DOGE Just Ended Nuclear in America

Summary

In a recent video, hankschannel discusses the impact of DOGE's actions on America's nuclear power sector, particularly focusing on the essential role of the government's loan programs office in supporting innovative energy projects that commercial banks shy away from. With DOGE's interference leading to significant staff resignations within this office, the future of nuclear power financing in America becomes uncertain. The video contrasts technological advances and industrial policies with personal anecdotes and a light-hearted story about cast members of the film "School of Rock."

Highlights

• DOGE's actions have jeopardized the government’s loan programs office, crucial for nuclear power funding. 😱
• The loan programs office supports groundbreaking projects that commercial banks avoid due to risk. 💡
• Despite criticism, this government office has a lower default rate compared to traditional banks. 🔍
• The office backed significant nuclear projects in Georgia and Michigan, showcasing its critical role. 🔋
• DOGE's interference could delay or halt future innovative energy projects. 🛑

Key Takeaways

• The government’s loan programs office plays a pivotal role in funding innovative projects like nuclear power in the U.S. 🚀
• DOGE's recent moves have led to staff resignations in this crucial office, threatening future projects. 😬
• Alternatives like solar and wind energy are often bankrolled by this office, driving green initiatives forward. 🌞
• The office has a lower loan loss rate compared to commercial banks, showing its efficiency despite handling riskier projects. 📉
• Despite past controversies, the loan programs office remains a critical component of U.S. industrial policy. 🇺🇸

Overview

Hankschannel delves into the fascinating world of the U.S. government's loan programs office, highlighting its vital role in nurturing risk-laden yet potentially groundbreaking projects in the energy sector. As traditional banks veer towards safer ventures, this office takes the plunge, funding efforts like Tesla in its nascent stages and now focusing heavily on alternative energy sources, including nuclear power.

However, the plot thickens as DOGE enters the scene, unsettling the office's operations by prompting substantial employee departures. This upheaval has stoked fears about the future of innovative energy financing, given the office's unparalleled track record in managing loans more effectively than commercial banks. Will these disruptions steer the U.S. away from being a leader in nuclear energy advancements?

