Sean Duffy’s MARAD initiative may look like another Trump-era energy dominance announcement, but beneath the politics lies a serious industrial question: can the United States build the regulatory, shipyard, insurance and port framework needed to make nuclear-powered merchant ships commercially viable before Asia takes the lead? //

The real story behind the announcement made by U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy and the Maritime Administration on 7 May is not that America has discovered nuclear propulsion. It is that Washington has finally recognized maritime nuclear power as a shipbuilding, logistics, insurance, port-access and national-security race, and has decided to enter it. MARAD’s Request for Information, with comments due by 5 August 2026, asks industry to help develop a U.S.-built, scalable, commercially viable SMR model for marine transportation. That is a materially different ambition from funding a reactor demonstration. It is an attempt to build a complete commercial ecosystem. //

Shipping is uniquely suited to nuclear propulsion. The energy density argument for maritime nuclear propulsion is more compelling than for almost any other transport sector. A modern ultra-large container ship consumes between 250 and 350 tonnes of fuel per day at sea. Over a 25-year operational life, fuel can represent billions of dollars in lifecycle cost. Bunker storage, fuel treatment systems, purifier rooms, sludge handling, emissions scrubbers and the growing infrastructure of alternative-fuel compliance consume enormous volumes of space, capital and crew time. Nuclear propulsion potentially eliminates most of that complexity, a reactor fuelled for two decades or more fits within a containment space that returns cargo volume to its owners and voyage economics to their prior simplicity. //

Thorium, increasingly discussed as an alternative fuel cycle, offers further advantages. Thorium-232 converts under neutron bombardment to fissile uranium-233, is three to four times more abundant than uranium in the earth’s crust, produces significantly less long-lived radioactive waste, and is far less susceptible to weapons proliferation. Molten salt reactor designs, which dissolve thorium in liquid fluoride salt that also acts as the coolant, operate at atmospheric pressure rather than under the high-pressure steam conditions of conventional light-water reactors, removing explosive decompression risk. An approval in principle for a nuclear-powered LNG carrier using molten salt technology was granted in 2025. //

The United States now accounts for approximately 0.1 per cent of global commercial ship production. A single Chinese state shipbuilder built more vessels by tonnage in 2024 than the entire U.S. industry has produced since 1945. //

The U.S. has become marginal in commercial construction outside naval programmes, which is precisely why the MARAD announcement repeatedly frames SMR development as a mechanism for rebuilding domestic yards, creating strategic engineering employment, and reconnecting maritime and defence industrial capacity. //

While Europe debates how to tax shipping emissions, the United States is beginning to ask who will build and power the next generation of ships altogether.

South Korea is not waiting for that question to be answered. HD Hyundai has unveiled a 15,000 TEU-class SMR-powered containership concept and is working with ABS on nuclear-electric propulsion systems potentially supplying up to 100 megawatts. China has explored molten salt reactor ship concepts and is investing heavily in thorium-based systems. Russia already operates the only nuclear-powered commercial vessels in service, alongside its Arctic icebreaker fleet.

Transporting oil by pipelines is significantly safer for workers and carries lower risk of spills than moving it by train or truck, a new report from the Fraser Institute says. Analyzing data from Canada’s National Energy Board and the US Department of Transportation going back to the year 2000, the report’s authors find that pipelines result in fewer spillage incidents and personal injuries than road and rail in North America. //

The evidence is clear: transporting oil by pipeline is safe and environmentally friendly. Furthermore, pipeline transportation is safer than transportation by road, rail, or barge, as measured by incidents, injuries, and fatalities- even though more road and rail incidents go unreported. //

There are 825,000 kilometres of pipeline in Canada and about five times that much in the US. In the US from 2005 to 2009, there were more “serious” incidents, injuries and fatalities resulting from the shipment of oil by road and rail than by pipeline.

Accounting for the superior safety and environmental performance of pipelines is the “genius” of the technology, which has the shipping container remain static while the commodity moves. According to the report, there are an average of 20 spills per billion ton-miles in trucking, two in rail shipping, and 0.6 in pipelines. Pipeline spills release more oil, however, than either road or rail spills. The report maintains that despite the relatively higher quantities of oil released, it is still “miniscule” when taken in the context of the total quantities being shipped each day.

The ten-year average for the frequency of liquid leaks is “approximately three leaks per 1,000 km of pipeline” the report says, citing the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers for that statistic.

