Climate Conversations: Nuclear Energy

[Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign hello everyone my name is kasha kornetsky and I am pleased to welcome you to the National academies of Sciences engineering and medicine and today to our monthly webinar series climate conversations Pathways to action the national academies provide independent objective advice to inform policy with evidence spark progress and Innovation and confront challenging issues for the benefit of society in keeping with this Mission we're excited to host these conversations about issues relevant to policy action on climate change we'd like to acknowledge that the national academies Washington DC headquarters is physically housed on the TR on the traditional land of the nakach tank and Piscataway people's past and present we honor with gratitude the land itself and the people who have been at stewards throughout the generations we respect the enduring relationship that exists between these peoples and Nations and this land and acknowledge that the expertise held by different Native communities is crucial to the work of understanding and addressing climate change today we'll talk about the role of nuclear energy in addressing climate change nuclear energy is one of the most reliable sources of carbon-free electricity but it's not without its risks and trade-offs if you'd like to ask questions today please submit them in the box below the video at any time and we'll incorporate them in a dedicated question and answer period during the second half of the event we also encourage you to participate in the polls that will appear in the same location and we've also listed a few academies reports relevant to nuclear energy on this page in particular laying the foundation for new and advanced nuclear reactors in the United States which was released last month and which I encourage you to look at for greater depth above the video you'll see a link to sign up for a Weekly Newsletter about all upcoming climate activities at the academies including future climate conversations so moving into today's conversation I am so grateful to be joined by Cara Colton she is the director of nuclear policy at the energy communities Alliance where she leads their new nuclear initiative to help define the role for local governments considering nuclear missions and to facilitate the Partnerships necessary to develop priorities policies educational resources and Outreach on new nuclear development Cara will introduce our conversationalists and will moderate the event today thank you again for joining the national academies for climate conversations and with that Cara it's all you thank you so much Kasha we are just coming off from eca's new nuclear initiative Forum meeting which we held last month last week in Paducah Kentucky where we had over 225 policy makers from the federal state and local level discussing this topic exactly so the timing couldn't be more perfect so his costume was saying nuclear energy is one of the most reliable sources of carbon-free electricity and it provides about half of the low carbon electricity in the United States and a fifth of U.S electricity overall maintaining the current nuclear power Fleet is a key part of U.S trajectories to reach the goal of net zero emissions by 2050. but as caution noted nuclear energy is expensive and it has some risks it produces radioactive waste that can last for Generations as such nuclear energy is a contentious topic with complex trade-offs today I'm excited about this conversation about the challenges and opportunities related to nuclear and let me go ahead and introduce you to the two people will be joined by who can help us unpack both Ahmed Abdullah is an assistant professor in the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Carleton University in Ottawa Ontario he investigates Energy System design for deep decarbonization focusing on the role of disruptive Energy Technologies that sit at a low level of technical Readiness including energy storage systems Advanced nuclear power and negative emissions Technologies Michael Ford is the associate laboratory director for engineering at the Princeton plasma Physics laboratory where he leads the pursuit of the laboratory's mission to develop Advanced fusion and Engineering knowledge and techniques and is responsible for all engineering support he also holds an appointment as a research scholar at Princeton's and lingard Center for Energy and the environment Dr cord also served a full career as an officer in the U.S Nuclear Navy both Ahmed and Mike were members of the committee that authored the national academies report that Kasha referred to laying the foundation for new and advanced nuclear reactors in the United States which came out last month and which I hope they'll use to draw from in their answers today so let's go ahead and get started let's start first with the landscape what is nuclear energy what role does it serve today and what role could it serve in the future but before we get into the nitty-gritty let me first ask each of you to talk a bit more about your backgrounds and what brought you to do the work you're doing now Dr Ford would you care to start uh certainly and uh first let me thank the national academies and Kasha for the opportunity to participate today and I appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation with you Cara and with Ahmed so I look forward to the discussion today uh my background is uh you covered in your uh a nice summary of my background is uh first as a active duty naval officer for