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The Nuclear Company is betting on the old school approach.
More than any other form of zero-carbon energy, nuclear energy seems to be stuck between its past and its future. There are currently 94 working reactors in the United States, fewer than there were in 1990. With the country’s growing energy needs in mind, the federal government has made generous incentives and tax credits available for constructing new nuclear power, operating existing plants, and for re-opening shuttered plants. It has also literally rewritten the rulebook for nuclear power to encourage the development of smaller advanced reactors that are supposed to be, eventually, cheaper to build at scale.
But in the meantime, there’s the confused present.
Despite more reactors closing than opening in the past decade, nuclear remains the largest source of carbon-free energy on the U.S. grid. Right now, there are only a handful of reactor designs certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but no actual plans to build any more of them. The two most recently built reactors in the U.S., Vogtle 3 and 4, are both AP1000s, the latest version of the workhouse United States nuclear design — massive light water reactors, the most common reactor type, which use regular water as a coolant. (The other approved designs include the ESBWR, a GE-Hitachi reactor, and the APR-1400 — both versions of large, light-water reactors, both more likely to be built overseas than at home.) The NRC has approved just one small modular reactor design, but a recent attempt to actually build it for a coalition of utilities fell through.
The two reactors that have been built recently, Georgia’s Vogtle 3 and 4, were each delivered years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. “So there was a feeling in the industry that we weren’t going to build anymore AP1000s,” Jessica Lovering, co-founder and executive director of the Good Energy Collective, told me. “And that was a shame because we just got all this experience from doing this big project.”
Lately, however, utilities have been asking a provocative question. What if, instead of waiting for one of the many nascent advanced reactor technologies to take off, we just ... keep building AP1000s, instead?
Anyone who wants to build or buy new nuclear power might have a new partner in The Nuclear Company, which wants to build a 6 gigawatt fleet of reactors — to start — using “proven, licensed technology,” according to the company’s public statements. Juliann Edwards, The Nuclear Company’s chief development officer, wouldn’t specify which technology in particular the company is planning on deploying, but she did tell me it plans on doing so one after the other, in sequence, hoping to drive down the massive price of building a new reactor. “We’re definitely focused on fleet scale deployment,” Edwards said.
“Six has been this magic number that comes back again and again and again,” Ted Nordhaus, founder and executive director of the Breakthrough Institute told me. The Energy Policy Act of 2005, for instance, called for 6,000 megawatts — a.k.a. 6 gigawatts — of new nuclear built with a new production tax credit as an incentive, exactly what Edwards and crew are planning to deliver.
The Nuclear Company won’t be designing or operating the reactors. Instead, Edwards told me, “picture us as the front end as well as throughput to operations. That’s ensuring that a project gets developed, licensed, all the necessary environmental permits, interconnect filings,” working with utilities that have licensed and permitted development sites already lined up. The company is focusing particularly on the big new sources of electricity demand — data centers and manufacturing — which likely means it will concentrate its activities in the East and Southeast. As far as areas where nuclear development has already been approved, Utility Dive identified sites in Florida and South Carolina that are licensed for AP1000, while others in Michigan and Virginia are authorized to use GE-Hitachi reactors.
The reason having this fleet approach matters, Lovering told me, is that building out a supply chain and getting the requisite investment is much easier when everyone involved knows there’s going to be six reactors’ worth in the pipeline, and costs could fall as the reactors are constructed. “If it was just a one-off project, I’d be much more skeptical,” she said. “It’s always easier to get financing for a proven project that's already up and running.”
John Kotek, the head of public policy for the Nuclear Energy Institute, concurred. He told me in an emailed statement that The Nuclear Company’s business model “demonstrates the innovation needed to meet the demand for clean, reliable nuclear energy.”
But there’s a reason much of the nuclear advocacy and policy community has seen advanced reactors as the solution to building out the scale of nuclear power needed to help power a growing grid without carbon emissions. Nordhaus’ Breakthrough Institute is one of the biggest boosters of nuclear, with a focus on reforming the regulatory system in order to make advanced nuclear more economical.
