Archive

Published editions

Browse published editions of Finding Critical Path, with each week collected as a complete editorial read on the signals shaping the nuclear industry.

Paying Its Own Way

August 2 – 8, 2026 7 min read

Every kid who ever started a neighborhood lawn-mowing business knows the struggle of yanking that pull cord over and over, trying to get the mower started. After a few tries, you remember to prime the engine. You give it a few pumps. The next pull, the engine stutters, catches, and roars to life. All those flying blades of grass might as well be dollar bills dropping into your piggy bank. Well, after a bit of priming, the nuclear industry is revving its engine.

A person in shorts and a t-shirt pushes a scuffed red push-mower across a striped suburban lawn at golden hour, and where the mower's engine should be sits a small nuclear reactor, a metal containment dome ringed by control-rod drive mechanisms and piping, carrying the edition's idea that an industry once primed by government is now running under its own power.

Powering Each Other

July 26 – August 1, 2026 6 min read

AI needs more electricity than the grid can give it. Nuclear can make that energy, but needs AI to build fast enough to matter. The two were always meant to power each other.

A wide dark cover showing a glowing figure-eight loop, its left lobe rendered in electric blue as a digital brain, microchip, and circuit traces standing in for AI, its right lobe in amber gold as a nuclear cooling tower with rising steam beside a bright atomic symbol, the two halves joined at a luminous central crossing, with one arrow sweeping right across the top and another sweeping left across the bottom to show power flowing both ways between them.

Anchored Accelerando

July 19–25, 2026 6 min read

We all know that second chances are rare. Those that make theirs count study the moment while everyone else is celebrating it, and they move with intent before the rules are obvious to anyone else.

Editorial-style cinematic illustration of four engineers of varied age and background leaning over a wide table spread with detailed reactor schematics, studying the plans together in warm early light with employee badges on their lanyards, a containment dome under construction and a tower crane standing through the tall window behind them, conveying an industry that studies its next move with deliberate care as the build goes on outside.

Nuclear's Longest Lead Item

July 5–18, 2026 7 min read

Nuclear plans its schedules around the long lead times of heavy hardware. The longest item on the critical path is often a signature.

Editorial-style cinematic illustration of a freshly signed document lying open on a dark wooden desk under warm lamplight with a fountain pen resting beside the signature, a tall stack of worn, tab-marked folders piled alongside it, and beyond a tall window a completed nuclear power station standing lit and operating across dark water at blue hour, conveying that a single signature was the last thing standing between years of accumulated paperwork and a plant that was already finished.

Nuclear Brings the Rain

June 29 – July 4, 2026 8 min read

There is a proverb that says "A promise is a cloud; fulfillment is rain." Nuclear just delivered a downpour.

Editorial illustration of a nuclear power facility on Idaho high desert sage flats, with a visible rain curtain falling across the middle distance, sunlight breaking through dramatic cloud cover from the left, cooling towers and reactor domes solid in the mid-ground, grey-green sagebrush in the foreground catching the rain.

Nuclear Starts Speaking in Fleets

June 21–27, 2026 7 min read

The most reliable thing an industry tells you about its future is the size of the goal it is willing to say out loud. Nuclear just started speaking in fleets.

Editorial-style cinematic illustration of a planning table holding a glowing blue wireframe master plan of ten nuclear reactor units in two rows of five, with a real industrial build site beyond it at golden hour laid out in the same grid, where a single reactor stands complete, a few rise as steel skeletons under cranes, and the remaining positions are cleared foundation pads receding toward a distant coastline, conveying a ten-unit fleet that exists in full only on the plan.

How Nuclear Is Making Winning a Habit

June 14–20, 2026 7 min read

Excellence is the discipline of doing the ordinary things right so often that success becomes inevitable. Nuclear has always had that commitment, and the wins are stacking up.

Editorial-style cinematic illustration of a football team running training drills with cones and balls on a stadium pitch at dusk, the stands largely empty, with a sleek matte-black advanced nuclear reactor unit accented in amber light standing at realistic scale at the far end of the field where the goal would be, conveying the unseen groundwork that makes a visible win possible.

Nuclear's Succession Plan Finds Its Footing

May 31–June 6, 2026 7 min read

The hardest part of building the future is keeping the present running long enough to get there.

Blue holographic schematic of a large reactor component projected from a tablet on a workbench inside a warm amber-lit nuclear plant industrial hall filled with full-scale pipes, vessels, platforms, and steel structures.

Confidence Measured in Generations

May 24–30, 2026 6 min read

A mentor of mine retired today, after decades spent as one of the nuclear industry's leading innovators. The fleet running today is like the forty- and fifty-year-old trees that people like him planted and tended through the first era of nuclear power. This week, the industry was busy planting the next ones.

Editorial-style golden-hour silhouette illustration of a nuclear plant worker in a hard hat sitting at the base of a large mature tree, resting in its shade, while in the sunlit distance two nuclear power stations stand against an amber sky, one complete and operating with a containment dome and steaming cooling tower, and one still under construction with a tall crane and exposed structural framework.

Nuclear Is Power-Leveling

May 18–24, 2026 5 min read

This week, nuclear didn't just make progress. It unlocked the next stage.

Retro 8-bit pixel art video game level up screen featuring a nuclear power plant with cooling towers and containment dome rendered in chunky pixel blocks, glowing gold against a deep blue night sky, with LEVEL UP in large pixelated letters at the top, three progress bars all at 100% along the bottom, and NEW LEVEL ACHIEVED displayed in pixel font beneath them.