about 29 years where I served both in command of ships and also as a senior nuclear engineer on an aircraft carrier and served several tours on carriers as an engineer I also served as part of a nuclear propulsion Examining Board and then spent many years in the Pentagon doing requirements development for new weapon systems following my uh retirement from active duty I moved into an energy policy career first in Academia and we're recently in the National Lab system first at Argonne National Lab and recently at Princeton plasma physics lab and my focus has been on examining nuclear technologies as they apply to low carbon energy and see what the challenges and opportunities are just as it's focused here in this discussion so that's the broad brushes of my career and I look forward to discussing this with you today thanks so much excited to have you and um a man yeah thank you very much Cara and I'd like to Second Mike's thank to the thanks to the academies uh this is a wonderful forum for discussing this again very timely issue um I'm a chemical engineer by training I started my research career in my undergraduate life uh and it was on hydrogen which was a technology that was going to save us back in the 2000s it's witnessing a Resurgence now um so I've always been interested in sustainable energy and the need to transition to Net Zero or even net negative emissions um what drew me to nuclear was my focus on technologies that have so much potential where the attributes kind of tick all the boxes and the question then becomes why haven't we deployed them more and if it's a failure on our part how do we fix our failures and that way we could kind of set the stage for a Revival whether it's in five years or 50 and avoid mistakes of the past so yes like Mike I'd love to have a conversation with you and I'm looking forward to this discussion all right well let's go ahead then and get started Mike let's start let's start the basics what role has nuclear played in the U.S Energy System over the roughly 70 years that commercial nuclear power plants have existed and what's changing well I think you cut you hit some of it uh in your early intro to the discussion here uh it has been one of the cornerstones of the uh of the electric grid in the United States for for decades uh it uh grew to about what we have today which is about 92 operating power plants with a number more coming online uh Vogel plants in Georgia uh and it has been one of the strongest performing Technologies for the last uh a couple of decades operating typically in the 90 to 95 capacity uh so a very uh strong generator that can provide that firm power that's necessary for the grid uh but uh are over 40 years old and uh and many of them applied for and received license extensions from the nuclear Regulatory Commission uh some to even out to 80 years so the fleet is aging a bit and so there's certainly a concern that uh as they age out what will replace them certainly we'd like to see low carbon technologies that are have similar characteristics in that they are firm and have high capacity uh the other thing that's changing a bit with the use of these Technologies is an examination of how we might take advantage of different scales of the plants the ones that have been deployed to date have largely been gigawatt scale plants very large uh take very many years to to develop and and a lot of people to operate so the Examination for the last 10 years or so has been into smaller scale reactors small modular reactors and micro reactors and this has generated a lot of excitement recently about how those smaller scales might accelerate development timelines and reduce costs so that the decision to develop a new plant won't be a bet the company kind of decision the hope is then that these new technologies will have the same characteristics high capacity perhaps fewer people operating them and so uh between that as potential replacement for uh coal and other plants that are that are aging out as well we might see opportunity for these plants to be used in other use cases and so for example perhaps for process heat to help decarbonize industrial process so those kinds of examinations are going on but still The prominent use case for these is likely to be electricity generation for many years and so that the goal here that we had from this study was to look at what the foundations would need to be to uh to perhaps have some of these Advanced Technologies take a new take on their role as a part of that low carbon generation capacity so I'll pause there and see if I'm at one standing thanks um I meant you have anything to add and actually you know Dr Ford mentioned price and cost and maybe could you speak a little bit to how expensive nuclear is compared to other generation resources and what does that mean for the future so traditionally nuclear power by its by its very nature these big plants have been very expensive to build they have been traditionally rather cheap to operate that has changed because of the introduction of variable and renewable energy resources which are even cheaper to operate right because they have no fuel costs so that has changed the economic uh Paradigm for for the large nuclear reactors including the existing ones that Mike mentioned but these new reactors I think their primary Innovation there are a few secular trends that are happening um one is for example We've Got The Power Electronics Revolution we've got digital uh instrumentation and controls these things are happening in all Industries right we've got the move to decarbonization all of