> but SMRs should be cheaper and easier to construct.

The word should is doing some real heavy lifting there. Especially given the subject.

I guess we'll know in 2030 when one should come online.

With solar and batteries getting cheaper and cheaper, is this still a topic? Or at least for the time being until that "cheaper" gets cheaper enough?

Although generally safe these reactors aren't totally safe.

I'm concerned lax physical security will allow miscreants to blow them up and spread nuclear materials over a wide area. The ensuing panic would totally destroy any goodwill nuclear power has gained over the last 20 years or so.

I'm also concerned these things will mostly be used by Big Tech for their A.I. data-centers playing the Good Samaritan with their claims of "Carbon Neutral Environmentally Friendly A.I."

They're all ridiculously fuel inefficient and we're going to have to figure out how to dispose of thousands or tens of thousands of these reactors. Aside from that one that starts pre buried, where the plan is to just leave a spent nuclear reactor buried in a hole. A cost that will almost certainly be externalized to the taxpayers.

The promise here is the rich fleecing the average citizen.

Getting downvoted wicked hard super fast. But how else are we supposed to see this? How else do we citizens of the world interpret this? The fuel efficiency is a fact. The nuclear clean up has been a problem every single time.

"a supplement produced with financial support from Oklo Inc"

"Oklo Corp. Logo Oklo is designing and deploying advanced fission power plants to provide clean, reliable, affordable energy"

there is just one problem

like everything else with the current US administration

they deregulated nuclear safety

* https://www.npr.org/2026/01/28/nx-s1-5677187/nuclear-safety-...

* https://www.npr.org/2026/08/27/nx-s1-5920368/nrc-nuclear-rad...

any other administration even Republican I'd be willing to listen to why

this administration will happily kill thousands or give them cancer if it means another million dollars in their pockets

there is only one kind of nuclear reactor that should be built anymore

and that is Thorium reactors, they "fail safe" (or at least safer)

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElulEJruhRQ

I wish the article had more details on the cost to build these reactors, the cost to operate, refuel, dispose of fuel and then decommission. Details about how long they’re expected to operate, and how much power they will generate in their lifetime. Then we could get a projected cost per kWh for the power they will generate.

I ask because the last reactors the US brought online took so long to build and cost so much they caused the cost of power to go up.

This seems unworkable when solar is already causing power to be free (Australia), and gets cheaper by the day.

And a contrasting article from IEEE: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuc...

> Samuel B. Morris, the general manager and chief engineer of Los Angeles’s Department of Water and Power, traveled all the way to Geneva in 1955 to attend the first International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. There, he made a case for small reactors, arguing that because the “number of small units…is many times the number of large units,” there could be “economy in development and repetitive manufacture” of the small units.

> But nothing in the history of small nuclear reactors suggests that they would be more economical than full-size ones. In fact, the record is pretty clear: Without exception, small reactors cost too much for the little electricity they produced, the result of both their low output and their poor performance.

For me, SMRs don't pass the smell test. Buying one big plot of land for a reactor, building one power interconnect, having a localized water impact is way easier and cheaper than many. Even if its cheaper to build small reactor vessels, MANY of the other costs become more expensive in larger numbers. Costs that you can ignore while you're just building a prototype.

If it's so much cheaper to build multiple small reactors, just build one big plant with 24 small reactors. Thing is the nuclear reactor part is only 10-15% of the plants full cost: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec...

Seems like you'd end up with even more waste in the end. For example, the navy's nuclear reactor graveyard: https://interestingengineering.com/military/trench-94-the-ee...

You could probably just sink it all in the ocean near a subduction zone.