Leave It to Private Enterprise – Not the Army Bureaucrats

Several of my columns over the last couple of months have discussed the use of small modular reactors (SMR) as the demand for electrical power has skyrocketed. The rapidly advancing technology provided by artificial intelligence (AI) and massive data storage and retrieval solutions has been adversely impacted by the inability of the current antiquated power grid and the power technologies (hydro, carbon fired, nuclear, solar, and wind turbines. The principle limitations require any new producer of energy to be located near the existing grid in order to connect to the distribution network. That coupled with the myopic view that increased demand for power must be met by the current technologies which to a man are inflexible..

For industries requiring substantial power, it means that they have to locate their facilities near the power grid and wait for the power generators to plan, locate and construct the next massive power generation facility to meet the increased demand. Not only does that retard the growth of industries that are power dependent, but it basically closes out the location of those industries in rural areas where land is abundant. My favorite example is Portal, North Dakota which enjoys abundant land and naturally occurring cooling* as an excellent choice for data centers which currently require massive amounts of power to provide refrigeration to offset the heat generated by the acres of computers necessary for the collection, storage and retrieval of data for any number of businesses.

Those columns went on to describe the entry of small modular reactors that are scalable by simply adding or subtracting units. I mentioned NuScale Power because it is Oregon based and has been in the field for at least a dozen years. But there are at least twenty others, the majority of which have working models and are currently manufacturing units for delivery in the near term. It is a robust, competitive market and the competitive market will drive innovations for size, power production scalability, and cost.

That is why I was surprised and disappointed to read an announcement from the United States Army that it was launching a program to design, build and deploy small modular reactors in at least five locations by September of 2028.

“The program will build commercial microreactors through a nimble, milestone-based contracting model in partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), accelerating delivery of advanced energy solutions to the warfighter.

“The reactors will be commercially owned-and-operated, with the milestone payments intended to help companies close their business cases as they seek “Nth-of-a-kind” production. The Army and DIU will be modeling this contracting mechanism off of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program.

We are just coming off of a thirty year drunken binge of spending trillions of dollars on a series of technologies that common sense would tell you were not going to provide growth in reliable energy production over either the near or long term. Billions on wind farms that failed to recognize that the wind doesn’t blow all of the time at a reliable rate and that even a brief experience demonstrated that individual wind generators were down nearly as often as they were operational. Billions on a technology that had no solution as to what to do with the broken parts or the abandoned fields of “wind farms.” Billions more dollars on solar technology that failed to recognize that the sun does not shine all of the time. Billions of dollars on solar alternatives like solar mirrors that never worked from the day they were installed.

And even other alternatives like thermal energy that common sense will tell you has severe limitations – the principle one (like coal fired plants and hydro electric) requires you to locate within limitations for connectivity with the antiquated national power grid. And all because there is some b.s. government program that will pay for little or no progress.

I thought we were moving beyond that under President Donald Trump but apparently not.

What the Army is proposing already exists from a variety of providers. There is nothing new, innovative or necessary in this so-called Janus project. This reminds me of the Portland City Commission that repeatedly declined to go out and purchase an accounting and billing system for their water and sewer programs – always smuggley announcing that the bureaucrats had a better way – an Oregon way. A solution that always cost multiple times what existing and available systems would have cost and always failed to deliver a usable program.

If the nations bureaucrats – local, state and federal – were so effing smart they would be out in the private sector putting their great ideas out in competitive environment – you know like the one that exists for SMRs and will not be improved by a bunch of know-it-alls overseeing private technology.

So Mr. Trump and Secretary Pete Hegseth, you would do yourself and the country a huge favor if you would alter the charter for the Janus project to ensure that is providing a list of energy needs and not energy design. That no federal dollars are spent redesigning what is already available. And that no federal bureaucrats is in charge of design, construction or placement. In fact, you would do all of us a favor and make sure we aren’t growing the next “green energy scam.”

For me, I trust NuScale Power, TerraPower, Okio and Kairos Power – they have all proved that they know what they are doing. They have existing and operating models. Who I don’t trust is the federal bureaucrats and their continuing lack of accomplishments on anything other than raising the cost or delaying the completion date of any project. If you are ever tempted to believe government is the answer, I have a tunnel project and a high speed rail line in California that are both years behind and billions of dollars over budget. Go figure.

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* It’s cold in Portal, North Dakota, located near the Canadian border where the average low temperature in January and February is -10 and -8 degrees respectively. Even in summer the average low temperature is 50 degrees. In essence Portal has freezing temperatures from October to through April. Not exactly the temperatures likely to entice a tourist rush but nearly perfect for mitigating the cooling required for data centers. The same can be said of numerous communities in Alaska.