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Just don’t confuse them with SMRs.
When politicians tell the CEO of Radiant that they love small modular reactors, he groans inwardly and just keeps smiling.
Doug Bernauer’s Radiant is not trying to make SMRs. His company — a VC-backed startup currently in the pre-application phase with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — is designing a portable nuclear microreactor, which is intended to replace diesel generators. The politicians don’t always know the difference, Bernauer told me.
The SMR-microreactor confusion is common outside the world of nuclear. While they are both versions of advanced nuclear technologies not yet built in the United States (all of our nuclear power comes from big, old-fashioned plants), SMRs and microreactors have different designs, power outputs, costs, financing models, and potential use cases.
Unlike SMRs, microreactors are too small to ever become key energy players within a full-sized grid. But they could replace fossil fuels in some of the hardest to decarbonize sectors and locations in the world: mines, factories, towns in remote locations (especially Alaska and northern Canada), military bases, and (ironically) oil fields. For those customers, they could also make power supply and prices more consistent, secure, and dependable than fossil fuels, whose fluctuating prices batter industrial sectors and the residents of remote towns without discrimination.
Perhaps even more importantly, microreactors’ small size and comparatively low price could make them a gateway drug for new nuclear technologies in the U.S., helping companies and regulators build the know-how they need to lower the risk and cost for larger projects.
Heatmap Illustration/Radiant, IAEA, Getty Images
The big problem with this idea? No functional commercial nuclear microreactor actually exists. Industry experts cannot say with confidence that they know what the technological hurdles are going to be, how to solve them, or what it’s going to cost to address them.
“My crystal ball is broken,” John Parsons, an economist researching risk in energy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said when I asked him whether he believed microreactors would make it through the technical gauntlet. “I’m hopeful. But I’m also very open-minded. I don’t know what’s going to happen. And I really believe we need a lot of shots on goal, and not all shots are going to go through,” he said.
Recent advances in both technology and regulation indicate that in the next few years, we should have some answers.
Private companies are expecting to conduct their first tests in about two years, and they are in conversations with potential customers. Radiant is hoping to test at the Idaho National Laboratory in 2026; Westinghouse and Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation have contracts to test microreactors there as well. BWX Technologies is currently procuring the parts for a demonstration reactor through the Department of Defense’s prototype program — called Project Pele — and plans to test in about two years; X-energy signed an expanded contract in 2023 to build a prototype for Project Pele as well. Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska is commissioning a pilot microreactor. Schools including Pennsylvania State University and the University of Illinois have announced their interest as potential customers. Mining companies and other industry players in Alaska regularly express interest in embracing this technology.
The government is also quietly smoothing the way, removing barriers to make those tests possible. On March 4, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission released a new draft of licensing rules that will shape the future for these microreactors, and early March’s emergency spending bill included more than $2.5 billion repurposed for investment in a domestic supply chain of the type of nuclear fuel most advanced reactors will require.
“If we are truly committed as a nation to sticking to our climate goals, then we will absolutely get to a place where there are a bunch of microreactors replacing otherwise difficult to decarbonize sectors and applications,” said Kathryn Huff, the head of the office of nuclear energy at the Department of Energy.
Eric Gimon, a senior fellow at the nonprofit Energy Innovation, was a microreactor skeptic until about a month ago. His own recent research has made him far more optimistic that these microreactors might actually be technologically feasible, he told me when I reached out for an honest critique. “If they can make (the microreactors) work, it’s attractive,” he said. “There are a lot of industrial players that are going to want to buy them.”
“If your goal is to produce power at 4 cents per kilowatt hour, why would you buy any power that’s way more expensive than what you need? You do it because if that adds diversity to the portfolio and less variance, then you can get an overall portfolio that is lower cost or a lower risk for the same cost,” he told me.
Everyone I spoke to in the industry began our conversation with the same analogy: In the world of nuclear, full-size power plants are to airports what microreactors are to airplanes. Just as it's easier to build and regulate an airplane than an entire airport, in theory the microreactors should be built in a factory, regulated and licensed in the factory, and then rented out to or sold to the end user. An airport requires approvals specific to the construction site, a huge team of people employed for a long time to construct it and then another team to maintain it, and complicated financing based on the idea that the airport could be used for 50 or more years; a full-scale nuclear plant is the same. An airplane can basically be ordered online; a microreactor should be the same.
