The first US atomic rush was a bust. Will Trump’s big nuclear-for-AI plans fare any better?

Bulletin, By Chloe Shrager | July 18, 2025

As Big Tech turns to nuclear power to solve the artificial intelligence power problem, critics have cast doubt on energy developers’ ability to build new reactors on a timeline that will satisfy data centers’ energy needs.

High costs and lack of commercial economic viability have been persistent obstacles to new nuclear infrastructure development. But on May 23, President Donald Trump signed four executive orders that represent the most explicit government commitment to nuclear power for artificial intelligence yet.

Three of the orders explicitly mention AI as a driver for nuclear energy development and a potential beneficiary. One directive incentivizes the operation of privately funded advanced nuclear reactor technologies on federal sites—mainly national laboratories or military installations—allegedly to power AI infrastructure, labelled as “critical defense facilities,” and mandates the deployment of small modular nuclear reactors on one of these sites within 30 months.

Previously, tech companies were the most vocal advocates pushing for nuclear power to meet AI’s energy demands. Now the US government—heavily influenced by Big Tech’s hand—has made nuclear power for AI a national security priority, setting a goal of quadrupling the United States’ nuclear capacity from 100 gigawatts to 400 gigawatts by 2050. Whether government intervention can overcome the challenges that have plagued nuclear deployment for decades remains to be seen—and if so, at what cost?

Déjà vu. As with the rise of the nuclear power industry in the 1950s and 60s, the demand for nuclear energy is being created, justified, and incentivized by the government and its national security interests rather than by market forces.

Robert Duffy, a professor of political science at Colorado State University, summarized the history of the US nuclear power industry in a 2004 paper.

“The atomic energy subgovernment was endowed with additional prestige and power because of the program’s identification with national security issues,” Duffy wrote. “The actors in this tightly knit monopoly were united by the conviction that the development of atomic energy, first as a weapon but later as a means of generating electricity, was both necessary and desirable for the nation’s welfare.”

Duffy showed that the government’s rush to create a nuclear industry in the United States ultimately undermined that very industry. The hasty development, government incentives, and ambitious timelines led to cost overruns, safety problems, and public opposition that ultimately killed new nuclear construction for decades.

Today, the Trump administration is repeating history by declaring AI technologies driven by advanced nuclear power generators a key national security interest.

“There seems to be an aspect to the government’s interest in AI which is sort of positing that as the next nuclear weapons race,” Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, observes. “If you expect the most powerful countries in the history of the world, and the wealthiest corporations that have ever existed, which are trying to develop […] ‘digital gods,’ to not do everything they can to win that race, then you don’t understand human nature, and you don’t understand geopolitics.”

But by trying to rush nuclear power development again for geopolitical reasons (then the Cold War, now the global AI race), the US government risks creating another failed—or at least costly and insufficiently safe—nuclear program…………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………………..Sticky problems. Even without the economic hurdles, the fundamental problem remains timing, and presidential orders cannot change the laws of physics. As Mycle Schneider, an independent nuclear policy analyst and main contributor to the World Nuclear Industry Status Report, bluntly states: “I doubt that any SMR would be operating 10 years from now in the Western world.”

Schneider’s skepticism isn’t unfounded. Construction times for nuclear plants average around 10 years, he said, and that’s just the construction phase—which only begins with the pouring of reactor foundations. Even with the Trump administration’s regulatory streamlining and federal site access, the reality of nuclear development timelines clashes directly with AI’s immediate energy needs. “All of these deals with nuclear companies are about future power plants maybe coming online in the 2030s, but all the AI data centers are being built today,” Judson observes.

Small modular reactors have long been promoted by the industry—and now also the government—as a solution to nuclear power’s problems, promising faster construction, lower costs, and standardized designs. The Trump administration’s nuclear orders specifically enable SMR testing and deployment on federal sites, betting that government support can make SMR promises a reality.

But the reality has proven far more complex, even with unprecedented government backing. Canada’s recent approval of the world’s first SMR in a G7 country demonstrates both the promise and the problems. The project’s price tag sits at nearly $21 billion Canadian dollars ($15.1 billion US dollars) for four reactors at Ontario’s Darlington site, roughly $12.5 million US dollars per megawatt—far exceeding the costs of renewable alternatives that can be deployed in a fraction of the time. Even more so, Judson says the energy company GE Vernova-Hitachi chose to pursue its SMR project in Canada because the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission regulations allow construction permit applications to be submitted with much of the design still incomplete. “The jury is very much still out on whether the BWRX-300 [SMR design] will prove feasible to build on time and on budget, but what we know so far is not encouraging,” Judson said.

