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01 / 05
For Progress on Zero-Carbon Energy, Look Beyond the Beltway

Blog Post | Energy & Natural Resources

For Progress on Zero-Carbon Energy, Look Beyond the Beltway

New reactor designs could lead to low-cost, low-risk, zero-carbon energy if regulators don’t make the economics untenable.

With Democrats at the helm of the federal government, climate change and zero-carbon energy technologies have become front-page issues in Washington. But just out of port, this conversation has been run aground by the environmental movement’s fixation upon wind and solar and its near exclusion of the lone form of carbon-free electricity that can scale anywhere in the world: nuclear.

The CLEAN Future Act, introduced by Energy Subcommittee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), is the most recent example of wind and solar’s capture of the policy arena. The bill makes 54 references to solar energy and 27 to wind energy. Nuclear energy is referenced a paltry 12 times in its 981 pages.

If zero-carbon energy is the civically agreed-upon goal (and, no, we’re not there yet), safe and scalable nuclear is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet. Yet rather than increasing nuclear plant output and getting new nuclear projects underway, the U.S. is at the beginning of a nuclear retirement en masse. In 2021, 5.1 GW of nuclear capacity will be retired, 5 percent of the current U.S. total. Up for retirement are the Dresden and Byron plants owned by Exelon Corporation in Illinois, and Unit 3 of the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant in New York.  

After a post-war period of growth, nuclear energy took on an unfair stigma. Despite the power of the atom providing 75 percent of France’s electricity without a single noteworthy incident, to cite one example, harnessing nuclear energy makes Americans uneasy. Public misunderstanding and intentional fearmongering from the back-to-nature set have left a lasting scar in the United States. (And HBO’s production of the Chernobyl miniseries in 2019 sure didn’t help.)

But if one were to read these signs as indicators of nuclear’s impending disappearance from the American energy landscape, one would be wrong. To far less fanfare than the celebrated installation of dilute solar and wind arrays and the rollout of new Tesla models, tantalizing developments have been made at the Idaho and Oak Ridge (TN) National Laboratories on new designs for nuclear energy. Technologies are on the horizon that could deliver all of their predecessors’ benefits while being more adaptable and even safer, perhaps renewing nuclear’s appeal.

Small Modular Reactors

Small modular reactors are marvels of efficiency. To achieve a nameplate capacity of 720 MWe, a NuScale small modular reactor would require just 35 acres, whereas a traditional plant would take up nearly 600 acres. Because they’re simpler and smaller, these reactors can be utilized in locations that could not support larger reactors, including smaller markets, remote and isolated areas, and areas with less access to the water necessary to cool larger reactors. Unlike the large plants with equally large staffing requirements, a small modular reactor has passive safety features that cause it to shut down on its own in the event of an emergency without requiring outside action by operators or inputs such as cooling water. They can also be sited below or partially below ground to present less of a target for terrorism.

Small modular reactors can have a wide range of power outputs, depending on the number of modules, meaning that they can replace retiring power plants or complement an existing fuel mix depending on what is needed. And, construction is less expensive in terms of both time and money. Parts can be factory-made and shipped to sites for assembly, allowing for quicker construction with lower costs than traditional reactor designs.

The first reactor of this kind will be a twelve-module unit that will be built by NuScale Power, which is expected to be sited at Idaho National Laboratory and begin operation in 2029.

Advanced Non-Light Water Reactors

While small modular reactors operate on the same general principles as large-scale plants, there are also new reactor designs currently in development with some fundamental differences. These include molten salt reactors and high-temperature gas reactors.

Molten salt reactors operate at higher temperatures than light water reactors, increasing efficiency and reducing waste. They also operate at lower pressure which reduces operating risks. While these designs still use controlled fission and steam to spin turbines, the key difference is that in these designs, nuclear fuel dissolves into the coolant (the salt) itself. That means no radioactive water on the loose in the event of a meltdown, and no spent fuel rods to store.