that is affecting the new nuclear Paradigm in addition to that we've got that primary innovation of scale we've got the small size which is leading to secondary Innovations and sighting secondary innovation in the mission of the reactor and excitement as a result and also maybe even improved safety because we've got smaller reactors which means that even worst case scenario is likely to be more benign than a big Reactor with a larger inventory you know for both of you actually what when you mention new reactors what do you what do you mean by that what are what makes these nuclear reactors new nuclear reactors well I'll I'll start and I'm sure Ahmed has his thoughts as well but I I'd say that some of them we call them new the reality is many of the technologies have been around for decades and were examined at the Advent of nuclear power as a generating Source uh so we're talking about reactors that are uh liquid metal cool fast reactors like a sodium fast reactor high temperature gas reactors uh molten salt reactors these are designs that instead of using what has traditionally been the cooling and moderating medium medium for nuclear plants which is water so the light water reactors these are using other things to moderate the neutrons to lead to the fission reaction and to cool them and do the heat transfer portion of the of the operation so they're they're new in the sense that they're taking advantage of different media for some of those Key activities that help the plant operate and and for fission to work but they're not new in the sense that their Tech technologies that have literally been around since the 50s and being been under development in some cases actually deployed uh in different uh both in the US and around the world and so they're new in the sense that they may have improved safety cases they may have higher temperature profiles which may make them uh more beneficial for use in other use cases that I've had mentioned uh whether it's you know hydrogen production or gas or uh a fuels production things like this that they might be able to provide us some some utility that's different than the light water Fleet which operates at a lower temperature profile so they have different characteristics uh but they get the benefit is that they can also be a scaled dramatically from micro reactor up to all the way up to gigawatt scale in some cases so they they offer us a lot of opportunity to look at different parts of the Energy System where they could provide utility thank you and to that end Ahmed what do we mean when we say they're modular um can you explain that yes so um I'd just like to add to Mike's Point and say some of them are light water they do not use these radical new moderators um lots of the ones that are likely to be deployed in the first decade in fact will be like water reactors and they're modular like water so what does that mean it means that instead of taking all of your staff to a site and these are really highly paid Engineers you know of every stripe and leaving them there and literally stick building the factory as we used to do instead we can make components in different factories ship them to the site and make the site an assembly Point uh to the extent that we can there are some things we can never stereolize or fabricate um we need to do them on site but it's to leverage modular construction practices that we've witnessed in a variety of other fields and try to apply them to nuclear with the ultimate aim being cost control and cost reduction thank you let's move on and take a deeper dive on some of the key considerations for including nuclear and policy and planning around climate change and let me just take a quick moment to remind everyone who's watching that if you have any questions so please submit them through slido in the box below the video so to set the stage a nuclear Renaissance was expected uh in the early 2000s and it never came to fruition how is the conversation today which again leans so positively how is it different it seems that there may be four themes that could influence the future role of nuclear we've referred to a few of them already project management the changing Energy System economics and cost and social acceptance let's dig in on the subject that Ahmed introduced of project management Mike the new nuclear industry has field very few orders for new capacity editions in the last 10 years the large-scale projects that have been undertaken have almost unfortunately been uh executed well behind schedule and over budget with significant challenges in site development what can developers of new Advanced Technologies and new nuclear actors do to change this pattern and perhaps build confidence that there can be beneficial learning in the development of these facilities and what can the government do to help that's a big one well yeah I I I'd say that uh first I'll I'll do a Shameless plug and save if you want the full details you can certainly refer to the report that we just published last last month so that'll have the full detail uh but if I were to encapsulate it it would be that uh we we see that there's opportunity here in a couple of areas one would be to continue to examine technologies that might prove beneficial for streamlining some of the site development that Ahmed mentioned is a challenge and so coming up and having the department of energy and other parts of the government look to incentivize development of new technologies that may streamline that make it cheaper and send more streamlined to develop the site the second would be perhaps to