They essentially got a ton of traction because Altman was on the board (but since left) but most (not all) tech people don’t understand deep energy problems.
> “It’s not like the NRC asks for an extraordinary amount of information,” said a former nuclear official who was involved in reviewing Oklo’s failed application and spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing their work in the industry. “The NRC asks three questions: What is the worst that can happen, what are the systems, structures and components in your reactor that prevents that from happening, and how do you know that?”
>“Oklo would only answer them at a very high level,” the person said. “They wanted to say nothing bad can happen to our reactor.”
>DeWitte said Oklo had planned a robust public rebuttal but claims that at the time, NRC officials “threatened us, in a retributional way, not to issue a response letter to correct the record.”
>“Well, they’re gone now,” he added.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/11/26/nuclear-e...
This...does not square with the successful hamstringing of the nuclear energy industry by regulation over the past several decades.
In the 2000s the NRC adopted a new licensing scheme at industry urging. What "hamstringing" are you talking about?
Okla would sound a lot more reliable here if they would have fought back with lawsuits with their accusations, or if the would release the communication now that there's no chance of this supposed retribution. As it is Okla makes all the talk of "hamstringing" seem like people not doing their jobs and trying to blame others.
From the horse's mouth in 2012, only 3 (*3!*) such licenses had been granted in 30 years ( https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=5250# ).
If your agency's job is to regulate something and you've done it so successfully that barely anybody has actually gotten a license--all while complaining about compliance costs--maybe you're the problem.
Had the fellow said "Oh, we have a really high bar for safety and compliance, and not everybody's able to handle that", it'd be fine. But, acting like "oh golly gee we're so easy to work with we don't ask for much" is brazen horseshit.
Or any the other many many other reactors abandoned at various states of development:
http://www.powermag.com/blog/nuclear-renaissance-recalls-pas...
There's an argument that the NRC could do things better, but placing all the well documented failures in the nuclear construction industry on the NRC doesn't make sense. Who are going to believe, the people who are always late and over budget, or the bystanders in the industry that have watched it all play out?
Why?
The US Navy doesn't have to go through the NRC.
But remember that with the Seawolf classes the cost was astronomically higher than in the Virginia submarine; high costs are very possible without the NRC and are frequent, and an excellent counterexample to show the underlying fallacy behind the "NRC must be reason costs are high" argument. And remember that the Navy can use highly-enriched fuel that we don't allow in civilian reactors, and that the military nuclear labor force usually gets the best and the brightest and that the civilian nuclear work force gets the leftovers.
The NRC could be the source of high cost, but if so there should be two clear pieces of evidence to show that: 1) clear examples of the NRC doing something to drive up costs, and 2) some example of what to do instead of the NRC, or differences with other regulatory schemes that we could adopt instead. In particular, I never hear the corrective action that people want to the NRC. Having the Navy license civilian power reactors does not seem feasible. The closest we got to suggested regulatory reform culminated with Vogtle and Summer's failure: combined licensing. The biggest benefit of the industry's request merely gave the builders enough rope to hang themselves with bad design and their own delays.
[0] https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-are-nuclear-power...
The US Navy has managed a total of 273 nuclear reactors, 6200 reactor-years, over 177 million miles, averaging 4 new reactors per year over 70 years.
They have done this with a perfect safety record. Zero accidents. Zero injuries, zero deaths, zero environmental pollution.
US Navy Cost: $2 billion for 2 x 400 MW reactors in Ford-class aircraft carrier
NuScale: $10 bn for 500 MW reactor
Westinghouse: ~$8 bn for 1000MW reactor
Military reactors should be more expensive, not less, because they operate under harsher conditions. But they aren't, because the US Navy doesn't have to go through the NRC.
https://www.nuclear-power.com/nuclear-engineering/thermodyna...
Assuming that your cited numbers are correct, "$2 billion for 2 x 400 MW reactors in Ford-class aircraft carrier" translates to 267 megawatts of electrical output for $2 billion. Or $7.5 billion for 1000 megawatts of electrical output. This is not much cheaper than "Westinghouse: ~$8 bn for 1000MW reactor."
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy-and-environ...
[1] https://www.eenews.net/articles/doge-told-regulator-to-rubbe...
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/doge-doesnt-exist-with-eigh...
Anyone could’ve picked up the mantle of fixing the NRC, which is an obviously broken agency. France transitioned the majority of its grid to nuclear back in the 80s. Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden, anyone could have picked up this low hanging fruit and fixed the problem. Nobody even tried.