The long-term management of nuclear waste also poses a sticky issue to new nuclear development, especially the relatively higher waste per gigawatt from SMRs compared to full-scale reactors, which has no permanent solution yet……………………………………………………………. https://thebulletin.org/2025/07/the-first-us-atomic-rush-was-a-bust-will-trumps-big-nuclear-for-ai-plans-fare-any-better/

July 21, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, USA | Leave a comment

Trump’s Weapons Magic Show is Smoke & Mirrors Masterclass

Simplicius, Jul 15, 2025

Trump finally ‘wowed’ the world today with his grand announcement on punitive measures against Russia.

As usual, the announcement struck a dull and lackluster chord for most, with Russian markets jubilantly jumping by nearly 3% in response. But let’s dig in to see whether there is actually more meat on the bone of Trump’s scary threats than people give credit for.

Firstly, the timing: Axios now reports that Putin allegedly told Trump he plans to ‘intensify’ the Russian summer offensive in the next 60 days, with the goal—according to some sources—purportedly being to capture the remainder of nominal Russian territory, i.e. Donetsk, Lugansk, and Zaporozhye oblasts

Axios: According to Trump, Putin allegedly told him about plans to intensify the offensive in Ukraine in the next 60 days.

Trump shared details of the conversation with the Russian leader with his French counterpart Macron, adding: “He wants to take everything.”

It was after this conversation, according to the publication, that Trump criticized Putin and promised to increase arms supplies to Ukraine.

If there’s any hint of truth to such reports, then Trump’s “50-day notice” would seem to line up with Putin’s timeline, given that the conversation happened days ago, and thus Putin’s “60-day plan” would fall almost precisely on Trump’s deadline.

The basic interpretation of that could be that Trump is giving Russia two months to capture whatever territory it claims belongs to it, then “the hammer” will come down.

Now on the weapons side, as always, is where the biggest cloud of ambiguity lies. No one seems to know precisely what weapons and from what package will be sent, but according to CNN, it all sounds like more of the same, but just ‘repackaged’ with a new price tag.

Reports indicate the same air-to-air missiles, howitzer and GMLRS rounds will be sent as before, but simply that now NATO countries will foot the bill. Prior to that, under Biden’s PDA, the US was sending weapons directly to Ukraine from its own stockpiles, and then replenishing those stockpiles with new orders to the MIC, from taxpayer funds. Now, it will come from European taxpayer funds—a win for the US, we must admit.

But the biggest focal point were the Patriot ‘systems’. Again, the cloud of confusion—no one quite knows what the numbers represent: Patriot launchers, batteries, battalions, etc. Trump once mentioned the word ‘batteries’, but the numbers being discussed do not appear to realistically jibe. For instance, he mentioned sending “17” to Ukraine, but the US itself only has something like a total 50-70 active batteries, and obviously sending a third of its entire Patriot stock is unlikely.

When you really read between the lines, what Trump appeared to intimate was that the eventual goal is to scrounge up a larger amount of ‘systems’ for Ukraine, but “initially” only a tiny fraction will be sent. This is one of the few commenters who grasped the nuances of the mealy-mouthed ‘announcement’:

Recall that Rubio just recently implied the US has no more Patriots to give, a video I posted several updates ago. He called on Europe to give their Patriots instead, but quelle surprise, in a new FT article German Defense Minister Pistorius admitted that Germany will not be sending any Patriots nor Taurus missiles:

You can see in the above [on original], he goes on to say that Germany could purchase two systems from the US for Ukraine, instead. This is a kind of puerile shell game which is really meant to bolster the PR narrative that Ukraine is being ‘supported’ in order to keep hopes alive, so that the AFU doesn’t collapse from demoralization.

German Defense Minister Pistorius to Reuters:

Decision on two Patriots for Ukraine will be taken within days or weeks, but actual delivery of first system will take months.

In short: it’s a lot of hoopla to kick the can down the road again, repackaging the same policy with new fanfare.

The sanctions threat was likewise fraught with double-meaning. Trump called them ‘tariffs on Russia’, but in reality they are merely tariffs on US’ own allies:

Russia exports virtually nothing to the US which can be ‘tariffed’. The threat here is meaningless as these other heavyweights will not put up with Trump’s threat, forcing him to back away at the last moment as usual, then claiming “victory” after securing some other secondary fig leaf ‘deal’.

