Joe Rogan Pressed Donald Trump on Nuclear Energy

Former President Donald Trump took a skeptical stance on nuclear power in a recent interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, warning that the power source is favored by Republican voters and that GOP lawmakers “risk” and Determined to support a much higher cost.

While the GOP nominee for president said nuclear power is “very clean” under his tenure. A three-hour conversation Along with the popular comedian and sports commentator, he has repeatedly cited the downsides of the technology his administration has supported in the past, and his campaign has now vowed that if he next Mah will promote it if re-elected.

“They get too big and too complicated and too expensive,” Trump said.

“There is little risk to nuclear,” he continued. “You know, we had some really bad nuclear.”

Trump then name-checked two proposed reactor projects that fell through during his presidency. Six months after Trump took office, South Carolina abandoned its $9 billion plan to expand the Virgil C. Summer nuclear station, ultimately firing two executives for lying to regulators about the project’s viability. Sent to jail. Trump also mentioned Alabama, where, just months after Trump left the White House, the Tennessee Valley Authority left Construction of new reactor allowed after 47 years.

The only two new reactors the United States has built from scratch in decades came online in Georgia earlier this year. Prominent American nuclear developer Westinghouse designed the AP-1000 reactors built on site in the early 2000s, initially touting the model as the workhorse of the nuclear renaissance planned under the George W. Bush administration. was declared.

Westinghouse had never built an AP-1000 before it began construction on utility giant Southern Co.’s Alvin W. Vogel Generating Station in 2012. Still, the companies involved in the project sought permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build and operate the new reactors under a joint license. which required the reactors to adhere to the blueprints presented to qualify them.

Every time a reactor design was changed during construction, developers had to go back to the NRC for approval, causing costs to skyrocket. When Southern Co. connected the second of two Westinghouse reactors to the grid this summer, the cost of the project Upward 35 billion dollars.

Trump said he wanted to avoid telling a story “too long for the show” because Rogan’s widely followed podcast was “too valuable to talk about concretely.” But he said that whenever the toughest types of concrete at a nuclear construction site failed to meet specifications, an inspector would say, “You’ve got to tear down a $25-zillion wall.”

Trump said these things cost $25 billion. “And one of them never opened.”

He proposed a solution: building the same type of reactor over and over again.

A view of the Gravelines nuclear power station in Gravelines, Nord, France. With a nuclear site surface area of ​​150 hectares and a total installed power network of 5,460 MW, it was one of the top 10 nuclear power plants in the world in 2022. In MV 2022, it produced 28.2 TWh of low CO2 electricity, covering 61% of Hauts-de-France’s annual electricity consumption needs.

Thierry Monas via Getty Images

“France does it. France is massively nuclear,” Trump said. “And they make small, tiny, compact plants, and if they make more, they make one thing and they combine it.”

This is partly true. France has generated most of its electricity from nuclear plants since its construction. More than 50 reactors Between 1973 and 1990 as part of an effort to wean the country off foreign fuel imports following the 1973 oil embargo. At its largest nuclear station, the Gravelines plant on the French side of the English Channel, France built six identical reactors in a row. But they are not small. Each is capable of producing about 1,000 megawatts of electricity, nearly as large and powerful as the reactors built in Georgia.

Faced with the rising costs of the AP-1000 projects in Georgia, the U.S. nuclear industry settled on smaller, less powerful reactors called small modular reactors, based on the idea that a power plant can build four at a time. Buys the same product. A larger unit will reduce construction costs through faster learning rates.

But many so-called SMRs relied on plant designs that required the same amount of concrete and other materials. He suggested that the models would actually cost more than larger, conventional units because the less powerful SMRs lost the same economies of scale that came from reactors generating 1,000 megawatts or more.

Kurosh Shirvan, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Estimated Another AP-1000 would be the cheapest type of reactor to build in the next US because the design and supply chains are in place, and there are now thousands of workers with experience building the technology. In fact, the so-called Plant Vogels Unit 4 came in about 30% cheaper than Unit 3, Jigar Shah, head of the Energy Department’s Loan Program Office, said. said recently.

But there are currently no plans for new AP-1000s or any large-scale reactors in the US. Instead, Microsoft is paying $16 billion to help reopen the shuttered reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, and the Biden administration to the nation’s most recently shuttered nuclear power station in Michigan. It is spending $1.5 billion to reopen.

