It’s moving fast. It built a 40,000 ft² pilot scale manufacturing plant in Austin, TX in just one year.

It plans to achieve initial criticality for Aalo-X, its first commercial scale reactor, in July 2026. That’s less than four months from now. The facility at the Idaho National Laboratory is completed, the reactor and primary systems have been installed. The reactor fuel is being manufactured by Global Nuclear Fuels in Wilmington, NC.

The few remaining steps include the Department of Energy’s issuance of the final Documented Safety Analysis, fuel receipt and fuel loading.

For many inside and outside the nuclear industry, Aalo’s pace seems to be almost impossible. Even for those who believe it is possible for nuclear systems to be designed, reviewed, licensed and constructed far faster than ever before, the accomplishments approach the incredible stage.

For Atomic Show #343, Yasir Arafat, Aalo’s co-founder and Chief Technical Officer enthusiastically shares his company’s story. He tells us how the company and its products were designed and manufactured with efficiency, ease and availability at the center of decision making.

The company also decided at a very early stage that it would do everything in its power to manufacture and assemble its machines, taking control of its own destiny wherever possible. He bragged – rightfully so – about the company’s ability to attract exceptional employees, stating their belief that a superstar can be as much as 10 times more productive than an average employee.

He described how the company has avoided adding management layers, saying that the team they have assembled does not need anyone to manage their performance.

He emphasized that Aalo had assembled a strong network of suppliers with shared motives that help to make the vision achievable. Raw materials, sensors, wiring harnesses and many other parts that aren’t at the top of mind are best purchased rather than built in house.

During the discussion, Yasir told stories from his 15-year career as a reactor design engineer at Westinghouse and Idaho National Laboratory that helped to shape his technical and managerial decision making. It’s evident that he has done a lot of personal “lesson learning” and is now applying those learnings with a high performing team.

Aalo’s inspiring vision and milestone execution track record have attracted a strong and growing number of risk-accepting investors. Nucleation Capital, the parent company of Atomic Insights and the Atomic Show podcast, has been one of those investors from a very early stage in the company.

At the same time that the CRISLA development effort began producing intriguing results, there was a major effort to consume excess enriched uranium from the former Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons complex. The solution was to convert that material into fuel so that it could be consumed in U.S. nuclear power plants.

The enriched uranium consumption program, known as “Megatons to Megawatts“, arguably made the world safer and provided significant benefits to American electricity consumers. Megatons to Megawatts also flooded the world’s enriched uranium market and eliminated investor interest in improving existing processes.

The CRISLA project was halted.

Just before the project was abruptly cancelled, the development team conducted several test runs and sent the produced samples out to be tested. The team was disbanded before the results came back. When they were finally available, they were filed in a place that wasn’t accessible to the development team. More than 20 years after the 1993 tests were conducted Jeff Eerkens, the team leader, learned that the technology that he and his team had built worked far better than they realized.

Christo Liebenberg, the current LIST President, visited the Atomic Show to share a more complete version of the above story. He tells us just how much better the enrichment results were compared to all other alternatives. He helps explain the importance and implications if successful commercial development can be achieved.

He explains how the equipment from the 1990s test was stored and recovered and he describes the success efforts to restore and improve the low pressure CO lasers at the heart of the system. He explains how LIST was formed and how it attracted the attention of Jay Yu, its Chairman, CEO, co-founder and initial investor.

Christo’s resume seems to have been designed to prepare him for the role of leading a laser isotope separation company. This is quoted from the LIST web site team page.

Mr Liebenberg started his career in the 1980’s at the Atomic Energy Corporation of South Africa where he later spearheaded the optimization of enrichment parameters of the Molecular Laser Isotope Separation (MLIS) process. By the end of the 1990’s his journey led him to Australia where he later joined Silex Systems Ltd as their Laser Manager, and continued this role at Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) in Wilmington, NC where he played a key role in the architecture of the Test Loop Facility. In 2012 he joined the research team at ASML where he was intricately involved with the R&D of state-of-the-art CO2 laser systems to generate EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet), used today to manufacture modern semiconductor chips.

We talked about the changes in the enrichment market and its growing need for both technological improvement and additional production capacity. The situation is far different today compared to what existed at the time CRISLA was initially shelved.

We ended our conversation with a personal inspiration story about Jeff Eerkens, the father of laser isotope enrichment. The great news is that he has lived long enough to participate in the process of developing his inventions.

I have no doubt that you will find this show to be informative and entertaining.

Chairman Nieh’s father worked as a nuclear qualified welder. His experiences during spring and fall outages were part of the inspiration for Nieh’s decision to pursue a career in nuclear engineering. He studied marine engineering at the U. S. Merchant Marine Academy. That major was the closest thing to a nuclear engineering program available at the sometimes overlooked 5th service academy.

Aside: (Everyone remembers the Military Academy, the Naval Academy (my personal favorite) and the Air Force Academy. Many know about the Coast Guard Academy. It’s less common to recall that the Merchant Marines play a vital role in the defense establishment and that they have their own service academy. End Aside.

Chairman Nieh told us about how he started his nuclear career as an instructor/operator at the S8G prototype at the Navy’s prototype site in West Milton, NY. He spent more than 4 years as a shift worker at the facility, likely having contact with 16 or more classes of trainees in the Navy’s Nuclear Power Program. After four plus years on rotating shifts, he was open to a suggestion from a former colleague to apply for a job as a resident inspector with the NRC. (Chairman Nieh is the first NRC Commissioner to have served as a resident inspector.)

At his service academy, Nieh was trained to seek roles of increasing responsibility where he could put his leadership training to its most effective use. His career on the NRC staff contains abundant evidence of choices made to deepen and broaden his capabilities as a leader in a complex and vital field.

Chairman Nieh described his appreciation of the skills, work ethic and depth of experience of his four fellow commissioners. It’s almost de rigueur for NRC commissioners to praise the collegiality of their Commission, but it sounded like he was describing an especially useful version of that descriptor is applicable to the current group.

We spoke about the agency’s evolving understanding of its role in enabling the safe use of nuclear energy and its growing understanding that the guiding language on that topic has always been included in Article 1 of the Atomic Energy Act. He acknowledged that there have been past leaders on the Commission and on the staff who felt that enabling was too “promotional” and wasn’t part of the NRC’s mission.

We spoke about the NRC’s very recent release of 10 CFR Part 53, the long-anticipated, new licensing framework whose creation was directed by the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act of 2019. Though analysis of the final, 701-page rule is still in progress, the early returns show that it has generally succeeded in becoming a risk-informed, performance-based, technology-inclusive framework for designing and licensing new nuclear reactors.

Though the rule is still under review and the draft has not yet been made public, the Chairman Nieh described how NRC is close to completing another assigned task, this one directed by Executive Order 14300. The Commission is reconsidering the use of the linear, no threshold (LNT) radiation protection model and the associated regulatory requirement to take action to keep radiation doses as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA), even when the doses involved are already many multiples below the regulatory limit.

Chairman Nieh emphasized that the agency is maintaining its historic independence and that there are no external forces that are going to detract it from its role in maintaining safety. He also describes how keeping reactors safe does not mean preventing them from being built and operated. The nation needs abundant, affordable, reliable, clean power. It needs nuclear plants that can be built on time and within budget and a regulator that will not inhibit the accomplishment of the goal for safe and abundant nuclear energy.

I think you will enjoy the show.

It’s a sobering and enlightening depiction of the daily struggle for sustenance and survival in a place that is plagued with dire energy poverty.

During her education and early career, Zion was deeply embedded in the environmental movement and accepted many of its tenants. But as she repeatedly heard her colleagues and associates idealize simple existence and express a desire to return to the land and the traditional ways, she began to ask hard questions. Did they have any idea what it was like for those people who were still living on the land using traditional, primitive technologies?

Her path of asking hard questions and looking for the best scientifically supportable answers to those questions soon led her to become a closeted nuclear energy supporter. She learned how useful the technology was, especially as a way to provide abundant energy while virtually eliminating immediately harmful air pollution and climate changing emissions. But she still traveled in the environmental circles and was sure that she would be ostracized if she openly expressed her conclusions.

She tested that thesis several times and received the response that she expected. One of her colleagues once asked “you aren’t pro-nuclear are you?”

At a key point in her journey of discovery she was employed as a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, an aggressive antinuclear NGO taking direct action to capture the public’s attention. Its illogical but unfortunately common position was to be both opposed to emission-free nuclear energy while also focused on fighting climate change. After finding herself in situations where her choice was to speak truthfully or to do her assigned job, she left the antinuclear group to become a pronuclear advocate, speaker and author.

We talked about her life trajectory, her recent book, and her pursuit of an abundant future where all people have access to the energy resources that give them agency and enable them to flourish.

I expect that you will enjoy this episode.

Some have dismissed or minimized the problem by pointing to the relatively low material concentrations and the low radiation doses emitted. But low concentrations multiplied by tens of millions of tons and thousands of sites calculates to distressingly large numbers. It’s also important to remember that the contaminating minerals of concern are heavy metals that might be lightly radioactive, but they also have a level of chemical toxicity that also causes negative health impacts on humans and animals.

Though billions of dollars have been allocated for cleaning up the waste piles, there hasn’t been much progress because the available solution set has been limited to on-site burial in engineered landfills or moving the material “somewhere else.”