have a Consortium approach to have these companies uh build uh build in uh teaming with companies that have historically simply been EPC contractors who come in uh in a bit and don't have the uh necessarily any skin in the game with the company that's building the reactor so perhaps having companies build that into their approach is to have a contractor be part of the team and have some incentives to uh to actually keep costs down and to to meet the schedule that's uh that's in place here by continuing to do things to incentivize uh the the growth that they've done with other Energy Technologies production tax credits investment tax credits power purchase agreements perhaps that the the government can use uh perhaps having government facilities through long-term power purchase agreements that will incentivize development of these Technologies those things can be done today and so uh they're certainly large enough government facilities that could take advantage of these Technologies to provide low-carbon generation uh or and and make it easier to get over that that hurdle that these companies will have in building a large enough uh order book that makes the development of these factories necessary that'll keep the call to bring the cost down because and ultimately Ahmed mentioned the modularity challenge in other words building some of these things in a more of a product approach like a project approach to do that you have to build the supply chain and the facilities to do that and before companies are going to build those factories they need to have the incentive of having a large enough order book that means that they have to have some incentives out there that will help reduce the hurdles to get there so I'll stop there and saw Ahmed can join yeah we've definitely heard a lot about the the challenge of getting from first of a kind to nth of a kind and the benefits once we do get there Ahmed what kind of policies do you think could help uh make support new nuclear development on the Project's management front or more broadly than that more broadly than that um I think the ones Mike touched on are probably the ones to go there needs to be uh the production tax credits that Mike mentioned for example that you have to remember that investors this for investors has been an industry that has burned them in the past right so now you're talking about a whole new generation of reactors that we have we don't even have experience with in some cases right the the really novel non-light water reactors that Mike mentioned uh those are not commercialized even if they're technologically mature some of them they're not necessarily a product you could pick up off the shelf and so investors want signals from government signals from the markets that are credible which means incentives that don't get removed that don't get sunseted early uh the process for getting the incentive some some of it honestly is Administrative burden even the policies that can be easily accessed uh stackable policies so incentives that people could Bank in a sense and and Clarity they need credibility and Clarity and so a carbon pricing scheme for example which we have in Canada is providing that level of clarity that's for in some regions of the US might be lacking at the moment so there's many levers that governments can actuate and with the IRA and other policies many of these levers have been actually that's great yes we've been excited to follow uh the the IRA and the bipartisan infrastructure law and see see what that does um you know we talk a lot about demand for electricity electric cars everybody hopping onto the grid oh is the grid evolving how is the energy system evolving along with the situation and our this the state of our grid uh for example there's a line of thinking that nuclear could help enable Renewables and be the role of capacity of supply and capacity and firm base load power in a net zero power system dominated by wind and solar um and that would help reduce overall system costs uh Mike would you have any thoughts about the system and the grid and adding nuclear to it in relation to support for Renewables and growth in solar and wind so the the grid is certainly evolving and it's going to evolve and one of the challenges that we saw as we looked through the report is what will it look like in 20 or 30 years and how will nuclear potentially play a role and what will the demand signal look like for that technology it's going to have to compete because there are other low-carbon options out there that are under development and and so understanding what the case is for firm power and what other Technologies may take and they have the ability to provide that firm capacity is something that that is still a bit uncertain for nuclear we you know first thing would say is that it's going to need to be able to compete in an economic basis as we've already mentioned but then the other thing is the flexibility that's going to be able to bring to be able to work with that higher penetration of Renewables a wind and solar can it operate in a way that's beneficial to the grid provide the uh the generation that's necessary but also bring with it some flexibility that in some cases our past large-scale nuclear plants that not quite ahead while they can do things like load following it's more challenging and they're not necessarily designed with that in mind the new technologies are designed with that in most cases and so may provide benefit in the future they can also because they may be smaller scale provide alternative services and then be able to