High-temperature gas reactors utilize a revolutionary process involving virtually indestructible, billiard ball-size, sealed kernels of uranium. The kernels are loaded in the reactor like a gumball machine and helium is pumped down through the pebble bed to extract the heat into a steam generator that produces electricity. 

These reactors make meltdowns nearly impossible. They can also be sited almost anywhere, some say within 500 meters of urban areas, and enjoy many of the same benefits as small modular reactors, like quicker construction and lower costs. They are also able to “load-follow” and can go from 40 percent to 100 percent power output in 20 minutes.

How Will Government Respond?

New reactor designs could lead to low-cost, low-risk, zero-carbon energy production that’s incredibly flexible, provided regulators don’t make the economics untenable. At present, these new designs are situated in a regulatory no-man’s-land. Their future rests in the hands of the Biden administration’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission. During the four-year Trump term, the NRC moved in an innovation-friendly direction. If this attitude continues, it could mean these designs come to fruition. Ultimately, political considerations will likely decide the course that the development of these technologies takes. What we know is this: While Washington squabbles over the pork roast known as the CLEAN Future Act, real progress is being made towards zero-carbon electricity in Idaho and Tennessee. Let’s hope Biden’s NRC recognizes this high-leverage opportunity.

Blog Post | Energy Prices

The Declining Time Price of Kilowatt-Hours

We're getting more energy for less time.

Summary: Energy powers economic progress, and it has become much more abundant since 1980. Despite nominal price increases, electricity is more affordable in terms of labor. A blue-collar worker today can buy much more electricity per hour worked than in 1980. Thanks to rising productivity and innovation, we’re getting significantly more energy for less time.


Energy is essential to creating abundance. Whether it’s used to organize and move atoms or to store and transmit information, economic development depends on energy. Although energy is available in many forms and measured in various units, the kilowatt-hour (kWh) is a common standard of comparison, especially in electricity-related contexts. A kWh represents the energy delivered by one kilowatt of power sustained over one hour. For perspective, a standard 42-gallon barrel of crude oil contains approximately 1,700 kWh of energy, though the exact amount depends on the oil’s grade.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tracks average electricity prices over time in nominal terms. The chart below shows the U.S. average price per kWh from 1980 to the present—rising from about 6 cents per kWh in 1980 to 17.6 cents today.

To convert the money price into a time price, we compared the US blue-collar hourly compensation rate for each year, indexing 1980 as the baseline (1.0). The result shows that the time required to purchase a kWh of electricity has declined by 26.6 percent since 1980.

Another way to understand electricity prices is to ask: how many kWh can you buy with one hour of work? This chart illustrates that relationship. In 1980, an hour of US blue-collar labor could buy 152 kWh; today, it buys 207 kWh—a 36 percent increase in energy abundance.

The regression line plotted on the chart suggests a steady gain of about two additional kWh per year for the same amount of work. Although time prices have spiked in the past three years, the long-term trend still indicates growing abundance..

If you started your first job as an unskilled worker in 1980 and “upskilled” to a blue-collar job by 2024, your time price for electricity would have dropped by 67.3 percent. For the time it took to earn enough to buy 100 kWh in 1980, you could now purchase 306 kWh—representing a 206 percent increase in electricity abundance.

Find more of Gale’s work at his Substack, Gale Winds.

News | Energy Production

Fusion Breakthrough Could Reduce Cost of Future Power Plant

“TAE Technologies, a private fusion energy company developing the cleanest and safest approach to commercial fusion power, has achieved a first-of-its-kind breakthrough that fundamentally advances the performance, practicality and reactor-readiness of the company’s proprietary fusion technology.

Experimental results published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications prove TAE has invented a streamlined approach to form and optimize plasma that increases efficiency, significantly reduces complexity and cost, and accelerates the company’s path to net energy and commercial fusion power.”

From TAE.

Blog Post | Energy Prices

Gasoline Abundance Increases with Population Growth

Since 1950, the global population has increased by 229 percent while the time price of gasoline fell by 35 percent.