Even amid bureaucratic hurdles and ideological bickering, the loan programs office stands as a beacon of American industrial policy. The dismissal of its critical functions could impede the country's foray into cleaner, sustainable energy solutions. A surprising end to the video brings a lighthearted detour, celebrating feel-good stories and personal anecdotes, showcasing the diverse narrative style of hankschannel.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Nuclear Power and Government's Role The chapter begins with a discussion on the resurgence of nuclear power, highlighting a belief that it will make a significant comeback, though this trend is not currently evident in America. The speaker proposes that the U.S. may eventually recognize and correct its recent 'gigantic mistake' regarding nuclear power. The transcript introduces the 'loan programs office,' a government entity described as a sort of 'government bank.' This office is intended to finance projects the government wants to promote in America, which traditional banks might avoid due to their conservative nature. The notion that the government is less conservative than banks is presented as a surprising observation.
• 00:30 - 01:30: The Loan Programs Office and Its Impact on Tesla Chapter titled 'The Loan Programs Office and Its Impact on Tesla' discusses how traditional commercial banks often hesitate to finance innovative but unproven ventures due to the lack of track record. The narrative uses Elon Musk's early challenges in building Tesla as an example. As a new entrant assembling electric cars, Tesla required considerable funding for factory setup. Unable to secure this from conventional banks, the solution was the Loan Programs Office which supported such unprecedented ventures.
• 01:30 - 02:30: The Efficiency of the Loan Programs Office The chapter discusses the role of the Loan Programs Office in supporting the growth of significant companies, using Tesla as a primary example. The office's loan was crucial to Tesla's ability to build its factory, contributing to its current success. However, the chapter also addresses the risks involved, illustrated by the story of Solyndra, a solar power company that failed, resulting in a significant financial loss of half a billion dollars. Despite such failures, loans are structured with interest to ensure profitability, even if some borrowers default.
• 02:30 - 03:30: Alternative Energy and the Loan Programs Office The chapter discusses the role and performance of the Loan Programs Office in the context of alternative energy funding. Historically operating without much attention, the office gained prominence when the Biden administration's inflation reduction act significantly increased its funding. Despite dealing in theoretically riskier loans that may not qualify for standard commercial lending, the office boasts an impressive loan loss rate of just 2-3%, outperforming commercial banks. Its purpose is specifically to facilitate funding for projects that might otherwise struggle to secure conventional financing.
• 03:30 - 04:30: Loan Programs Office's Role in Nuclear Power The chapter discusses the importance of the Loan Programs Office in supporting nuclear power projects, specifically those that are considered first-of-a-kind. These are projects with innovations that the market is not addressing on its own. The Loan Programs Office functions as a large financial entity capable of providing substantial loans to credible individuals and projects with the potential to significantly advance the United States and humanity more broadly. The existence of such an office is praised as a smart strategy, comparable to similar offices in other countries like China.
• 04:30 - 05:30: Challenges and Criticisms of the Loan Programs Office The chapter discusses the objectives and focal points of the Loan Programs Office, particularly its orientation towards alternative energy solutions. It addresses the limitations in further innovating in traditional energy sources like coal, oil, and gas, emphasizing the eventual depletion of these resources. Due to its emphasis on renewable energy, the office is sometimes referred to as a 'green bank' by those with centrist or center-left political views, indicating its role in promoting sustainable energy developments.
• 05:30 - 07:30: Personal Anecdote: Watching School of Rock The chapter discusses the utilization of markets to encourage a transition to different energy production systems. This transition is criticised by some as a misuse of funds, often referred to as a 'green slush fund', suggesting that the funds are not repaid. However, evidence is presented that such programs, like the loan programs office, generate revenue through interest, illustrating their potential profitability and questioning why there is opposition to their existence.
• 07:30 - 09:00: Cute Story About Former Child Actors This chapter discusses the role of a government bank office in industrial policy, specifically highlighting the loan programs office as part of the inflation reduction act. The program authorized loans amounting to half a trillion dollars, having distributed approximately 10% so far. A new development involved Doge, implying some form of involvement or change directed towards bankers and their employment choices.
• 09:00 - 15:00: Playing Connections Game The chapter discusses the staffing issues at the loan programs office, which has lost about half of its staff after orders from Doge, contrasting with other parts of the Trump administration that see the office as a crucial asset. This situation has created challenges in managing the loans that have already been issued.