Fatalities for pipeline workers averaged 0.2 per year from 2000 to 2009, it says. The rate of rail-related fatalities, by contrast, was 91 in 2010 and has a five-year average of 81. Measured by ton-miles, the rate of injuries associated with shipping by pipelines was just 0.00687 injuries requiring hospitalization per billion ton-miles; rail caused 30 times that many injuries.

A core part of the energy transition and of the solutions to meeting energy needs, nuclear energy is a strategic resource that is often a subject of debate. This section aims to respond to the main questions and misconceptions by presenting nuclear energy as clearly as possible. The goal is for everyone to form their own opinion.

The capacity of nuclear energy to ensure our energy independence and to guarantee the production of low-carbon electricity is invaluable for tackling the climate emergency.

1. A Low-carbon energy – Yes, it emits the least greenhouse gases!
2. Constant and controllable energy
3. Competitive energy – Least expensive!!
4. Energy that is essential to the electricity mix
5. Energy that is vital for tomorrow’s world
6. Energy that is sparing in its demand for raw materials – It saves natural resources!
7. Energy that preserves health – It does NOT emit fine particles, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrates or phosphates into the atmosphere!
   The plume escaping the reactors? Water vapor. That’s it.

Nuclear power is the most reliable and cleanest form of energy. //

Belgium has accepted reality and embraced nuclear power 20 years after passing phase-out legislation.

The Belgian government intends to acquire all of the “nuclear operations in the country” from the French energy group Engie.

“By doing so, the Belgian Government is taking responsibility for Belgium’s long-term energy future, with the objective of building a financially and economically viable activity that supports security of supply, climate objectives, industrial resilience and socio-economic prosperity,” Engie and the Belgian government said in a joint statement.

Belgium is reversing its decades long phasing-out course, seeking more energy independence by reviving its nuclear plants.

The Belgian government signed on Thursday a Letter of Intent to acquire Electrabel's (ENGIE) entire nuclear operations in the country.

Such a move would reverse the phase-out of nuclear energy legislation adopted in the early 2000s amid safety concerns.

Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever stated that the country is aiming to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels and gain greater autonomy in managing its own energy supplies.

I’m an engineer. That means I was put here to design and build things. The last thing I want to do is harp about a misguided regulatory system, which has turned a providential gift which should lift humanity to new heights into a drag on ratepayers and taxpayers and a haven for parasites and grifters. I need a break. A chorister has asked me if we could build a conventional big PWR in a shipyard. This would combine the low technical risk of a 75 year old technology with the amazing productivity of a world class shipyard. This question gives me a chance to go back to what I should be doing instead of moonlighting as an ineffective JV Jeremiah. //

But we are still below a 100 million dollars for steel and ballast. According to KHNP numbers, all the stuff inside the turbine hall will cost about 400 million. and the the Nuclear Steam Supply System will cost 1.5 billion.\cite{choi-2017} (Both numbers are far higher than they should be.) We are talking about 2 billion dollars for a 1.4 GW plant.

This is all back of the envelope. It will have to be confirmed by doing the actual design. But thanks to recent advances in heavy lift capability, if and only if we go to all steel construction, I’m confident that technically we could build a 1 GW+ Pressurized Water Reactor in a shipyard, and gain the astounding productivity that the world class yards have had to develop in the fiercely competitive environment that they face. We could quickly get back to $2000/kW and less using the same basic technology that the late 1960’s plants used. Build times will start out at around two years and quickly come down to one year. The TG will be the long lead time component.

But this is all dreaming. Shipyard productivity depends on three basics:

1) No one can unilaterally dictate the rules. Everybody involved knows the rules and the rules can’t change in the middle of the game.

2) Total freedom to build the ships the way the yard wants to and change that process as it sees fit, as long as the ships perform to spec. This includes freedom to buy equipment and material from anybody willing to provide it. And freedom to decide on its own quality enforcement system.

3) Intense competition over an extended period, not just between the yards, not just between the yards’ vendors and the vendors’ vendors, but also between the Classification Societies.

We have chosen to not allow these three basics to exist for nuclear power.

Until we build nuclear plants like the Koreans build commercial vessels, attempting to build plants, big or small, in a yard, will accomplish nothing but screw up the yard. Pass the Nuclear Reorganization Act.

Dr. Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, 90, an Apollo 17 astronaut who spent three days on the moon in 1972, told The Post this week that there is a superfuel locked within the lunar dust that could provide Earth with an abundance of clean and safe energy for generations.

