America's Nuclear Reactor Made Zero Watts of Power. Welcome to the Golden Era?
About this episode
The episode discusses the implications of a nuclear reactor reaching zero power criticality and the contrasting energy policies of the Department of Energy.
On June 4th, a reactor at Idaho National Lab hit something called "zero power criticality"—energy in equaled energy out. The plant won't produce a single usable watt until at least 2027, yet the Department of Energy is calling this the start of nuclear's golden era. At the same time, that same DOE is blocking wind farm permits that could be generating power right now. Mike and Neal spend the episode separating the real technology from the press release. Fusion—the "limitless energy" version everyone gets excited about—has been ten to twenty years away for the last thirty years, and this test doesn't change that math. Fission is the one that actually exists, but the new reactor designs the administration is betting on need uranium enriched well beyond what current regulation and fuel supply chains support—the same enrichment thresholds that turned Iran into a decades-long international crisis. Every nuclear project ever built has come in over cost and behind schedule, and somehow the industry still doesn't publish the one number that would tell you if it's worth it: levelized cost of electricity. Mike makes the case—backed by his grandfather's decades in the nuclear program going…
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