Since you're in industry, any thoughts on the Rellis "test bench" at Texas A&M?
"SMR Four" Consortium:
In early 2025, Texas A&M selected four other major SMR companies to deploy reactors at RELLIS:
Kairos Power: Developing fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactors.
Natura Resources: Working on liquid-fueled molten salt reactors (MSRs).
Aalo Atomics: Focused on factory-fabricated microreactors (the "Aalo-1").
Terrestrial Energy: Developing the Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR).
Was, I'm retired. None good. SMRs were "flying cars" in the 90s, but the issue isn't the technology so much but the mindset of "factory" "startups" without grasping the rigorous process and security protocols of operations and sustainment. It's simply not scalable to have tiny nor supposed underground sites because the fixed costs of doing the minimum to secure and maintain them are large when done properly. Having a lot of SMRs on a single site would be fine, but I'm totally against unmanned SMRs in residential areas or running around on flatbed trucks not used by the military for emergencies. SMR manufacturers not backed by a major existing vendor like Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Westinghouse, or GE is also a risk because 90% of startups fail, and then it will be made the taxpayers' problem to clean up their messes. I'm betting that one or more SMR startups will skip insurance and/or licensure, or that techbro third-world country-style political intervention will do it for them and put the public at risk because DOGE will "decide" the NRC is "fraud, waste, and abuse".
Smells like socialism. Around here we privatize the profits and only socialize the costs. Like the impending bailout of the most politically connected AI companies.
Somebody must not be old enough to remember Amazon before AWS. Maybe you also don’t remember that Amazon started selling books before becoming the world’s largest fencing for selling stolen merch. They used to be the butt of many jokes for losing so much money for so many years while they expanded warehouses.
I think of it as you say "install dishwasher" and it plan looks like all the steps but as it builds it out it somehow you end up hiring a maid and buying a drying rack.
I'm surprised this hasn't been been automated yet but I'm pretty naive to the space - the problem of "when?"/"how often?" seems like a fun one to chew on
I think Gemini 3 pro (high) in Antigravity does something like that because I can keep asking for different changes in the same chat without needing to create a new session.
Its also plausible that the research field attracts people who want to explore the cutting edge and now that transformers are no longer "that"... he wants to find something novel.
"SMR Four" Consortium:
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