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Nuclear is so back. America's birthday gift to itself just went critical.

The Blaze
6 days 23 hours ago


For the first time in more than 40 years, privately developed nuclear reactors are switching on in America.

On June 4, Antares Nuclear's Mark-0 reactor went critical at the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory. Valar Atomics followed on June 18, producing heat from a reactor core inside a tentlike structure in the Utah desert. The Department of Energy called it "the rebirth of America's nuclear industry."

'Nuclear in America has been defined for too long by delays, by companies that said they would and then didn't. ... Today is the first of those commitments delivered.'

President Trump has long been skeptical of large traditional reactors, saying they tend to get "too big and too complex and too expensive." But he bet big on small modular reactors, pledging to "approve new reactors" and "slash the red tape."

In May 2025, Trump signed four executive orders and set a deadline: at least three new small reactors online by July 4, 2026 — the nation's 250th birthday.

The Department of Energy's Reactor Pilot Program followed, fast-tracking 11 new designs and sidestepping the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's traditional licensing process, which previously took more than 20,000 hours to complete. Oversight was placed with the Energy Department instead.

Antares CEO Jordan Bramble put the stakes plainly: "Nuclear in America has been defined for too long by delays, by companies that said they would and then didn't. We said criticality in 2026, electricity production in 2027, and power to the warfighter in 2028. Today is the first of those commitments delivered on the schedule we set."

Chief nuclear officer at Ocean Atomics Nick Touran summed up the pace: "We haven't done anything this fast, basically ever."

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Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images

The reactors look nothing like today's massive plants, which average 44 years old. Radiant's design uses small nuclear fuel balls — its chief nuclear officer compared them to gobstoppers — built to be mass-produced and deployed anywhere from military bases to disaster zones. A third reactor still needs to go critical before July 4 to fulfill the president's pledge.

This month, the Trump administration also announced $17.5 billion in loans to build 10 large-scale conventional nuclear plants using Westinghouse technology. Construction is targeted to begin by 2030.

Idaho National Laboratory Director John Wagner made the bigger ambition clear: "The goal was never just criticality. The goal is 400 gigawatts of nuclear capacity by 2050."

Critics aren't sold. Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists called the race "essentially an exercise in public relations," warning that slashing regulations undoes decades of safety lessons. "This is taking us back to the 1950s, and that is not progress."

The program skipped public comment periods and environmental reviews — which the DOE said were unnecessary.

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Zoe Jung

Fatherhood under attack: Allie Beth Stuckey calls out media's latest ​hit pieces on dads

The Blaze
6 days 23 hours ago


This past Father’s Day weekend, an article on fatherhood in the New York Times went viral.

However, it wasn’t about a great father. It was about a woman who transitioned and calls herself a father.

“You might be thinking, ‘Really? In the year of our Lord 2026, this is what the New York Times is talking about? I thought we were over this madness. I thought we realized and successfully stigmatized roping kids into being sources of affirmation for gender delusion,'” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey says on “Relatable.”

The headline reads, “To my daughter, my gender was never complicated.”


The article contains cartoons to help describe the relationship between “father” and daughter, including one where the daughter asks, “How long did you have breasts for Dad?”

“What a tragic, tragic line for a child to utter. The daughter is later shown at school with friends where a friend says, ‘You can’t grow a beard. You’re a girl.’ And the daughter responds, ‘My dad did, and he was a girl,’” Stuckey explains.

“And this is supposed to prove that this is super simple. Or maybe it proves that it is so delusional that a child who still believes that there is a fat man that can circle the universe in one night, fit down their chimney, and put presents under the tree like that. They believe it because they believe all kinds of fantastical things,” she continues.

But the New York Times isn’t the only publication to do the opposite of celebrating fatherhood.

“There was also this piece in the Toronto Star: ‘A modest proposal: Why it’s time to abolish Father’s Day,’” Stuckey says, pointing out that the article is a bit of a “bait and switch.”

In the article, the author laments the pressure put on children to buy gifts, claiming that the real gift is quality time.

“If your problem is materialism, that's one thing. Or you just think it’s, you know, a made-up reason to buy Hallmark cards, that’s fine,” she says, adding, “But the title, we need to abolish Father’s Day, or we need to abolish Mother’s Day, another thing that I’ve heard in the past due to some undue burden that’s just perpetuating this idea that celebrating fathers and positive fatherhood is not something that we need to do.”

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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BlazeTV Staff