The landfill option doesn’t remove the potential threat to groundwater and the barriers are designed to last about 100 years. The vast majority of the contaminating minerals will still be there after the designed barriers have deteriorated. There has been little or no success in finding suitable or agreeable places to take the waste and even if there were, the mass of material means that most of the available clean up funds would be consumed in transportation.

Not surprisingly, there has not been a shortage of large established contracting companies willing to be paid tens of millions of dollars to study the issue and move some dirt around.

Enter John Lee and Greyson Buckingham, a pair of innovative entrepreneurs. They recognized the scale of the problem and the importance of effective solutions. They developed a patented technology called High Pressure Slurry Ablation that separates the contaminating minerals – mostly uranium and radium 226 – from sand and rock and concentrates those minerals into about 20% of the mass of the input stream. The clean fraction can meet stringent NRC unrestricted release criteria while the fraction containing the minerals will have a high enough concentration to turn a pile of contaminated material into valuable ore.

John Lee, with deep experience and education in mining and materials processing, developed the initial idea for HPSA. Greyson Buckingham added his legal training, business acumen and political experience. They formed a company called Disa Technologies in 2018 and patiently began the process of refining their ideas into useful and reliable machinery. Additionally, they entered into a plodding process of obtaining permission to deploy their problem-solving technology in an environmentally beneficial and cost effective manner.

Starting with a state regulatory engagement in 2018, Disa Technologies was recently – September 30, 2025 – awarded a service provider’s license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That license comes with a significant, but reasonably achievable condition to demonstrate HPSA on a commercial scale before entering into wide deployment of multiple units. Though it took about half a decade of staff engagement and Commission decision-making to determine the proper licensing framework, the NRC was able to review Disa’s service provider license application in six months (March–September 2025).

During the regulatory engagement process, Disa Technologies developed strong alliances with political representatives from affected states, with leaders among the Native American nations and with communities that have been seeking solutions to the waste issue for decades. They also produced solid scientific evidence of the efficacy of their inventions and demonstrated it to the satisfaction of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The saga is fascinating. For Atomic Show #339, I spoke with Greyson Buckingham about his company, its technology, the importance of cleaning up abandoned uranium mine (AUM) waste, the utility of HPSA in processing other critical mineral ores, the sometimes frustrating interactions with the NRC during period from 2020-2024 and the refreshingly competent and mission-oriented NRC that has been evolving during the past year.

Neither I nor Nucleation Capital, the sponsor of the Atomic Show and Atomic Insights, have any financial interest in Disa as of January 5, 2025, the date that this post and the associated audio recording are released.

Oklo is in the process of designing and permitting a family of small modular reactors that it plans to own and operate to produce electricity, heat and isotopes that it will sell to its end customers under long term power purchase agreements (PPA).

The specific type of SMR that Oklo has chosen as the one with the best chance to economically meet its needs as a power and heat producer – over the long haul – is a liquid sodium cooled, fast neutron reactor designed to closely match the features and performance of the Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II). That impressively successful demonstration reactor, which produced about 20 MWe, ran reliably for 30 years (1964-1994).

Oklo has stated that it intends to produce 15, 50 and 75 MWe versions of the system in order to best meet the needs of the customers it is aiming to serve.

An integral part of the Oklo vision is to recycle used nuclear fuel, the material that is often referred to as spent nuclear fuel or even “nuclear waste.” The fact that the material still contains about 90-95% of its initial potential energy is finally becoming common knowledge. Oklo believes that fast spectrum reactors are the technology that is best suited for converting used fuel materials into useful energy, and it also believes that affordably recycling fuel is essential to meeting its long term economic projections.

Part of Oklo’s business model is focusing on community acceptance for its powerhouses. They are designed to be aesthetically pleasing to the point where Oklo powerhouse images are often used to illustrate articles about advanced nuclear energy that focus on other companies. The company has talked about designing the stations to be community gathering places and also talked about beneficially using waste heat for purposes like heating swimming pools or district heating systems.

For Atomic Show #338, I spoke with Craig Bealmear, Oklo’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Craig described his 30-year background in the energy industry, mostly working in finance and accounting for BP. He spent most of his career in their marketing arm selling gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to large customers, but also ran several commercial enterprises within the company.

We discussed Oklo’s experience as one of three publicly traded pure plays in advanced nuclear energy during a period when excitement about nuclear energy hit an inflection point and dramatically increased demand for a commodity in very short supply. (Note: The supply of publicly traded pure plays in nuclear has recently doubled, creating a situation that is testing the strength of the demand for those companies.)

We spoke about the company’s vision, its business model and the way that its business model drove the selection of liquid metal fast spectrum reactors. Oklo’s founders – Jake and Caroline DeWitt – were attracted to their ability to operate at near atmospheric pressure while achieving high enough temperatures to create steam at the conditions used by modern Rankine Cycle steam plants. They believed that characteristic, along with the impressive results of EBR-II passive safety tests, will allow them to reduce the portion of their systems that are classified as safety-related. Sodium has been proven to be chemically compatible with stainless steel over a long period of high temperature operation, a characteristic with cost reduction potential.

Of course, we also had to talk about the design and operating provisions needed to mitigate and minimize the impact of sodium’s well known chemical reactions with water and moist air. That characteristic requires almost as much attention to keeping the primary coolant system leak tight and reliably separated from the clean steam site of the plant as has always been invested in pressurized water reactors. Low pressures make fabrication of the primary coolant pressure boundary for sodium cooled reactors a little less challenging than it is for very high pressure water.

Early in its development, Oklo invested a substantial amount of time recovering data from the EBR-II and the Fast Flux Test Facility. Craig and I talked about the value that quality testing and design data and how Oklo’s investment in organizing, understanding and using that data gives it a valuable head start compared to others who also have access to the government’s results.

During its decade+ period of operation, Oklo has developed strong relations with the Department of Energy and its national labs. It has recently announced several partnerships with others that are interested in fuel recycling, uranium enrichment and fast spectrum/liquid metal cooled reactors. It is interested in the potential for supplying – or buying – materials and components when it is mutually beneficial.

As the CFO, Craig is working to mitigate some of the concerns he has with the “asset-intensive” nature of Oklo’s build, own and operate business model. We talked about several paths that Oklo might pursue to reduce the capital requirements.

Though Oklo has been interacting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission since 2016, it is planning to take advantage of a recently reinvigorated capability for the Department of Energy to authorize the construction, operation and testing of pilot reactors. We spoke about DOE authorization as an interim step that can speed the process while enabling a later relicensing by the NRC for commercial operation. Oklo’s long term plan is to use repeated COLs under Part 52 with reactors manufactured under a manufacturing license.

We also talked about Atomic Alchemy and how the acquisition of that company fits Oklo’s future plans.

Counting Atomic Alchemy’s VIPER reactor, Oklo has three reactors in the DOE’s recently announced Reactor Pilot Program. The other two are Aurora-INL and Pluto. Aurora-INL is a 15 MWe version of Oklo’s powerhouse design while VIPER is a reactor that is optimized to produce high-demand isotopes. Very little information has been released about Pluto, but the project name offers a hint about one of its major design characteristics.

The company is actively pursuing all three reactor projects, but they intend to push hardest on one of the three to achieve critical operations by July 4, 2026. Kiewit is serving as the engineering, procurement and construction contractor for the Aurora-INL project.

One of the final topics we discussed was the company’s employee base. Oklo employs more than 200 people and has 45 openings listed on its job board. Either Jake or Caroline interviews every potential hire before they are added to the team.

We ran out of time before we could discuss topics like the manufacturing facility plans, the current progress of recycling efforts or the politics involved in moving the US away from the 50-year old de facto policy of avoiding fuel recycling.

Disclosure: My wife and I have a small position in Oklo. As Nov 19, 2025, It represents less than 1% of our net worth.

(c) The Secretary of Energy shall halt the surplus plutonium dilute and dispose program except with respect to the Department of Energy’s legal obligations to the State of South Carolina. In place of this program, the Secretary of Energy shall establish a program to dispose of surplus plutonium by processing and making it available to industry in a form that can be utilized for the fabrication of fuel for advanced nuclear technologies.

According to recent news reports, the Department of Energy is drafting a request for proposals from industry. Here is a quote from a Reuters article on the topic.

The plutonium would be offered to industry at little to no cost — with a catch. Industry will be responsible for costs of transportation, designing, building, and decommissioning DOE-authorized facilities to recycle, process and manufacture the fuel, the memo said.

Several nuclear non-proliferation careerists have objected to the very idea of using plutonium as nuclear reactor fuel, even though plutonium fueled reactors would have the same clean energy characteristics that are helping nuclear energy regain its popularity. They almost invariably point the last attempt at reusing Pu, which officially ended in 2017 after costing more than $7.5 B. Some of them say that nothing has changed the economics of Pu recycling and that it would be cheaper to continue with the dilute and dispose program championed by people like Ernie Moniz, a former Secretary of Energy.

In reality, the economics of the current and future nuclear fuel cycle have changed dramatically in the nearly 10 years since the last attempt at recycling Pu from the weapons program was killed off.