“I’ve been working on this for many decades — harvesting the light isotope of helium-3 from the moon,” said Schmitt, who is from New Mexico and lives in Albuquerque.

Schmitt is one of just 12 humans to ever walk on the moon, and four who are still alive. Buzz Aldrin, Charlie Duke and David Scott are also all in their 90s.

Since his Apollo 17 commander, Gene Cernan, died in 2017, Schmidt has been the last man alive to step off the lunar surface.

He also stands out for another reason: Unlike the other Apollo astronauts, who came from the military, Schmitt was a geologist and the only trained scientist to make the historic trip. //

“The question is, will that momentum keep going forward?”

Schmitt says he believes it will through a viable business model for interlunar travel — fueled by an industry involving the reaping of helium-3.

Helium-3 is a key ingredient needed to run nuclear fusion reactors, which operate with extreme efficiency and without the dangerous radioactive waste today’s fission-based power plants create.

But helium-3 is extremely rare on Earth — so rare that it’s rationed by the federal government — meaning fusion reactors have never been viable on a large scale.

But the moon is believed to be ripe with it, since the sun has been bombarding its atmosphere-free surface with the isotope for billions of years and building it up in the grey lunar dust.

Trump has already said the Navy will escort ships through Hormuz “if necessary.” If the same reflagging requirement applies, every European and Asian tanker that wants a U.S. escort would need to fly the American flag.

Think about what that means for the SHIPS Act, the Jones Act, the U.S. flag fleet, and CMA CGM’s unfulfilled promise to triple its U.S.-flag vessels, Greenland. Hormuz becomes the forcing function for everything Trump’s maritime agenda could not achieve through legislation or diplomacy.

Meanwhile, Iran is selectively letting ships through. Turkish, Indian, Chinese, and some Saudi tankers have been permitted to transit via Iranian territorial waters. About eighteen tankers, mostly Chinese, have done so according to Lloyd’s. Western-allied ships are blocked.

The “closure” is really a sorting mechanism. Iran decides who trades and who does not. Unless the U.S. Navy reopens it for everyone. On America’s terms.

That’s the decision the world has to make, let Iran pull up a tollbooth or stop blocking Trump’s maritime plans. //

While TV oil analysts focus on the global price of oil, the real experts in Houston are watching something different: the fracturing of the global energy market.

The real threat is not $200 oil. It’s a fracture of the system. It is cheap energy in export nations and ruinous energy costs in places far from reserves. It’s $2 oil in the Persain Gulf, $20 dollar oil in the Gulf of America and $2,000 oil in the UK. //

One global price only works if there is a surplus of tankers to arbitrage differentials. Before the Iran strikes, that surplus was razor-thin. Now, with supertankers stuck in the Gulf, it is gone. //

Meanwhile, California has been closing refineries and blocking pipelines, forcing gasoline imports from South Korea on ships with dayrates that are skyrocketing. Govenor Newsom, the leading canidate for President in 2028, is irrate. New England imports LNG and diesel by ship. If Hormuz stays closed, prices spike in those states. Deep blue states. Red state energy costs fall. Blue state costs rise. Europe capitulates on major policy disputes between now and the midterms. //

The strongest version of this thesis is not “Trump is playing 4D chess.” It is that the administration holds more options than anyone realizes, and the insurance mechanism, not the Navy, is the real lever of power.

Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that “almost half of the US data centers planned for this year are expected to be delayed or canceled” because developers can’t import enough transformers, switchgear, and batteries to build out the power infrastructure that every data center needs.

These parts, which China has primarily manufactured for US manufacturers “for decades,” used to take between 24 and 30 months to get delivered prior to 2020. Now, they can require wait times up to five years, Bloomberg reported. That lag could matter, since China is reportedly about five years behind the US in the AI race.

Rather than rely on China, Trump would prefer that the US manufacture its own equipment. However, currently, “US manufacturing capacity for these devices cannot keep up with demand,” Bloomberg reported.

At Three Mile Island, the NRC screwed up in just about every way possible.

1) Early on, they came up with an idiotically brazen lie to avoid admitting that there had been any release. This lie, signed off by at least three of the Commissioners, was quickly exposed, but only after turning the event into national news.