Anticipating a big increase in power demand from their artificial intelligence-powered data centers, the tech giants in recent weeks announced big investments in another type of SMR design that holds more promise. Both Google and Amazon have poured money into next-generation SMR companies, whose as-yet-unbuilt reactors use coolants other than water. Bill Gates’ reactor company, Terra Power, is building a similar pilot project reactor in Wyoming.

Reactor Three is on view May 31 in Waynesboro, Georgia, Biden administration Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said. Greenholm toured a newly completed nuclear reactor at the Alvin W. Vogel Electric Generating Plant.
Reactor Three is on view May 31 in Waynesboro, Georgia, Biden administration Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said. Greenholm toured a newly completed nuclear reactor at the Alvin W. Vogel Electric Generating Plant.

Nuclear power is the only major source of electricity in America that is supported by a growing number of both Democrats and Republicans. GOP-aligned voters still favor nuclear power by double-digit margins in recent polls that nonetheless show support for Democrats at the highest level since Fukushima.

Trump signed during his presidency. Executive orders And Legislation Supports nuclear power, but prefers fossil fuels over reactors. The only major lender is the Export-Import Bank of America Continued The largest federally owned lender under Trump — a $3 billion contract to help Poland build its first nuclear power plant using the AP-1000 reactor.

Under President Joe Biden, the federal government took its most active role in protecting and expanding the nation’s fleet of nuclear power reactors in half a century. Biden’s landmark infrastructure laws include billions in loans and tax credits for nuclear power, with experimental reactors now landing major commercial deals with tech companies.

Trump’s campaign has promised to continue expanding nuclear power if elected. Rep. Byron Donald (R-Fla.), one of the biggest sponsors of nuclear legislation in Congress, has been among Trump’s campaign leaders, and took the stage at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan on Sunday evening. But appeared with the former president.

Still, when first asked about nuclear power, Trump appeared to dodge Rogan’s question.

“Let me ask you about nuclear,” Rogan said. “One thing that I’ve talked to people who have a real understanding of nuclear power, their position is that it’s probably the cleanest, safest electricity that we can generate, that nuclear power is The concerns are really about a few disasters – Fukushima, Three Mile Island.

Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on February 28 in Orlando, Florida.
Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on February 28 in Orlando, Florida.

“These are older systems. They’re much more capable now, and they’re capable of building even better systems,” Rogan continued. “But it’s a political issue, you think nuclear power, you think Chernobyl.”

The 1986 nuclear accident in Soviet Ukraine is the only major civilian nuclear accident with a fatality rate. Repeated federal studies failed to detect any increase in illnesses from radiation exposure as a result of the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979. Only one emergency worker died of cancer after 2011’s Fukushima, but Scientist Create doubt on whether the man’s illness can be traced to radiation exposure at the facility.

The forced evacuation resulted in hundreds of mostly elderly Japanese dying of stress, but surviving livestock can be seen in the irradiated area around the nuclear plant. A few Signs From disease exposure, prescribing precautions around radiation may be overly stringent to avoid health effects.

But Trump intervened, insisting to Rogan that “you shouldn’t be entering the ground around the Fukushima nuclear plant for 3,000 years”.

The former president then began talking about what he called “raw earths,” an apparent reference to the “rare earths,” a family of metals needed for batteries and key military technologies, and on which China has almost a monopoly on production. From there, Trump launched into a familiar diatribe about wind energy trade — Rogan’s complaints.

Rogan redirected Trump to the opening question: “Would you replace it with nuclear? What would you do?”

Trump ended up dealing with concrete at the Vogel plant in Georgia. Rogan asked if this was an example of over-regulation by the NRC.

Trump noted how the French built reactors, then began talking about his uncle, MIT electrical engineer John G. Trump.

“He knew everything,” Trump said of his uncle. “He said someday it would be the way to go, but the problem is it’s too dangerous in terms of war.”

Trump said he imagined that someday, nuclear weapons would be small enough to fit in a backpack.

“He said someday, you’re going to have a little bag, and you’re going to be able to go into a building and blow up New York City,” Trump said.

Rogan suggested that the biggest problem with other countries building nuclear reactors, such as India and Pakistan, is that both countries built atomic bombs after signing the UN Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. No South Asian country is a signatory to the treaty. But Trump appeared to reaffirm the connection between atomic bombs and civilian nuclear power, and played down the main reason for the revival of reactor construction: the need for more zero-carbon electricity to combat climate change.

Trump said that the biggest problem in the world today is not global warming. “It’s nuclear warming.”

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