• The price of natural uranium is roughly 8 times as high as it was then.
• Smaller reactors using alternatives to conventional water cooling achieve better performance using fuels with higher concentrations of fissile material. Worries about adequate supplies of high assay, low enriched uranium (HALEU) have been widespread and sometimes used to discourage excitement about advanced reactors. Pu-239 is as fissile as U-235. Fuel with <20% Pu and >80% U (or Th) is an additional option that can overcome some concerns about HALEU availability.
• Projections for the future of nuclear energy use 10 years ago showed that it would slowly decline as reactors closed. Some were reaching their end of life; others were being retired early as a result of political decisions. Reactor owners in restructured markets faced economic challenges caused by an overabundance of alternatives that lowered average prices and revenues. In most countries, closed reactors were not being replaced.
• Current projections show that nuclear energy use will double, triple or even quadruple by 2050. The amount of fissile material consumed in reactors per unit of electricity is roughly fixed, those projected energy production increase demand for mined uranium. Prices will have to rise considerably if mines are the only available source of fissile material. (Uranium investors don’t hate increased market prices.)
• The new recycling program would be conducted at DOE-authorized facilities. That’s a significant economic change from the convoluted regulatory paradigm of both NRC and DOE oversight used for the earlier program.

Devoted opponents of the “plutonium economy” – often people who have prospered and captured significant levels of political power from the Hydrocarbon Economy or the Renewable Energy Economy – are up in arms. Some have worked throughout their entire career in efforts to prevent plutonium from becoming another energy fuel that would compete in “their” markets.

Since it’s been quite a while since the topic of plutonium reuse was last discussed with any new information it might be worth a few minutes to review the factors that came together to halt the last significant effort to use plutonium as a reactor fuel. The MOX project may have was officially ended in 2017, but the roots of its failure are much deeper and extend to the late 1990s when the program was being put together.

Introduction

The MOX (Mixed Oxide) program was designed to chemically convert weapons material – nearly pure fissile Pu-239, usually in the form of metal powder – into plutonium dioxide (PuO2). The next step of the process is to mix a small amount of that PuO2 with uranium dioxide (UO2) to produce <5% fissile fuel. The fuel mixture would be put through industrial processes to make pellets with the same size and shape as traditional LWR fuel pellets. Their nuclear properties would be close, but not identical, to the pellets they would replace. The MOX pellets would be stacked into cladding tubes that would be assembled into conventional light water fuel assemblies.

One fact that needs to enter the current discussion is that MOX is only one of many ways to create nuclear fuel using plutonium as the fissile material. Some of the other ways, like metal alloys for fast reactors or fluorides for molten salt reactors would need different, potentially less expensive equipment and processing.

When the MOX program was on its last legs and gaining political infamy as a failed, expensive government project, Atomic Insights published the below piece. We think it provides useful historical informations and lessons about how not to run a plutonium recycling program. It is republished in its entirety from the original, first published on May 17, 2017.

How Did the MOX Program Get So Expensive?

Over the past week or so, I’ve engaged in a “root cause analysis” project to determine why the US is having so much difficulty implementing a plan to take 34 metric tons of nearly pure plutonium 239 — a fissile isotope with virtually the same energy value as uranium 235 — out of our nuclear weapons program and beneficially use it as a source of fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.

It’s a fascinating tale with several branches, but here is the spoiler up front. The root cause seems to be encapsulated in the following quote from a recent article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists titled Can the US-Russia plutonium disposition agreement be saved?

Many experts were skeptical about the MOX option, not least because it would provide a significant boost to the plutonium economy, eventually leading to wider acceptance of plutonium in the civilian nuclear industry.

(Emphasis added.)

Resisting the Plutonium Economy

Long-time readers of Atomic Insights will recall several posts over the years about the pitched battle against the “plutonium economy” that started sometime in the early 1960s. The battle began after the Glenn Seaborg-led Atomic Energy Commission issued a report pointing out how fast breeder reactors–along with thermal breeder reactors using U-233 and Th-232–could provide enough fissile material to fuel nuclear power plants for hundreds to thousands of years. Those plants would be able to provide as much power as human society could ever desire.

For most of the scientists and engineers involved in producing the report, and for many of the far-sighted optimists that read it, that was a tremendously exciting and positive prospect.

It didn’t please everyone. Though Seaborg’s report did not predict fission would replace all combustion — recognizing that there are a number of specific power consumers that are not well suited to using fission reactors — its message still must have scared the bejesus out of people that were prospering in the existing Hydrocarbon Economy.

They had to recognize that a plutonium economy could both flood the energy markets they considered to be “theirs” and would relegate hydrocarbon fuels to shrinking niches of the lucrative enterprise of powering society.

Of course, resisting the plutonium economy by clearly stating that it would harm the fossil fuel business was, even in the early 1960s, a strategy that would fall on deaf ears. Though people appreciated the mobility, indoor climate control, refrigeration, manufactured goods and other capabilities enabled by the power released by burning hydrocarbons, they did not love the gigantic multinational corporations that already dominated the system.

Replacement strategies using various tactical elements needed to be devised and employed.

One ingredient used in fighting the plutonium economy was to demonize plutonium, characterizing it as one of the most deadly substances known to man. Though there is an element of truth to that statement if the plutonium is used explosively to rapidly destroy a large city, it is a false claim if simply comparing the material’s chemical or radiological toxicity.

Another ingredient was actively seeking to make plutonium as commercially unattractive as possible. That effort continues, especially among a certain aging clique of Northeast US nuclear “non-proliferation” academics headquartered at Princeton and MIT. Several of the usual suspects signed a letter in September 2015 expressing their continued opposition to using plutonium to produce power.

The latest was mailed Tuesday [September 8, 2015] by more than a dozen prominent former arms negotiators and senior diplomats supporting the conclusions of a report completed last month by the Red Team, a group of industry experts assembled by Moniz to evaluate cost projections and alternatives to the MOX project.

…

The signatories included former nuclear arms negotiators Robert Einhorn and Robert Gal­lucci; former ambassadors Thomas Picker­ing and Joseph Nye; former White House director for arms control and former Pentagon and intelligence official Henry S. Rowen; former head of the Carnegie Endow­ment for International Peace Jes­si­ca Matthews; former Nuclear Regulatory Commission members Peter Bradford and Victor Gilinsky; National Medal of Science winner Richard Garwin, a designer of the first hydrogen bomb; and nuclear policy experts Henry Sokolski, Frank von Hippel, S. David Freeman and Plough­shares Fund president Joseph Cirincione.

Amusingly, the letter was addressed to one of the longtime thought leaders of the Northeast non-proliferation clique — Dr. Ernest Moniz. He is currently serving as the U.S. Secretary of Energy. Moniz, who has been testifying for the past several years that the MOX project is too expensive, was deeply involved in creating the framework that made the current MOX morass almost inevitable.

After his 2013 appointment, Dr. Moniz selected another Cambridge, MA based non-proliferation proponent, Kevin Knobloch, formerly the President of the Union of Concerned Scientists, to be his office gatekeeper, a job with the formal title of Chief of Staff. Between the two of them, they have found wonderful positions from which to ensure the realization of a self-fulfilling prophesy. Among their other tasks, they’ve spent part of the past 30-40 years asserting that turning Pu-239 from weapons into MOX for light water reactors is more expensive than simply enriching natural uranium and producing conventional low-enriched uranium fuel.

They’ve also cooperated in the effort to push a potential more valuable reuse option — metal alloy fuel for fast reactors — off the table.

Since they have made sure that their often-repeated predictions over the years have come true they are now claiming that the only remaining plutonium disposition option is similar to one that they have wanted to pursue for more than two decades. Instead of abiding by the mantra of reduce, reuse and recycle, they want to mix the material with a diluent whose composition is classified and bury it deep underground without allowing any of the potential energy to enter into the world market.

Getting rid of the 34 tons covered by the 2000 vintage Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA) in this manner is just a beginning; it will establish a precedent for throwing away all plutonium, at least in the U.S. Obviously, the anti plutonium clique wants us to conclude that if it is too expensive to use plutonium that is already nearly pure before it is even put into a fuel cycle, then it would be even more expensive to devise and implement a fuel cycle that begins with used fuel.

Recycling used fuel would require several additional steps compared to using material that is already separated.

In 1998, DOE Adamant About NRC Regulation

Using the logic that the MOX facility would be producing fuel for NRC regulated commercial reactors, the Clinton Administration’s DOE leadership — specifically DOE Secretary Bill Richardson, Deputy Secretary Elizabeth Moler, and Under Secretary Ernest Moniz — made the case that a MOX facility should be built and operated to NRC standards and should undergo an NRC licensing process.

On April 3, 1998, they sent Howard Canter, Director of DOE’s Office of Fissile Materials Disposition, to a meeting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to explain the proposal. An experienced project manager would run and hide from an assignment to attempt to build anything under the regulatory framework that was discussed that day.

No contractor would touch it on anything but a “cost plus fee” pricing basis. Here are a few illuminating quotes.

Canter: Based on a great deal of internal discussion in the Department, which has included the Under Secretary and the Deputy Secretary, there is one major unresolved issue, and it really centers around whether or not we will get legislation this year. How do we get going in the event we do not have legislation, and do we need legislation? So there are many questions.

DOE wants to issue this RFP and desires to moves towards NRC regulation and licensing. The Deputy Secretary was very adamant upon this yesterday, that this will be a licensed facility. But we are in some difficulty because we can’t issue the RFP without reaching some agreement on the NRC regulatory role and how it will start. The RFP has been prepared and it was totally approved, ready to go out the end of February on the basis of NRC being the regulator on this. However, we have got to make sure that we allow for this period of transition in the start-up period, so we will have to make some changes to that.