load follow with the grid providing capacity to the grid but also perhaps capacity to another use case whether it's hydrogen production or something else the business case for that is still a bit you know it's it's uncertain so more work needs to be done and it's it's probably going to be locationally driven by something that would be broadly true everywhere so you'll have to look at it based on where the demand signal is and what type of type of industries that might be beneficial for so I'd say the grid has got a lot of uncertainty to it but nuclear could play a role but again economics and the use cases for how it might balance with those Renewables is still a good uncertain thanks you mentioned other applications and Ahmed maybe could you speak a little bit to what we've heard Dow being interested Nucor steel can you speak to some of the other roles nuclear could play in the future yes it's also dependent on the technology by the way because different reactors can offer uh different temperatures and so that we do have some high temperature processed heat applications that some of these non-light water reactions could serve when White Water reactors can't serve them um broadly speaking I would cluster these applications into floor buckets so you've got the electricity Mission and I think I agree with Mike that's by far the dominant Mission um but you've also got hydrogen production so it's unclear where the hydrogen economy is is or where it's going to stop uh how far the penetration is going to go but there's certainly a school of thoughts that hydrogen should substitute a good chunk of liquid and gaseous fuels those that can't be electrified those missions that can't be electrified so you've got hydrogen production in places like them at least for example they are using thinking about water desalination as a mission and then you've got the industrial emission which is a process heat mainly but also providing Heat and electricity to clusters of facilities or to a single facility heat is a bit scarier than the others in the sense that it's driven by proximity or or it's you need you need the production and the sub and the demand the consumption need to happen in proximate um distance to one another that is not necessarily the case with the other emissions thank you you know let's dig into economics a little bit more and and the market there's uncertainty surrounding the economic risks that we as we've already noted and how investors view nuclear technologies reducing these risks by lowering upfront costs and demonstrating discipline cost control as you've noted could be a factor in overcoming concerns with a nuclear investment what are some of the key cost drivers you think that are out there for new nuclear new nuclear development Ahmed let's start with you huge range also technology driven to be honest so if you're talking about these light Water Reactor concepts for example many of the materials fuel has already been qualified we're not talking about higher enrichment levels and so their path is easier it's a commercialization um just inherently right in terms of cost drivers there are a few business cases that rely on economic speculative economic advantages so multi-module operation uh autonomous Opera operation or remote monitoring these things need to go through the proper regulatory channels or smaller emergency planning zones so there are regulatory cost drivers um by far the biggest cost driver is just the sheer newness of building this the first of a Kind technology uh reactor and demonstrating the sort of cost control and quality control that products generally demonstrate as opposed to projects to use my x-rays phrasing um we've seen for example recently with a new scale that they've seen cost escalation they've got commodity issues right supply chain issues are our Legion in today's world although many of these prices are going down or at least stabilizing so the novelty the sheer novelty the regulation and the third cost drivers in my judgment is just the changing environment the changing markets that these reactors will be competing in we just talked about the evolving Energy System uh the Energy System of today is not the one that the you know generation two and three reactors kind of had to compete with there's much less certainty supplies changing demand is changing pricing and regulation are changing um so the the liberalization of electricity markets especially I would say was is the third cost driver well thank you and um Mike can you talk a little bit about the impact the international market and being able to uh have access more broadly to the with our new nuclear developments in the international market would that how would that factor into the economic viability for U.S vendors

