Latest news with #IsaiahTaylor
Bloomberg
24-05-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Trump Rattles Markets With New Tariff Threats
"Balance of Power: Late Edition" focuses on the intersection of politics and global business. On today's show, Susan Schwab, Former US Trade Representative, shares whether or not President Trump's tariff threats are an effective strategy. Natasha Hall, Senior Fellow with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, discusses the US and Iran concluding their fifth round of nuclear talks with no agreement made. Isaiah Taylor, Valar Atomics CEO & Founder, and Governor Spencer Cox of Utah discuss President Trump signing an executive order boosting the nuclear power industry and what these orders unlock. (Source: Bloomberg)
Bloomberg
23-05-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
What Trump's Executive Signing Means for Nuclear Power
Isaiah Taylor, Valar Atomics CEO & Founder, and Governor Spencer Cox of Utah discuss President Trump signing an executive order boosting nuclear power industry and what these orders unlock for the nuclear energy industry. They also talk about how Valar is testing a nuclear test reactor in Utah, and the mines Utah will be working on now that this order has been signed. Both Isaiah & Governor Cox peak with Kailey Leinz and Joe Mathieu on the late edition of Bloomberg's "Balance of Power." (Source: Bloomberg)
WIRED
29-04-2025
- Business
- WIRED
States and Startups Are Suing the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Apr 29, 2025 10:59 AM Critics of the NRC say its red tape and lengthy authorization timelines stifle innovation, but handing some of its responsibilities to states could undermine public trust and the industry's safety record. Photograph:American nuclear is in 25-year-old Isaiah Taylor's blood: his great-grandfather worked on the Manhattan Project. In 2023, Taylor, who dropped out of high school to work in tech, started his own nuclear company, Valar Atomics. It's currently developing a small test reactor, named after Taylor's great-grandfather. But the company says that overly onerous regulations imposed by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the country's main regulatory body for nuclear reactors, has forced Valar Atomics to develop its test reactor overseas. In early April, Valar Atomics, in addition to another nuclear startup, Deep Fission, as well as the states of Florida, Louisiana, and Arizona's state legislature, signed onto a lawsuit against the NRC. The lawsuit, originally filed in December by Texas, Utah, and nuclear company Last Energy, blames the NRC for 'so restrictively regulat[ing] new nuclear reactor construction that it rarely happens at all.' The US has historically been the global powerhouse of nuclear energy, yet only three reactors have come online over the past 25 years, all behind schedule and with ballooning budgets. Meanwhile, other countries, like China and South Korea, have raced ahead with construction of reactors of all sizes. Some nuclear advocates say that the US's regulation system, which imposes cumbersome requirements and ultra-long timelines on projects, is largely to blame for this delay—especially when it comes to developing new designs for smaller reactors—and that some reactors should be taken from the NRC's purview altogether. But others have concerns about potential attempts to bypass the country's nuclear regulations for specific designs. The NRC has long been criticized for its ultra-slow permitting times, inefficient processes, and contentious back-and-forth with nuclear companies. 'The regulatory relationship in the US has been described as legalistic and adversarial for nuclear,' says Nick Touran, a licensed nuclear engineer who runs the website What Is Nuclear. 'That is kind of uniquely American. In other countries, like France and China, the regulators are more cooperative.' The lawsuit takes these criticisms one step further, claiming that by regulating smaller reactors, the NRC is misreading a crucial piece of nuclear legislation. In 1954, Congress passed the Atomic Energy Act, which created modern nuclear regulation in the US. That law mandated regulations for nuclear facilities that used nuclear material 'in such quantity as to be of significance to the common defense and security' or that use it 'in such manner as to affect the health and safety of the public.' 'We would love the NRC to respect the law that was written,' says Taylor, who believes the reactor his company is working on sits outside of that mandate. 