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Next-Gen Nuclear Reactors Poised for Surge in U.S. Power Grid

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A manufacturing plant in Texas plans to power its production with an advanced nuclear reactor instead of natural gas, advancing the Trump administration’s push to unleash commercial nuclear power in the U.S.

When completed, the nation’s first grid-scale advanced nuclear reactor will power a 4,700-acre facility that produces plastics and other materials used in dozens of products.

Dow Chemical and the nuclear energy engineering firm X-energy submitted a construction permit this week to the federal government for a small modular reactor, or SMR, at Dow’s Seadrift, Texas, manufacturing site. The reactor will replace an aging natural gas plant and eliminate nearly all greenhouse gas emissions.

The permit is the first step in an anticipated resurgence in nuclear power. Mr. Trump initiated the nuclear power comeback during his first administration, and nuclear power is now set to skyrocket as the president seeks to rebuild the U.S. manufacturing base and establish the nation as a global leader in artificial intelligence.

X-energy CEO J. Clay Snell said the Dow project “will demonstrate how the technology deployed at Seadrift, Texas, can be quickly and efficiently replicated to meet incredible power demand growth across America.” (Read more from “Next-Gen Nuclear Reactors Poised for Surge in U.S. Power Grid” HERE)

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Israel hit Syrian nuke plant in 2007 after Bush refused to do so

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Former prime minister Ehud Olmert ordered the 2007 strike on a Syrian nuclear reactor immediately after former US president George W. Bush informed him that the Americans would not attack the facility, according to a Channel 10 report aired on Sunday evening.

Bush’s deputy national security adviser Elliot Abrams was present when the president called Olmert on September 6, 2007 and made clear that the US would not take action, and that then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice would fly to Israel to hold a joint press conference with Olmert to alert the international community of the secret reactor. The US had decided to handle the Syrian threat via diplomacy.

Olmert responded to Bush that the secretary’s visit would not be necessary and that Israel would deal with the nuclear facility on its own.

“If you’re not going to act against the reactor then we are,” Abrams quoted Olmert as saying during the teleconference. “You don’t want to know where or when,” the former prime minister reportedly added.

The Israelis were convinced that time was fairly short, and that they had to strike the reactor — built by the Syrians with extensive input from the North Koreans — before it went live, the TV report said.

Read more from this story HERE.