“They are sized to be similar to that kind of scope, where you could really consolidate a lot of the chemical and manufacturing oversight to a single location rather than moving thousands of people to a construction site,” Huff told me.
Microreactors should produce relatively small amounts of power (a maximum of 10-20 megawatts) and lots of heat with a tiny amount of nuclear fuel. They are usually portable, and if they aren’t portable they require a limited amount of construction or installation. Because it should not be possible to handle the fuel once it leaves the factory (most of the proposed reactor designs set the fuel deep into a dense, inaccessible matrix), these reactors wouldn’t require the same safety and security measures on site as a nuclear power plant. They’re easily operated or managed by people without nuclear expertise, and their safety design — called passive safety — should make it technically impossible for a reactor to meltdown.
“The excess reactivity is so small that you actually can’t get the reactor hot enough that you could start damaging the fuel. That’s something unique about the microreactor that would not necessarily be true for other types of nuclear,” Jeff Waksman, the program manager for the Department of Defense’s Strategic Capabilities Office, told me.
Microreactors should also cost on the order of tens of millions of dollars, not hundreds. That’s low enough that a company, university, town, or other similarly-sized entity could buy one or more of them. Because they’re cheaper than traditional nuclear, they don’t require lenders to take big risks on money committed over a very long period of time. If a mining company wanted to replace a diesel generator with one of these, they should be able to finance it in exactly the same way (a loan from the bank, for example). This makes their financial logic quite different from SMRs, which can suffer from some of the same problems as full-size nuclear power plants (see: NuScale’s recent setbacks).
“All of the things that contribute to a faster innovation cycle are true for microreactors compared to larger reactors. So you can just — build one,” said Rachel Slaybaugh, a partner at DCVC and a board member at Radiant, Fervo Energy, and Fourth Power.
Because microreactors max out at around 20 megawatts of energy, the economies of scale that eventually bring down energy prices for full-scale nuclear power can’t be replicated. While Jigar Shah, the director of the loan programs office at the DOE, speculated in a recent interview that costs might eventually go just below 10 cents per kilowatt hour, Parsons is skeptical that anyone could provide a practical cost estimate. It’s absolutely going to cost more than either large reactors or SMRs, Parsons said.
But cost comparisons to other types of nuclear technology aren’t practical, according to Slaybaugh. “You are going to be able to command a cost parity with diesel generators. It’s easy to get to a point where they make financial sense,” she said. “You can see why someone would pick one: This is not making noise, it’s not making local air pollution, you don’t have to deal with the diesel logistics complexity. You sell it at price parity, and maybe the first few customers pay a premium because they are excited about it.”
That premium price for the initial technology is the largest hurdle raised by every single person I spoke with, from the DOE to analysts and researchers to the different microreactor companies.
But there is one customer already inclined to pay a substantial premium: the Department of Defense. The U.S. military has greater resiliency and security needs than other consumers when it comes to its power supply, making the cost of microreactors more palatable. (And it doesn’t hurt that the taxpayer already foots the bill for enormous defense contracts, including for aircraft carriers and submarines powered by nuclear reactors). It’s common for technological innovations (think the internet, GPS, advanced prosthetics) to begin with the military and then expand outward to the consumer. Project Pele and the requests for proposals at Eielson Air Force Base both indicate that the pathway might be one for microreactors, according to Parsons.
For the president of BWXT Advanced Technologies, the Department of Defense’s decision to commission his company’s microreactor for Project Pele removed his last doubts that these microreactors would eventually be built. “The DOD being the first mover has extreme advantage for the country, and for eventually the commercial industry,” Joseph Miller told me. “The first mover was the barrier, and now it’s just 1,000 things that we’re working on all day every day to make it real, and there’s no gotcha out there that I see. That wasn’t the case when we were doing the design work, but now we’re making procurements to be able to assemble and deliver the reactor.”
Regardless of whether Miller’s optimism is well-founded, the experience gained in trying to make them happen is invaluable for a nuclear industry that’s been stuck in the mud for far too long.
“I've been talking with the federal government about the fact that there’s broader value in terms of getting wins on the board for the nuclear sector and getting the industry more experienced with building new things in a way that isn't quite so complicated,” Slaybaugh said. “Let’s have them build a thing that’s small and kind of cheap, and then they can go build a bigger thing that’s a little more expensive and a little more complicated. Let’s get some real reps in with microreactors.”
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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.