Nuclear power: The hero we need, but don’t (yet) deserve

The past, present, and future of the world's fanciest water heating machine

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Let’s be honest…

Wrapping our heads around decarbonizing everything is a bit overwhelming. Most inventions since the late 1800s have been tied to some form of carbon emissions.

Great for global progress, not the best for global prosperity over the long haul.

The good news?

As we unpack that emissions behemoth, we are greeted with a surprisingly manageable first step… electrifying everything!

Electrifying everything — a buzz word be that as it may — would mean transitioning from on-site combustion systems to electricity-based products that draw electrons from off-site production.

Why so manageable?

As opposed to some really tough-to-decarbonize sectors (e.g., cement, steel), the world already has wide-spread, low-carbon sources of electricity (woo!). And in fact, we’ve had these for hundreds of years. First with hydro, and then in the mid-1900s… nuclear!

Depending on who you ask, nuclear power — now the largest source of zero-carbon electricity in the United States — can be scary, misunderstood, mispronounced, the silver bullet, or about 1000 other adjectives.

For me, nuclear is best characterized by a perpetual cycle:

1. Unbridled optimism, followed by

2. Technical progress, and then sadly,

3. Crushing despair

So…

Let’s dive into this perpetual cycle and see how it explains the past, present, and future of nuclear.

Can this cycle be broken? And if so, will nuclear have a shot at being part of a decarbonized future?

Nuclear: The past

The cycle begins…

1. Unbridled optimism: Since its inception by Enrico Fermi in the early 1930s, nuclear power has held the promise of electricity that is “too cheap to meter”. Seemingly endless quantities of clean, safe, and affordable electrons to thrust the world into its next era of progress. Why so exciting?

   Bang for its buck: Compared to the energy stored in molecular bonds (e.g., gasoline), a nuclear or atomic bond holds nearly a million times more energy density. That yields the potential for low-cost, abundant, low-land use electricity.

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2. Technical progress: Building on this unbridled optimism, the world went out to design and build the fanciest water-heating machines on the planet.

   I joke… but nuclear is essentially a fancy water heating machine. Instead of heating water with fossil fuels, we get that heat from splitting atoms. We then use that heat to boil water, which turns a turbine, resulting in electricity!

   And build did we ever – between 1960 and 1985, the world built 300GW of nuclear capacity – reaching >50% of annual electric power installations at its peak. What could go wrong…

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3. Crushing despair: Despair… summed up by one event and one year — Chernobyl, 1986¹ — the worst nuclear power accident in history. Some of you may have seen the recent HBO series, but for those who haven’t… mix together poor design, poor operating conditions, poor oversight, and bad luck and you get a pretty bad nuclear accident.

   How bad? It’s hard to quantify the impacts of completing evacuating a region and almost contaminating the water supply of neighboring countries… but in terms of deaths: Chernobyl caused ~30 direct deaths, with an additional ~4000 expected to die from indirect effects of radiation.

Nuclear: The present

The cycle continues…

1. Unbridled optimism: So where are we today? Well, we’ve got an aging nuclear fleet² and a carbon problem. This presents a tremendously exciting opportunity for the nuclear industry – said simply, after wind and solar decarbonize the bulk ~70% of the electricity grid, there will remain a need for 20-30% clean, baseload / dispatchable power sources that can balance the intermittency of renewables.

   A trillion dollar opportunity: Who wins this clean, baseload market? It’s truly up for grabs! Between battery storage, hydro, natural gas with carbon capture, and hydrogen (grid flexibility)… it is anyone’s guess, but there’s no reason why nuclear can’t be a part of the picture.

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2. Technical progress: What is nuclear doing to capture that opportunity? Enter, advanced nuclear… and I’m talking both fission (splitting atoms) and fusion (combining atoms). There is a flurry of activity and progress across all fronts when it comes to designing and building new nuclear plants, specifically:

   Traditional nuclear: Our global peers continue to build out their nuclear fleets. China, Russia, and Middle Eastern countries… all building large quantities of nuclear reactors to power their growth.

   Advanced fission: “new and improved” reactors are currently being developed and built world wide. They generally combine a smaller, modular approach, automatic safety features, and new reactor design elements that are cheaper and more efficient. First-of-a-kind plants are always an uphill battle, but progress is being made.

   Fusion: My personal favorite. The mantle, “fusion is 30 years away and always will be”, is currently being tackled by a number of privately funded start-ups. Everyone is trying to crack the code and design an affordable machine that generates more power than it consumes – an incredible challenge, but the promise of inherently safe, energy-dense nuclear is hard to ignore.