2) The next day they claimed that, if the hydrogen bubble in the top of the Reactor Pressure Vessel expanded too far, it would interfere with the reactor cooling. At best, this showed gross incompetence. The B&W reactor pressure vessel (RPV) has a ring of check valves near the top of the RPV which would vent the hydrogen to the RPV annulus if the bubble got down that far.

3) The following day on the basis of a calculation that was off by a actor of 100 and a misinterpreted measurement, and with no attempt to confirm either with the NRC guys on site, NRC-DC called Pennsylvania Governor Thornburgh and recommended evacuation up to 10 miles downwind. Harold Denton, the NRC employee who made the decision later said: ``my sole objective was to minimize the radiation exposure to the public. I did not give any weight to whatever hardship evacuation might cause”.\cite{walker-2004}[p 126] Fortunately, Thornburgh who was talking to the people at the plant did not follow Denton’s recommendation.1

4) Later in the day, the NRC said that a meltdown was unlikely, but possible. The reactor had melted down two days earlier.

5) That evening, when everything was calming down, and the hydrogen bubble in the RPV was expertly but slowly being squeezed down by the reactor operators, an NRC employee, almost certainly Dr. Roger Mattson, Director of Systems Safety, went to an AP reporter demanding anonymity, and told him the bubble in the the RPV could explode within two days. This bombshell sent seasoned war correspondents and over 100,000 locals into panicked evacuation. The local Bishop was so sure his flock was about to be annihilated he declared General Absolution.

An explosion in the RPV was impossible due to the lack of oxygen, which was obvious to any competent nuclear engineer. A Chicago Tribune reporter, who was part of the ‘night of terror’, later correctly called it a “a hoax, a fumbling miscalculation by one of the NRC’s masters of technology,”

Figure 1. The 2.5 gigawatt Oconee plant in South Carolina. These three reactors were built for just over 350 million dollars between 1967 and 1974. That’s $1141 per kilowatt in 2024 dollars. They took about 6 years to build. Oconee can produce reliable, on-demand, zero pollution, very low CO2 electricity at less than 3 cents/kWh in today’s money. Oconee’s average capacity factor over the last 5 years was 98.2%. All three of these reactors have been licensed into the 2050’s, a gift from the Greatest Generation. Oconee and its cooling pond Lake Keowee have turned a depressed part of western South Carolina into a second home and tourist magnet.

Nuclear power in the West is a disastrously expensive mess. Table 1 shows where we are. Current builds have capital costs that are more than ten times higher than Oconee and her sisters. Only the wealthiest nations can afford these kind of costs, and then only sporadically. The construction times are such that there is no way nuclear can put a dent in global warming, or anything else. And it keeps getting worse. If this is the way things must be, nuclear power is a dead end, and rightly so. //

Yet in 2015, the German utility RWE commissioned their Eemshaven plant in the northeast corner of Holland at a cost of 2.2 billion euros. This is a little under $1500/kW for a 2 by 800 MW plant, or just under $2000/kW in 2024 dollars. This is for the latest and greatest ultra-super-critical plant meeting stringent EU pollution limits, sited in one of the most expensive places to build on the planet. The rule of thumb is $500/kW for the turbine hall and switchgear. The rest is fuel handling, the boiler, and pollution control. //

Figure 4. Fuel for 1 GW plant for one day. The coal plant’s fuel requires a 70 car train. The nuclear plant’s fuel fits in a two gallon jug. Newcastle 6700 is a good coal. Most coal’s are worse. //

A 1 GW nuclear, Figure 5, plant will burn about 82 kg’s of fuel per day, producing the same amount of solid waste. That’s about 100,000 times less than a coal plant. The coal yard and the coal receiving terminal disappear, as do the dryers and pulverizers. The nuke’s Fission Island volume will be smaller than the coal plant’s boiler. The turbine hall will be slightly larger. There will no stack gas handling equipment, no massive Forced Draft and Induced Draft fans, no SCR, no baghouses, no scrubbers, no massive stack. The ash landfill and slurry pond will be replaced by less than an acre of 5.9m(19 ft) high by 3.5m(11 ft) diameter casks. The nuclear plant should be cheaper to build with far cheaper fuel costs. //

Figure 15. Coal should be easy to beat

The reason why it is not is a tragically misdirected, autocratic regulatory system. We give an omnipotent regulator final approval of any nuclear power plant, and judge him on his ability to prevent a release of radiation. He gets no credit for the cheap, pollution-free, CO2-free, on-demand, power generated by a successful plant, nor the avoided mortality and morbidity that would have resulted if the plant had not been built. But he owns any problems. The regulator responds accordingly; and, since he has the final say, it’s his incentives, not society’s, that determines what happens. NRC Chairman Hendrie put it succinctly “The NRC’s responsibility is [nuclear] safety without regard to economic and social costs.” [Joseph Hendrie, NRC Chairman, 1979] The NRC’s definition of nuclear safety is preventing a release.