well broadly I think actually earlier which is that in order to meet the business case that a lot of these companies Envision they're going to need to have a fairly extensive order they want to have a lot of product orders that they can justify then building these manufacturing facilities that will allow them to modularize and bring costs down more rapidly which has not happened in the past of nuclear development and so one of the places that I know many of them have looked at is the international market so if there's perhaps not as large a market initially in the U.S there may be growing demand in other countries that might they might be able to compete for and so they're going to be a need to also look at their designs and their Technologies and and also not look at them just in the regulatory sense that I'm bad mentioned for the us but how may they may be more quickly certified and made available for an international market that could help them jump start the development of those facilities they need to really bring down the cost of development so the larger the the market and the international market is potentially a big one where there's perhaps even greater electricity demand growth uh than there is in the U.S then that's an opportunity for the these uh these U.S companies in fact any company to perhaps grow the size of their market and uh more quickly uh develop the the learning curves there and it's going to be that are going to be necessary uh to be competitive because ultimately if it's a small order book then they'll have high costs and they will not probably be competitive uh as they have not been in the past because they are much higher cost point than the other technologies that are available and very quickly something that we hear a lot about because some of our communities are interested in supporting where are we on the supply chain uh for building these uh do we have that domestically are we going to be leaning internationally um Ahmed or Mike either one of you um I'll just kind of just say one thing I should have said too that it was a cost driver that I met didn't mention is is a fuel cycle perhaps uh because some of these uh new technologies are dependent on what's known as high assay low enriched uranium or Halo or their designs uh the the supply chain for that could be critical to the viability of some of these new plants that supply chain is not robust right now and is is more challenged by some of the international issues that are out there that I won't get into here in this conversation but that perhaps restrain the supply for uh High assay low enriched uranium and make it more challenging for some of these companies to have a Dependable supply for that so um you know there's I'll just note that that's a critical area that'll need to get addressed by all the companies that intend to use that as part of their designs Ahmed do we have the opportunity to rebuild Supply chains in in North America now yes I mean you could technically do anything the question is that's that's what's caused and how quickly right um I I would say in addition to the fuel supply chain issue there there's a Workforce human capital issue the human capital has been degraded relative to where it was at its peak of course but the U.S still has Legacy infrastructure

Legacy training programs that are the world's best that can be rebuilt and the third thing is any of these reactors are trying to avoid things like large forgings or you know trying to develop coherence plans there's been a lot of work on developing the supply chain for the actual components so of course it can be done the question is at what cost what timeline and what hiccups are will be in the way right with any new technology uh you don't go from first of a kind to nth of a Kind it's not a monotonically decreasing function it's actually you need to you need to build a few to find the problems fix them and then it starts going down as as research tells us thanks um okay okay let's move into one of my favorite areas the social acceptance discussion recognizing that there are varied views on nuclear can you provide a brief overview of how attitudes in the U.S and perhaps globally on nuclear energy have shifted over time uh particularly its role in the effort to address climate change uh Dr Ford actually I'd like to defer to my colleague Dr Abdullah because he he had a large hand in drafting that portion of our report I think it's uh would be beneficial for the audience to hear from him first I'm happy to add in as he goes but he is there's one of the lead authors for that chapter for our report I think it's better for him to lead up fantastic thank you Dr Abdullah he just wants to see if I missed something so if I do Mike please jump in um it's very hard to do justice for this topic as you well know Cara uh and especially when you're talking globally I would start by saying there are two things here some people refer to polling as public acceptance you know how many what percentage of the people in the U.S support or oppose nuclear power so there's polling and there's actual behavioral social science in terms of the polling nuclear power has been between that 40 and 60 band of support or opposition whichever one you prefer and usually you know the support goes down after an accident it takes some time to recover right now we're actually at a high point um for support uh globally it's actually in the same picture even in places that have more nuclear power than the US like France there's always a strong components of supports and strong components or Coalition that opposes and that's a very small 10 to 20 percent kind of the population that doesn't have to be in terms of Behavioral social science we know a lot we've learned a lot over the past for decades and it's actually much more stable than polling uh or Tasman over the past few decades we know why people might have issues with nuclear power we know what they want to know if you propose a facility in their uh proximate location and and you have a phenomenal amount of experience with us Gary you know that there are discussions we can have and things we can do and often it's a failure of risk communication we don't know what to communicate or how to communicate it often it's arrogant so it's kind of a personality issue that's independent of nuclear power to be honest and often it's using risk communication strategies