'What it would do for us is to allow innovation to happen again. Innovation is what drives the American economy.' 'The NRC will address the litigation, as necessary, in its court filings,' agency spokesperson Scott Burnell told WIRED in an email. While we generally think of nuclear reactors as huge power plants, reactors can be made much smaller: Models known as small modular reactors, or SMRs, usually produce a third of the energy of a larger reactor, while even smaller reactors known as microreactors are designed small enough to be hauled by semitruck. Because of their size, these reactors are inherently less dangerous than their large counterparts. There's simply not enough power in an SMR for a Three Mile Island–style meltdown. The lawsuit argues that by mandating a cumbersome licensing process for all types of reactors—including those that are safer because of their size—the NRC is both violating the Atomic Energy Act and stifling progress. A company called NuScale, the only SMR company to get NRC approval for its model, spent $500 million and 2 million hours of labor over several years just to get its design approved. In late 2023 it pulled the plug on a planned power plant in Idaho after customers balked at the projected high price tag for power, which soared from an estimated $58 per megawatt-hour in 2021 to $89 per megawatt-hour in 2023. The lawsuit comes at a unique time for nuclear power. Public sentiment around nuclear energy is the highest it's been in 15 years. Dozens of new nuclear startups have cropped up in recent years, each promising to revolutionize the American nuclear industry—and serve power-hungry industries like data centers and oil and gas. Private equity and venture capital invested more than $783 million in nuclear startups in 2024, doing twice the number of deals in the sector as they did in 2023. The lawsuit 'is about getting steel in the ground. This is about getting nuclear on the grid,' says Chris Koopman, the CEO of the Abundance Institute, a nonprofit focused on encouraging the development and deployment of new technology. The Institute, which was founded last year, has no standing in the lawsuit and does not represent any plaintiffs but has served as a 'thought partner,' per Koopman, who coauthored an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in January announcing the lawsuit. Deep Fission, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, seeks to generate electricity using small modular reactors placed a mile underground—a model its CEO, Liz Muller, says is both safer and cheaper than traditional construction. Even though Deep Fission is a party in the lawsuit, the company has also begun pre-licensing its design with the NRC. Muller sees the lawsuit as bringing a new approach to the agency regarding SMRs: helping it to develop 'a regulatory sandbox, where we're allowed to explore approaches to regulations while we're moving forward at the same time.' The lawsuit posits that individual states 'are more than capable of regulating' smaller reactors. Thirty-nine states are already licensed by the NRC to handle and inspect nuclear material, while Koopman points out that the states involved in the lawsuit have recently passed legislation to speed the construction of nuclear projects in-state. 'All of the states involved in the case have already entered into agreement with the NRC, in which the NRC has recognized that they know their stuff,' he says. Taylor believes allowing states to compete on regulation would help boost safety within the field of small modular reactors. 'Innovation is what drives the safety ball down the field, and the only way to do that is to have different regulators with different ideas,' he says. 'That's federalism 101.' Adam Stein, the director of the Nuclear Energy Innovation program at the Breakthrough Institute, an eco-modernist policy center, sees some serious flaws with this approach. He says that while some states, like Texas, may have the resources and the knowledge to create their own effective regulatory body, other states may struggle. Stein likens a patchwork of different regulations as being akin to car seat laws, where the age of the child required to be in a car seat varies across states, making it tough for a parent to plan a road trip. 'Some states are less consistent in applying safety standards than others,' he says. 'Some states would prefer their standards to be stricter than national standards. Some states have reduced safety standards from nationally recommended standards.' Muller says she understands these concerns. 