DOGE Just Ended Nuclear in America Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 I made a video a little while back about how I thought that nuclear power was going to be coming back in a big way and it still is just definitely not in America. I don't know actually maybe they'll realize the gigantic mistake they have just made and they will undo it. But there's this thing called the loan programs office. It's basically a government bank that is used to fund things that the government would like to see happen in America that otherwise would not happen because banks are just too conservative. Now this is a wild thing to say. the government is less conservative than banks. But yeah, banks will basically only fund stuff that
• 00:30 - 01:00 they've seen work before. So say for example, you're like a young guy who made a bunch of money with his like tech startup in the payments space and you want to build a car company and so you found this car company and you invested in you started to help build it with the founders and now you need to like build a big factory. No normal commercial bank is going to do that because you have no track record of building car factories and no one has a track record of building electric car factories. And so enter the loan program's office. They
• 01:00 - 01:30 would give you that loan and allow you to build your big factory. And that is exactly what happened to Tesla. And that loan was instrumental in the existence of Tesla today. This is a good thing. Everyone likes it. Now, at the same time, there was also this case that and no one can shut up about of Celindra, which was like a solar power company that went belly up. That resulted in a half a billion dollars of lost money, which is a lot. But this is the thing about loans. You charge interest so that you can make money even if some of them
• 01:30 - 02:00 fail. The loan program's office has existed for a long time, mostly behind the scenes, not catching a lot of flack or a lot of attention. Though Biden's inflation reduction act dramatically increased the amount of money that it had to deploy. But it has a loan loss rate of around 2 or 3%. Which is better than commercial banks. So the loans that end up not coming back, it's better than commercial banks. Even though the loans that they are making are riskier theoretically because otherwise they just get normal commercial loans. It's specifically designed to help fund
• 02:00 - 02:30 first-of-akind projects, which is exactly what you want to do because those are exactly the things that the market isn't taking care of. and having there be some large banklike thing that is able to give large loans for people who are credible and who have ideas that could like carry not just the United States but humanity forward substantially and and more rapidly than otherwise would happen is so good. The loan programs office is like I think one of the smartest things that we have. Other countries have them too. China's
• 02:30 - 03:00 is gigantic and ours is focused a lot on alternatives to current energy stuff which makes sense because there's a lot of opportunity in that space right now and and like we can't innovate that much more in coal and oil and gas. We all I thought were on the same page that like that's not the f eventually we're going to run out of those things anyway. And so because it's often focused on alternative energy stuff, it's sometimes called a green bank usually by people who are like more center or center left. And it's like this is how we're going to
• 03:00 - 03:30 help incentivize through markets the transition to a different set of energy production systems which has resulted in the people on the right calling it a green slush fund where it's just like they're taking your money and they're giving it away. But there's not even like the money gets paid back. Like Celindra was half a billion dollars of loss. The loan programs office makes more than that in interest payments every year. like it it makes money. It's a bank. It's a bank run by the government and it makes money and it's not as efficient as it could be. I don't know why you don't even want this to exist. It's like a fundamental
• 03:30 - 04:00 cornerstone of industrial policy. If you want industrial policy, you need a government bank office like this who could take risks. Through the inflation reduction act, the loan programs office was authorized to loan out half a trillion dollars about. It's loaned out so far around 10% of that. And now what has happened is Doge has come in and they've said to all of these bankers who are not hard to employ. These are not people who are wanting for career opportunities. They've said to all these people, look, you can quit now and we'll
• 04:00 - 04:30 keep paying you for 6 months or something like that or later on we'll fire you and you'll get no severance. And so a lot of these people are taking that opportunity. And right now it looks like the loan programs office has lost about half of its staff because Doge came in and said, "We don't want you to be in this work anymore." when like a lot of other I think pieces of the Trump administration see the loan programs office as a huge potential asset that they would like to deploy, but now no one's around to administer the loans that they've already given out, let
• 04:30 - 05:00 alone figure out how to give out new ones. These are not people who needed a job. They are people who wanted to work in something that was more interesting and more meaningful. They could make more elsewhere. the only bank in America that is financing nuclear power projects right now that goes both for existing technology nuclear and potential like firstofakind kinds of nuclear stuff is the loan programs office. It's the only one doing it. Way too risky for commercial banks. They are not interested in it. There's too much
