I’m strongly pro-nuclear and pro-innovation. We need new reactor designs and new technology pathways. What I’m not pro is over-promising and under-delivering. Nuclear has paid dearly for that pattern in money, schedules, and public trust.

Skepticism is not rejection — it’s a demand for operational proof.

I’ve spent my career operating light water reactors, where performance is measured in capacity factor, outage duration, delays, and unplanned trips — not slide decks.

Exotic fuel and coolant reactors don’t get a free credibility pass. They earn it with data and operating results over years of operation. They deserve hard questions — and proof.

Today, several exotic fuel and coolant developers imply that their FOAK plants will reach capacity factors comparable to the LWR fleet. That’s a VERY high bar.

Modern LWRs achieve ~90% capacity factors because of decades of operating experience, mature supply chains, standardized procedures, trained operators, and disciplined maintenance.

Historical operating data for exotic fuel and coolant reactors tells a different story. Early performance has often been rough. Sodium plants struggled with reliability and maintenance complexity. Most high-temperature gas reactors produced low double-digit capacity factors. Molten salt systems were few and strictly experimental.

We do not yet have the operating depth with these fuels and coolants to justify LWR-class performance claims out of the gate.

Some developers say they’ve solved the historic problems — and maybe they have — but solving a problem on paper is not the same as proving it through years of plant operation. Until it runs reliably in the real world, it remains a hypothesis, not a result.

FOAK reality usually includes: unexpected materials behavior, fuel qualification delays, high TRISO cost at current scale, extremely difficult maintenance, I&C learning curves, longer outages, higher training burden, and immature supply chains.

Every experienced operator knows FOAK units teach hard lessons drawings never show. Those risks rarely appear in media releases — only confident claims about changing the nuclear landscape.

If your business case depends on LWR-level capacity factor from day one with a brand-new fuel and coolant system, that’s like planning a moon landing with a prototype rocket and a marketing schedule. You’re not being bold — you’re being unrealistic.

We’ve seen this before: confident projections, aggressive timelines, smooth curves on paper — followed by hard operational lessons.

Healthy skepticism is not opposition. It’s engineering discipline. It keeps high-consequence technology honest.

I want these reactors to succeed. But success comes from conservative assumptions, transparent risk discussion, and operational realism — not marketing optimism.

Under-promise. Over-deliver. Earn trust the hard way — the way the LWR fleet did.

That’s how serious energy technologies win.