Dear Secretary Wright:

Congratulations on your appointment as Secretary of the Department of Energy. With your experience and background I am sure you will have great success in shaping and implementing the energy policy of the United States.

Way back in 1978, I did some work for the DOE to help them track the energy usage of Americans. That turned into the total financial tracking called the credit card system. So I think the DOE can significantly contribute to American life.

I'd like to make a suggestion as to what the layman would regard as a positive vision:-
"Give the individual American citizen access to record levels of power and energy in a format and environment where they can afford it, and be trusted with it"

Let me explain.

Individual access to power has been on a expanding slope:-

man-power ~ 10 Watts
ox-power ~ 100 Watts
horse-power ~ 1 KW
steam-power ~ 10 KW
gasoline-power ~ 100 KW
jet-power ~ 10 MW+

On the last - a 747 on its takeoff roll generates GW levels of power - amortized over the roughly 500 passengers that is the 10MW a passenger has access to - to enable him/her to travel anywhere in the world.

Reducing the cost of existing sources is still important. But as vision, the next stage is 1 GW. We need new applications where this level of power makes sense. The applications that come to mind are reliable power sources for creating new living space out of hostile terrain, and engines for interplanetary travel. NASA has multiple proposals.

We are not yet ready. Chemical systems are not sufficiently compact. While nuclear has the density and is being touted as "clean" alternative to carbon fuel, so far it is actually an incredibly "dirty" fuel, with waste products that are dangerous for hundreds to millions of years. Getting rid of waste heat from a small package is another big problem. The energy industry is reluctant to threaten their current cash cows, and stymies the development of "cheap" nuclear power. They use these risks - pointing to the need for incredible care in the development and testing of solutions. E.g. BWXT is dragging its heels on the development of engines for DRACO.

So, how do we get there? We need to be able to point to places where experimenting can be done in a relatively unregulated fashion. I'm sure OKLO and their ilk would love an unregulated environment to test and experiment. We should point to a Sun intersecting orbit as as an unregulated test and disposal site. If taken up, this would boost the space launch industry and further drive down the cost of a launch.

We could point to the Moon as a place to site datacenters, if there was power to power them. This would get AI companies to fund quick development of both space and power technology.

We also need to buy back "energy amplifier" technology from the Norwegians who have just been sitting on it. Because it uses subcritical reactors, this avoids the risk of explosions.

Finally, from a national security and competitiveness standpoint, I dont think we can tolerate a lot of dilly dallying in the development of nuclear technology applications. The Russians already have Burovestniks - missiles powered with air-breathing nuclear engines. The Chinese are putting a lot of work into nuclear reactors to supplant coal, and are likely to beat OKLO at fielding SMRs.

So, a lot of ideas to explore. I wish you the best.

Sincerely,

Niket Patwardhan