I do not want nuclear power approved quickly, or easily. I want it to be burdensome, difficult, and with a massive requirement for proving out safety in even the most unlikely of scenarios.
This area does not need Silicon Valley style disruption at the cost of endangering lives and destroying the earth.
People talk about climate change in apocalyptic terms until it actually matters in real world decisions for things other than the things they wanted to do anyway.
We are currently destroying the earth because we are stuck using technology from the 1800s to power our 21st century society. Yes we do need silicon valley style disruption.
Give them a pacific atoll, or an old oil drilling platform, and let them do whatever they want.
Problem is it will cost the rich and powerful a little opportunity cost and a bit of wealth.
The looming climate catastrophe has political and social solutions. Not technical ones.
Moreover, we're still pretty far from the point where this even becomes an issue. We can accelerate the deployment of renewables a lot before this is a real constraint on anything.
In the future (I predict) it will more and more be distributed both production and consumption.
The technology all exists. But it does not suit the concentration of power. It will take democracy (people taking action - perhaps direct action) to avert the catastrophe.
I am optimistic.
The claim from the NRC in that letter is:
“Oklo’s application continues to contain significant information gaps in its description of Aurora’s potential accidents as well as its classification of safety systems and components,” Veil said. “These gaps prevent further review activities. We are prepared to re-engage with Oklo if they submit a revised application that provides the information we need for a thorough and timely review.”
(phew, that PDF does not copy/paste text cleanly, at least not in Safari. Had to re-type it.)
Asking for more information until the other party gives up is a tactic -- as is refusing to provide damning information. It's hard to say which game is being played, or even if any game is being played at all, without knowing details.
Longer explanation
Oklo's application doesn't follow the Standard Review Plan format. That 4,500 page document of regulatory guidance fits the large light water reactor systems, structures, components, and processes it was designed for. But it is unwieldy and inappropriate for Oklo's reactor design. Reviewers are used to the SRP and the applications produced using its specified format; they are not yet comfortable with the way that the Oklo application provides required information.
The NRC's denial of Oklo's novel COL application is a disappointment, but it's not a complete surprise. Oklo is doing something that is difficult by pushing change in a federal regulatory agency whose processes and procedures have been developed over decades to focus on a particular kind of reactor. Oklo's 1.5 MWe reactor uses liquid metal filled heat pipes to passively move heat energy out of a few dozen assemblies containing metallic alloy fuel rods. That is a completely different machine than a 1,000 MWe reactor that pumps high pressure water through a core made up of hundreds of assemblies consisting of a bundle of hundreds of thin walled tubes filled with UO2 pellets. Oklo and the NRC review team have worked diligently to come to an agreement that the COL contained information required for a complete safety review. Oklo has answered every request for information it has received, but the NRC has judged those responses to be not yet complete. The NRC had the option of obtaining information it thought was missing through another, more focused round of RAIs and response. Under the pressure of a Congressionally mandated deadline of 3 years for reviewing a docketed application, it chose to deny the application "without prejudice." This gives the NRC the opportunity, outside of a formal license review process, to communicate what they believe is missing from the application. It gives Oklo the opportunity to produce a better application that fills those information gaps.
Oklo co-founder and COO Caroline Cochran pointed out the stunning fact that no nuclear plant that has submitted an application since the formation of the NRC in 1975 has yet commenced operation.
Assuming accuracy, that's a damning statistic. I don't believe for a minute that every single application that's crossed their desk for nearly half a century was so flawed or unsafe that it was unworkable.
Knowing what I know of governments and bureaucrats, I'd speculate that they're being asked for a bunch of irrelevant or impossible (i.e. doesn't apply to their design) information, and the people in the bureau are being useless and obstructive about it since there's no downsisde for false negatives.
The NRC may be the culprit there also, but that is a completely different question.
https://mobile.twitter.com/patrickc/status/14807290103257661...
It's easy to blame regulators, but a big factor is simply cost. For the last 20-30 years, low fossil fuel costs in the US have meant that the huge investment needed to get a nuclear plant from application to operations didn't make sense. Westinghouse Electric went bankrupt in 2017 because of it. Add in that nuclear has been very out of favor with the public, it makes it really hard to get a reactor built.