Where have All the Nuclear Power Plants Gone?
Nuclear Reimagined - Image from Third Way
What is green? With regard to color, it’s light near 532 nm. With regard to experience and plants, it’s something young and alive. With regard to energy, green can mean many things. Government agencies at many levels throughout the world, and especially now in the EU, are debating what power sources should be considered green and economically incentivized. The most common definition of green energy are sources that have a minimum of CO2 output; yet despite nuclear power accounting for almost 50% of carbon-free emissions in the United States and having the lowest death per TWh (terawatt hour) [1], it’s not universally accepted as a form of green energy.
This topic of what counts as green energy is important now because the decreased cost of natural gas and the rise of natural gas plants have put significant economic pressure on nuclear power plants. Because of economics combined with political forces in some states, nuclear plants that would still be safe to operate for decades are being shuttered. And once decommissioned, these plants can’t be started again. As an example, we have lost 8 out of 104 plants in the last 21 years in the US (and Germany has closed 10 reactors since 2011, with the remaining 7 planned for phase-out by 2022 [2]). These plant closures bring losses in jobs, losses in energy resilience during natural disasters, losses in national security, and losses in grid stability because of the nearly constant output of nuclear plants (with capacity factors, or amount of time actually generating electricity, of 91.2% [3] compared to 24.5% for photovoltaic [4]). In the case of Germany closing their reactors due to pressure from the Green Party, coal plants have had to increase output to meet the country’s energy needs, vastly increase the CO2 output [1].
Currently, there are only two nuclear reactors being built in the US, Vogtle Units 3-4 in Georgia. Two other reactors in South Carolina (Units 2 & 3 at Virgil C. Summer) were canceled in 2017 after significant cost overruns during the 4 years of construction. Internationally, though, there are currently 28 reactors being planned or built in the next 6 years [5], with the most aggressive builder being China as it transitions away from its many coal power plants. Nuclear power needs to remain in the energy mix in the US if we want to maintain the quality of life we enjoy while also limiting our CO2 emissions. A lot of the nuclear industry’s future hinges on the completion of Vogtle’s improved AP-1000 reactors, but we haven’t put all of our eggs in the same basket. That’s where the exciting and innovative reactors of the future come in.
The future is promising for nuclear with new investments, new reactor designs, and new allies. NuScale Power [6] has developed an impressive reactor called a Small Modular Reactor (SMR), and they have almost completed the initial regulatory hurdle with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to begin building their demonstration reactor. This SMR concept was designed to:
better meet economic problems (it is to be built in a factory and shipped on-site),
improve safety (it is cooled through natural convection rather than needing cooling water injected like most current reactors)
be scalable (utilities can install 1-12 SMR vessels, rated at 50 MWe each, to meet their community needs and still only need one control room)
And Utah has a major part to play with making history with SMRs. UAMPS (Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems) is NuScale’s first customer and has contracts to get power from NuScale’s demonstration reactor to be built in Idaho by 2026 [7].
On top of these near-term SMRs, investors like Bill Gates through his company Terrapower and others are exploring reactors that move away from the limitations imposed by using water as a reactor coolant. There are other exciting new reactor designs in the works including:
fast neutron reactors that use spent nuclear fuel and reduce nuclear waste,
molten salt reactors with improved efficiencies, useful waste heat for other industries, and the potential to provide radioisotopes for medical use,
microreactors that fit on a truck bed to power remote communities and those impacted by natural disasters,
and fusion reactors, including the large tokamak reactor being built in France (ITER), that do not produce long-lived nuclear waste.
I’ll highlight one of my favorite synergistic nuclear reactor concepts (partly because my research supports them), the molten salt reactor (MSR). MSRs run on either chloride or fluoride salts, include either solid uranium fuel in graphite pebbles or fuel (uranium or thorium) dissolved directly in the salt and operate at 700 °C and atmospheric pressures (compared to current reactors’ nearly 2,200 psi pressure). Because of the high output temperatures, MSRs can be paired with the chemical and hydrogen production industry to provide abundant access to heat to produce high-value products. Based on some reactor designs, medical isotopes like technetium-99m (which is used in millions of diagnostic procedures every year) can be produced at lower costs than existing methods, producing yet another revenue stream. And finally, the waste Li6 isotope, created during the enrichment of Li7 needed for MSRs, can be used to provide the fuel for a fusion reactor.
To answer a different form of the question posed as the title of this article, where are all the nuclear reactors? The answer is that they are on the near horizon and their outlook is very green.
References:
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#daf373c709b7
[2] https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/infographic-the-unintended-consequences-of-germanys-nuclear-phase-out
[3] https://www.ans.org/pubs/magazines/nn/
[4] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_6_07_b
[5] https://www.power-technology.com/features/new-nuclear-projects-where-when/
[6] https://www.nuscalepower.com/
[7] https://www.nuscalepower.com/newsletter/nucleus-summer-2019/powering-the-next-generation-of-nuclear
