The very first fair and comprehensive analysis of where we are and how we arrived here, that I have ever seen. Congratulations!
I would like to have seen mention of Copenhagen Atomics progressive design pathway and business plan for modular thorium reactors. Using nuclear engineering principles validated by the US in the early 1960s at Argonne and elsewhere, at a time when nuclear powered aircraft were being actively considered. Reportedly the lack of bomb suitable byproducts was an ironic disqualifier for further development.
By planning a modular, serially upgradeable design, Copenhagen seem to solve the problems of latent design flaws (pull the defective module and replace with newer) and flexible scaling to adapt to load changes. That their design is inherently walk away safe from the types of catastrophic high-pressure explosive events which require the massive concrete and steel containment structures that are required for most of the old designs, should make multiple real world prototype testing feasible. We learn to make bricks individually, not as completed houses. https://www.copenhagenatomics.com/
The end goal of a breeder capable of consuming the problematic, inefficiently burned nuclear fuel waste of the last 60 years would also seem a major incentive to develop at speed. One wonders why the leader of the Swiss Greens decided to launch a Soviet made rocket attack on the Superphénix fast-breeder nuclear plant in Creys-Malville under construction in 1982? That the progressive Left was a strong part of the 1950s Anti Nuclear movement which later linked fear of weapons to opposition to peaceful utility power, all while the Soviets were vigorously expanding both, raises suspicion about motivation.
The current "Climate Emergency" campaign, prominently linking the iconic, parabolic cooling towers, now a symbol of "nuclear hazard" in the public mind, with the clouds of white water vapor relabeled as "carbon(sic) pollution" makes one wonder what powerful interests are being served.
You’re right that Copenhagen Atomics belongs in this conversation, and “we learn to make bricks individually, not completed houses” is better than half the lines in my piece. The swap-out-the-module idea is a real answer to the standardized-flaw problem I raised with France.
So I went and read their pages closely — products, about, invest — because you clearly took the design seriously and I wanted to as well. And here’s the honest thing: it’s the cleanest confirmation of my essay’s argument I’ve found, not a counterexample to it. The design is genuinely exciting. But look at the structure underneath it. It’s an LLC funded by 200-odd private investors, family offices and high-net-worth individuals, pitching “10x to 100x ROI” and an eventual IPO once a test reactor runs. The roadmap’s most advanced milestone is a 1 MWth demo in 2028 — the commercial 100 MWth unit is “early 2030s.” And the projected price is “$9/MWh” on one page and “below $20/MWh” on another. None of that is damning — early-stage estimates move — but it’s exactly the point of the piece: those are projections from a pre-reactor company, financed by the most expensive and least patient money there is. That’s the NuScale structure, not the Vogtle-supply-chain structure.
The engineering might be right. Thorium MSRs have a real pedigree — Weinberg and Oak Ridge in the ‘60s, which they’re honest about. But “the physics works” was never the question. The question is who eats the loss if the first commercial unit runs long, and family-office equity expecting 50x is the wrong balance sheet to absorb that. I’d genuinely love to be too cautious here. I’m just not betting the grid on a Series-whatever deck.
On the political thread — Superphénix, the anti-nuclear left, the cooling towers — I kept the piece careful on purpose. I share the hunch that the people who lost from nuclear didn’t cry about it. But “who benefited” is a question, not proof. The fear after Three Mile Island was real, the weapons anxiety was real, and the regulators didn’t need a conspiracy to keep piling on rules. Glad of the outcome isn’t the same as arranging it. I’d rather say less and be right.
So nothing’s wrong with your thinking, as long as it stays a question. Appreciate you pushing this — exactly the exchange I hoped the piece would start.
Thanks, a welcome reply for a retired old audio technician with only inherited curiosity about how things work and career experience that they are often not what you first thought, as qualifications.
While I well understand your preference to "say less and be right", even trying to move issues like this into policy consideration with a wider audience, now fearful of deviation from "what everyone knows", is an uphill struggle against inertia, which wartime experience shows is absolutely crucial to survival.
"Climate" policy is surely one of the main drivers suppressing rational energy alternatives such as nuclear and a bitter confirmation of Eisenhower's 1961 twin fears of "The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money", with "the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite" completing a perverse, positive feedback loop.
Senator Tim Wirth, boasting of "stage managing" NASA's James Hansen's Senate testimony warning of imminent doom, was among the first to use "even if we are wrong we are right" as the all purpose justification for "trying to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy", so pointing the way to the pot of gold for innumerable projects remotely linked to "fighting warming". Wind and solar interests got there first and elbowed everyone else away, kicking nuclear to the kerb and beyond consideration.
The idea that diverse, practical solutions might be innovated further down the food chain, rather than top down policy direction seems attractive to me. Copenhagen's approach of methodically proving the basic components of their prototype, the critical molten salt pump and circulation loop have now been hot run 24/7 for over 2 years and are one of their products now available for purchase. Scaling up investment with development progress sounds more viable than an initial big bang to me.
If the pre-production prototype proves out in hot fissile testing by 2028, series production in the early 2030's sounds feasible, although the application for their entry to the critical General Design Approval process by UK Atomics subsidiary, is still queued behind Terra Power, Rolls Royce and GE Hitachi. None of the above submissions seem to be designed as scalable as Copenhagen's and I wonder again if the current UK government's steadfast refusal to see other than wind and solar solutions, even while industry crumbles around them, plays a part?
The very first fair and comprehensive analysis of where we are and how we arrived here, that I have ever seen. Congratulations!