In conclusion: the entire charade appears to be a sneaky but brilliant act of jugglery by Trump, wherein he once again gives the appearance of major ‘action’ against Russia to silence critics and placate neocons, while in actuality doing little to further Ukraine’s war efforts, apart from plugging the previous status quo back onto life support. The act is meant to play both sides, relieving pressure on himself, while not overly risking his relationship with Putin in the hopes he can still clinch his big Nobel-earning armistice.

Notably, top-shelf items like JASSM missiles were all absent from the discussion, contrary to high-octane predictions from the peanut gallery the day before. Likewise, in the earlier-mentioned FT article, Pistorius once again categorically rejected—for the umpteenth time—the sending of Taurus missiles to Ukraine:

So, what are we left with? Essentially, the resumption of Biden’s PDA status quo with an ambiguous new promise of “a few” Patriot launchers, which is more a preliminary call to look for some potential stock among allies.

When asked what would happen after the 50 day mark if Putin refuses to back down, Trump told a reporter: “Don’t ask me that question.”

The bigger debate is whether Trump has now officially taken ownership of the war, despite his feeble attempts to impute his continued failings to Biden; many think so. But I still suspect Trump is trying his hardest to playact the stern and impatient taskmaster to signal ‘toughness’ against Putin for his deep state audience, all while actually trying to mitigate damage to US-Russian relations.

For instance, ‘senior officials’ told FT just two days ago that Trump still views Zelensky as the primary obstacle to peace:

That would likely make his ‘anger’ at Putin a put-on.

—

Intermezzo:

Ex-Russian prime minister Sergei Stepashin has a stark message for Germany, amidst all the militarization threats:

Moscow ‘knows location’ of German missile plants as Merz plans to hand Zelensky the bombs to hit ‘center of Russia’ — ex-PM Stepashin

Given that all the Trump-Ukraine weapons antics are merely an attempt to front-run and offlet some steam from the Russian summer offensives, let us now turn to frontline news:

Starting in western Zaporozhye Russian forces took over the remainder of Kamyanske:……………………………………………………………………………………….. https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/trumps-weapons-magic-show-is-smoke?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1351274&post_id=168312161&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=c9zhh&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

July 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, USA | Leave a comment

New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s Major Nuclear Power Push

What the nuclear industry and nuclear believers in government are calling “advanced” nuclear power plants are, as the Union of Concerned Scientists has found in an extensive report, not improved and no better—”and in some respects significantly worse”—than current nuclear plants.

the nuclear industry now is seeking large amounts of government financial support including in the forms of tax credits and loan guarantees to cover cost overruns.

Karl Grossman, May 14, 2025, https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/05/14/new-york-governor-kathy-hochuls-major-nuclear-power-push/

“Governor [Kathy] Hochul is making a major push to not only build new nuclear plants in New York State but to make N.Y. the center of a nuclear revival in the U.S.,” declared Mark Dunlea, chair of the Green Education and Legal Fund, and long a leader on environmental issues in the state and nationally, in a recent email calling on support to “stop Hochul’s nuclear push.”

Dunlea is author of the book “Putting Out the Planetary Fire: An Introduction to Climate Change and Advocacy.” An Albany Law School graduate, he co-founded both the New York Public Interest Research Group and national PIRG. In an interview last week from his home in Poestenkill in upstate New York, Dunlea charged that Governor Hochul has “bought into nuclear power.”

He said, “She buys the argument that nuclear is carbon-free, avoiding looking at the life cycle of nuclear and its carbon footprint,” which includes, he noted, significant emissions of carbon in uranium mining, milling, enrichment, fuel fabrication and at other points. “The nuclear industry has been lobbying her to go along with it, and she has,” he said.

Hochul has also become involved in promoting nuclear power nationally.

The Clean Air Task Force, based in Sunnyside in Queens, New York, which advocates nuclear power, issued a press release in February stating: “The National Association of State Energy officials announced a multi-state initiative to accelerate advanced nuclear energy projects. The initiative was first previewed by Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York last month and will be co-chaired by New York.”

The heading of the release: “New York leads multi-state consortium to drive nuclear energy deployment …”

Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), based in Mount Rainier, Maryland, and formerly of Syracuse, New York, pointed out in an interview that Hochul made nuclear power “a specific priority in her State of the State speech” in January.

Hochul in the speech declared: “The economy of the future: microchips fabs [fabrication plants], data centers and the supercomputers that power AI need tremendous amounts of energy. To support these industries, we’ve already started developing an advanced nuclear strategy. This is a good investment. Artificial Intelligence alone is projected to drive $320 billion of economic growth in our state by 2038.”

