Move Fast and Glow Things

The SMR revolution will be mythologized

Between my morning cup of cacao and the grackles disputing in the trees above my grass roof, I read in ProPublica that a 31-year-old lawyer named Seth Cohen — five years out of law school — had convened a meeting at the Idaho National Laboratory to determine the future of nuclear safety in America.

The nuclear “Big Balls” czar that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) installed had no significant experience in nuclear safety law or policy. He did have opinions, however, and in Trumpworld, opinions are the new expertise. As Kara Swisher often reminds us, Silicon Valley techies are “frequently wrong, but never in doubt.”

When Idaho staff raised the matter of radiation exposure at a nearby site, Cohen offered a brisk geographic reassurance. “They are testing in Utah,” he said. “I don’t know, like 70 people live there.” A veteran staffer noted, with some delicacy, that there were also babies in Utah. “They’ve been downwind before,” Cohen’s DOGE assistant replied. The transcript of this exchange is one of the more illuminating documents produced by the current administration — not because it reveals anything surprising about the people now running things, but because it so…