…

The Department does want to go to NRC regulation on this. And the other things is we don’t want to mix it up with the much wider issue of external regulation of DOE. It is not — this is not a pilot project or something having to do with that program, although there will be a lot that is learned out of this from that program.

There are significant differences. Some of the reasons are that it is a private contractor, not a M and O contractor. We have even looked at such issues as who would own the facility. We have some options there. We can even consider the idea of leasing the facility, once it is created, back to the contractor, and a number of things to make this very clear how this would work, and very clear who has the NRC authority.

I agree with Commissioner McGaffigan that we do not want to end run the Congress on this thing. There is significant interest in the Congress. A number of the staff members have contacted me and they may be off writing their own legislation on this. In fact, I know, I think, of one case on the Senate side where they may be doing that right now.

…

One of the things that we are concerned about is dual regulation and dual oversight. In fact, there is even the potential for triple oversight here if we are not careful and plan this out properly between DOE exercising a degree of oversight, the NRC staff providing some oversight, and maybe even the Defense Board. And I think that would be a lot of confusion and, essentially, a disaster if we had that.

After substantial questioning by commissioners and attempts to answer by Mr. Canter, Commissioner Diaz summed it up pretty well.

COMMISSIONER DIAZ: And a second comment — you know, just for the record — there is probably, you know, one regulatory structure that can be created that is more cumbersome and more complex than the DOE and the NRC, and that is a mix — DOE and NRC.

As a matter of historical record, the construction permit for the MOX facility was issued in March 2005 and construction began in 2007 with a completely different contractor consortium than the one that won the design contract based on the 1998 solicitation.

MOX Project Status

No reasonable observer reviewing the current status of the MOX project could fail to conclude that the project is in trouble. Nearly $5 billion has already been expended; it costs about $350 million per year to keep the project treading water. Even at that level, the workforce is perpetually worried about continued employment.

Secretary Moniz likes to imply that the contractor has mislead the government about costs, that it continues to underestimate completion costs, and that the only remaining alternative to increasing spending to the level of a billion dollars per year for the next several decades is to terminate the project.

There have been a number of studies, some funded by the government, others funded by MOX services, the consortium of contracting companies building the facility. Here is a quote from the Executive Considerations section of the Plutonium Disposition Program Red Team Report.

The current lack of sustained funding for the MFFF project illustrated in Table 1, which shows planned (based on the MOX Services 2012 BCP) versus actual funding, has created an environment of intense uncertainty, ultimately manifesting itself through project inefficiencies and strained relationships between DOE and the contractor. This uncertainty has in-turn led to a lack of workforce confidence in program stability, resulting in low levels of staff retention (exacerbated by loss of the most qualified

workers), and low morale in the remaining workforce.

…

The downward performance spiral is accompanied by an upward cost escalation spiral that would eventually make DOE’s path-forward decision for them, but only after a great deal of money has been wasted. Project surety would instead lead directly to increased staff retention, resulting in reduced recruitment and training costs, increased ownership, and enhanced overall project performance. Should the MOX option be chosen for continuation, it is vital to create and sustain an adequate and stable funding profile. Indeed, consistent support will be vital for any path forward.

Aside: Dr. Moniz commissioned the Red Team (pg. A-3). It was largely made up of contractors employed in the DOE’s national laboratory system (pg. B-1) whose continued income depends partly on providing the answers that the Secretary wants to hear. Their August 2015 report is marked with “For Official Use Only,” which means that non governmental observers like me are not supposed to see it. I’ll leave it to the questioning attitudes of Atomic Insights readers to pose guesses about the source of the leaked document. Hint: Look at the URL where it is posted. End Aside.

Though DOE summarizes the Red Team’s conclusions by asserting that it supports their assertion that continuing the MOX program under the currently projected funding profile of ~ $500 million per year is significantly more expensive than the hypothetical costs of the dilute and dispose option, it doesn’t seem to recognize its own responsibility for creating the mess, first by establishing an onerous and complex licensing process.

Partly as a result of that process, the contractors produced an almost unworkably complicated design. The on-off-on-off mission and funding has helped to create a hostile, uncertain work environment that has been abandoned by many of the best workers. According to the Red Team report, the remaining workforce seems to spend more effort in oversight and project controls than in completing constructive tasks.

Contractual enhancements may also enable a reduction of burdensome oversight and indirect costs associated with this kind of counterproductive relationship between DOE and the contractor.

…

Implementing project management reforms, providing for incentive fees (based upon jointly negotiated performance outcomes) and ultimately reducing the amount of daily oversight and transactional interactions between the DOE field element and the MOX Services contractor could result in meaningful cost savings.

Final thoughts: As currently funded and overseen by DOE, the MOX Project is expensive and is at a high risk of failure. It might be salvageable, but only with a tripling or quadrupling of annual appropriations in the near term along with a major overhaul of the project management structure and environment to get the project completed and operating expeditiously. Small annual funding requests might be easier to get through Congress, but they invariably add cost and stretch project completion.

The Department of Energy helped to establish a situation that would guarantee that the project could not succeed.

The problem for the people who have to determine where to go from here is that the alternative solution being proposed would depend on the same kind of management, requires changes in law that have not yet been submitted, would require the agreement of at least two state governments that have no real incentive to accept the new plan and would require the Russian government to agree, in writing, to a disposal method that they have been opposed to accepting for the past 20 years.

Since the money that is being expended on MOX comes from the defense budget, the Russians have strong incentives to reject a new deal whose primary selling point is a lowered cost for the U.S.

Paraphrasing Senator Graham in his most ironic voice, other than those obstacles the alternative plan seems okay.

There are alternative courses of action that have the potential to provide a better outcome, but I’ll save those for another day.

The company is in the final stages of hearings and approvals needed from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to allow it to begin constructing the mine infrastructure for its Rook 1 project. In a term that might be familiar to petroleum energy geologists, Rook 1 is a supergiant resource.

Aside: In the petroleum business, a supergiant field is one that contains at least 5 billion barrels of oil. There are more than 250 million pounds of uranium in the measured and indicated mineral resources in the Rook 1 project. Google’s Gemini says that one million pounds of natural uranium contains 31 million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE). It follows that 250 million pounds contains more than 7.5 billion BOE. End Aside.

The ore in the Arrow deposit part of Rook 1 has an exceedingly rare uranium concentration that is as high as 69% uranium oxide. On average, the deposit measures out at well over 3%.

Leigh Curyer, NexGen’s founder and CEO, visited the Atomic Show to talk about his company’s successful and continuing exploration program. We talked about the growing need for uranium fuel as the nuclear energy market expands, the tightness in the current supply chain and the impacts of a new production source that is planning to supply between 22% and 25% of the current annual uranium supply.

Curyer spoke about NexGen’s investments in planning and engineering a mine that balances the needs for profitable extraction, minimum environmental impacts and maximum community benefits. He described the company’s strategy of remediating impacts as the mining continues so that there is less to do once the mine closes.

If you are interested in uranium mining or if you are concerned about the sustainability of nuclear energy in terms of ensuring an adequate fuel supply, you will find this to be a fascinating conversation.

His company, AMS Corporation, provides key services and products to nearly every nuclear power plant in the United States and a growing portion of those located outside of the United States. He founded AMS with a partner in 1977 and became the sole owner in 1986. Even though it is a relatively small company with an average head count of 100 people, AMS maintains a strong research and development organization. AMS employees, including Dr. Hashemian, have published hundreds of papers in academic journals and produced a significant body of original research.

Hash is a nuclear energy industry expert with an enormous breadth and depth of experience.

On this episode of the Atomic Show, we skimmed over a sampling of his knowledge of the industry. We talked about his visions and plans for the next year as the President of ANS, his view of the future of nuclear energy and our slightly differing views of the role that the government should play in getting a nuclear power plant building effort off of the ground.

We discussed Dr. Hashemian’s successful, inspiring effort to obtain not one, not two, but three PhD’s over a 10 year period while running a business and raising a family. Besides his incredible work ethic, he shared another tactic – he devoted the hours of 9:00 pm to 2:00 am to study each day during that decade.

Dr. Hashemian is a proud graduate of the University of Tennessee. His business is headquartered in Knoxville, not far from Oak Ridge. He is an active member of the East Tennessee nuclear industry, which currently includes 156 companies. We talked about Tennessee’s leadership within the industry, the investments that the state is making in maintaining its leadership and the special advantages of having Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Y-12 and legacy defense-related nuclear sites that are being cleaned and leveled. These sites provide large tracts of land that are available to nuclear-focused companies at attractive prices.

Colleges and universities in East Tennessee, including the University of Tennessee, Tennessee Tech and Roane State Community College are academic assets that are training engineers and technicians in fields relevant to the nuclear industry.

Dr. Hashemian reminded us that states like Texas and Virginia are also racing to be nuclear industry leaders.

We took advantage of Dr. Hashemian’s special knowledge of nuclear power plant instrumentation and control systems to discuss the reasons why the U.S. nuclear power plant fleet almost exclusively still uses analog protection and alarm systems.

We talked about some of the changing I & C needs for advanced reactors and the usefulness of a wide variety of sizes and configurations for nuclear energy facilities. Dr. Hashemian is a believer in an “all of the nuclear plant sizes above” catalog.

Dr. Hashemian also shared his nuclear energy origin story. Like several other prominent nuclear industry leaders, he grew up in Iran during the period when it was still ruled by the Shah of Iran. Throughout almost all of the 1970s, the Shah was pursuing a plan to build 20 large nuclear power plants to provide electricity to his rapidly modernizing country.