What the nuclear industry and nuclear believers in government are calling “advanced” nuclear power plants are, as the Union of Concerned Scientists has found in an extensive report, not improved and no better—”and in some respects significantly worse”—than current nuclear plants. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based organization has detailed this in an article headlined: “Report Finds That ‘Advanced’ Nuclear Reactor Designs Are No Better Than Current Reactors—and Some Are Worse.”

Hochul is a Democrat. But also, said Judson, the “New York Republican Party has been rabidly pro-nuclear.” In a time of extreme partisan polarity, there is a “bipartisan consensus among the political elite in favor of nuclear power,” and thus is one thing in government for which “there are bipartisan votes.”

As the Syracuse.com website has reported: “Fort Drum, the U.S. Army base outside Watertown, could become the first New York site to try advanced nuclear power technology if the Army goes along with pleas from congressional representatives. U.S. Reps. Elise Stefanik and Claudia Tenney, both upstate Republicans, issued a joint letter October 25 urging the Army to put Fort Drum first in line for one of the small modular nuclear reactors that President Joe Biden and Department of Defense officials are promoting as a clean source of resilient energy.”

Stefanik is a Republican front-runner to challenge Hochul in election for governor in 2026. Democrat Biden has supported nuclear power.

Hochul’s predecessor as New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, also a Democrat, now seeking to be the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor in the 2025 election, has a mixed record on nuclear power.

As governor Cuomo was instrumental in closing down in 2021 the two Indian Point nuclear power plants 26 miles north of New York City, but in 2016 he engineered a $7.6 billion bail-out to allow four aged nuclear plants in upstate New York to continue to operate. Their owners then deemed them uneconomical to continue to operate.

The plants—Fitzpatrick, Nine Mile Point 1 and 2, and Ginna—are now owned by Constellation Energy, the largest nuclear power plant operator in the United States.

The $7.6 billion bail-out is being paid for over a 12-year period as a surcharge on electric bills of all residential and industrial customers in New York State.

So far, Dunlea said, Hochul has been focusing on upstate New York for new nuclear development, particularly targeting areas where nuclear plants are now located, rather than, “at the moment,” downstate.

For decades, a battle raged that stopped the plan of the Long Island Lighting Company to build a large collection of nuclear power plants—seven to 11 nuclear plants—downstate, on Long Island, the 120-mile island east of Manhattan.

If there is again a plan for placement of nuclear power plants on Long Island, said Dunlea, “hopefully, Long Islanders would stand up and beat it back.”

Grassroots citizen action was a key in the decades long fight to block to the scheme to, in the parlance of promoters of it at the time, turn Long Island into a “nuclear park.” The only plant built was Shoreham 1 which was stopped from going into commercial operation.

The October Syracuse.com piece said: “Gov. Kathy Hochul has expressed an interest in exploring the potential for new nuclear power in New York” highlighted by her having “hosted an energy summit last month [September 2024] in Syracuse that focused heavily on nuclear power.”

Judson, of NIRS, said the nuclear industry now is seeking large amounts of government financial support including in the forms of tax credits and loan guarantees to cover cost overruns.

Laura Shindell, New York State director of the Washington-headquartered organization Food & Water Watch, has scored in a piece in the Times Union newspaper of Albany what she terms “Governor Hochul’s nuclear embrace” and said Hochul should commit to “real climate and affordable energy solutions.” Shindell’s piece was headlined, “Commentary: No place for nuclear in New York’s energy plants.” Its subhead: “Nuclear power is a dirty, dangerous, expensive distraction to the essential work of transitioning to clean energy.”

New York State’s emphasis on nuclear power under Hochul has been recognized by World Nuclear News, a publication of the World Nuclear Association, a London-based group that describes itself as an “international organization that promotes nuclear power.”

A January article was headlined “New York State looks to advanced nuclear.”

It began: “As New York Governor Kathy Hochul announces a master plan for advanced nuclear development,” the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, NYSERDA “has joined Constellation [Energy] on a grant proposal to help it pursue an early site permit for advanced nuclear reactors at its Nine Mile Point Clean Energy Center.” That’s the site of the Nine Mile Point 1 and 2 nuclear power plants.

Anne Rabe, volunteer coordinator of the group Don’t Waste New York, charged in an interview that Hochul “is recklessly and deliberately telling NYSERDA to pursue advanced reactors.” A resident of Castleton-on-Hudson in upstate New York, she said “the nuclear industry for years has worked to lay the groundwork for this.”

Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, and is the author of the book, The Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet, and the Beyond Nuclear handbook, The U.S. Space Force and the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear war in space. Grossman is an associate of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.

May 18, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, USA | Leave a comment