Figure 16. Hinkley Point tombstone.
No. Human welfare is our overriding priority.

This auto-genocidal myopia produces technical stagnation, a demoralized workforce, lack of competition, and shoddy quality. The end result is nuclear power that costs five or more times what it should-cost and build times that are three or more times longer than they need be. This in turn means nuclear is replaced by far more harmful technologies. It means nuclear can never be cheaper than the competition, which means humanity is far poorer than it could be. The greatest health hazard of all is poverty.

The war on Iran revealed how dependent Israel’s Arab neighbours are on its gas exports, a dependency that could extend to Syria and Lebanon. //

Last year, Cairo signed a $35bn deal to import Israeli gas from Israel until 2040, boosting its previous supplies by another 2bcm (70.6 billion cubic feet) per year. //

Unlike Egypt, Jordan is not a major gas-producing country. Local production accounts for less than 5 percent of gas (PDF) needs. It imports the rest, about 3.6bcm (127 billion cubic feet) per year, mostly from Israel, but also Egypt and some LNG sources. //

The Arab Gas Pipeline—once a symbol of joint Arab development projects—has become the primary conduit for exporting Israeli gas to both Jordan and Egypt. Pipelines carrying gas from the Leviathan field off the coast of Haifa connect to the pipeline network in northern Jordan’s Mafraq governorate, from which gas flows southward towards the Egyptian border. //

Even when Israel is not the immediate supplier in a given transaction, the system itself depends structurally on Israeli gas. Once Israeli exports stop, the entire network falters. //

This is a clear example of how the Zionist settler-colonial project is expanding not only through military aggression but also through economic power and energy networks.

It advances through an infrastructure that appears mundane and technical, yet ultimately grips societies by the throat. Once embedded, disengaging from such systems becomes extraordinarily difficult, because they govern the essentials of everyday life: electricity, water and energy. //

Today, Syrian and Lebanese political leaders may be lured by the promise of quick and easy economic security and reliable living conditions. But such security would be illusory. Ultimate control would rest in the hands of a state whose capacity to cut supply – and to use that interruption as a tool of destruction, political coercion and colonial expansion – is already visible for all to see.

Damage to a critical Qatari facility is threatening to keep energy prices high around the world even if the war in Iran ends soon in what some analysts are calling an “Armageddon” situation.

Qatar’s Las Raffan plant supplies a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas, which is used for electricity, heating and cooking – but Iranian strikes have damaged the facility, worsening what is already the largest-ever energy supply disruption. //

Qatar’s Las Raffan site is almost three times the size of Paris. It took three decades to build, cost hundreds of billions of dollars and chills enough gas to meet the annual demand of the UK and Italy combined.

A blogger, Destin, talked TVA into letting him film the refueling process at Browns Ferry in Alabama. Browns Ferry is a three unit boiling water reactor plant. The design is essentially the same as the reactors at Fukushima. The hour and 45 minute video is overly long; and Destin’s narration can be a little grating at times; but overall he does a great job. It’s worth your time.

We also get a pretty good feeling for the plant’s safety culture. //

much of the video is taken up by Destin’s going through various check points, each manned by 3 or 4 people sitting around watching screens. While there are scores of people on the refueling floor, only a handful seem to be actually doing something to the plant. The actual shifting of the fuel bundles is done by a three person team, and is largely automated. At one point, a lady berates Destin’s guide who outranks her for letting Destin walk down a stairs facing forward. The stairs were narrower and steeper than normal. The rule is you have to treat it like a ladder.

Destin is told not to step on the floor drains. The problem is the moisture might contaminate his shoes, and set off alarms. The radiation in the drain is not from the plant. It’s normal background, naturally occurring radon and daughters. Nuclear plants don’t produce radon. On the way out, Destin’s camera fails to clear a check. So they disassemble the camera and put each piece into the detector separately, to allow the pieces out of the plant. Once again the source is background radon. //

On a positive note, TVA should be congratulated for allowing this visit. It should be commonplace. If I were king of the world, I’d have a glassed in viewing gallery, high in every reactor’s refueling space. During outages, I would invite everybody to walk through and get a look at what’s going on. Most of the people will come out as enthusiastic about nuclear as Destin.

