Fourteen Months

Fourteen months is the number in the Oklo story. That’s how much later its 750-megawatt Virginia project would land, the company says, if it misses the current PJM study cycle. FERC has now declined to order PJM to put it back in, so it misses.

I keep turning that over because of everything else happening around nuclear lately. The Army picked five microreactor companies, and DOE lent NextEra $1.9 billion to restart Duane Arnold. Then there’s the queue, which doesn’t seem to care. Nuclear is the most politically fashionable electron of 2026, and it’s standing in the same line as a gas turbine and a battery. The summary I have cuts off before PJM’s full reasoning, so I can’t say whether Oklo lost on the merits or on the calendar. Either way the calendar got it, which is sort of the point of a calendar.

Meanwhile a second federal judge, this one in a suit from Harris County, Texas, has thrown out the cancellation of the $7 billion Solar for All program, following last week’s ruling. Add the appeals court that told DOE “emergency” doesn’t mean whatever DOE needs it to mean in the coal plant case. Then remember that a federal court also stopped New York’s Climate Superfund law earlier this month, which cuts the other way entirely.

So the judges aren’t on anyone’s side. They’re reading. The statute says the money was appropriated. It doesn’t say the agency gets to decide afterward whether the money exists. A text is a boring thing to lose to, which may be why it keeps winning.

What I can’t tell from here is whether a restored program means money reaching rooftops, or a very correct order sitting on a desk at EPA. A court can say the line is live. Somebody still has to flip the breaker.