A nuclear energy resurgence is underway, driven by the artificial intelligence revolution and the Trump administration. Nuclear plants that were shut down are being restarted. Dozens of small reactors are being deployed. But nuclear power still faces major cost, startup time, and regulatory obstacles.

The first commercial nuclear plant started operation at Calder Hall in England in 1956. By 1970, reactors were in construction around the world. Many predicted that atomic energy would generate most of the world’s power by 2000. In 1973, President Richard Nixon stated, “It is estimated that nuclear power will provide more than one-quarter of the country’s electrical production by 1985, and over half by the year 2000.”

However, operational problems and environmental opposition would sway public opinion against atomic energy. Reactor failures at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, in Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986, and at Fukushima, Japan in 2011 raised safety concerns.…

In his February 1977 address, President Carter stated:

I also said many times during the Campaign that we must reform and reorganize the Federal Government.

I have often used the phrase “competent and compassionate” to describe what our Government should be. When the Government must perform a function, it should do it efficiently. Wherever free competition would do a better job of serving the public, the Government should stay out. Ordinary people should be able to understand how our Government works and to get satisfactory answers to questions.

Our confused and wasteful system that took so long to grow will take a long time to change. The place to start is at the top—in the White House.

I am reducing the size of the White House staff by nearly one third, and have asked the members of the Cabinet to do the same at the top staff level.

“We believe energy should be in an upward spiral. Energy is the foundational engine of our civilization. The more energy we have, the more people we can have, and the better everyone’s lives can be. We should raise everyone to the energy consumption level we have, then increase our energy 1,000x, then raise everyone else’s energy 1,000x as well.” (- Techno-Optimist Manifesto, below)

Add a new name to the powerful critics of climate alarmism and forced energy transformation. Marc Andreessen is the author of The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, which draws upon the Julian Simon tradition of free minds and free markets to solve real challenges. This is a refreshing anecdote to the doom-and-gloom neo-Malthusians–and a threat to the climate industrial complex.

Sure enough, the critics are out with swords. Having posted The Techno-Optimist Manifesto on LinkedIn to the Climate Change Professionals Group, I was asked: “How is this diatribe from consume-more economics suitable for climate change professionals group??”…

The Arab oil embargo was not the cause of the energy crisis in this country: it was merely the straw that showed that the camel’s back was broken. There is no “natural” or geological crisis; there is an enormous political one. It is in the nature of a mixed economy that its policies are rationally inexplicable.

– Ayn Rand, The Energy Crisis, Part I and Part II (November 1973) [1]

Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum, known to the world as Ayn Rand, (1905–1982) was a philosopher attuned to the workings of the mind, the economy, and politics. Best known as a novelist, she wrote fiction based on fact and wrote on contemporary issues later in life. She is the inspiration of “free minds and free markets” through her philosophy of Objectivism.

When asked by a Random House salesman to summarize her philosophy “while standing on one foot,” she answered:

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