The second 1974 Power Engineering article that Nick Touran has uncovered is Senior Editor Olds’ discussion of the massive jumps in power plant capital costs between 1965 and 1974 Power Plant Capital Costs Going Out of Sight.

The AEC required plant owners to report their estimate of the capital cost of any nuclear plants under construction, and update those estimates annually. Olds’ article is largely based on that data. All his dollar figures are in nominal dollars, the dollar of that year.

Figure 2. USA fossil plant costs bottomed out in 1966.

The paper is graced by a number of hand drawn, beautifully lettered graphics. Figure 2 shows that prior to 1967 fossil plant capital costs were falling reaching a low of $100/kW in nominal dollars in 1966. But in 1967, the cost jumped nearly 20% to $118. Unfortunately, Old does not take the fossil figures any further forward. But if he did he would see that 20% per year escalation continue unabated through 1974, Figure 3. //

Thanks to nuclear’s factor of 100,000 advantage in energy density over fossil, a technology that did not exist 15 years earlier, was working its way down a steep learning curve, and in 1967 was fully competitive with coal, when coal was as cheap as it ever was. Nuclear was insulated from both oil price and fossil pollution regulation.

But in 1967, a new omnipotent player emerged. In 1954, Congress had given the AEC complete and unfettered control over nuclear, both nuclear weapons and nuclear power. As Truman put it, atom power was “too important to be made the subject of profiteering”. The AEC had to both implement Mutually Assured Destruction, and promote and regulate nuclear power. The first responsibility included making sure everybody was petrified of the bomb.

bungalowbernard Ars Praetorian
5y
404

Each KG of coal produces about 8 KWh of electricity - to produce 8 MWh in a year is literally just Steve throwing a shovelful into the hopper once a day.

On Tuesday, March 10th, an EF-1 tornado destroyed the Dunns Bridge Solar I and II facilities owned by the Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO). The facilities, located outside of Wheaton, Indiana, had 2.4 million solar panels, totaling 700 megawatts (MW) of power capacity, and reportedly cost $1 billion to construct—a little over $1,400 per kilowatt (kW).

NIPSCO issued the following statement in the aftermath:

On the evening of March 10, while actively monitoring severe weather and responding to storm‑related outages across our service area, NIPSCO became aware of damage to its Dunns Bridge I and Dunns Bridge II solar facilities in Starke and Jasper counties. Our team was tracking the storm in real time and moved in to assess conditions and respond as soon as it was safe to do so. Debris from the damage could have been displaced, and we are working to safely secure the area, assess the damage and proactively communicate with the community.

We recognize there may be questions and concerns about potential environmental impacts related to the damage at the solar farm. Solar panel leaching concerns have been thoroughly evaluated in industry-leading research, which shows that the risk is extremely low. Overall, the available evidence demonstrates that both crystalline silicon and thin-film PV (i.e., photovoltaic) modules do not pose a meaningful risk of environmental or human exposure from leaching, even when damaged. //

While the solar panels were damaged by the tornado, we are not aware of any reports of damage at the nearby R.M. Schahfer Generating Station, a 950 MW coal facility that NIPSCO was planning to retire at the end of 2025. However, it is still running thanks to a 202(C) order issued by the U.S. Department of Energy requiring the plant to continue operations. //

Let’s be incredibly uncharitable and look at the anticipated levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of the solar facility over its projected 25-year useful lifetime, and its actual, tornado-truncated lifetime.

Dunns Bridge I began generating power in June of 2023, producing a total of 1.3 million megawatt hours (MWh) up until December of 2025, the most recent month for which data are available. Dunns Bridge II began generating power in January of 2025, and through December, it produced 812,439 MW of power, which is good for a 21.3 percent capacity factor.

We calculated the LCOE over two time periods: a 25-year lifecycle, a standard assumption in the industry, and a 2-year lifecycle to account for the facility being destroyed very early in its lifecycle. The results are about what we would expect. Our estimated subsidized costs over 25 years are approximately equal to S&P Global’s reported PPA cost for the facilities, including subsidies.

