanded reliance on nuclear energy. Congress has also encouraged those efforts and further instructed the NRC to make more improvements to the process through the bipartisan ADVANCE Act signed into law in 2024. All of this was underway before the White House interference.

The NRC has protected the health and safety of Americans for 50 years without a single civilian reactor radiation-related death. The lessons of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident have long been woven into the safety regime, and every commercial reactor in the United States is safer today because of major safety steps taken after the destruction of reactors in Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

Since Three Mile Island, the agency has licensed approximately 50 power reactors to operate. It has recently issued construction permits for advanced reactors ahead of schedule. And the NRC has cleared utilities to boost the power of many existing reactors and has licensed them to run longer than originally planned.

We are concerned about the unintended safety consequences that a reduced NRC independence and a schedule-driven regulatory paradigm threaten to bring.

We fear the loss of public confidence that can befall a safety agency when expediency is seen to be given priority. Reducing the NRC’s independence while mixing promotion of nuclear energy and responsibility for safeguarding the public and environment is a recipe for corner-cutting at best and catastrophe at worst.

We are also concerned that such steps could damage the reputation of US reactor vendors worldwide. A design licensed in the United States now carries a stamp of approval that can facilitate licensing elsewhere, including the many countries that plan to embark on a nuclear power program. If it becomes clear that the NRC has been forced to cut corners on safety and operate less transparently, US reactor vendors will be hurt.

The US nuclear industry is helped by the fact that it has a strong independent regulator behind it. The White House’s executive orders may produce the opposite effect from their stated purpose.

Editor’s note: The authors are former chairs of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2025/05/its-deceitful-critics-slam-tmi-for-not-reporting-fire-at-plant.html

Three Mile Island: Nuclear name change and social media strategies show power of AI energy push

Big tech wants more electricity but grassroots activists are sceptical
 

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Cody Combs
Washington
July 02, 2025

“The name change is not about remembering, it’s about forgetting,” said Eric Epstein, director of Three Mile Island Alert, a grass roots safe energy organisation founded in 1977, two years before the Unit 2 accident. 

Mr Epstein, who unsuccessfully filed a petition with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to oppose the name change, has not backed down from his critiques of Constellation's partnership with Microsoft, and for that matter, the much touted nuclear renaissance driven by AI energy demands. 

“The name change is intended to honour Chris Crane, the former CEO of Exelon, who presided over a massive nuclear corruption scheme resulting in a $200 million fine,” he said. 

The name change is an “attempt to establish a fictional narrative divorced from past misdeeds,” he told The National. 

As well as Mr Epstein's concerns about nuclear waste storage, the lingering clean-up at Unit 2 and fears about potential over-running costs that might burden taxpayers, he has alleged that Pennsylvanians will not be benefiting from the electricity generated once Crane Energy Centre goes online.

“The partnership between data centres and nuclear power plants has the potential to meet the needs of data centres, but does nothing to address the energy needs of businesses, consumers and farmers,” he recently told the Pennsylvania public utility commission. 

Yet in terms of nationwide public sentiment, Mr Epstein might be fighting an uphill battle.

According to Pew Research polling last month, about 59 per cent of US citizens now support nuclear energy as a way to meet the country's energy demands.

Other US technology companies have joined in the push for nuclear energy to plug the electricity gap potentially posed by AI technology. 

Meta, parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, recently teamed up with Constellation for a 20-year power purchase agreement to revive a nuclear plant in Illinois. 

“Nuclear energy from the project will be used to support Meta’s operations in the region,” Meta said. “We’re building AI technologies that are transforming the global economy and the way people connect … our data centres enable these innovations.” 

As for the Crane Energy Centre in Pennsylvania, Constellation says the plant, originally set to reopen in 2028, is ahead of schedule with some of its regulatory processes, and may be online as early as 2027. 

Meanwhile, some still warn the AI tech bubble could burst, meaning many of these deals could be risky. For now, however, the AI investments, data centres and overall infrastructure in need of energy show no sign of slowing down.

Updated: July 02, 2025, 2:20 PM

NRC Accelerates Review of Kemmerer Power Station Construction Permit

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