• 05:00 - 05:30 regulatory weirdness. It's been too long since we've built a nuclear power plant. There's too much weirdness in the energy sector generally with like the cost of both batteries and solar panels dropping so quickly. For the units that went online in Georgia recently, the LPO financed $12 billion, which is going to be paid back because we successfully built them and now it is generating electricity that people are paying for. They have a commitment of over a billion dollars for a plant in Michigan to refurbish and turn back on a nuclear uh reactor there. And the LPO is backing
• 05:30 - 06:00 companies that are doing small modular reactors, which is this area of nuclear power that people are excited about where it's like instead of trying to build a custom nuclear power plant every time, you instead have like a single plant that you just exercise over and over again and they're smaller so you can have like three of them on site or just one of them or 20 of them or whatever. There's X Energy and Terrap Power and Oaklo and they are all financed by the LPO. And of course, they do a ton of other stuff. They do solar stuff. They do wind stuff. They do geothermal stuff that I think could potentially like be like actually what
• 06:00 - 06:30 we do instead of fision and instead of fusion. I think that it's potential. I think that that's absolutely possible and like the reason why we are able to investigate it right now because banks will not finance it because it is too new is the loan programs office. It also is helping to finance conversion of automobile industry stuff in various ways to modernize car manufacturing, do more battery and EV stuff. It's it's like the most obvious bipartisan good thing. You know, like China's version of this we don't
• 06:30 - 07:00 understand well because they don't have to be transparent about what they do, but it's probably at least four or five times bigger than what the US is spending. And I think there's like a bunch of little ones like each province has the ability to do industrial policy on its own and so they're all spinning loans and we have no idea what their loan loss rate is because that might look bad. Like we got to do it the American way. But it's so crazy that like Celindra became this big debacle when it wasn't even a like an issue. There were so many loans that all the money came back with interest and it
• 07:00 - 07:30 paid that back and all those companies now are like in the world doing good things pushing society forward. I mean, the fact that that was turned into some kind of attack on the loan programs office and like like why even what don't you like? It's a program that works that's administered well and like they're trying to give away half a trillion dollars. They had 200 employees. So like each person is responsible for over $2 billion and you want them to do it more efficiently than that. I'm not saying it couldn't be more efficient, but I am saying that per
• 07:30 - 08:00 dollar of loans, both going out and the dollars coming back in, that's way more efficient than any commercial bank has ever been. Now, there are reasons why it could be more efficient. There's reasons why it can be better. There's reasons why it could be riskier. And there's reasons why it pushes society forward much faster than commercial banking. It's just so dumb. It's so dumb. And I don't think even people in the Trump administration wanted it to happen. I think that Doge just has like cart blanch to go in and do stuff cuz they want to and they feel like it and like
• 08:00 - 08:30 where can we mess around? And it's extra kind of disgusting because the OPO gave Elon Musk this big ass loan to build his first big factory. It's textbook. I got in and I'm going to close the door behind me. I find iting gross and it's hurting all of us. It's not good for anyone. It's 100 bankers on the scale of the entire federal government. I'm sorry. I think that should be 10 times higher. They have such a good track record. We have so much going for
• 08:30 - 09:00 us in this country. And petty, boring, ideologically driven like this is what stands in our way. It's so dumb. So, I want to finish this video with an entirely different topic because I'm too mad and we need to take it down a notch. But before we turn those tables a little bit, this video is brought to you by the Awesome Socks Club. You need socks, but you don't need to go to the store to buy them. It's nice to have a surprise arrive at your doorstep once a month. And that's what the Awesome Socks Club is about. Shipping is free everywhere in
• 09:00 - 09:30 the world. It's very easy to cancel. And when you sign up for the Awesome Socks Club, you're signing up to have awesome socks like these ones designed by a different independent artist every month, delivered to your door. And also, all of the profit gets donated to charity. You can also prepay for 6 or 12 months. That's especially useful if you want to give them as a gift to somebody else. They're super comfy. I get compliments on them all the time. And you can join the over 30,000 people who get these socks delivered every month if you just go to the link in the description. All right, now back to the