'There is a risk if we get wildly different regulatory processes, that would not be a great result,' she says. 'But I think there's also an opportunity for states to move forward and then for other states to piggyback on what has been developed by the earlier adopter.' Stein also foresees a possibility for continued red tape, as even with state-level regulation, the NRC would still be forced to review individual reactor designs to see if they were safe enough to pass off for state review. 'A developer couldn't just assert that their design is so safe, that it's below the line,' he says. 'It's still going to have to go through a review to determine whether the NRC should review it.' Just because a nuclear reactor can't cause massive damage to big populations doesn't necessarily mean it's fail-safe. The only deadly nuclear accident on US soil occurred at a tiny reactor in Idaho, which killed its three operators in the early 1960s. Designs for small reactors have made leaps and bounds in safety since then—a development Touran says is thanks in part to regulations from the federal government. 'I believe a well-designed small reactor, subject to reasonable nuclear design standards based on years of lessons learned, would be very safe,' says Touran. 'I do not believe that this means anyone should be able to go out and build a small reactor with minimal oversight.' There have been efforts in recent years to speed up the NRC's permitting process. In 2019, during his first term, President Donald Trump signed the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act; among its many reforms, it mandated that the NRC shift around key licensing processes and create a new process for licensing smaller, more technologically varied reactors. Last year, President Joe Biden signed the ADVANCE Act, which made even more changes to the NRC process; both of these pieces of legislation passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. 'At this point, the NRC says pretty willingly that they're working hard to be more efficient, that they understand they need to be more efficient, that they have been more efficient with recent licensing applications,' says Klein. For developers like Taylor, this progress is too little, too late. 'Do we really want China and Russia to be the global nuclear developers for the world?' he says. 'I don't. I would like the United States to be the nuclear developer of the world.' Permitting reform alone, especially in the SMR space, may not solve the issue of competing with other world powers. Nuclear energy might be overregulated, but it is also expensive to build, even for smaller reactors, requiring big up-front investments and a large amount of labor. NuScale did lose valuable time and money on a cumbersome regulatory process—but its energy was also competing in price against gas and renewables, which are, on average, cheaper than nuclear power from plants that have been running for decades. After decades of battling public fear of nuclear plants, nuclear acceptance has reached a pivotal moment. When compared to the massive health toll from fossil fuels, which research shows are responsible for 1 in 5 deaths around the world, nuclear power is exorbitantly safe. But there's a sense from some advocates that some of the hard-won trust nuclear energy now has from the public—supported by decades of careful regulation—is in danger if the movement becomes too cavalier about safety. When Valar announced it would join the lawsuit, Taylor published a blog post on the company's website that claimed that the company's reactor was so safe that someone could hold the spent fuel in their hands for five minutes and get as much radiation exposure as a CAT scan. Touran questioned this claim, leading Taylor to post the numbers behind the company's analysis on X. Another nuclear engineer ran his own calculation using these inputs, finding that holding fuel under the conditions provided by Valar would give a 'lethal dose' of radiation in 85 milliseconds. (Taylor told WIRED that Valar is working on a 'thorough analysis' in response that will be public in a few weeks and that the initial claims around the spent fuel were simply 'a thought experiment we did for our own internal illustration purposes' and not part of the lawsuit materials.) 'We've operated reactors so well for so long that a whole new breed of advocates and even founders mistakenly believe that they're fail-safe by default,' says Touran. 'The reality is they're made fail-safe by very careful and well-regulated engineering and quality assurance.'
