Storm clouds began to form in America’s Atoms for Peace construction program during the late 1950s. Clear-headed analysts identified many pitfalls in constructing commercial atomic power reactors that continue now, 70 years later. This February 10, 1958, opinion piece in Time Magazinewas not just prescient for the failure of the Atoms for Peace program, but also applies to the Small Modular Reactor (SMR) marketing ploy in 2025:

“Industry Asks More Government Help to Speed Program”

… to many U.S. businessmen, a stronger atomic defense is only one side of the coin… they insist that commercial nuclear power must be sped up, or else the U.S. will fall far behind other nations.

The main argument is over how much help the U.S. Government should give private industry. AEC’s [Atomic Energy Commission]position is that nuclear power for peaceful purposes should be largely a private venture, with AEC supplying only limited funds.

Originally, businessmen supported the idea, lest nuclear energy grow into a giant public-power program. Now their position has changed. Even the stoutest private power men feel that the program needs a strong infusion of Government aid because commercial nuclear power is so new, so complex, and so costly that private companies cannot carry the burden alone. …“There isn’t a reactor manufacturer in the U.S. who doesn’t favor Government assistance to get them over the hump.”

The big hump is the fact that conventional U.S. power is so cheap—and nuclear power so expensive—that the U.S. itself has no pressing domestic need for a crash program. … U.S. industry is learning, to its sorrow, that there is a vast gulf between atomic power in the lab and in commercial quantities. Costs have shot up to the point where they discourage even the richest companies… Even the biggest companies find the going rough…. G.E., like the others, thinks that if it could build three big plants in a row, it could learn enough to produce competitive power. But G.E. has no plans at the moment. As one reactor builder says: “Private industry has found that there is no money in atomic energy and no prospect of making any money”… For U.S. consumers, the lag in the commercial nuclear program is no great worry…the U.S. can afford to wait…. There is little doubt among nuclear experts that the U.S. must push ahead much faster than AEC Chairman Strauss is willing to go…. But until nuclear power becomes competitive with present power, he wants the Federal Government to make cash contributions to pay most of the difference between nuclear-and conventional-power construction costs… “The only way our country can achieve competitive nuclear power is through the building of a series of full-scale plants …. Our program must be accelerated.” ^[1][Emphasis Added]

Several themes from the 1958 Time Magazine opinion piece are identical to today’s unfounded marketing ploys announced by SMR manufacturers and supporters.

First, SMR corporations appeal to nationalistic pride by asserting that the U.S. will fall far behind other nations.

Second, the financial demands by today’s SMR investors and manufacturers are almost identical to those made during the 1950s that emphasized the need for Government subsidies. “There isn’t a reactor manufacturer in the U.S. who does not favor Government assistance to get them over the hump.”

Third, there is an unfounded belief that repeatedly building the same design will somehow reduce costs. “G.E., like the others, thinks that if it could build three big plants in a row, it could learn enough to produce competitive power.”

Forth, the Small Modular Reactor vendors are creating a sense of urgency, pushing nuclear regulators faster than necessary.

“There is little doubt among nuclear experts that the U.S. must push ahead much faster than AEC Chairman Strauss is willing to go…The only way our country can achieve competitive nuclear power is through the building of a series of full-scale plants …Our program must be accelerated.”

Fifth, much less expensive and proven technologies are available to produce electricity, so there is no reason to develop a new, untested, cost-prohibitive SMR nuclear technology. “For U.S. consumers, the lag in the commercial nuclear program is no great worry… the U.S. can afford to wait. …But until nuclear power becomes competitive with present power, he wants the Federal Government to make cash contributions to pay most of the difference between nuclear and conventional-power construction costs”

Following the 1958 Time Magazine Opinion, the business-friendly Forbes Magazine published an excellent one-sentence summary 30 years later pronouncing the utter failure of every single U.S. atomic construction project. By 1985, the economic debacle of building nuclear plants had reached the front cover of Forbes Magazine.

The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale.^[2]

Forbes was one of the first major business magazines to identify the adverse economic implications associated with nuclear power. As a financial magazine, it was a nuclear agnostic, conceptually neither in favor of nor against nuclear, it had no dog in the nuclear fight! It was following the money. In the intervening 40 years since the prescient Forbes cover story, nuclear remains much more costly than renewable alternatives.

The financial and schedule collapse of every nuclear project ever proposed in the U.S. during the last 60 years has been well-documented in thousands of mainstream media articles, in academia, assessments by financial analysts, Statehouses, and, of course, in Congress, before Federal Agencies, and in review by Environmental watchdogs and community nonprofits. Yet in 2025, policymakers and politicians remain enthralled with yet another of the nuclear industry’s latest marketing ploy disguised this time as the Small Modular Reactor.

To rephrase Yogi Berra, Building Small Modular Reactors appears to be “Déjà vu all over again”.

NOTES

1. February 10, 1958, Time Magazine ↑

2. Forbes Magazine, Cover Story, February 1985 ↑

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