https://www.wsj.com/articles/clean-power-no-thanks-to-al-gore-11600633749
Here’s a fun game. Ask an environmentalist about his top plan of action to fight climate change. You’ll likely get a quick answer urging a carbon-neutral or net-zero-emission clean-energy economy, usually by 2050, echoing the Paris climate agreement. OK, now ask if he’s for nuclear power, which has zero carbon emissions, at which point he’ll usually stare at his shoes and mumble something about high costs.
“The biggest problem with nuclear power,” activist Bill McKibben of 350.org told Techonomy, is that “it’s really expensive.” Al Gore, who sounds more and more like a revivalist preacher, told Reuters last month, “They’ve priced themselves out of the market. Electricity from nuclear power plants is by far the most expensive in the world,” while the cost of renewables “is continuing to go down.”
That’s funny, because in 1994 the Clinton-Gore administration canceled research funding for the Integral Fast Reactor, which sure could have helped us down the learning curve to lower-cost carbon-free electricity today. The U.S. has constructed a tiny handful of new nuclear plants in the past four decades. Yes, the same folks who fought nuclear energy tooth and nail are now complaining that it’s too expensive—like saying they’re orphans after killing their parents.
I mention all this now because earlier this month, and almost miraculously, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the design and issued a final safety evaluation report for a Small Modular Reactor, or SMR, by NuScale based in Portland, Ore. NuScale’s design, funded by engineering firm Fluor and the U.S. Energy Department, joins six older federally approved designs. But it’s the first that looks as if it can scale and reduce costs.
In most nuclear fission reactors, uranium pellets are sealed in metal tubes known as fuel rods. These rods are submerged in water along with control rods that usually contain cadmium or boron, which absorb neutrons. When the control rods are removed, released neutrons cause a fission chain reaction, splitting atoms and releasing heat. This heats the water, which circulates through a heat exchanger with a separate water stream, producing steam to turn an electricity-generating turbine.
The NuScale reactor is smaller—only 65 feet tall and 9 feet in diameter, with much installed below grade.
It has a really small core, 1/20th the size of larger reactors, and, importantly, it comes with passive safety features. Using buoyancy, water circulates internally without pumps. Motors lift the control rods such that if electricity is lost, gravity drops them back into the core, stopping the reactor. Safety first.
Each SMR can generate 60 megawatts of power, and a dozen can be linked together at one site. California’s recent blackouts were from a shortage of 4,000 megawatts of power, so only six SMR groupings could have solved the problem, carbon free.
Because NuScale reactors are so small and modular, they can be manufactured in factories rather than custom-made on site. Hopefully that reduces costs over time. At about $3 billion, “NuScale’s first plant offers a competitive overnight capital cost in comparison to large gigawatt nuclear facilities,” CEO John Hopkins tells me about their 12-module 683-megawatt (net) plant. “As subsequent NuScale plants are built, our already competitive cost will continue to decrease.” The first potential customers are utility companies in Utah with rollout beginning in the mid-2020s, though some prospective buyers have dropped out.
As for climate change, I’m somewhat in the Bjørn Lomborg camp: The world is warming and that might even be man-made, but the remedies are a waste of societal wealth and wouldn’t make much difference, and the money is better spent improving quality of life for earth’s population. So let’s spend productively.
Remember, there’s no energy solution without extraneous costs. Hydroelectric dams are ugly and hurt salmon. Wind turbines gore golden eagles. And utility-scale solar takes up lots of space, 5 to 10 acres per megawatt. One NuScale cluster on 30 acres replaces 11 square miles of solar panels.
NuScale is not alone. Bill Gates has reportedly invested $500 million or more in TerraPower, which started in 2006 and was hoping to build SMRs in China before Trump trade tensions put the kibosh on those plans.
No one likes nuclear bombs and nuclear accidents—the industry needs a marketing makeover. The HBO series “Chernobyl” was haunting but overblown. How about some rebranding? Instead of nuclear, call it carbon-free heavy metals. No? Maybe particle power? Quark spark? Anything but nukes.
Either way, this sets up a great test. Joe Biden has promised to spend $2 trillion on clean energy and “achieve a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035.” If there is a Biden administration and it doesn’t encourage the rollout of nuclear power, then, like Messrs. McKibben and Gore and other alarmists, that’s proof they’re not really serious about climate change. So what is their agenda?