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Yahoo
Isaiah Taylor's racial profiling case against 2 Milwaukee officers could get new jury
A new jury could hear the federal civil case brought by the son of a circuit court judge, who alleges two Milwaukee police officers illegally detained him nearly 10 years ago while he was delivering a turkey to a neighbor. Stephen C. Dries, a federal magistrate for the U.S. District Court for Wisconsin's Eastern District, handed down the order for a new trial on March 17, online court records show. "Seventh Circuit victory!" Milwaukee attorney Mark Thomsen, who represents Isaiah Taylor, wrote in a Thursday post on Facebook. "The Court concluded 'that clearly established law bars the type of stop and frisk conducted here.' Even one second of continued detention after an unlawful stop is too long.' When reached by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Thursday, Thomsen deferred further comment until after he has had a chance to talk with his client and his client's family. Attempts to reach Taylor or his mother, Lena Taylor, whom Gov. Tony Evers appointed last year to fill the circuit court judgeship left vacant when Audrey Skwierawski became interim director of state courts, were unsuccessful. Isaiah Taylor filed a lawsuit in federal court in Milwaukee in 2021 accusing Milwaukee police of racial profiling and of violating his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Named as respondents are Milwaukee police officers Justin Schwarzhuber and Jasen Rydzewski, and the city of Milwaukee. Isaiah Taylor had returned home on Dec. 21, 2015, with Lena Taylor, then a state senator, after giving out holiday meals to needy families. Isaiah Taylor, who was 16 at the time, wanted to take a turkey to a neighbor down the street. On the way, he was stopped by Schwarzhuber and Rydzewski as he was running near North 15th Street and West Capitol Drive. Court records say the officers frisked him, searched his bag and detained him in their squad car while they checked to see if he had any outstanding warrants. Robberies had been reported in the area beforehand. The magistrate judge presiding over the case earlier in district court granted qualified immunity and summary judgment to Schwarzhuber and Rydzewski on Taylor's Fourteenth Amendment equal protection claim. The magistrate also allowed it on Taylor's Fourth Amendment claim concerning the initial stop and his being frisked. However, the court denied qualified immunity to the officers on another Fourth Amendment issue – on whether the officers were operating within the law when they continued to detain Taylor beyond the initial stop and frisk. A jury found the officers not liable, and the court later denied Taylor's motion for post-trial relief. That triggered an appeal from Taylor, who argued the court improperly awarded qualified immunity and summary judgment to the officers, and improperly declined to grant him judgment as a matter of law. Dries concluded the officers aren't entitled to qualified immunity or summary judgment, and vacated both the summary judgment on the stop-and-frisk issue. Dries also vacated the jury verdict on Taylor's continued detention claim and ordered a new trial. It was unclear immediately when a new trial could be scheduled. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Isaiah Taylor gets new trial for profiling case against 2 Milwaukee officers
Dubai Eye
10-02-2025
- Sport
- Dubai Eye
Isaiah Taylor shines as Dubai Basketball win on the road again
Isaiah Taylor was among the stars to impress as Dubai Basketball celebrated another win on the road, defeating Serbia's Spartak 90-84 in a thrilling game – their 15th victory of the season. In the Round 20 clash in Subotica, Dubai Basketball found themselves down early in the first quarter, but rallied back with eight consecutive points to take a 20-12 advantage into the second quarter. When play resumed, Dubai took further control of the game with Serbian shooting guard, Danilo Anđušić's, driving layup seeing them up 35-23 before former NBA star, Davis Bertans, brought the lead to 44-36 just before half-time. The intensity rose late in the fourth quarter, as Spartak fought back and reduced their deficit to just two points with less than two-and-a-half minutes remaining — but Dubai Basketball's, Isaiah Taylor, who would later be named Man of the Match, hit another bucket in the clutch to extend Dubai's lead and close the door on Spartak's comeback bid. It was a game to remember for Taylor who finished as the game's top scorer with 22 points while adding 6 assists, 2 rebounds and 1 steal. French Center, Jerry Boutsiele, continued his impressive form since joining the team with seven rebounds. The result saw Dubai Basketball improve their record to 15-5, currently fourth place in the standings and still in control of securing a play-off berth. Dubai Basketball Head Coach, Jurica Golemac, had nothing but praise for his team. He said, 'It was a well deserved victory and we controlled most of the game. We knew that Spartak would not give up, and it showed. They have a strong crowd behind them that gives them energy. We gave up a little in defense in the last quarter and they came close but we managed to play good in the last two defenses and handled the situation well to close out the win.' The ABA League will now have a three-week break with Dubai Basketball set to be in action again at Coca-Cola Arena on Sunday, March 2 against Cibona – the start of three back-to-back home games.