• 09:30 - 10:00 cool good news. Last night, my son, we want him to watch like uh more movies that we we like uh and he's getting that age where we can do more of that. And so we suggested a couple movies and he wanted to watch School of Rock because it had Minecraft Steve in it, which we're working through. You know, it is what it is. That hit in a certain way that nothing else has ever hit before, but we we just kind of moved past it. Has Minecraft Steve in it. Okay. So, we watched School of Rock with my son. Absolute blast. He loves it. We love it. There's a couple of moments that maybe
• 10:00 - 10:30 wouldn't be done the same way now, but like it made me feel like ah they don't make them like they used to. And also like how do they get all these like tremendous little virtuoso kids to act in this movie? And so I got curious about that and I like googled the kids and there's all kinds of really cool stories. I can't believe I went from bone programs office to this in and amongst the like the kids from this movie. Most of them never acted again or or if they did they did very little. This movie, if you don't know it, is about sort of a aging uh unsuccessful rocker who takes a substitute teaching
• 10:30 - 11:00 gig uh illicitly and then turns these kids into a a rock band. And it's very great. And so I'm googling and I discover 10 weeks ago, so this movie came out in 2003, so it's 20 plus years since this movie came out. the girl who is like one of the singer girls like the with the pigtails. She got married to the security guard boy, like the big security guard boy. And the little pigtail singer girl got married in real life 10 weeks ago. Apparently, like the
• 11:00 - 11:30 School of Rock Kids have like a group chat and they've been group chatting for 20 years and they'd always be like, "Oh, I'm going to be in your city." And like these two like eventually like got older, they grew up. They met. He's a lawyer. She does like sonograms for an OBGYn and they uh hit it off I guess later in life and now they're married people. That's so cute. That is the cutest meat cute I've ever heard of. Like a little girl and little boy like they like did an audition together and were in a movie together 20s something
• 11:30 - 12:00 years ago and then as adults they they like met back up and they were like, "Oh, I like you. I that's adorable. I'm so happy about that." And so there are lovely things. We do continue to love each other and to build together. And some people really do just suck, especially at understanding the intricacies of industrial policy and the difficulties of doing it well and the amount to which maybe their entire success is based on the existence of this office that they now want to close
• 12:00 - 12:30 down. But some people make really good movies that my son really likes and then they are kids in a child actor movie and then they go on to become normal people with normal lives and then they meet up and they love each other. And so that's I don't know. I don't I can't really tie that together at all. So let's play connections. Bean gag. Bean gag trunk muzzle. Muzzle and trunk are like both the front part of a face. Tail muzzle and tail uh muzzle tail paw. Those are
• 12:30 - 13:00 all dog parts. May act act act bit root root beer tad a tad a bit branch flag fur fur paw tail muzzle those are dog things those are those are things that dogs have so that's good we've got something to start with we've got I saw a branch leaf when I was clicking around there trunk we got we also got tree parts you guys come on give me something good all right that's good enough for me and then we got to go root trunk leaf and bean branch Branch, branch, branch,
• 13:00 - 13:30 branch. Those are all tree. Branch, branch, branch, branch, branch, branch. E, I e e i e. I obviously have an 8-year-old. I'm trying to get purple first, just in case anybody's new here. I like to try and get purple first. Gag flag. No, I am lost. I'm lost, you guys. I got I'm I'm lost. I got two categories and I'm lost. Now, I'm going to look at tad here because that's a weird word. is the first part of a
• 13:30 - 14:00 tadpole. It is dat spelled backward. It is It means a small amount. Tad doesn't mean much. Tad is like a shortening of a name. Theodors are sometimes called Tad. God, what the heck? Tad is a weird word. Gag is also weird. There aren't very many gag words. G- A G T A D B I T ACT. ACT is a is a test. M A Y. Uh, but MAY doesn't feel the same because it I don't know. It doesn't. Well, ACT doesn't really either. Bit, tad, and gag all are
• 14:00 - 14:30 very similar phonetically, like structurally. Gag, tad, bit, and flag. Those all have the same sort of phenomic structure, but that doesn't help me. Tag pole, bit pole, flagpole. Wait a second. Flagpole, tadpole, bean pole. Oh, thank God. And maple. That's the purple. Oh. I had it. Tad was the secret. I was
• 14:30 - 15:00 right. All right. And that leaves us with what? Act gag bit. Oh, like it's a it's a as a comedian, this is embarrassing. It's a a unit of comedy. I'm excited for this to actually say a unit of comedy. Ah, dang it. All right. And that leaves us with I guess the probably the green is trunk leaf branch root. No, it's the other one cuz muzzle is a little weird. Yeah, great. Well, now we're done. Let's
• 15:00 - 15:30 just hope it gets put back together again. That's what we're all hoping for again. The awesome socks club. You could get a cool pair of socks designed by an independent artist, delivered to your door every month. Shipping is free. You can cancel anytime. You can buy it for someone you love. It's really cool. And all the profit gets donated to charity. There's a linky link right down there. Unless YouTube has moved where the description box is, which isn't impossible. I've been doing this a while.