Nuclear reactors I had to edit the title bc it autocorrected it to nuclear tractors at first lmao
On Friday, May 23rd, Trump signed an executive order to loosen federal regulations nuclear safety, and a Louisiana state news source posted the article.
To speed up the development of nuclear power, the orders grant the U.S. energy secretary authority to approve some advanced reactor designs and projects, taking authority away from the independent safety agency that has regulated the U.S. nuclear industry for five decades.
The order comes as demand for electricity surges amid a boom in energy-hungry data centers and artificial intelligence. Tech companies, venture capitalists, states and others are competing for electricity and straining the nation’s electric grid.
Sunday, there were sudden blackouts across several parts of Louisiana.
The outages on Sunday hit homes served by Entergy and Cleco in parts of Orleans, Jefferson, St. Tammany, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes. The popular Greek Festival along Bayou St. John was also affected, forcing it to take cash only for a period of time and extend its hours with free entry.
The outage raises questions about why the spike in electricity usage caught MISO, the grid operator that ordered the outage, off guard, local officials said. Some also alleged that MISO granted only a short notice for the outage directive.
Two nuclear power plants, both operated by Entergy, were out of commission as of May 23 and remained so on Sunday, according to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s website and local officials. One was down for planned maintenance. The other went offline last week, and “tripped” as Entergy tried to bring it back online, Lewis said.
The grid operator is blaming higher than average temperatures, but it wasn’t even that hot. I actually spent most of the day outside because it was pretty pleasant on Sunday.
Currently, Louisiana is trying to to fast-track environmental permitting for advanced nuclear projects under a bill that aligns the state with a national effort to accelerate next-gen reactor development and in April, Louisiana joined a lawsuit with several other states to challenge the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s “utilization facility rule,” a licensing requirement that applies uniformly to all nuclear reactors, regardless of size or risk profile.
Landry said the state is amenable to the development of small modular reactors, or SMRs, with a capacity to produce up to 300 megawatts of electricity. By comparison, Entergy’s Grand Gulf Nuclear Station in Port Gibson, Mississippi, which provides part of the utility’s power, has more than 1,400 MW of generation capability
“Joining this lawsuit is about defending our ability to pursue advanced energy solutions like SMRs — solutions that are reliable, clean and essential for economic development in the State,” Landry said in a LDEQ news release. A 2022 research study from Stanford University that found small modular reactors may actually exacerbate challenges of highly radioactive nuclear waste, which makes the governor’s statement seen a big misleading.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta data center is still under construction in Louisiana, but as of May 16th, had caught the attention of House Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse for seeming to ignoring previous climate commitments, as well as the New Orleans based alliance for Affordable Energy, and the Union of Concerned Scientists for a lack of transparency and concerns regarding community pollution.](https://www.theverge.com/news/668934/meta-ai-data-center-gas-energy-climate-sustainability)
I feel like people of Louisiana should know that SNRs are not as a perfectly reliable and clean as the Governor might believe they are, so I posted an article about the bill on Reddit. There seemed to be a big influx of people in Louisiana that felt very strongly that this was the correct path for Louisiana, and that SNRs wouldn’t pose the same risk as other nuclear reactors. Instead of arguing back and forth with them, I just decided to make a new post and include some information provided by the Union of Concerned Scientists in their article Five Things the “Nuclear Bros” Don’t Want You to Know About Small Modular Reactors
Even casual followers of energy and climate issues have probably heard about the alleged wonders of small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). This is due in no small part to the “nuclear bros”: an active and seemingly tireless group of nuclear power advocates who dominate social media discussions on energy by promoting SMRs and other “advanced” nuclear technologies as the only real solution for the climate crisis.
Here are five facts about SMRs that the nuclear industry and the “nuclear bros” who push its message don’t want you, the public, to know.
-
SMRs are not more economical than large reactors.
-
SMRs are not generally safer or more secure than large light-water reactors.
-
SMRs will not reduce the problem of what to do with radioactive waste.
-
SMRs cannot be counted on to provide reliable and resilient off-the-grid power for facilities, such as data centers, bitcoin mining, hydrogen or petrochemical production.
