Nuclear.

This is a brief summation of what I spent the last week working on.

Modern power plants all use the same basic design. There is a heat source (the reactor, boiler, furnace) which produces steam which turns a turbine which produces electricity. The steam then moves through a condenser to cool it and then that water is sent via a pump back to the heat source.

That’s really it. It’s archaic tech.

You can make a “power plant” in home with your kids in a weekend and generate enough electricity to power an LED with just a lighter and some tubing and components you can order online.

The difficulty (and cost) is in the scale. And most importantly with nuclear in protecting the world from any hickups.

Safety systems. Back-up systems. Specialized heat resistance materials. Giant mechanical machines the size of your home. Specialize concrete to prevent radiation from leaking. And lots of it.

There are currently 70 nuclear power plants under construction around the world.

This means there are 70 construction projects that need a special grade of concrete and all the other specialized components. All inline for these materials and components. All reliant on a few companies around the world. If one turbine delivery is delayed.

All the projects get delayed.

And none of these projects are in the US.

The most recent nuclear power plant to be built in the US (an entire plant not just a new generator) was the Tennessee Valley Authority’ Watts Bar Nuclear Plant. Construction started on this plant in 1973 (when Nixon was in office.) The Tennessee Valley Authority is a federally-owned electric utility corporation. Eisenhower called the TVA “creeping socialism” even as he signed the TVA Act.

Watts Bar I came online in 1996. A second reactor came online in 2016.

However since 1996, power plants have been built in China, Japan, France, Belarus, the UAE, Russia, India, Pakistan, the UK, Romania…

The US decided to shift efforts into the private sector and into novel reactor designs and into science experiments instead of building what we know works. The US decided to not pay taxes and not fund infrastructure. And the private sector decided to not spend money on new plants since that would lower profits. Even the money granted by the Federal government that was supposed to go to new projects just went to share buybacks.

The US built Instagram instead of new power plants.

In fact we decided to build the entire attention economy and move commercialism online, both which make ever increasing demands on power plants, instead of building new power plants.

It was a choice made by every administration since Reagan to not expand the US’ nuclear foot print. Because no Administration thinks farther ahead than the next election cycle and only cares about the some sound bite in 24 hours news cycle.

But it was a choice the rest of the world did not make.

Now here we are.

With data centers demanding more and more electricity and with no way to generate that electricity except from the grid that just yesterday failed and shut off power to 1/3 of San Francisco.

There is at least a 10 year wait period to bring online any new reactors and a 20 year delay to build any new power plants.

If the US were to decide to skip the line for components (like turbines) (i.e. not rely on South Korea to build reactors and China/Germany to build the plants for us) it would take just as long to ramp up on-shore manufacturing capacity and build the human capital.

For you see we not only can’t make the components in the US anymore.

We’ve forgotten how.

Real numbers for you.

In 2008, total costs (including escalation and financing costs) were estimated to be between $5,500/kW to $8,100/kW or between $6 billion and $9 billion for a 1,100 MW power plant.

In 2009, Georgia Power estimated that a new 1,114 megawatt (MW) Unit 3 reactor (Vogtle 3) would cost $14 billion. The project ran into significant construction delays and cost overruns and ended up costing around $30 billion. The reactor which was scheduled to deliver power in 2016 finally came online in 2023.

In May 1, 2025, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power won a bid to build two similar two nuclear reactors in the Czech Republic for a cost of $18 billion dollars.

For just the reactors.

The first of these plants is expected to come online in 2036.

Average cost over runs of nuclear power plants average 102%. If AI continues the US will have to double or triple it’s power generation in the next decade.

Just throwing around trillions of dollars everywhere now.

Do you really think the US can bring online new plants before 2036?

Can you imagine just how expensive it will be in a decade if we don’t start now? Trillions, today.

We are wasting too much money on science experiments like fusion, molten metal/salt reactors, modular reactors, etc. trying to catch up for very bad decision making over the last 30 years. Expecting a miracle of science to fix a real problem is fucking stupid.

The list of times this has actually worked it is short: Haber solved the food shortage problem and Salk cured Polio. And, technically putting people on the Moon solved Kennedy’s legacy problem after the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

But, society didn’t benefit from a few men bouncing on TV.

It seems like quite a risk to take that fusion will solve the problem here.

Planning to rebuild humanity on Mars is also fucking stupid. Trying to save the planet by converting gas cars to electric cars instead of moving closer together so we can walk to work. Is fucking stupid.

Pray and Hope for the best is generally speaking fucking stupid. And always has been.

This is all a product of American Exceptionalism. We think we can bend reality to our will in the US. While profit off of the fantasy of course.

We’re gamblers. Not doers.

Conservatives push oil - that’s a gamble climate change isn’t happening. Liberals push idealistic but impossible alternatives - that’s a gamble our poorly funded education system is going to produce a lot of geniuses. Solar requires battery tech that doesn’t exist for example.

Both parties profit off being wrong. Conservatives profit off of denying climate change. Liberals profit off of the believe we can invent our way out of climate change.

The US spent billions on solar. Instead of giving billions to the socialist TVA to make new power plants. Not even the democratic socialists in Congress suggested this by the way.

There are consequences to electing officials who just want to be electable.

Beyond the fact, if you live in the US and Europe, your electrical bill is going to go up steadily for the next few years and there will be more brown outs and black outs (especially in Texas a State run by morons) there is also the fact that all the projects requiring money to be moved around are not in the US anymore.

Which means the center of the economic world is no longer in Manhattan (or London). Wall Street is ever increasingly referring to a road in Singapore.

The US prints the world’s money but we are ever increasingly no longer in the position to possess any of it.

Now, the good news…

If you have enough wealth you can just move to Asia.