“The market for a 1 gigawatt reactor is a very large public works project,” Nordhaus said. “No one in the world has ever built one of these things on spec. Instead, they’re typically built by national energy companies, or, in the United States, by utilities who are able to essentially charge their customers for the massive costs of construction.”
While the nuclear industry has, with lots of intellectual and public support from groups like Nordhaus’s Breakthrough, oriented its energies toward advanced reactors, The Nuclear Company likely has fans in the Department of Energy, which would really like to see more large reactors getting built soon. “There’s a lot of energy right now, being driven in part by [Secretary of Energy Jennifer] Granholm and [the Loan Programs Office’s] Jigar [Shah], who are like, We need to get nuclear steel in the ground and get more AP1000s built,” Nordhaus said.
Granholm has called for a buildout of new nuclear “at a scale not seen since the ’70s and ’80s.” The Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office, meanwhile, has been supporting nuclear since its founding following the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and Shah has scolded utilities and state regulators for demanding the government essentially provide cost overrun insurance before they even think about building a new AP1000, pointing to the incentives and loans available from the feds.
Nordhaus, who called himself “skeptical” about The Nuclear Company’s plans, told me that his goal was “to get technology to market that would be feasible to build outside a vertically integrated market. I don’t see how nuclear has a future in this country if you don’t do that.”
That’s Edwards’s goal, too. She’s confident that The Nuclear Company could build even in restructured electricity markets where utilities can’t tap their ratepayers to build expensive new plants, she told me. “We need to be able to get in a cycle where maybe we're breaking ground and by the late 2020s. And then we're going into putting neutrons on the grid by the mid 2030s.”
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Though it might not be as comprehensive or as permanent as renewables advocates have feared, it’s also “just the beginning,” the congressman said.
President-elect Donald Trump’s team is drafting an executive order to “halt offshore wind turbine activities” along the East Coast, working with the office of Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, the congressman said in a press release from his office Monday afternoon.
“This executive order is just the beginning,” Van Drew said in a statement. “We will fight tooth and nail to prevent this offshore wind catastrophe from wreaking havoc on the hardworking people who call our coastal towns home.”
The announcement indicates that some in the anti-wind space are leaving open the possibility that Trump’s much-hyped offshore wind ban may be less sweeping than initially suggested.
In its press release, Van Drew’s office said the executive order would “lay the groundwork for permanent measures against the projects,” leaving the door open to only a temporary pause on permitting new projects. The congressman had recently told New Jersey reporters that he anticipates only a six-month moratorium on offshore wind.
The release also stated that the “proposed order” is “expected to be finalized within the first few months of the administration,” which is a far cry from Trump’s promise to stop projects on Day 1. If enacted, a pause would essentially halt all U.S. offshore wind development because the sought-after stretches of national coastline are entirely within federal waters.
Whether this is just caution from Van Drew’s people or a true moderation of Trump’s ambition we’ll soon find out. Inauguration Day is in less than a week.
Imagine for a moment that you’re an aerial firefighter pilot. You have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and now you’ve been called in to fight the devastating fires burning in Los Angeles County’s famously tricky, hilly terrain. You’re working long hours — not as long as your colleagues on the ground due to flight time limitations, but the maximum scheduling allows — not to mention the added external pressures you’re also facing. Even the incoming president recently wondered aloud why the fires aren’t under control yet and insinuated that it’s your and your colleagues’ fault.
You’re on a sortie, getting ready for a particularly white-knuckle drop at a low altitude in poor visibility conditions when an object catches your eye outside the cockpit window: an authorized drone dangerously close to your wing.
Aerial firefighters don’t have to imagine this terrifying scenario; they’ve lived it. Last week, a drone punched a hole in the wing of a Québécois “super soaker” plane that had traveled down from Canada to fight the fires, grounding Palisades firefighting operations for an agonizing half-hour. Thirty minutes might not seem like much, but it is precious time lost when the Santa Ana winds have already curtailed aerial operations.