-
SMRs do not use fuel more efficiently than large reactors.
Now I’m permabanned from my state’s subreddit.
That blows but I’m not surprised. Reddit has gone full lockdown on anything opposing glorious leader, his politics, and the money Spez presume will soon flow to him as just reward. The LA sub was already super conservative anyway. Even the fucking NOLA sub is shockingly conservative for this town. The Money doesn’t like to be reminded of inconvenient truths.
Well, I’ve labelled you as an LA local. If we keep posting and building up a fediverse LA community, I know we’ll eventually get to critical mass here!
I’m hoping more people from LA move here. The Nola sub has gotten insanely right wing, and is mainly just a business advertising platform. It got so ridiculous that r/Louisiana actually became the more progressive sub. I have my suspicions about why, especially bc several of the users have been there a very long time.
When the WaPo story about mass surveillance came out, I posted about it and the Palantir/New Orleans contract. I was here the whole time it was going on, but didn’t know anything about it until the WaPo story came out.
Anyway, the city wide ban on facial recognition tech was put in place afterwards, and then in 2022, Cantrell (while under investigation for her own BS) asked the city to lift it and replace it with an ordinance that contained all kinds of crazy surveillance shit (that once again, I completely missed).
Definitely not the most concerning of everything in there, but this part caught my eye bc the New Orleans subreddit specifically has taken this weird pro Landry slant, and accounts seem to swarm/get sooo weirdly aggressive if you point out it’s weird bc that is not how most people in the city actually feel about Landry:
Lastly the proposal would allow the city to use “social media or communications software or applications for the purpose of communicating with the public, provided such use does not include the affirmative use of any face surveillance.” The Lens asked Tidwell and Green why this was included and what it was meant to allow, but neither responded.
I’m like 90% sure that a lot of the accounts on that sub are on duty police, and I’m absolutely sure the state police and/or ice are using it to snoop for information or get people to incriminate themselves. To be fair it could be true of any social media, even here bc it’s a pretty vague thing to include.
Lately that sub has been filled with all these posts that are practically like “I’m trying to commit fraud with government assistance, can anyone tell me all the locations in the city that can help me accomplish this? Many thnxx” 🙏
Also, there was a post where I was concerned ICE could be using Reddit to try and locate someone for deportation, and when I brought up that it wasn’t a good idea to give people information like that, this right wing account was like “WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU!!111!1 U R UNHINGED!!1111”
Looked back at the post several weeks later the day the WaPo story came out. Someone else had commented something like “omg that is me thank you so much!!” and the OP was like “no problem so glad I could use Reddit to help!!” 😊 and then neither account ever had any activity again afterwards lmao
How are you labeling users?
Some apps have that feature. Sync and Voyager for example. Likely others too.
Connect app does this too and quite nicely imo.
Good to know, as voyager isn’t for me, and I’m on a syncing ship.
Yep, Voyager!
Local subreddits were always trash
they reflect the local culture ;)
suburban locations bring out the best out white america
Because Reddit isn’t a place to express your true opinions. Rather, it’s a social media website designed to control the populace and herd us like sheep. Like pretty much all social media.
What you plan on doing in real life, don’t post it.
Only the regime or interest group sanctioned opinions are permitted…
I am shocked how in 2025 majority is still learning this hard lessons
I mean, I learned it a while back when I lost my account of 10 years. I only use Reddit to try to warn people in my community about the insane information that is being suppressed right now even at a local level
It is effective too… Reddit opinion shaping operations are wild. If they can’t suppress, they let it run. Then scrabs it as if it never happened.
This was quite effective but ever since the dead CEO parasite got justice and Gaza, they have lost the edge with this tactic as public opinion is pretty strong and a lot of people are noticing the censorship. So they get on there and post out of spite. It seems they are hoping this blows over and then can go back to decide and rule. Left right circle jerk is their preferred situation
Lol for a min I thought you were talking about Aaron Schwartz and I was legit trying to figure out what he had done lol
Aaron did nothing wrong, MIT is a parasite leeching on taxpayers that used its clout to ruin his life because publishing company said so.