We the People, Choose Nuclear

May 10–16, 2026 7 min read

Nuclear received votes of confidence this week on three continents, as different governments, with different histories, all choose one direction.

Editorial-style cinematic illustration of a nuclear power plant sitting on the curve of the Earth as seen from low orbit, with cooling towers and a containment dome rising against a star field, a warm sunrise glowing on the left horizon, and the words 'We the People' rendered in faded calligraphic script in the dark space behind the plant.

Oh, The Things That You'll Do

May 3–9, 2026 5 min read

Nuclear keeps discovering new capabilities. This week was a good reminder of how much that list is still growing.

Whimsical editorial-style illustration of a fantastical nuclear facility towering over a Seussian landscape, with rainbow-striped roads radiating outward, a medical building, a fuel transport truck, a construction crane, and a map with location pins surrounding a small figure looking up in wonder.

Nuclear Is Getting to the Good Part

April 26–May 2, 2026 5 min read

This week, nuclear is writing the next chapters in stories that have been building for months.

Editorial-style paper-craft illustration of an open book with a detailed nuclear power plant rising from its pages as a three-dimensional pop-up structure, with transmission towers, a construction crane, and surrounding infrastructure unfolding across the spread.

Nuclear Steps Up to the Plate

April 19–25, 2026 5 min read

They say if you build it, they will come. Nuclear built the infrastructure. Now everyone is showing up.

Editorial-style illustration of a baseball diamond carved out of a cornfield at sunset, with nuclear cooling towers and a reactor dome rising from the mist in the background, evoking the moment the nuclear industry steps up to perform.

Nuclear Is Showing Up in All the Right Places

April 12–18, 2026 5 min read

Where nuclear shows up next may matter almost as much as what gets built.

Editorial-style illustration of a lunar surface outpost powered by a nuclear facility, with connected habitat modules in the foreground and Earth rising above the moon's horizon in deep space.

Nuclear Is Building to Last

April 5–11, 2026 5 min read

Nuclear is not just trying to move faster. It is starting to think further ahead.

Editorial-style illustration of a monumental modern nuclear power facility overlooking a rocky Mediterranean coastline, with stone-toned architecture and a timeless civic-infrastructure feel.

From Ambitious Plans to Serious Commitments

March 29–April 4, 2026 5 min read

Nuclear has never lacked ambition. Now those plans are beginning to translate into commitments.

Illustration of a nuclear facility transitioning from blueprint-style planning on the left to fully realized industrial construction on the right, symbolizing the shift from ambition to real-world commitment.

Nuclear Is Back to Building the Future

March 22–28, 2026 4 min read

Nuclear is back to building the future.

Editorial-style illustration of a glowing nuclear energy hub set at the center of the Earth, with circuit-like pathways extending across the globe and an orbital path reaching toward Mars, suggesting nuclear’s expanding role across infrastructure, technology, and space.

Preparing the Base Layer

March 15–21, 2026 4 min read

Building reactors changes the grid. Preparing the systems that support them changes the future of energy. This week’s signals indicate the nuclear industry may be starting to do both at once.

Editorial-style illustration of a cutaway nuclear power plant under construction, rendered like a precision-built model with exposed internal systems and workers assembling major components, emphasizing nuclear as foundational infrastructure.

Nuclear's Building Blocks Begin to Snap in Place

March 8–14, 2026 5 min read

Technology launches industries. Industrial capacity sustains them. Energy systems expand when the infrastructure around them begins to grow.

Editorial-style graphic representing the industrial building blocks of the next nuclear era coming together across policy, fuel, operations, manufacturing, and workforce development.

The World Says It's Time to Build

March 1–7, 2026 5 min read

When new nuclear advances simultaneously in four countries around the globe, the message is clear. New nuclear is happening now.

Editorial-style graphic representing multiple countries simultaneously clearing a path for new nuclear development and deployment.

From Megaproject Uncertainty to Engineered Predictability

February 22–28, 2026 4 min read

Reactor designs are stretching toward 100-year lifespans. Financial architecture is shifting to support that century-scale ambition.

Editorial-style graphic representing nuclear finance shifting from uncertainty to long-term engineered predictability through contracts, capital, regulation, and standardized designs.

Who Controls the Clock?

February 15–21, 2026 4 min read

Nuclear deployment is entering a phase where time itself is becoming a design variable.

Editorial-style graphic representing nuclear deployment timelines compressing across policy, AI-enabled workflows, commissioning milestones, and mobile reactor deployment.

New Nuclear Momentum Meets Fuel Reality

February 8–14, 2026 4 min read

New nuclear needs more than policy and momentum. Fuel security is the strategic variable that will define scale.

Editorial-style graphic representing nuclear momentum meeting fuel reality through upstream uranium supply, midstream fuel fabrication, and downstream reactor deployment.

Rewriting the Playbook for Progress

February 1–7, 2026 3 min read

This week, the pace of regulatory reorganization is reshaping legacy timelines, prompting a new negotiation between caution and growth in nuclear deployment.

Editorial-style graphic representing regulatory reform, deployment milestones, and fuel-cycle innovation reshaping the pace of nuclear progress.

What Surfaced This Week

January 25–31, 2026 3 min read

This week in nuclear tech marks a subtle but significant shift: the sector is converging on integrated innovation ecosystems that span from computational advances to supply chain autonomy.

Editorial-style graphic representing an integrated nuclear innovation ecosystem spanning computing, fuel supply, licensing, and commercialization.

Why Finding Critical Path Exists

January 1–24, 2026 4 min read

I probably should not be surprised that AI could help with one of my personal headaches.