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3. Crushing despair: Again with the despair… sheesh! The world’s nuclear industry (and the USA specifically) has so far squandered this opportunity. The costs to build nuclear plants have gotten more and more expensive over time… both in building new plants, and operating existing plants… this means two things:

   Shut offs: A lot of existing nuclear plants are getting shut off or subsidized because they aren’t affordable…

   No new builds: …and even if we did want to build nuclear plants, it’d be hard to make an economic case for them.

   What’s driving this cost problem? Researchers have written on the topic, but it comes down to massive, complex, difficult-to-build plants, bundled with arguably excessive regulations, and a workforce / industrial complex that has forgotten how to build these plants efficiently. Yikes…

Nuclear: The future

Now… let me try and convince you that this cycle can be broken. And to do so, let’s use a “what you’d have to believe” approach to see if you’re buying what I’m selling.

For nuclear to be a major part of a low carbon future, you’d have to believe:

The world needs clean dispatchable power: Yes, definitely. 👍 

The power grid modeling is clear. Even with awesome sun and wind resources, we need something to balance out the intermittency of renewables and cover occasional long duration gaps in production.

New nuclear plants can be regulated and built: Yes, probably. 👍 

Regulators are waking up and understanding that they need to help the industry survive. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has licensed one leading approach, NuScale, and is in productive talks with other new nuclear start-ups. Don’t hold your breath, but progress is promising.

Nuclear can be cost competitive with other options: Maybe. 🤔 

Reminder: Cost in the world of power production is a function of the investment to build the plant (CAPEX), what it takes to operate it (OPEX), and what portion of time in a given year the plant actually generates power (utilization).

In short, new nuclear plants are targeting $3-5/W CAPEX with very little OPEX and very high utilization (>90%). These projections, if achieved, are competitive with renewables that are around $1/W CAPEX and similarly little OPEX, but much lower utilization (~30%). So there’s a chance! However, if nuclear keeps up its recent dismal track record of >$10/W CAPEX with cost overruns… I’m not buying.

Nuclear plants can keep their ‘license to operate’: Maybe. 🤔 

The elephant in the room… will society tolerate nuclear after its past accidents? Germany is a sad example of shutting down nuclear plants before their time, and they’ve paid the price through higher carbon emissions.

The problem is not the rate of accidents, but the potential magnitude (and associated fear factor) of an accident if / when it might occur. Interesting enough, if you look at the “Deaths per TWh” of nuclear compared to its peers, it scores as the safest power option available³. I’m holding out hope, but humans are not necessarily rational…

Another tech won’t steal all of the market: Who knows! ⁉️

A technological breakthrough in point-source carbon capture, battery technology, hydrogen, or some new source of energy could make all of this a moot point and send nuclear to the graveyard. Now… I don’t think this is tremendously likely, but it is always good to be aware of the “known unknowns”.

Yes, I’m telling you there’s a chance.

Even if you are like me and don’t fully believe the above arguments, like it or not, nuclear will be part of the future. Intimately tied to the world’s nuclear weapons arsenal, nuclear — in some shape or size — is here to stay.

In reality, I think the best bet for the US recharging its nuclear industry is an entirely independent argument about maintaining and growing the nuclear fleet for technical prowess / institutional knowledge / national security reasons (e.g., China surpassing the US as the world’s nuclear power). Humans get jealous… what can I say…

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Now remember — I’m a nuclear fan boy at heart, and would love for my 4 years of nuclear training at Berkeley to not fully go to waste — so I might be a bit more optimistic than pragmatic on this topic… but a boy can dream!

Regardless, if nuclear power is able to provide safe, clean, affordable, baseload power… that’s a good thing for the world and a great thing for the climate.

Let’s see what happens! Until next time…

1. I don’t mean to indicate that Chernobyl is the only accident that’s ever happened, or ever had an impact. Three Mile Island was the accident that caused the fear to hit home in the USA, and Fukushima was the accident in 2011 that really put the breaks on a nuclear re-birth. Chernobyl was simply the worst, first accident that is still pointed to as the “worst case scenario”, even if today’s reactor designs have prevented it from ever happening again.

2. The average age of the nuclear fleet is >35 years. To put that in context, most plants were designed and regulated for 40 years, initially. They are now being extended to 60 or even 80 years, but the end of the first age of nuclear plants is on the horizon.

3. Nuclear has been widely said to be the safest power source in the world. Without causing deaths from smog and minimal dangerous mining, nuclear is estimated to have 90 deaths per TWh (as compared to 100K for coal and even 150 for wind!)