Maybe they get blessed by st luigi
Yes, keep your true intent private. Never on here.
Damn Reddit is like the worst fediverse instance. It’s amazing people use it
most subreddits of regions and cities have been overtaken by conservatives/tankies, i avoid those subs. the state subs seems to be different. you’re lucky the reddit filters decided not to be anal and shadowban you as they have banned alot of people for random things.
Smr is not a good enough distinction. Small light water reactors will still be just as bad but some designs eliminate some or most of the problems. I am not aware of what is coming comercially in La.
Nuclear is the future though. We need some of these running to get more running.
I am not opposed to expanding nuclear if it is done safely, but this is literally only being done to power the AI database.
Landry is not doing this because he’s trying to find a better alternative for the environment. He is also creating giant ammonia and liquid natural gas processing plants here that have been in the works for some time.
Trump, Landry and everyone else that has already dumped way too much money into AI databases are going to use whatever energy source necessary to power these things. They didn’t really have much of a plan (what a fucking surprise 🫢) in terms of how they would deal with the insane amount of energy required to do so.
They have only recently realized as a result of the massive environmental disaster/first AI database in the U.S. that Elon Musk has been running in Memphis for the last year, how unsustainable it is to use gas turbines even with their plans to dismantle the EPA and increase drilling in the U.S. and invest in Russian oil.
‘How come I can’t breathe?': Musk’s data company draws a backlash in Memphis
People have been trying to draw increased attention to what Musk has been doing in Memphis for over a year now, but facing speech suppression. That’s actually how I first ended up on Lemmy.
Trump released his EO regarding nuclear safety deregulation on Friday, but the Tuesday before, Musk gave an interview to CNBC that seemed to strongly indicate, he was beginning to accept AI would need to shift towards nuclear energy to handle capacity issues
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that this unexpected mad dash for the U.S. to begin embracing nuclear energy is potentially related to why the relationship between Trump and Putin seems to have cooled recently.
Nuclear has been slowly dying for a long time.
Mostly due to oil industry supporting green groups that are against it.
Yes, i get that it’s a big upfront cost and everything, but there is absolutely no reason why governments shouldnt be pushing investment into these, I am pretty sure we have only 2 in our country and we are selling some electricity to Germany at a hefty premium
There are two in my state alone. Yesterday a list of U.S. nuclear power plants with the highest number of safety violations was released, and the two in my state were #1 and #3 for most violations…
I’m not opposed to nuclear energy but absolutely do not buy for one second we should be further allowing deregulation of licensing and other safety precautions.
Paid off old nuclear is cheap but unsafe. New nuclear is the most expensive power there is, and takes forever to build and the result is not guaranteed to be reliable. Unless you’re Russia, or China.
And it’s unclear where you’ll be getting your fuel, nor is it guaranteed in future.
Old nuclear was really good considering it was.the first big rollout
There are a lot of reasons why old nuclear was profitable, but nowadays:
- Construction is more expensive
- Regulations are in place (EU perspective)
- There is less of a demand for enriched Uranium
As long as these things don’t change, I don’t think we’ll ever see cheap nuclear power again. They are designed to last decades, so they also just turn a profit decades into the future, and investors don’t like that. You can blame energy liberalisation once again.
They are designed to last decades, so they also just turn a profit decades into the future, and investors don’t like that.
These same investors rely on endless state aid… who fucking cares what they like. The state can deploy CapEx for strategic projects but some how westoid normie can’t wrap his head around this concept so we keep funneling money to the parasites to pad their profits for poorly thought out projects.
It was sabotaged by big oil
@AcidicBasicGlitch yeah, i fell into a few nuclear promoting chats from the front page feed on there
And yet another industry set to destroy the LA ecosystem backed by politicians that stand to gain less than the culture stands to lose. Every time I go back it seems like that place keeps falling more in a hole than the year before. Only thing that gets better is the boudin.