Because the LCOE is like calculating the cost of driving your car over the number of miles driven, if your car dies after two years when you expected to drive it for 10, the cost per mile obviously increases. This is why the cost of electricity from the Dunns Bridge I & II facilities skyrockets in this analysis, reaching a subsidized cost of $289.61 per MWh, and an unsubsidized cost of $405.09 per MWh. [Compared to $63.87/MWh subsidized over 25 years, or $82.61/MWh unsubsidized over 25 yrs] //

In our upcoming LCOE study for Reliable Energy Inc. in Indiana, we found that the R.M. Schahfer plant was the most expensive coal plant in the state, due primarily to very high delivered fuel costs at the plant ($50 per MWh).

However, the December 2025 data from S&P Global, the most recent available, show the delivered fuel cost was about $27 per MWh, which substantially improves the economics of the plant, although this could possibly be the result of the company assuming the plant would retire at the end of the year, rather than being required to stay open.

At $70 per MWh, the Schahfer plant is competitive with subsidized solar over a 25-year lifespan, cheaper than the unsubsidized cost over 25 years, and a bargain compared with our admittedly uncharitable comparison to the facility’s actual 2-year lifespan. //

For our part, we would encourage those in the surrounding areas not to worry too much about chemicals leaching from the panels into the soil or water. Photovoltaic panels are made mostly of glass, and the small amounts of toxic materials, such as lead used in soldering, are not a significant concern because they are present in small quantities and there is probably no realistic exposure pathway for humans. //

The storm likely blew debris well beyond the solar site, which could create issues for nearby farmers, especially if they are growing root crops.

Anecdotally, we’ve heard that large potato buyers won’t purchase potatoes from growers located within a mile of a glass recycling facility for precisely this reason. In other words, the real concern here isn’t chemical contamination, it’s debris.

Currently, by far the best Free World reactor is the Korean APR1400. The Korean’s can build an APR1400 for less than $3000/kW in Korea and have built four in the UAE for around $4500/kW. The APR1400 was our best, maybe only, hope for leading Western nuclear out of a prohibitively expensive regulatory morass.

The APR1400 is based on the Combustion Engineering (CE) System 80+ design, the best of the American PWR’s. In 1997, Kepco licensed that design. The Koreans demanded and got a Total Technology Transfer Agreement. No strings attached. They could use the IP anyway they wanted. CE’s back was against the wall. The tort lawyers had embroiled CE in an asbestos suit and they were going bankrupt. The cash from the Koreans kept CE alive for another couple of years. In 2000, Westinghouse acquired CE and became the licensor.

Westinghouse’s offering is the AP1000. The AP1000 is a cramped, nearly unmaintainable reactor which will cost you somewhere around $15,000/kW. Westinghouse knows it can’t compete with the APR1400. So Westinghouse has colluded with the DOE to prevent the Koreans from exporting the APR1400 from Korea. Westinghouse may have lousy engineers but they’ve got great lawyers.

China is indeed churning out solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and batteries that flood global markets — proof, advocates say, of an inevitable green transition.

Yet these supposed marvels are forged amid overwhelming and surging use of fossil fuels, particularly coal.

Its real energy achievements — dramatic energy ramp-ups to fuel prosperity, and advances in nuclear power — remain overlooked. //

Crucially, China’s solar-panel production depends on coal: Every one of its silicon smelters requires its own coal-fired power station. //

While China added unprecedented solar and wind capacity in 2025, it also planned an unprecedented number of new coal power plants.

China remains the world’s top coal consumer, with fossil fuels supplying over 87% of its primary energy.

Renewables’ share was 40% in 1971 when China was poor, but plummeted to 7.5% in 2011 — and has risen slowly over the next 13 years, to just over 10% in 2024. //

Second, China is surging ahead in technologies that could truly decarbonize the planet at scale: nuclear fission and fusion.

In the West, traditional nuclear has grown prohibitively expensive, with US construction costs tripling since the mid-1980s.

The US has built only three new nuclear plants this century, at enormous cost and with 11-year timelines.

Contrast this with China, where reactors are completed in five years and costs have halved since 2000.

China has expanded from three reactors in 2000 to 60 today, with 37 under construction (nearly half the global total), 42 planned and 146 proposed. //

This isn’t renewables redux; it’s a race for abundant energy.

And the West risks awakening to a world powered by Beijing’s reactors, not its own ingenuity.

Green China is a sham — but it’s time for the West to emulate Beijing’s real playbook, by ramping up energy use and investing in nuclear R&D.