Let’s start building nuclear plants already

OPINION:

Adm. Hyman Rickover, the creator of the nuclear navy, had no patience for fantasy. He drew a line between the “academic reactor,” which exists only in theory, and the “practical reactor,” which is built of metal, tested under stress and refined through hard lessons.

From his biting sarcasm, the lesson was blunt: If you want real reactors, then you have to build real reactors.

Today, America risks forgetting that lesson. In the past 25 years, only three commercial nuclear generation plants have begun operations in the United States, including one that was completing a project started more than 40 years ago. Although a handful of advanced nuclear reactor concepts have been moving dirt and bending metal, the U.S. nuclear sector is drowning in “academic reactors,” dazzling concepts that live on PowerPoint slides and glossy investor decks but have not touched steel.

These paper reactors promise revolutions in safety, efficiency and cost, but they remain vaporware.

Meanwhile, the few programs that actually dare to weld metal together — the Westinghouse deal, the Janus program — are being pilloried by some industry observers. The criticism is almost comical. Instead of applauding the courage to move beyond slide decks, critics wring their hands about the risks of funding reactors that might actually be built. Apparently, in their world, it’s safer to fund fantasies than to confront reality.

History is unambiguous. The U.S. Navy didn’t get a fleet of nuclear submarines by sketching reactor designs on chalkboards. It got there by building prototypes, testing them, fixing corrosion and learning from failure. Eight practical reactor designs stood between the first prototype and the mass-produced S5W plant. That messy, iterative process, not academic theorizing, created a nuclear fleet in less than a decade.

The Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission finally seem to understand this. Their updated memorandum of understanding and the Energy Department’s streamlined safety standard (DOE-STD-1271-2025) are designed to push reactors out of the presentation stage and into construction.

Critics who sneer at “funding practical reactors” miss the point entirely. A reactor that exists only as a slide deck is neither safe nor fast. A reactor built of metal, tested under Energy Department oversight and licensed through Nuclear Regulatory Commission review is both.

The choice before America is stark. We can keep chasing academic reactors that promise miracles but deliver nothing, or we can embrace Rickover’s maxim and build practical reactors. If we fail to act, then the future of nuclear innovation will belong to Russia and China. If we succeed, then it will belong to those who pick up the welder’s torch instead of the laser pointer.

• David S. Jonas is a partner at Fluet in Tysons. He served as general counsel of the National Nuclear Security Administration and now teaches nuclear nonproliferation law and policy at Georgetown Law School and GW Law. R. Budd Haemer teaches atomic energy law at GW Law. He has more than four decades of experience in the nuclear industry, both in the U.S. government and in the U.S. commercial sector. The views expressed are solely those of the authors and do not represent the views of Fluet or its clients or any other organization with which the authors have been affiliated.