It looks like those trendy new nuclear plants will never happen now

An obnoxious boondoggle reaching its logical conclusion

For a long time now the quick answer from nuclear industry shills to the complaints about the meltdowns, high costs, and inefficiency of traditional nuclear plants (the ones that exist) was hyping up a planned “small” reactor concept that was going to change the game. Regulatory approval had even been secured for one of these “SMRs” and it was expected to be the first of many.

Now this first major attempt at creating such a plant, the so-called “Carbon Free Power Project” (CFPP) in Idaho, has been canceled. Many reasons were given but the fact is that real green alternatives like wind and solar continue to become more efficient, while creating none of the obnoxious spent fuel waste that is still an issue in these newer designs. Its backers decided that there is no good reason to lose more money on the project.

That so many people had nuclear energy sold to them as a “green” alternative is not surprising—in the long postwar nuclear era the industry has tried to sell it for all sorts of dubious applications, including mining and canal building. It has always been propaganda—but among the most successful ever.

This project being canceled really is an event to celebrate—while the shares of NuScale (the corporation hoping to profit from this latest wave of nuclear hype) have cratered, the prospects for truly sustainable green energy alternatives have gotten much better with the end of the CFPP project and it might be worth looking at ETFs like TAN and ICLN.

Disclosure: Through personal holdings that I control and through investment LLCs in which I am a partner, I buy, hold, and sell stocks, bonds, ETFs, options, NFTs, and cryptocurrencies, not limited to but including some of those discussed in this newsletter.