Trump Orders Faster Build-Out of Nuclear Power Plants | Among a flurry of executive actions, Mr. Trump directed the nation’s nuclear safety regulator to speed up approvals for new reactors.

Being able to harness the power of atoms is cool, but directly harnessing the power of a star is arguably far cooler.

Nuclear doesn't scale globally and it's not renewable. It's contribution to humankind's power generation negligible and it will stay that way.

AI needs large amounts of cheap power. Nuclear does not deliver on those requirements - vast quantities of renewables would be far more suitable for this purpose. However, renewables are woke and as such Trump would never lean into them, no matter how profitable it would be.

Nuclear doesn't make sense for that purpose because it'd have to quickly be able to spin up and down. Most reactor designs aren't really able to do it quickly in normal operations, and those that can can't do so in a way that makes any economic sense. They're financially outcompeted by their alternatives.

Storage is the solution, which we can build today in a viable way and is rapidly becoming cheaper and cheaper.

The financial case for nuclear today is shoddy at best. It's why no company wants to touch it with a ten-foot pole unless heavy government subsidies are involved. The case for nuclear in ten years is, given the continuous advancements in renewable energy costs and battery storage tech, almost certainly dead.

If we got our head out of our ass and invested into battery tech - e.g. sodium-ion batteries or proton batteries, we could very quickly build sustainable energy storage instead of relying on technology that is potentially dangerous or continuing to rely on fossil fuels.

If you start a nuclear project today, you'll get it in 20 years. And that's for conventional reactor designs with all their well known flaws. If you spend the same money on renewables and storage, you'll have it all up and running next year. We don't have 20 years. We need solutions now.

but only as long as they output power.

We could say the same about nuclear power:

EDF cuts nuclear production in reaction to soaring temperatures

No, we have viable energy storage solutions already. We haven't built them out, but they are already feasible. And the best part about them is that they get more feasible each year, while nuclear becomes less and less feasible each year.

Assuming that you start today, by the time the first nuclear plant comes online, it will be so wildly uncompetitive that only huge amounts of subsidies will be able to keep it running.

Closing down existing nuclear was a mistake, and there's probably an argument to be made that scaling back on its construction and R&D was also a mistake. But trying to go back to nuclear at this point when renewables and storage are so obviously taking over is a larger mistake.

Nuclear power is the safest, cheapest and cleanest only because we have learned so many painful mistakes and that every new reactor is built with only safety in mind.

If you even get a doubling of power usage that way, I'd be surprised.

they are really expensive have a history of costing far more than promised

Because every plant is essentially a unique prototype in a field with very few experienced experts. Building nuclear plants makes building future nuclear plants cheaper and increases the pool of nuclear experts in the country.