That plan was openly aimed at reducing Iran’s domestic oil and gas consumption so that more of those valuable products could be exported into the world market.

Aside: As Atomic Insights has said many times, nuclear fission heat can replace other sources of thermal energy including oil, gas and coal. That gives those whose wealth and power is sourced from combustion fuels a powerful incentive to shape public and political attitudes about their most capable competitive technology. End Aside.

The Shah’s government supported thousands of students – including Hash Hashemian – in programs to study nuclear science and engineering and other related fields in some of the best universities in the world. The expectation was that those student would return to Iran and help develop the Shah’s expansive nuclear power program.

After the Shah was overthrown, some of the students returned to Iran, but many – like Dr. Hashemian – chose to remain in the United States and build their lives and careers here.

Those enterprising, hard-working immigrants – first generation Americans – continue to play an important role in nuclear energy development. The second generation is also contributing their skills, work ethic and intellect.

You’ll enjoy this show. We’re sure of it.

Now a word from our sponsor.

As you’ll hear during the show, there is an intensifying interest in building new nuclear power plants in the U.S. and around the world. Customers are clamoring for power sources that are clean, abundant, reliable and affordable. Only nuclear energy has the potential to meet those criteria without regard to prevailing weather or geography.

The challenging, but addressable criteria is “affordable”. Some customers have needs that are so immediate, they are willing to pay a premium and even invest in product development.

Nucleation Capital, the sponsor of this show, is also investing in emerging companies – aka entrepreneurial ventures – that are developing technologies, processes and supporting systems designed to lower cost and reduce schedules. Nucleation Capital Fund I is structured to allow accredited investors – people with either $1 M of investable assets or $200 K in annual income – to become limited partners (LPs) and invest a portion of their portfolio in advanced nuclear energy ventures. The general partners in the fund invest alongside the LPs, giving them a strong vested interest in picking winners from a growing list of exciting customers.

If you’re interested in joining the journey, seizing the opportunity for strong returns and helping nuclear energy to develop, please visit the Nucleation Capital web site or contact us directly.

The company was formed to address the chosen problem because it was a time consuming – aka expensive – data-driven task with a large number of variables, each with a significant amount of uncertainty that was mitigated by inserting large margins. Though operating with those large margins provided safety and operational reliability, the extra margins led to increased costs/reduced revenues in the form of higher than necessary enrichments, shorter refueling cycles and/or operating at a lower than rated power.

Jonathan Nistor is Blue Wave AI’s chief operating officer and one of its early employees. During his visit to the Atomic Show he provided a lot of deep technical details about addressing the challenges of designing BWR core reloads and also provided some insights into new directions that AI (artificial intelligence, not to be confused with Atomic Insights) can take to improve the operating efficiency of nuclear power plants.

We also talked extensively about the potential for AI to address difficult and time consuming documentation and review tasks that require reliable access to cited reference material, a comprehensive understanding of plant license basis and the requirements associated with license applications for both changes to operating reactors and initial license applications for new, advanced reactors.

We talked about the way that suppliers like Blue Wave AI meet the requirements for cyber security and how they protect their clients’s data for both security and proprietary reasons.

We also discussed the current state of acceptance for AI tools from the point of view of nuclear licensees and the regulators that oversee the industry.

This episode is a bit more technical than usual, so it should appeal to the hardcore geeks in the audience. But it’s also accessible to anyone who wants to gain some understanding of the challenges facing the operating fleet and the assistance that the rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence can provide.

It’s important to point out that the nuclear industry is interested in AI tools that help humans do their job better, not in tools that result in machines driven by codes to make decisions that humans should be making.

Enjoy the show.

The hints leading to the conclusion include:

• New York operates three existing nuclear plants (one is a two unit facility). All of them are on the shore of Lake Ontario.
• “Candidate locations will be assessed for suitability based on public safety, strength of community support, compatibility with existing infrastructure, as well as skilled labor and land availability. (Existing plant sites or those close to existing plants score well on all listed attributes.)
• “…initiative also builds on the State’s ongoing financial support to Constellation to pursue an early site permitting process for a new project at its Nine Mile Point Clean Energy Center” (New York is already investing in a site evaluation process at an existing nuclear facility. The value of that investment decreases with increasing distance from the evaluated site.)
• “…will allow for future collaboration with other states and Ontario, building on regional momentum to strengthen nuclear supply chains, share best practices, and support the responsible deployment of advanced nuclear technologies (Ontario started construction on a four-unit BWRX-300 project at the Darlington Nuclear Power Plant which is located on the north shore of Lake Ontario. The Tennessee Valley Authority is well on its way to a final investment decision for a similar project at the Clinch River, TN site. “Best practices”, “responsible deployment” and “strengthening supply chains” all point to the selection of the same design.
• Large scale transportation capabilities across Lake Ontario would facilitate strong project management cooperation between the New York Power Authority and Ontario Power Generation. They could develop schedules that enable workforce coordination for maximum benefits, share specialized equipment including cranes and automated welding devices, arrange for larger bulk deliveries of specialized steel and concrete and increase order quantities for specialized components.
• GE Vernova has an historically strong manufacturing base in Upstate New York. That base shrank dramatically during the past several decades as GE deemphasized manufacturing and moved remaining production to other locations, but the current on-shoring trend could move it in the opposite direction.
• Three of the four operating nuclear units in New York are GE boiling water reactors (BWR).

Those factors do not make the prediction a 100% slam dunk, but they add up to a strong case.

Choosing GEV-H BWRX-300 units for the specific project that Gov. Hochul announced on June 23 will not preclude the selection of different designs that might be more suitable in different locations or for different applications.

Though Standard Nuclear is young enough to have a single page web site, it owns and operates the largest TRISO – tristructural isotopic – fuel production facility in the world outside of China. That facility was purchased during the Chapter 11 reorganization of Ultra Safe Nuclear (USNC), a formerly sprawling advanced nuclear company that outran its financing. Along with the facility, its equipment, land and operating procedures, Standard Nuclear acquired a fully functioning, dedicated team of TRISO nuclear fuel specialists.

As described in a June 11, 2025 article in the Wall Street Journal, the fuel manufacturing team at Standard Nuclear was so committed to the vision of becoming a globally important fuel supplier to the advanced nuclear sector that many of them worked for months without pay to keep their facility operational and sale-ready during the USNC bankruptcy proceedings.

Dr. Kurt Terrani, CEO of Standard Nuclear, is our guest for Atomic Show #333. We discuss his personal trajectory in becoming one of the world’s leading technical experts on TRISO fuel production and then becoming the corporate leader of one of the world’s leading TRISO fuel manufacturing companies.

Kurt told us how the Standard Nuclear team began working together at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as part of the Advanced Gas Reactor (AGR) program (funded by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.) The fuel development segment of that program both preceded and superseded the larger AGR program. In a rare example of long term, consistent planning supported by reasonably consistent funding, the TRISO fuel development and testing program was sustained through completion for nearly 20 years (2002-2021).

One output of the program was NREG-2246 – Fuel Qualification for Advanced Reactors – that provides license applicants that use TRISO in their design a standard path to analyze the fuel form to prove it meets radioactive retention barrier requirements for their particular design under projected operating and accident conditions.

We talked about the paradigm-shifting nature of building nuclear power systems where the radioactive material is retained in the fuel material at all anticipated reactor temperatures during normal operation or accident conditions. When license applicants earn NRC approval using NUREG-2246, their reactors are viewed as achieving functional containment that greatly lessens the boundary and safety system requirements for their complete nuclear heat source system.

With expensive fuel and reduced capital investment, nuclear cost accounts might shift to be something closer to those more commonly associated with natural gas fired turbines (either Rankine steam cycles or Brayton gas cycles). For TRISO reactors, nuclear becomes a fuel-dominated business. Nuclear energy designers recognize this shift and have been developing power systems that can economically respond to load changes to reduce fuel consumption during low demand/low price periods.

Terrani provides insights on TRISO fuel construction and on the processes required to produce the fuel to meet the stringent requirements. He describes the modular nature of the fabrication line and the methods used to maximize productive capacity for each line and the way that enterprise capacity is expanded to meet customer demand. We talk about the coating improvement paths and TRISO’s ability to use a variety of enrichments and fissile materials in the coated particles.

We discuss how the nearly infinite variations can introduce market and engineering challenges.

Terrani uses the analogy of automobiles and gasoline to illustrate his vision of many different brands of TRISO-based reactors using a limited menu of interchangeable fuel particles. Standard Nuclear”s name calls back to the time when John D. Rockefeller recognized that oil products would find larger markets if they were standardized so that equipment manufacturers could focus on their equipment with the confidence that there was a reliable supply of fuel with predictable characteristics.

That doesn’t mean that Standard Nuclear intends to produce only one kind of fuel, but it does mean that the company is working with as many developers as possible to create standards and prevent a high cost situation where every reactor line needs its own unique fuel. With standardization, TRISO fuels become a commodity whose costs steadily decline as billions to trillions of particles are produced.

If you are interested in the current state of TRISO manufacturing development and in the story of a dedicated team with a vision, you will enjoy this show.

Thomas Jam Pedersen is a co-founder and the CEO of Copenhagen Atomics. He recently visited the Atomic Show to describe his company, its history, its vision and its technology. He provided a wealth of information during a lengthy conversation and also shared a brief about the company, its facilities, its potential markets and the physical fabrication and testing units.

