The Return of CONG (Coal Oil Nuclear Gas)

It’s “Déjà Vu All Over Again” in America. I feel as if I am being forced to revisit old 20th-century American paradigms under the current administration, while the rest of the world is rolling into the 21st century. This year we are told that AI needs more nuclear power plants built, “Drill Baby, Drill” is once again the White House theme song and the Navy needs more battleships. Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it.

In December 1910 (not a typo), a Popular Mechanics (Page 783) article “The Aeroplane vs the Battleship” envisioned swarms of planes attacking a battleship, concluding that advances in aeroplanes would make battleships obsolete. As Popular Mechanics predicted more than a century ago, now in 2026, Ukraine’s advances in drone warfare are being copied by Iran, causing the Navy to keep precious aircraft carriers further away from conflicts. The Russian fleet and armoured tanks are suddenly vulnerable to drone swarms. And Battleships? The last battleship commissioned was in 1944. But hey, let’s build ten more!

In 2008, Sarah Palin popularised “Drill Baby, Drill” to reemphasise America’s return to fossil fuels, even as the growing hazards of climate change were already well known. Today, the science of climate change has reached even more compelling conclusions than Palin’s campaign utterances. New data shows that the Gulf Stream is weakening, sea levels are increasing and storms as well as droughts are worsening. Yet the current administration claims Climate Change is a “con”, a “scam, and a “hoax”. As a result of the science, the rest of the world is changing direction by adopting renewables, while America is choosing to ignore the science and “Drill Baby, Drill.”

By 2010, the first “Nuclear Renaissance” had already begun to fissile, with all but two of the 20 proposed Renaissance Reactors dead in the water. Today, China is installing 100 solar panels every second, the equivalent of a large nuclear reactor every 8 hours. Yet in America, the administration is putting roadblocks in front of solar and wind installations while subsidizing the restart of retired coal and trying to restart retired nuclear plants. It’s the return of CONG – Coal Oil Nuclear Gas!

Forget the pronuclear zealots and antinuclear activists. What do the economists have to say? Forbes Magazine has no dog in this fight and here is what they said:

One of the most critical metrics for evaluating energy sources is the Levelized Cost of Electricity — which is a measure of the total cost of building and operating a power plant over its lifetime and expressed in dollars per megawatt-hour. Additionally, the 2024 World Energy Outlook report further states that LCOE serves as a comprehensive metric that consolidates all direct cost components of a specific power generation technology. This includes capital expenditures, financing, fuel costs, operations and maintenance, and any expenses related to carbon pricing…

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the LCOE for advanced nuclear power was estimated at $110/MWh in 2023 and forecasted to remain the same up to 2050, while solar PV estimated to be $55/MWh in 2023 and expected to decline too$25/MWh in 2050. Onshore wind was $40/MWh in 2023 and expected to decline to $35/MWh in 2050 making renewables significantly cheaper in many cases. Similar trends were observed in the report for EU, China and India.