Nuclear energy just has to be part of a climate smart future. It has to be. It also maybe, can be, should be part of a peaceful future free of nuclear weapons. Anyway, what’s new and exciting is that a small modular nuclear reactor was permitted for the first time in the United States. What’s not exciting is the company decided the project was…

Still, if it can and has been permitted, hopefully somebody will find a business model that works, and/or governments will subsidize it to get it off the ground. In the cancelled or on-hold negotiations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia recently, we hear that the U.S. was willing to consider “giving” Saudi Arabia civilian nuclear technology. This seems problematic, when we know countries (Iran and Israel just to name a couple) have managed to develop dual-use uranium enrichment technology under the appearance of a peaceful civilian energy program. So the technology shouldn’t be “given” unilaterally by nuclear powers (the geopolitical kind of power here) to governments they like. This needs to be done under the IAEA under a strict inspection regime, and there has to be a commitment to enforce it. It seems somewhat unlikely the dysfunctional UN Security Council is set up to do this in the near future.