by the industry that that haven't worked in the past so not talking about the issue doesn't make it go to go away for example so I'm going to stop there and turn it over to Mike because I'm sure I've missed quite a few things no actually I I as always you have this topic well in hand and man I I would say that uh the the attitude certainly have uh have fluctuated but I think that there is uh to me a new uh approach that I've seen starts to come to the fore uh in the way that uh some of these companies are engaging communities and there is a focus uh at the government level through the department of energy to examine how to do this better look at consent-based citing mechanisms uh to look at helping industry engage better with the communities when I was at Argonne National Lab we did a uh an analysis of where Advanced reactor demonstration sites uh could be placed and help try to understand better what the Dynamics were with that to help the industry ask the right questions and help engage better with the industry and they through the natural reactor Innovation Center developed a nice tool called The Stand tool that's now available for industry to use on the Idaho National Lab website site and so they they've they've really taken the lead in trying to look at different ways of engaging and ensuring that some issues in energy Justice and Equity that were not addressed in the past our address before these companies move in that they haven't come to the fore with a an already solved problem that they tried to present to the community but rather engage the community early understand what the needs are and be willing in many cases to walk away uh to to not and make sure that they've taken into account all the uh the issues that the community is concerned about for a facility of this type so I think that there's a a bit of a sea change that I've seen in the last few years about the way many of these companies are addressing this and the way the government uh supporting that so I think you know there's there's hope here and there's also some good examples of it internationally especially in things like uh fuel repository citing and you're there's there's been some very good examples of how to do it and maybe how not to do it and so that's that's all beneficial uh and it provides us support to better engage the communities that's really what we're hearing in our communities it's reflected that we're we're having some success breaking down some of the silos that normally exist around these kinds of future plans and getting developers utilities potential host communities and policy makers in the same room at the same time early in the process so it's good to hear we're all hearing the same things so because we only have limited time let's go ahead and turn towards next steps and the future and where do we go from here there are obviously a lot of challenges but the potential is also huge and nuclear power could really help us meet those electricity system decarbonization goals but there are some other big challenges that I'd really like to raise it's important and that is signing up future generations for these projects that impact uh multi multiple Generations like radioactive waste um I'd love to get your your thoughts on a subject we talk about all the time and that is how do you think these competing responsibilities approaching the waste responsibly but also looking at the benefits of nuclear and new development what changes uh do you see in how we should approach this balance and how we talk about it amen I I think there's a call for humility here on the parts of you know people like us analysts people in government um you're right the waste issue is a critical issue right and it actually impacts the social engagement and social acceptance side enormously as well I I think there's a call for co-producing the future with the people with the community just just asking them what do you want Where Do We Go From Here there has often been you know we've got thousands of these decarbonization Pathways that are completely divorced from reality um and and and those are Irrelevant in a world where this is not a scientific question right this is what Alvin Weinberg called transcientific it involves policy makers it involves communities it involves engineers and scientists but it also involves the public the publics and so we need to know you know if we find a community that is interested in hosting a waste repository for example that helps solve that link in the chain right and we can cultivate those relationships if we find communities that value citing then we could cite reactors in them this is very different from the model that says we need 20 of our powers it comes from to come from nuclear right it's a much slower but I argue much cheaper and much more sustainable pathway in the long run where we kind of treat this as the socio-technical system that it is and yes we need to think about the long-term implications by the way we need to stop having a high discount rate on the future when it comes to the nuclear waste question we've seen what that has led to over 40 50 years right the San Diego San Andreas um you know a citing question citing questions all over the country we need to be honest about this and engage with communities about this and and only in that way will we be will we be able to co-produce uh socio-politically sustainable solution Mike from your perspective do you think the fact that as you mentioned there's the consent based citing process which is getting underway soon the department is going to give out