I would like to have seen mention of Copenhagen Atomics progressive design pathway and business plan for modular thorium reactors. Using nuclear engineering principles validated by the US in the early 1960s at Argonne and elsewhere, at a time when nuclear powered aircraft were being actively considered. Reportedly the lack of bomb suitable byproducts was an ironic disqualifier for further development.
By planning a modular, serially upgradeable design, Copenhagen seem to solve the problems of latent design flaws (pull the defective module and replace with newer) and flexible scaling to adapt to load changes. That their design is inherently walk away safe from the types of catastrophic high-pressure explosive events which require the massive concrete and steel containment structures that are required for most of the old designs, should make multiple real world prototype testing feasible. We learn to make bricks individually, not as completed houses. https://www.copenhagenatomics.com/
The end goal of a breeder capable of consuming the problematic, inefficiently burned nuclear fuel waste of the last 60 years would also seem a major incentive to develop at speed. One wonders why the leader of the Swiss Greens decided to launch a Soviet made rocket attack on the Superphénix fast-breeder nuclear plant in Creys-Malville under construction in 1982? That the progressive Left was a strong part of the 1950s Anti Nuclear movement which later linked fear of weapons to opposition to peaceful utility power, all while the Soviets were vigorously expanding both, raises suspicion about motivation.
The current "Climate Emergency" campaign, prominently linking the iconic, parabolic cooling towers, now a symbol of "nuclear hazard" in the public mind, with the clouds of white water vapor relabeled as "carbon(sic) pollution" makes one wonder what powerful interests are being served.
What is wrong with my line of thought?
Thank you — that genuinely means a lot.
You’re right that Copenhagen Atomics belongs in this conversation, and “we learn to make bricks individually, not completed houses” is better than half the lines in my piece. The swap-out-the-module idea is a real answer to the standardized-flaw problem I raised with France.
So I went and read their pages closely — products, about, invest — because you clearly took the design seriously and I wanted to as well. And here’s the honest thing: it’s the cleanest confirmation of my essay’s argument I’ve found, not a counterexample to it. The design is genuinely exciting. But look at the structure underneath it. It’s an LLC funded by 200-odd private investors, family offices and high-net-worth individuals, pitching “10x to 100x ROI” and an eventual IPO once a test reactor runs. The roadmap’s most advanced milestone is a 1 MWth demo in 2028 — the commercial 100 MWth unit is “early 2030s.” And the projected price is “$9/MWh” on one page and “below $20/MWh” on another. None of that is damning — early-stage estimates move — but it’s exactly the point of the piece: those are projections from a pre-reactor company, financed by the most expensive and least patient money there is. That’s the NuScale structure, not the Vogtle-supply-chain structure.
The engineering might be right. Thorium MSRs have a real pedigree — Weinberg and Oak Ridge in the ‘60s, which they’re honest about. But “the physics works” was never the question. The question is who eats the loss if the first commercial unit runs long, and family-office equity expecting 50x is the wrong balance sheet to absorb that. I’d genuinely love to be too cautious here. I’m just not betting the grid on a Series-whatever deck.
On the political thread — Superphénix, the anti-nuclear left, the cooling towers — I kept the piece careful on purpose. I share the hunch that the people who lost from nuclear didn’t cry about it. But “who benefited” is a question, not proof. The fear after Three Mile Island was real, the weapons anxiety was real, and the regulators didn’t need a conspiracy to keep piling on rules. Glad of the outcome isn’t the same as arranging it. I’d rather say less and be right.
So nothing’s wrong with your thinking, as long as it stays a question. Appreciate you pushing this — exactly the exchange I hoped the piece would start.
Thanks, a welcome reply for a retired old audio technician with only inherited curiosity about how things work and career experience that they are often not what you first thought, as qualifications.
While I well understand your preference to "say less and be right", even trying to move issues like this into policy consideration with a wider audience, now fearful of deviation from "what everyone knows", is an uphill struggle against inertia, which wartime experience shows is absolutely crucial to survival.
"Climate" policy is surely one of the main drivers suppressing rational energy alternatives such as nuclear and a bitter confirmation of Eisenhower's 1961 twin fears of "The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money", with "the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite" completing a perverse, positive feedback loop.
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address
Senator Tim Wirth, boasting of "stage managing" NASA's James Hansen's Senate testimony warning of imminent doom, was among the first to use "even if we are wrong we are right" as the all purpose justification for "trying to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy", so pointing the way to the pot of gold for innumerable projects remotely linked to "fighting warming". Wind and solar interests got there first and elbowed everyone else away, kicking nuclear to the kerb and beyond consideration.
The idea that diverse, practical solutions might be innovated further down the food chain, rather than top down policy direction seems attractive to me. Copenhagen's approach of methodically proving the basic components of their prototype, the critical molten salt pump and circulation loop have now been hot run 24/7 for over 2 years and are one of their products now available for purchase. Scaling up investment with development progress sounds more viable than an initial big bang to me.
If the pre-production prototype proves out in hot fissile testing by 2028, series production in the early 2030's sounds feasible, although the application for their entry to the critical General Design Approval process by UK Atomics subsidiary, is still queued behind Terra Power, Rolls Royce and GE Hitachi. None of the above submissions seem to be designed as scalable as Copenhagen's and I wonder again if the current UK government's steadfast refusal to see other than wind and solar solutions, even while industry crumbles around them, plays a part?
https://www.onr.org.uk/generic-design-assessment/early-regulatory-engagement-on-new-nuclear-project
If only decisions were made in a rational and thoughtful manner and curiosity had not apparently gone extinct...