The company was founded by a group of four Danish engineers and businessmen with a complimentary set of valuable skills and experience. They were each “bitten by the thorium bug” through individual research starting in the late 2000s. They came to the decision to start a company about ten years ago through a series of meetings at Copenhagen bars and restaurants.

Copenhagen Atomics is developing a molten salt reactor that uses a kickstarter actinide fuel (U-233, U-235 or Pu-239) along with a thorium blanket and heavy water moderator to produce 100 MW of heat. The nuclear heat source system – including pumps, tanks, pipes, valves and the proprietary “onion core” reactor – fits into a standard shipping container. After 5 years of operation, the molten salt contains almost as much fissile material as it did when it was initially loaded into the fuel.

In the future, the fissile material inventory at the end of 5 years will be equal to, or slightly greater than it was at the beginning. The Waste Burner reactor will eventually become a thermal spectrum breeder reactor that adds to the world’s fissile material inventory.

The container and its included systems would be fully manufactured and tested at the factory, but it would be shipped to its destination with no loaded fuel using conventional shipping methods. The destination facility could use heat for a conventional steam power plant or it could use the heat for an application like manufacturing fertilizer or desalinating water.

In the current business model, the receiving facility would be erected by a customer that had contracted to purchase heat coming from the pre-fabricated reactor furnished by Copenhagen Atomics. The power plant design and construction would include a series of shielded “cocoons”, each with two meter thick walls and enough internal space for the container and a number of tanks and connections.

Each reactor would be inserted into a cocoon, loaded with fuel from tanks in the cocoon and connected to the receiving heat system using welded connections. The welding would be done by an automated system that is already under development and testing at Copenhagen Atomics’s 9,000 m² fabrication and testing facility in Copenhagen. (See photos in the company presentation.)

The containers and their included mechanical systems are fabricated out of conventional stainless steel and designed to be affordably replaced every five years. At the end of this operating life, they would be defueled and replaced with the fuel salt put into the new reactor. The old reactor would be stacked into a pre-existing storage facility at the power plant where it would remain for several decades to allow radioactive isotopes to decay.

After the containers have sufficiently cooled – from a radioactivity perspective – they could be recycled into materials for new reactors or compacted for storage at low level waste facilities.

Though Denmark does not allow the government to invest in nuclear power facilities, it has a respected regulator with many decades worth of experience in regulating radioactive materials and nuclear research facilities that include reactors. But Copenhagen Atomics’s current development path includes construction of an initial fissioning test reactor at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland. That facility is currently planned to be completed in 2028, but that date can vary depending on a number of factors, including the time required to arrange appropriate financing.

Copenhagen Atomics is a company founded by practical engineers that know that real products require a vast amount of physical testing. They build parts – including tanks, pipes, valves, sensors and pumps – and assemble them into both partial and complete systems that allow them to test materials and performance at operating conditions. They started with non radioactive salts and are progressing to tests and demonstrations using non-fissile actinides and then to the actual fuel materials that will be used in commercial facilities.

So far, the company has accumulated 100,000 hours of actual system testing. They have developed refined test loops that are good enough to have been sold to other researchers working on molten salts. They have developed large scale salt production systems and gradually increased their production rates.

If all continues to progress, Copenhagen Atomics expects that its first commercial reactor unit will be operating in about 5 years. But Thomas Jam is a practical and patient man who realizes that there are lot of obstacles left to overcome.

Disclosure – Nucleation Capital is an investor in Copenhagen Atomics. We believe that the company’s vision is important, visionary and potentially valuable. We appreciate the iterative approach to design and manufacture; it is vital for teams designing something new to build, test, redesign and rebuilt as often as needed to produce refined products.

We think you will appreciate the opportunity to learn more about Copenhagen Atomics in a discussion that delves into some deeply technical issues.

President Trump signed five Executive Orders on May 23 that are designed to accelerate the process of unleashing nuclear energy’s incredible potential. Those orders build on strong and growing public support as well as recently enacted, strongly bipartisan laws that have made it abundantly clear that America both needs and wants the affordable, reliable, abundant and clean energy that nuclear fission has proven it can produce.

Aside: Four of the five EOs that President Trump signed on May 23 include the word “nuclear”, but the fifth one “Restoring Gold Standard Science” is also destined to have a significant effect on nuclear energy development. It includes directives that will help dislodge the entrenched policy position of the “conservative” assumption that all radiation is harmful enough to justify extreme costs in efforts to reduce exposure to the absolute minimum. End Aside.

During the past 20 years, lawmakers and presidents from both parties have expressed their desire to enable nuclear energy to flourish. Unsurprisingly, they have been rewarded by voters who often express wonder that we haven’t already built a lot more nuclear plants. 

In part 1 of this series of articles on the impacts of the Executive Orders, we discussed the potential impact of the collection on addressing the waste issue that has been constraining nuclear energy growth since the mid 1970s. 

Part 2 will focus on the potential for the EOs to achieve their stated goal of 400 GW of nuclear energy capacity by 2025.

Can the U.S. Quadruple Nuclear Production by 2050?

As many others have written, there should be no expectation that executive action alone can achieve the aggressive goal of quadrupling U.S. nuclear energy production in the next 25 years. But combined with a number of other legislative and private sector actions, the Executive Orders add strong Executive Branch support and smooth the path to an achievable goal. It’s an accomplishment that has been done before.

Focusing on the US and using data from the Energy Information Agency (EIA), nuclear energy production grew from 22 TWh in 1970 to 673 in 1995. That’s a factor of 30 during a 25 year period. It. During a slightly earlier 25-year period U.S. nuclear generation increased by more than 150 times, rising from 3.7 TWh in 1965 to 577 TWh in 1990.

For the world, nuclear energy production increased by a factor of 29 between 1970 and 1995. According to Our World In Data’s Nuclear Energy page, total nuclear electricity production was 79 TWh in 1970 and 2,323 TWh in 1995. Between 1965 and 1990, nuclear generation increased from 25.5 TWh to 2000 TWh, a factor of 78.

It’s easy to challenge those growth accomplishments as being possible because they started from a lower base than exists today. However, the stated goal of a quadrupling is much lower than previous achievements and it starts on the base of a stagnant, but capable industry and supply chain.

Unlike the situation in 1965 or 1970, we have a large, underused base of nuclear knowledgeable people who are working outside of the nuclear industry. As interest, investment and productive activity in the nuclear development sector increase, some of those skilled people will make a mid-career pivot back to their nuclear energy roots. They’ll  inject valuable experience from fast growing industries at a leadership level that matters. Anecdotally, we’re already seeing it happen.

In a number of other ways, the nuclear industry is more ready for a period of accelerating growth today than it was in 1965 or 1970.

We know more about how to build and operate productive, reliable plants and we know what it takes to achieve impressive safety records. We are still learning which of the redundant layers of safety systems, unique quality assurance programs and operational constraints are not needed or that need to be changed. 

We have almost immeasurably faster computational capabilities, and we have developed capable tools that enable precision engineering and manufacturing to be done at a more rapid pace. Computer advances in the past 50-60 years have enabled automated factory production, automated welding and operational monitoring systems that were not available during the first Atomic Age. Material science has made numerous improvements during the past 50 years; some of them have been carefully tested in high radiation environments and are now ready for expanding use.

Stagnation, But Not Disappearance

Those improvements have been emerging and available for decades, but regulatory requirements, the NRC’s institutional risk aversion and the industry’s ingrained fear of its omnipotent regulator have resulted in deep stagnation and an avoidance of innovation within the established nuclear industry. 

Since 1975, when it was created by splitting apart the Atomic Energy Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has, in the words of the EO titled Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission “tried to insulate Americans from the most remote risks without appropriate regard for the severe domestic and geopolitical costs of such risk aversion.”

That risk aversion has created a culture where “no” has traditionally been the default position and where any proposed change is considered to be guilty until proven innocent. Change, including building new plants, has thus been slow or nonexistent. Anecdotal evidence accumulated from numerous conversations conducted over decades of involvement indicates that talented nuclear trained people have often left the industry because they grew frustrated with stagnation and innovation avoidance. 

In another anecdotal bit of evidence, we know several couples where each partner was a career nuclear professional who discouraged their children from choosing nuclear career paths, even though the children were math and science wizzes with an interest in engineering.

One of the most incredible examples of stagnation in the established nuclear industry is the fact that there is exactly one reactor in the United States with a fully digital control and instrumentation system. That reactor, which completed its analog to digital conversion in 2019, is PUR-1 (Purdue University Reactor Number 1). 

Duke Energy completed the conversion of its three-unit Oconee Nuclear station to an almost fully digital instrumentation system in 2013, but the process was so painful that no other plant owner has made a similar investment choice in the succeeding dozen years.

Even though it’s been stagnant on many measures, the U.S. nuclear industry has been strong, capable and resilient. It’s a base on which to build a vastly more expansive enterprise. In important ways, the nuclear industry of today is similar to the computer industry when it was dominated by mainframe computers with IBM and a small BUNCH (Burroughs, UNIVAC, NCR, Control Data and Honeywell) of smaller competitors. 

Imagine the world that could result if nuclear tech comes remotely close to copying the trajectory of the semiconductor tech sector.