Summary: Since 1950, the global population has grown by 229%, yet the time price of gasoline for US blue-collar workers has fallen by 35 percent, illustrating an enormous increase in personal gasoline abundance. By fostering free markets and entrepreneurial energy, societies like the United States have shown how the power of knowledge and innovation can transform finite physical resources into increasingly abundant commodities.


Since 1950, the time price of gasoline for US blue-collar workers has fallen by 35 percent. For the time it took to earn enough money to buy a gallon of gasoline in 1950, today’s blue-collar workers can buy 1.54 gallons. That means personal gasoline abundance has increased by 54 percent.

Crude oil is refined to make gasoline, and the market for crude oil is global. Since 1950, the world population increased by 229 percent, from 2.5 billion to almost 8.2 billion. How is that possible, since, according to Thomas Robert Malthus and Thanos, the opposite should occur? It’s because Malthus and Thanos mistakenly assumed that only atoms could be resources and that since we have a finite number of atoms, we must also have a finite number of resources.

The truth is that atoms without knowledge are not, in fact, resources; they have no intrinsic economic value. It’s only when we add knowledge to atoms that they become resources. Since there’s no limit to the amount of knowledge yet to be discovered, created, and shared, resources can be infinite.

The gasoline-population chart shows that more people mean more abundant gasoline, proving Malthus and Thanos wrong in their assumptions.

In the 1970s, people obsessed over the number of barrels of oil in proven reserves. They thought we had discovered all the oil. By dividing the quantity in proven reserves by the annual consumption, they calculated the date we would run out. That flawed approach of Malthus and Thanos fails to recognize that it’s the price of a resource, not its quantity, that matters. Humans react to increasing prices in a variety of ways; they consume less, search for more, look for substitutes, recycle, etc. These actions ultimately reduce prices and increase abundance. What increasing prices really does is focus our energy on discovering new knowledge, which transforms scarcity into abundance.

When prices go up, we not only look for more oil, but we also innovate ways to use it more efficiently. The top-selling car in 1980 was the Oldsmobile Cutlass. Gas mileage on this vehicle averaged 20 miles per gallon (17 city/23 highway). By 2023, the Honda CR-V was the most popular two-wheel drive car. The CR-V reported mileage at 31 miles per gallon (28 city/34 highway). This improvement in mileage represents an increase of 55 percent over this 43-year period (1980–2023). Mileage has been increasing at a compound rate of around 1 percent a year. Today’s cars are also much safer and more reliable, durable, and comfortable.

The lesson of gasoline over the past 74 years is that as the price increases, we find more of it, and we find more productive ways of using it. Then the price goes down. That has been true for all kinds of products, not just gasoline.

The exceptions are those manipulated by the government on the supply and/or demand side. President Richard Nixon imposed price controls in the early 1970s that were not fully removed until President Ronald Reagan did so in the early 1980s, allowing the free market to work its magic. Then fracking and horizontal drilling were applied to oil exploration, thanks in part to Harold Hamm’s Continental Resources in Oklahoma City. That company was a major player in the development of the Bakken formation in North Dakota, which led directly to massively increased domestic production and eventually resulted in the United States becoming a net exporter of oil.

With government price controls, there was almost immediate scarcity for nearly a decade, but when prices were allowed to freely operate, abundance soon overflowed. That shows how governments tend to create scarcity while entrepreneurs (such as Hamm) produce abundance. In the United States, property owners have subsurface property rights. In most other countries, the government owns all the underground oil. These private property rights, a free market and lots of entrepreneurs and innovators have made the United States the most productive energy producer on the planet. The country has led the world in crude oil production since 2018:

Can you guess where gasoline is the most affordable on the planet? Please read “Where Gasoline is Most Affordable.”

Entrepreneurs create abundance; bureaucrats almost always create scarcity. Choose wisely.

Find more of Gale’s work at his Substack, Gale Winds.