larry johnson thinks the empire has forgotten what it knew about nuke power plants and can't learn any new tricks; 

 

Donald Trump made news briefly this week by proposing civil nuclear cooperation with Saudi Arabia that includes support for building nuclear reactors using US technology. This is not actually a new development. Discussions between the US and Saudi Arabia on a formal civil nuclear cooperation agreement (known as a “123 Agreement” under the U.S. Atomic Energy Act) have been ongoing for years. What makes Trump’s announcement new (and curious) is that he is insisting that the Saudis must sign on to the Abraham Accords in order to seal the deal. And that will be the deal killer if the Saudis hold to their position that there must be a Palestinian state before they accept the Abraham Accords.

But there is another more important reason that should give the Saudis pause in betting their nuclear future on the US… The US experience in building nuclear plants is a shambles.

In the pine barrens of eastern Georgia, two hulking concrete domes finally began splitting atoms last year, two decades after they were first imagined. The Vogtle nuclear plant’s Units 3 and 4 cost more than $30 billion, ran seven years late, and nearly bankrupted their builder. They are, by most technical measures, engineering triumphs. They are also a tombstone.

Vogtle is the first new American nuclear reactor project to cross the finish line in more than thirty years. In that same span, China built sixty. Russia built a global empire. And the United States— the nation that lit the first commercial reactor in 1957, that perfected the light-water design the world still uses, that once dominated the atom the way it dominated the microchip—has forgotten how to pour the concrete, bend the steel, and balance the books..............more...........