“What’s lacking are the products – the SMRs. It’s not the government’s job to pick winners and losers in the race to develop the products. That’s how free markets are supposed to work.”

The Department of Energy last Tuesday (March 24) announced a $900 million pot of money to “de-risk the deployment of Generation III+ light-water small modular reactors (Gen III+ SMR).” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said (although it’s more likely someone wrote the words for him), “America’s nuclear energy renaissance starts now.”

Really? The new solicitation is a dead ringer for the Biden administration’s October 2024 $900 SMR solicitation, in many cases word-for-word, including a ‘two-tier’ structure: $800 million for the first, $100 million for the second. The residue of the Biden initiative has been scrubbed from DOE’s website, probably in hopes that no one would remember it.…

“Since its 2009 formation under Obama, ARPA-E within the U.S. Department of Energy has awarded about $4.2 billion to some 1,700 energy projects. The latest nuclear revival continues a long string of starts-and-stops for a technology that has been more promise than performance.”

Energy Secretary Chris Wright and the White House appear to be headed for a clash on major DOE spending programs, including the agency’s Loan Programs Office and the main research arm, Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-Energy).

Last week, DOE earmarked another $57.8 million in federal money to the Palisades nuclear plant resurrection in Michigan, part of a $1.52 DOE billion loan to Holtec International for the project.

Since DOE’s Loan Programs Office approved the deal last September, the agency has doled out almost $96 million for the restart of the 805-MW reactor that shut down in 2022, starting with $38 million this January.…

“The Monterey County Board of Supervisors held an emergency meeting Friday morning to discuss the fire. County Supervisor Glenn Church told KSVW-TV, ‘There’s no way to sugarcoat it. This is a disaster, is what it is’.”

The world’s second largest lithium-ion battery storage facility broke into flames last week (Jan. 16) some 77 miles south of San Francisco at Vistra Corp’s Moss Landing gas-fired power plant site, prompting an evacuation order of site workers and some nearby areas. The fire initially began to subside but flared up again the next day.

Firefighters decided to let the fire burn itself out rather than trying to extinguish it. A Monterey official told Reuters, that “the best approach, according to fire staff, is to allow the building and batteries to burn.” Officials said the fire finally burned out on January 20.…

“Construction of the advanced ‘European Pressurized Reactor’ (EPR) at Flamanville began in 2007. It was projected to come into service in 2012 at a cost of $3.4 billion. The final cost, according to (Électricité de France) is about $13.7 billion.”

Last month (December 21), the 1,600-MW Flamanville nuclear power plant near Normandy (below) began delivering electricity to the French and European grid. It became the first new unit in France’s once-aggressive nuclear power program since 1996. The new reactor becomes the 57^th in the French fleet.

EDF (Électricité de France) the French state-owned electric utility, was once seen as at the forefront of nuclear power, ahead in many ways of even the U.S., which has had its own troubles moving beyond its initial nuclear boom times. No more.

Construction of the advanced “European Pressurized Reactor” or EPR at Flamanville began in 2007.…