There may be no radiation leaks seeping into the country’s power system yet, but it seems the policymaking core of the Department of Energy (DOE) is already 'overheating' and treading halfway into a meltdown.
The DOE’s newly issued Circular (No. 2025-10-0019) reads like an incentive policy, but it's more of a legal trap and a government-induced instability in power system design—one that risks sabotaging grid efficiency while openly defying a Supreme Court ruling on competitive bidding for all power supply agreements (PSAs).
Top of the queue is the department’s decree that the pioneer nuclear plant “will be treated as a baseload facility and granted priority dispatch in coordination with the DOE, the Independent Market Operator (IMO) and the System Operator (SO), regardless of the nuclear technology deployed.”
This demands urgent technical reassessment: forcing nuclear into the ‘first dispatch’ order is risky because it is an inflexible plant. It needs to generate power continuously and runs at or near full capacity round-the-clock; it cannot be curtailed even if there's excess electricity in the grid; and ramping it up or down is technically challenging and danger-lade
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