Compelling Culture Change

The Executive Order aimed at reforming the NRC acknowledged how the ADVANCE Act of 2024 – which was enacted with overwhelming bipartisan support – sought to change the NRC’s risk averse culture. It required that the agency’s mission shall include “facilitating nuclear power while ensuring reactor safety.” That revised mission statement was issued January 28, 2025.

The EO takes the next step in the process of changing the agency’s culture by identifying the fundamental cause of the agency’s plodding, quadruple-checking, expensive approach to review and approval.

NRC utilizes safety models that posit there is no safe threshold of radiation exposure and that harm is directly proportional to the amount of exposure.  Those models lack sound scientific basis and produce irrational results, such as requiring that nuclear plants protect against radiation below naturally occurring levels.  A myopic policy of minimizing even trivial risks ignores the reality that substitute forms of energy production also carry risk, such as pollution with potentially deleterious health effects.

To address this problem, the EO directs the agency to “Adopt science-based radiation limits.” While that paragraph uses the seemingly mushy direction “NRC shall reconsider reliance on the linear no-threshold (LNT) model for radiation exposure,” it’s worthwhile to look to the EO Restoring Gold Standard Science for clearer understanding of what it means to “adopt science-based” regulations. 

The LNT construct cannot withstand even a cursory application of the directions in the Gold Standard Science EO. We may delve more deeply into this topic in a later post, but for now we will say that it seems unlikely that the LNT and the associated ALARA policy will remain unchanged.

The EOs plus previously enacted laws direct continuing effort to change NRC – and industry – culture away from one focused on driving risks from using nuclear energy and radioactive materials as close to zero as possible. The desired result is an agency that recognizes that “It is the policy of the United States to expedite and promote to the fullest possible extent the production and operation of nuclear energy to provide affordable, reliable, safe, and secure energy to the American people”.

The EO directing the reform of the NRC imposes a deadline of 18 months for a final decision on an application to construct or operate a new reactor and just one year for the final decision on an application to continue operating and existing reactor. It’s intriguing to note the language used; the Commission has often taken many months after the staff has issued a final safety evaluation to make a “final decision” on a license or permit.

These deadlines address the temporal variability that has often plagued nuclear energy project and technology development. Firm timelines – with some provision for extensions – help alleviate investor reluctance.

Successfully Attracting Investors

Investors have shied away from nuclear energy for a number of reasons, but one of the primary discouraging factors has been the uncertainty associated with the regulatory permitting process. That uncertainty does not stop after a Standard Design Approval, a design certification or even a combined license has been issued; history has proven that regulatory uncertainty plays an enormous role throughout the reactor construction and final testing processes.

Investors avoid uncertainty whenever possible. Even in financial segments like venture capital where there are inevitably high risks and great uncertainty, successful investors work hard to comprehensively understand and eliminate apparent risks before moving their money into an enterprise.

The collection of Executive Orders issued May 23 points to an action item list that will gradually reduce uncertainty and encourage investment. Perhaps most importantly, they make it clear that the policy of the United States is to support and expeditiously increase nuclear energy production for a host of important reasons including energy security, national security, electricity abundance, enhanced domestic manufacturing and protection from “pollution with potentially deleterious health effects.”

Though stock market price trends are the result of a collection of factors, they can provide useful indications of investor reactions to major events or policy statements. A sample of publicly traded companies with significant exposure to nuclear energy growth prospects provides a glimpse of investor sentiment during the brief period since the issuance of the EOs. 

For early stage growth companies facing major capital expenditures, strong market performance is a key fundraising tool. All three of the publicly traded advanced nuclear/SMR companies have recently announced stock sales that will build their cash on hand balances without adding debt. According to a recent Financial Times headline, the total recent capital raise among the three companies is in excess of $1 B.

From this admittedly early snapshot, the Executive Orders appear to be accomplishing their intent. They have enabled productive action, and they have stimulated the movement of significant investment dollars. They prove that words, both spoken and written, from the bully pulpit can stimulate action and provide important financial resources even without appropriating additional taxpayer dollars.

Nuclear power has been steadily regaining its political and public popularity for about a decade and a half. A number of new laws, head of state actions and international commission decisions have made it clear that nuclear energy’s reliability, contributions to economic growth, safety and cleanliness are valuable features worth investment and deployment.

Approximately 70 new reactor designs are in various stages of development. Some will be able to be commercially prototyped within 5 years. These new designs aim to expand the base of customers that can directly benefit from nuclear fission energy’s proven capabilities. These new designs are often smaller – as much as 1000 times smaller – and incorporate features that make them more suitable for important energy applications like industrial process heat, ammonia production for fertilizer, distributed power generation and ship propulsion. 

Nuclear energy acceptance has improved dramatically, but with few exceptions, that acceptance has not resulted in new project completion. The amount of nuclear generated electricity produced each year has been roughly flat for two decades and is just now reaching the peak levels achieved prior to 2011.

On May 23, 2025, US President Donald Trump issued a set of four executive orders designed to address – not solve by themselves – the most important of the remaining barriers that have discouraged investors and boards of directors from making final investment decisions on new projects. The primary remaining barriers include cost, schedule, approval uncertainty and an accepted governmental solution to “the nuclear waste issue.”

The set of orders can be viewed as mutually supportive, which is necessary because the remaining challenges are sticky and not easy to address in isolation. 

This first-of-several posts on the topic of Executive Orders focuses on impacts on “the waste issue.”

Efforts to implement an acceptable nuclear waste solution have partly floundered on cost and schedule, but they have also become political hot potatoes as states and their representatives effectively rejected the notion of becoming the nation’s waste destination. 

Even when local communities fought for the proposed facility, the state’s powers that be erected sufficient barriers to halt all progress. Many nuclear energy experts have resisted plans to permanently dispose of used nuclear materials, arguing that many of the materials are rare and potentially valuable. They argue that used nuclear fuel should not be called “spent” since it contains about 95% of the initial potential energy of the mined uranium.

Aside: Atomic Insights is in this faction of nuclear energy experts. End Aside.

The order that directly addresses the nuclear waste issue is titled “Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base.” Section 3 directs the production of an interagency report that will lay out a policy for spent nuclear fuel and advanced fuel cycles that will include reprocessing and recycling. 

The contributing agencies are Energy, Defense, Transportation and OMB. It will be reviewed by the Chair of National Energy Dominance Council and the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. The report is due 240 days after May 23 (January 18, 2026). It’s easy to dismiss this requirement as just another report, but the reversal from a 50 year old policy and the tight deadline makes the effort worth watching. 

The directive to adopt science-based radiation limits will have an important effect on the cost and complexity of addressing “the waste issue.” The annual maximum dose rate to the most exposed person (worst case scenario) from a repository is just 15 mrem (0.15 mSv) above background. The difficulty – which generally translates into cost – of meeting the requirement is multiplied by the need to prove that the limit is not exceeded for the most exposed person for the first 10,000 years after the facility is sealed. There is even a limit for the first million years of 100 mrem/yr, which is also well below the average annual background dose for a US resident.

That incredibly low number and long performance requirement is not based on any science; it was selected for political reasons. As GAO reports dating back to the early 1990s prove, the chosen limit was a source of contention between the EPA and the NRC for several decades. It played an important role in the perceived need for a titanium-plated design and projected construction and operational cost of the defunct Yucca Mountain facility.

The 15 mrem (0.15 mSv) annual limit is just 5% of average background exposure, so the repository designer, builder and operator must be able to distinguish 315 mrem/yr from 300 mrem/yr. That almost absurd challenge is highly likely to change. A science-based limit will make compliance simpler and less costly without any reduction in protection for humans. 

Though not specifically mentioning the demonstration of nuclear waste disposal technologies, the orders to deploy advanced nuclear reactor technologies for national security and to reform nuclear reactor testing both direct the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense to make better use of federally owned land for testing. Testing disposal technologies along with recycling systems is a logical application of the spirit of those orders.

The federal government holds a large inventory of high level radioactive materials. Though they could conceivably be permanently stored using the existing Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, packaging and transporting the materials has proven to be significantly slower than planned. A solution capable of working together with recycling and reprocessing systems on the same site where the waste is currently stored would benefit both the government and the commercial industry.

Physical testing programs will help speed the implementation of acceptable, cost-effective solutions that join recycling systems with permanent disposal of the unusable leftovers from chosen processes. Physical demonstrations would give the US an advantage in the international market for waste disposal solutions; that is a market that is approximately 3-4 times larger than the US market alone.

Deep Isolation has developed a complete nuclear waste technology solution in partnership with some of the most experienced companies in the drilling, waste container and construction industries.  Their solution is ready for licensing. 

They issued a press release titled “Deep Isolation Welcomes Presidential Action to Reinvigorate U.S. Nuclear Waste Disposal Program” describing their support for the actions directed by the Executive Order. Their press release does not mention the potential benefits of a change to the radiation protection model because their system was developed to meet the existing regulations.

Deep Isolation’s technology solution is primarily based on a brilliant insight that combines a known need with a well-developed technology developed by a different industry for a different purpose. 

The world’s nuclear waste disposal scientific community long ago agreed that a deep geologic repository is an excellent final resting place for unusable, high level radioactive materials. The world’s oil and gas industry discovered long ago that there are abundant hydrocarbon resources in geologic formations located a thousand or more meters below the earth’s surface, far below the depth where there is any interaction with usable aquifers.