“I am shocked by what happened in Los Angeles with the drone,” Anna Lau, a forestry communication coordinator with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, told me. The Montana DNRC has also had to contend with unauthorized drones grounding its firefighting planes. “We’re following what’s going on very closely, and it’s shocking to us,” Lau went on. Leaving the skies clear so that firefighters can get on with their work “just seems like a no-brainer, especially when people are actively trying to tackle the situation at hand and fighting to save homes, property, and lives.”
Courtesy of U.S. Forest Service
Although the super soaker collision was by far the most egregious case, according to authorities there have been at least 40 “incidents involving drones” in the airspace around L.A. since the fires started. (Notably, the Federal Aviation Administration has not granted any waivers for the air space around Palisades, meaning any drone images you see of the region, including on the news, were “probably shot illegally,” Intelligencer reports.) So far, law enforcement has arrested three people connected to drones flying near the L.A. fires, and the FBI is seeking information regarding the super soaker collision.
Such a problem is hardly isolated to these fires, though. The Forest Service reports that drones led to the suspension of or interfered with at least 172 fire responses between 2015 and 2020. Some people, including Mike Fraietta, an FAA-certified drone pilot and the founder of the drone-detection company Gargoyle Systems, believe the true number of interferences is much higher — closer to 400.
Law enforcement likes to say that unauthorized drone use falls into three buckets — clueless, criminal, or careless — and Fraietta was inclined to believe that it’s mostly the former in L.A. Hobbyists and other casual drone operators “don’t know the regulations or that this is a danger,” he said. “There’s a lot of ignorance.” To raise awareness, he suggested law enforcement and the media highlight the steep penalties for flying drones in wildfire no-fly zones, which is punishable by up to 12 months in prison or a fine of $75,000.
“What we’re seeing, particularly in California, is TikTok and Instagram influencers trying to get a shot and get likes,” Fraietta conjectured. In the case of the drone that hit the super soaker, it “might have been a case of citizen journalism, like, Well, I have the ability to get this shot and share what’s going on.”
Emergency management teams are waking up, too. Many technologies are on the horizon for drone detection, identification, and deflection, including Wi-Fi jamming, which was used to ground climate activists’ drones at Heathrow Airport in 2019. Jamming is less practical in an emergency situation like the one in L.A., though, where lives could be at stake if people can’t communicate.
Still, the fact of the matter is that firefighters waste precious time dealing with drones when there are far more pressing issues that need their attention. Lau, in Montana, described how even just a 12-minute interruption to firefighting efforts can put a community at risk. “The biggest public awareness message we put out is, ‘If you fly, we can’t,’” she said.
Fraietta, though, noted that drone technology could be used positively in the future, including on wildfire detection and monitoring, prescribed burns, and communicating with firefighters or victims on the ground.
“We don’t want to see this turn into the FAA saying, ‘Hey everyone, no more drones in the United States because of this incident,’” Fraietta said. “You don’t shut down I-95 because a few people are running drugs up and down it, right? Drones are going to be super beneficial to the country long term.”
But critically, in the case of a wildfire, such tools belong in the right hands — not the hands of your neighbor who got a DJI Mini 3 for Christmas. “Their one shot isn’t worth it,” Lau said.
Plus 3 more outstanding questions about this ongoing emergency.
As Los Angeles continued to battle multiple big blazes ripping through some of the most beloved (and expensive) areas of the city on Friday, a question lingered in the background: What caused the fires in the first place?
Though fires are less common in California during this time of the year, they aren’t unheard of. In early December 2017, power lines sparked the Thomas Fire near Ventura, California, which burned through to mid-January. At the time it was the largest fire in the state since at least the 1930s. Now it’s the ninth-largest. Although that fire was in a more rural area, it ignited for some of the same reasons we’re seeing fires this week.
Read on for everything we know so far about how the fires started.