Nuclear energy is uneconomic. It’s useful for military purposes only. By being large projects, they are popular with politicians for the bribery potential. Because nuclear energy is expensive, fossil fuel lobby groups support it for not competing with them whenever they are actually built. SMRs is just a new scam taking off because the old scam is no longer marketable.
The reason its expensive is the lawsuits against it, including those funded by oil company. France built massive amounts over 50 years ago, did we lose our ability to build or what?
We did lose nuclear expertise in workforce. There is a time delay to construction that can result from public NIMBY opposition, but that is not a significant expense.
Nuclear energy is most corrupt industry on earth, because it is most expensive/uneconomic energy that must be sold as though it is economic. The overbudget pattern (almost always over double the estimates that justified approval) is primarily corruption to leverage sunk costs, rather than incompetence.
Even French experts say that new nuclear construction should be postponed to 2060, when possible manufacturing (automation) advances could make costs affordable.
Statement submitted without evidence can be dismissed with prejudice
well whatever we do, lets stop all progress on smrs 'cuz reasons!
Or we could continue to just regulate them, and elect leaders that understand nuclear safety regulations have existed for the last 50 years for a good reason…
It’s weird how they had no interest in expanding nuclear energy in Louisiana until they realized the gas powered turbines and giant LNG plant Landry has had in the works weren’t going to be enough to keep these supercomputers running.
I guess regulated nuclear energy is too woke
any nuclear energy is progress.
Uhh… Do you know why they call Louisiana cancer alley?
Hint: it’s not because there are way too many regulations/strict oversight of how businesses dispose of toxic waste.
Nuclear is by ridiculously far the safest form of actively generated energy, it causes less radiation than Coal and Gas and less deaths per year than fucking Hydro
Considering how your government literally nuked it’s own people, maybe ask CIA what they’re pulling in your area
Lol funny you should mention what the CIA has been up to here
It’s actually kind of been this whole thing lately
Still don’t see how that changes the fact that this state does not need to be trusted to further deregulate nuclear safety regulations? If anything, given the owner of Palantir is apparently obsessed with nationalism and the Manhattan project, I would say it makes a pretty good argument for why safety regulations should be reinforced if not increased.
We already have at least two nuclear energy plants, and even with current regulations in place, we just made this list that was released yesterday of the 13 worst locations for security violations in the U.S. nuclear power plants.
We’re number 1 & 3…
The SNRs the governor wants to use and further deregulate in order to power these stupid AI databases are actually more difficult to monitor, generate more nuclear waste than traditional nuclear reactors and the safety features are more prone to failure in natural disasters such as flooding. So deregulating them in Louisiana, where it floods all the time, makes about as much sense as handing a fully loaded automatic weapon to a toddler.
I’m really not sure how anyone can pretend that generating massive amounts of nuclear waste isn’t a problem, but you’re definitely not the first person that seems to refuse to acknowledge that, and it honestly seems a little like propaganda on behalf of nuclear energy. At best it’s misleading.
I’m not disagreeing that we should be moving towards increasing nuclear power, but I do think we need better safety enforcement and oversight (definitely not less) and better plans for what we actually do with the waste we generate.
People in Missouri are getting cancer in large numbers due to left over nuclear waste
We’re literally still trying to figure out what to do with waste generated in WWII
The third worst nuclear disaster in history after Chernobyl and Fukishima, was caused by an explosion of buried nuclear waste in Kyshtym. It’s just not as well known because of Russian propaganda that kept it covered up for decades. I’m sure they would have done the same in Chernobyl if they had been able to.
If there was any plan beyond getting rich quicker, and not caring who they hurt to do so, I would feel differently, but nobody, especially these people, should be allowed to have less regulations and oversight for how they handle nuclear safety.
right cuz those coal plants are just awwwesomely better.
Right now, nuclear is mostly being supported by fossil fuel interests, either as simply a way to stall action on climate change (because nuclear plants take decades or more to design and build), or because they’re better placed to commercially benefit from nuclear because it’s very highly centralised and can only be run by large corporations, in contrast to highly distributable renewable power.
it also takes a very long time to get a nuclear plant up and running.
Yes exactly. That’s how they stall action on climate change.