In their quest to reach more of the stored hydrocarbons, the oil and gas industry developed and refined highly capable, cost-effective drilling equipment operated by skilled teams that learned how to steer their drill bits with great precision. If drill bits can be accurately directed to geologic formations storing hydrocarbons, they can also be directed to rock layers that have been stable for millions of years.

A drilled deep borehole with a lengthy horizontal lateral can store a meaningful amount of material, especially when the material has been fully reprocessed or recycled in a method that removes valuable isotopes – including those that produce most of the thermal energy associated with used nuclear fuel.

The remaining steps for implementation of this solution is a more complete demonstration on federal land using federally owned materials. The collection of five Executive Orders that the President signed on May 23 will accelerate the availability and acceptability of full scale deep borehole disposal.

Aside: The fifth order in the collection – Restoring Gold Standard Science – doesn’t include the word “nuclear” in its title or even in its text, but it will play a role in achieving deployment success. End Aside.

Deep borehole disposal is certainly not the only technology that can accomplish the task, but it’s good enough to meet the need for a demonstrated, accepted, permanent solution to “the nuclear waste issue.” It’s arguably the most cost effective, complete solution available today that can meet the needs of nuclear nations, both large and small. Its success will be accelerated by the May 23 Executive Orders.

Successful implementation of the EOs directives around waste depends upon decisions made by Chris Wright, the Secretary of Energy. Secretary Wright has vast professional experience in the business of drilling deep holes with horizontal laterals. He understands its benefits and limitations. His understanding should contribute to the future implementation of a demonstration and deployment program that tests out this approach.

Disclosure: Atomic Insights is now affiliated with Nucleation Capital, my new venture fund, which is an investor in Deep Isolation. We are convinced that Deep Isolation’s deep borehole solution can help solve the nuclear waste conundrum, which itself would contribute to the success of nearly every other nuclear venture in our portfolio.

Nucleation’s Fund I is a uniquely accessible and affordable venture capital fund focused on investing into ventures innovating in advanced nuclear energy and carbon management with important technologies being developed by capable teams. 

Kronos MMR has a different focus. In its FAQ on the project, UIUC describes the purpose of the project as follows:

[The project will] shape the future of nuclear research, move [our] campus to a cleaner energy future, create unique educational opportunities for our students, and develop a skilled workforce ready to address the urgent need for carbon-free energy technologies across our country and beyond.

Caleb Brooks is an associate professor in the Grainger College of Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is also the Kronos MMR Project Lead. He visited the Atomic Show to describe the project, its goals and the impact that it is and will have on the campus and nearby communities.

The Kronos MMR is a full scale, but power-derated, version of Nano Nuclear Energy’s high temperature gas cooled reactor. In commercial use, the reactor will be able to produce 45 MW of thermal power (~15 MWe). As a campus-based research reactor, Kronos MMR will be limited to operating at 10 MW thermal, a little less than 25% of what the reactor core will be able to handle. That limit is based on the current power cap placed on reactors licensed by the NRC using the class 104(c) process.

The lower power will, logically enough, mean that the reactor core can run 4.5 times as long before needing to be refueled. If it is operated at the somewhat lower capacity factor expected in an academic environment compared to a commercial environment, the time between refuelings will be extended even further.

Dr. Brooks explained how the research reactor classification was chosen to help the Kronos project move faster than it would otherwise move under a class 103 commercial license process. The University began its official engagement with the NRC in May 2021.

Though we did not get into details about the business partner situation during the discussion, some readers might recall that the UIUC micro reactor program began as a partnership with the Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation. That entity ran into financial difficulties and declared bankruptcy in 2024, after it had done a substantial amount of engineering and design work for its 45 MWth high temperature gas cooled reactor that it called MMR®.

Nano Nuclear Energy purchased the designs and other intellectual property associated with USNC’s MMR, including the projects that the company had begun. Nuclear News published an article in April 2025 titled UIUC and NANO Nuclear reboot plans for a FOAK research reactor that provides more details about the transition and the plans to move the project towards completion.

During our conversation, Caleb indicated that the transition had gone reasonable well, but that the uncertainty during the period leading up to and immediately following USNC’s collapse had added about 18 months to the initially envisioned project schedule.

One of the primary topics of our conversation was the effort that the University has undertaken to build public support for the project. Given the campus location, this will be a pioneering effort showing how small and micro reactor projects can be accepted and located very close to customers, including residential communities.

You will enjoy this show. I promise.

TNC is a young, visionary company driven by what business author Jim Collins describes as a BHAG – “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” – in his best-selling book titled Built To Last. TNC’s intermediate goal is to deploy 6 large nuclear reactors in the U.S. while developing a complete platform that enables repeated projects using a design once, build many approach.

For a company that was just formed in 2023, that qualifies as an enormously audacious goal.

One of the examples Collins used for a BHAG was Boeing’s 1952 decision to build the 707 as one of the world’s first commercial jet aircraft. But at the time, Boeing was an established, profitable company whose head count had reached over 50,000 employees during WWII and that was still producing several different bombers for the Air Force, including the large, jet powered B52.

TNC’s leap seems to be substantially larger than the one that Boeing successfully made. But, with the right people forming the right teams and gathering the resources available, TNC’s goal might be possible. The Atomic Show first covered this intriguing company in August of 2024, about a month after the company exited a formative, quiet year, when Juliann Edwards, TNC’s Chief Development Officer, appeared as a guest on Atomic Show #319.

TNC summarizes its strategy as follows:

The Nuclear Company’s approach can be articulated through our four-pronged strategy:

1. Fleet-Scale Deployment: We are building at fleet scale, not project scale, enabling us to capture significant efficiency gains and cost savings, and enabling the reshoring of American industry. 
2. Broad Industry Coalition: Fleet scale requires a broad coalition of industry partners for successful project planning and execution. We build that coalition to scale.
3. Comprehensive Program Management: We synergy-capture program management applicable across existing and new deployments.
4. Public-Private Partnerships: We leverage federal, state, and local government engagement and support along with industry to re-establish a US commercial nuclear leadership position. 

For this episode of the Atomic Show, I spoke with Joe Klecha, TNC’s Chief Nuclear Officer (CNO), to learn more about how the company plans to achieve its initial BHAG while establishing the foundation for future growth.

Joe has a deep well of practical knowledge accumulated during a lengthy career as an on-site, walk-around manager. He told me how the most important job of management is to enable skilled subordinates to perform with as little friction as possible. (I’m paraphrasing here.). For a site-level, project manager that translates into ensuring that crafts people arrive on prepared work front with all of the necessary tools and documentation.

A key focus for The Nuclear Company is to avoid paper processing. Most listeners will be amazed to hear Joe talk about the wagon loads of paper that accompanied much of the work done at Vogtle 3 & 4.

We talked about the value of well crafted contracts that properly share risk among contributing entities while also establishing a system of progress payments and milestones that give all participants a shared goal. Joe told me about the exceptional team TNC is building and the way it is rapidly gathering interested and committed partners.

Joe displayed his broad reach of technical knowledge during our conversation, providing a point of view that is rarely found in audio commentary by people whose expertise is mostly based on academic research, computer aide design or computational model simulations. We talked about concrete, steel, rebar, interfaces, managing multiple work fronts, the importance of addressing worker density, ways to improve workforce productivity, evaluating sites, finding and incentivizing capable suppliers, and building contractor teams.

I’m still in the willing to be, but not yet convinced camp regarding TNC’s chances for success. Given where we are today, the chances are better than they were two years ago when the company founders were developing their BHAG. But they still have a very long road to travel and the competition is already heating up.

Avoiding ending on a down note, my conversation with Joe Klecha left me more enthusiastic than I was before about their progress and their opportunities.

Please listen to this show. It will provide a unique point of view regarding the lessons America has learned so far about building new nuclear plants in the 21st century.

She served as the Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy from May of 2022 through May of 2024.

We talked about her tenure at the Department of Energy and the somewhat jarring transition from being a university professor with frequent contact with undergraduate students to running a bureaucratic agency inside the Washington beltway. We chatted about the Byzantine and somewhat plodding nature of the federal budgetary process and the reasons why the process was designed to insert a certain amount of deliberative reviews and second checks before making decisions, especially when they carried large monetary implications.

We paid a little extra attention to the process of implementing the Congressional appropriation of $2.72 B for the Domestic Low Enriched Uranium Supply Chain.

We discussed some of the more enjoyable aspects of her position, including the opportunities to teach both decision makers and staff members about the utility of nuclear energy and some of the reasons why it is such a fascinating and important scientific, technological and economic topic. We spoke about her visits to national labs, universities and international centers of nuclear energy research and development.

She mentioned that the opportunity to host students and other groups of young people was one of the most rewarding and enjoyable aspects of her job. She appreciated the opportunity to share some of her excitement about nuclear energy.

We also talked about several recent Executive Orders with the potential for significant impact on energy in general and nuclear energy more specifically.

One of the Executive Orders that we discussed does not include the word “energy” in its title or anywhere in its text, but it holds the potential to make an impact on the future of nuclear energy development. Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies addresses the independence of certain agencies, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, within the Executive Branch of the federal government. The NRC’s independence has often been described as a major component of its effectiveness as a regulatory body.

Dr. Huff joined with two colleagues to publish a commentary in Scientific American about the possible implications of reducing the NRC’s independence. On the Atomic Show, she offered her perspective and provided some concerns worth thinking about.

I hope you enjoy this episode. Please participate in the comment discussion, but be aware that comments will be closed sometime after they’ve been open for two weeks.