Ken Maize’s recent post arguing for a strong grid instead of a smart one made an important point: the Smart Grid is largely an assortment of tweaks and minor fixes that lets America’s utilities get by with the transmission status quo to cope with the growing demand and integration of intermittent renewables.

Policy should instead aim at a strong grid. Redundancies and “excess” capacity could better maintain reliability and lower delivered power costs in a world of monopoly utilities. It would also facilitate market transactions if competitive retail and wholesale power markets prevail.

Maize has well-founded concerns about how utilities in a smart-grid world will

1) administer their new gizmo-heavy systems;

2) justify the benefits that small consumers will get in return for higher bills, and

3) make up for the prospect for increased vulnerability to innocent or serious hacking.

The DOE move to prop up the nuclear big iron also prompts a recollection of the words of the great American philosopher Lawrence “Yogi” Berra: “It’s déjà vu all over again.” Alternatively, “Been there. Done that. Didn’t work.” Some 20 years ago, facing a 30-year decline in the U.S. nuclear power business (no reactor ordered after 1974 got built), the George W. Bush administration threw $8 billion in 2005 dollars each to two, two-unit AP-1000 reactor projects.

The Trump administration and its Department of Energy have made Canada–who many Americans other than Donald Trump consider our closest ally and good friend–happy. Recently (June 23, 2026), DOE’s loan office (grandiosity renamed the Office of Energy Dominance Financing) announced a $17.5 billion dollar loan program to subsidize building five as yet unidentified, two-unit 1,000-MW, nuclear power plant stations.…

“Energy hyperbole and the madness of crowds are evident with both NuScale Power and Fermi America. Bubbles burst.”

The most mature U.S. small modular nuclear reactor vendor — NuScale Power — and a politically connected firm planning to build perhaps the largest reactor project in the U.S. to power an enormous Texas data center — Fermi America — have both suffered recent, major, possibly existential blows.  NuScale and Fermi, both publicly traded, have seen their stock value plummet amid bad financial results, questionable management decisions, and attacks by the wolves of Wall Street, short sellers, and claims of securities fraud.

NuScale Power

Oregon-based NuScale Power (NYSE:SMR) is the only advanced reactor vendor in this new market with a design approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a “first mover” advantage. It also uses the familiar and well-understood pressurized light water cooled technology, which has decades of mostly successful operation.…

“Europe’s biggest nuclear power operator EDF, which manages France’s fleet of 57 reactors, is under pressure to show it can improve on its record of reactor construction. Recent projects have been severely delayed and hugely over budget, taking well over 10 years to complete.” – Financial Times, February 20, 2026).

There’s a new leader in the nuclear power plant cost overrun derby, and it isn’t even in the clubhouse yet. Britain’s Hinkley Point C — being built in Somerset by France’s government-owned Électricité de France (EDF) — is now going to cost at least £49 billion ($65 billion) if it goes into service in 2030 and another £1 billion ($1.3 billion) if the first unit is delayed to 2031. This equates to $10 million per megawatt–best case–with multiple years of waiting.…