In May 2025, President Trump signed four executive orders to revitalize the nuclear power industry in the U.S., with one goal being to have three new advanced test reactors achieve criticality (self-sustaining nuclear reactions) by July 4th of this year. When this was first announced, there were a ton of skeptics, and many people said it couldn't be done in such a short time frame. Nonetheless, DOE moved quickly to establish the Reactor Pilot Program and, in August of 2025, announced the initial 11 projects selected.
Now, here we are 8 days out from the deadline, and an entirely different tune is being sung. Already, two different projects have achieved criticality, with Antares Nuclear accomplishing it on June 4th, an entire month early, and Valar Atomics successfully accomplishing the feat on June 18th. Yesterday, while being interviewed on CNBC, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright announced that Aalo Atomics had received DOE approval for their reactor's criticality test and that it would be done before the 4th.
Skeptics of the nuclear revival have now switched their comments to how a criticality test is not that important, it is just symbolic, ignoring the fact that this is the first time in forty years that a new privately developed non-light-water reactor has reached criticality in the U.S. Instead of being amazed at what the private industry has been able to accomplish critics continue to act like these significant developments are not all that important. The fact of the matter is, these are significant achievements that carry real weight and are huge in getting these reactors out of testing and onto the grid to provide power.
You do not have to like Trump or his actions, but for this, he got it right. He has correctly leveraged the National Labs and industry to produce results for America. After years of talks about the future of nuclear and the development of SMRs, we are finally seeing actual results, not ideas or theoretical options.
USA adopting State Capitalism because China already won the trade war and electricity generation race.
USA lags far behind and is desperate to catch up with China.
Good luck with that given the massively depleted US industrial base.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-top-countries-by-annual-electricity-production-1985-2024/
Read the graph and start dealing with reality US Exceptionalists!
China is currently building dozens of new nuclear power generation plants at 1/6th the cost of the USs only new plant in decades!
USA lost the power generation war that underpins the post industrial economy including AI.
Neoliberal crony capitalism crippled the US military industrial base.
Trumps feeble and belated attempts to emulate Chinas finely honed State Capitalism will fail in the pit of US crony capitalism.
We're adopting "rob everyone who speaks my language to pay for the war"-ism because that's all the communists understand.
Like I told you before, there was a ton of shit we couldn't legally build because treasonous eunuchs in the government hate human progress. With them out of the way we're ready to recommence 1776.
You are so stuck in the propaganda of the 1950s.
There are no communists anymore.
China is a state capitalist- free enterprise hybrid economy and its more productive and efficient than your decadent crony capitalist-imperialism.
Then you should have no problem winning WWIII. Good luck.
You assert I am China because I point out the blatant flaws in your biased analysis.
I am simply a neutral observer seeking the truth of the situation, not blinded by ideological prejudice.
Your rabid bias creates and fuels the basis of conflict with China and makes it more likely China will win because you fail to understand what is actually happening by constantly denying the facts and very nature of the process.
There's no neutrality in a world war. You're in capitalist territory. My government can beat up your government so you have to pay me. Is that not the nature of the process?
I understand the facts perfectly well. The world has been invaded by communist Nephilim and every nation has to cooperate towards their elimination for humanity to survive.
New Zealand is aligned militarily, culturally and historically to the US.
Likewise though we are economically aligned closely with China because China pay the best price for our commodity exports and China supply us with the lowest cost manufactured imports...plus China and NZ have a FTA since early 2000s - something 'free enterprise' USA has always refused to agree to with New Zealand.
Thus our economic advantage is thus strongly linked to China while our historical-cultural alliance would be toward USA- but USA today is not USA of the past- USA is increasingly seen by many western countries as an unstable, dangerous and malign force.
My observations as a private citizen seek to look at and understand the global situation as clearly and neutrally as possible as only by seeing things clearly can a small neutral nation hope to survive in the contest between powerful empires.
Because they're too lazy or too evil to take on International Communism. Of course they're buttmad. It's not our fault we're surrounded by traitors and sell-outs. That's fine. We're making new and better friends at the same time.
Fantastic! I hope to see more big energy developments.
Nice! I always appreciate your updates on science policy in the US