Six major fires started during the Santa Ana wind event last week:
Officials are investigating the cause of the fires and have not made any public statements yet. Early eyewitness accounts suggest that the Eaton Fire may have started at the base of a transmission tower owned by Southern California Edison. So far, the company has maintained that an analysis of its equipment showed “no interruptions or electrical or operational anomalies until more than one hour after the reported start time of the fire.” A Washington Post investigation found that the Palisades Fire could have risen from the remnants of a fire that burned on New Year’s Eve and reignited.
On Thursday morning, Edward Nordskog, a retired fire investigator from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, told me it was unlikely they had even begun looking into the root of the biggest and most destructive of the fires in the Pacific Palisades. “They don't start an investigation until it's safe to go into the area where the fire started, and it just hasn't been safe until probably today,” he said.
It can take years to determine the cause of a fire. Investigators did not pinpoint the cause of the Thomas Fire until March 2019, more than two years after it started.
But Nordskog doesn’t think it will take very long this time. It’s easier to narrow down the possibilities for an urban fire because there are typically both witnesses and surveillance footage, he told me. He said the most common causes of wildfires in Los Angeles are power lines and those started by unhoused people. They can also be caused by sparks from vehicles or equipment.
At more than 40,000 acres burned total, these fires are unlikely to make the charts for the largest in California history. But because they are burning in urban, densely populated, and expensive areas, they could be some of the most devastating. With an estimated 9,000 structures damaged as of Friday morning, the Eaton and Palisades fires are likely to make the list for most destructive wildfire events in the state.
And they will certainly be at the top for costliest. The Palisades Fire has already been declared a likely contender for the most expensive wildfire in U.S. history. It has destroyed more than 5,000 structures in some of the most expensive zip codes in the country. Between that and the Eaton Fire, Accuweather estimates the damages could reach $57 billion.
While we don’t know the root causes of the ignitions, several factors came together to create perfect fire conditions in Southern California this week.
First, there’s the Santa Ana winds, an annual phenomenon in Southern California, when very dry, high-pressure air gets trapped in the Great Basin and begins escaping westward through mountain passes to lower-pressure areas along the coast. Most of the time, the wind in Los Angeles blows eastward from the ocean, but during a Santa Ana event, it changes direction, picking up speed as it rushes toward the sea.
Jon Keeley, a research scientist with the US Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles told me that Santa Ana winds typically blow at maybe 30 to 40 miles per hour, while the winds this week hit upwards of 60 to 70 miles per hour. “More severe than is normal, but not unique,” he said. “We had similar severe winds in 2017 with the Thomas Fire.”
Second, Southern California is currently in the midst of extreme drought. Winter is typically a rainier season, but Los Angeles has seen less than half an inch of rain since July. That means that all the shrubland vegetation in the area is bone-dry. Again, Keeley said, this was not usual, but not unique. Some years are drier than others.
These fires were also not a question of fuel management, Keeley told me. “The fuels are not really the issue in these big fires. It's the extreme winds,” he said. “You can do prescription burning in chaparral and have essentially no impact on Santa Ana wind-driven fires.” As far as he can tell, based on information from CalFire, the Eaton Fire started on an urban street.
While it’s likely that climate change played a role in amplifying the drought, it’s hard to say how big a factor it was. Patrick Brown, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, published a long post on X outlining the factors contributing to the fires, including a chart of historic rainfall during the winter in Los Angeles that shows oscillations between wet and dry years over the past eight decades.
But climate change is expected to make dry years drier and wet years wetter, creating a “hydroclimate whiplash,” as Daniel Swain, a pre-eminent expert on climate change and weather in California puts it. In a thread on Bluesky, Swain wrote that “in 2024, Southern California experienced an exceptional episode of wet-to-dry hydroclimate whiplash.” Last year’s rainy winter fostered abundant plant growth, and the proceeding dryness primed the vegetation for fire.
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Editor’s note: This story was last update on Monday, January 13, at 10:00 a.m. ET.