A Silicon Valley startup called Oklo is leading the charge to bring nuclear power back to the US with small reactors. Its backers have wealth and political connections that could undermine nuclear safety.
This is a dumb title. We’ve always been nuclear and will always be. Instead they should have gone with a title that highlights our moron in chief not understanding what he’s asking for and why.
SMRs have been a thing long before Oklo. It’s the only way to build new nuclear quickly and without massive costs that can take decades to amortize. GE has been selling them. China already has them running, Canada has a few in construction.
I would be far more worried about the ageing nuclear plants in the USA, now 42 years old on average, and the military restarting bomb testing.
No one is “selling them” in the sense of a working device, but rather they are all prototypes that have not been shown to work or live up to the hype. The top vendor in that artitice I posted from June, NuScale, is on the edge of bankruptcy and just churning staff. Its only existant on meme stock hype from “no detail” trade deals about nuclear investments, not on actual sales of its technology.
There’s probably a lot of good criticism for Oklo specifically. It’s a shame I can’t really take anything seriously with such a heavy-handed FUD tone on the history and context of nuclear power in general.