funding for consortia to form to help address consent-based citing and build capacity but without an interim storage facility and without a geologic repository in the United States do you think that that is going to impact the future development of these fantastic new technologies certainly could could factor into the business case that the the companies that would want to be the customers were here would want to know what the solution is in other words uh just as uh they would have to worry about the price of electricity in their region uh and uh the cost of the development overall they have to factor in what the long-term commitment that there is that they're making related to waste management uh and so there would need to be something with the the group that's doing the development and that uh and that customer to understand what that long-term solution is and what the government's role is in helping ensure that it stays stable because certainly uh many of the companies that built these plants decades ago anticipated that the fuel would be taken back by the government and that the government will manage that solution and paid the government for many years uh to to to be able to to develop that solution and so there's a little bit of a hesitancy I would absolutely think among the customer base until there's a reasonable answer there but I think that their Solutions here and that's where I think what I'm Ed's discussing is is the only approach that can be taken to find communities that are willing uh perhaps to to host a repository a government uh this focused on how to do that in an equitable fashion and then companies and consortia that are willing to to make the investment and take take a bit of a chance and a risk in some cases perhaps that will be needed for some of the first movers in this area to be able to to start to develop a large order book that I that I say is going to be necessary for nuclear to really be competitive so it can't just be a one-off solution it needs to be something that's repetitive and that could be modeled for a larger number of these reactors to be built otherwise they'll just still be Niche Solutions and that's not that's not something that's going to work for that for this technology be built at scale meaning large volume for it to be more yes there's a risk balancing and a value managing what do you value find in the communities that maybe would value the business that would come from a repository because certainly there are Technical Solutions that are available we've seen internationally so it's not in many cases a technical issue it is a community support issue and a political issue and one quick question just to round this out before we go to our audience questions that are coming in furiously and that is if we deploy Advanced nuclear reactors do we still need a repository absolutely we will need some we will need something let me put it this way we will need a waste management solution so we will need to there there are many solutions a repository is one of them uh there are other solutions that we may not want to get into here but certainly the the question of what happens with the used fuel uh needs to be answered and so that will always be a be an issue even with these Advanced plans so I know um Dr Abdullah that the department of energy and Dr Huff just signed an agreement with you all in Canada the nuclear waste management organization to collaborate on consent based citing for a geological repository so it's great to know that we're all who are facing these issues whether it's just one country or multiple countries that we're all working together to see where we can leverage experience um thank you so much I appreciate you all taking time for the questions that we prepared and now we're going to go to the audience so the first question that I'm going to share is um let's start with you Abdullah um Ahmed excuse me what and how is nuclear energy still important if it can't be applied fast enough to help us reduce carbon now well you know if we're a couple of things and we need to unpack this question first um just because you know the first just because it won't be deployed by 2040 does not immediately eliminate nuclear from the solution for example I'm using 2014 as a straw man but there could be if we develop these Technologies properly and we develop the processes to scale them up to manage their costs and to engage with the public properly there's no reason why nuclear cats contribute to a net zero World post 2050 right so we need as many Technologies in our toolkit as possible and we should invest in making every technology available at the same time I would say um there are rates of technological scale up that seem absurd now but could be possible in the future if we get our act together so I'll give you one example um the UK has always been seen as a leader in offshore wind but China recently actually not quite recently overtook the UK and offshore wind development and China is deploying offshore wind at exponential rates that shows that scale up of these Technologies to to meet the Net Zero by 2050 challenge even is possible if it's done you know appropriately or if they're sufficient in China's case sufficient Capital sufficient coordinates coordination across all levels of government and Industry in the U.S case because the system is different and the institutional context is different it will have to be a different sort of alignment to Coalition building but we could scale up all of these Technologies radically and and make them all parts of the solution thank you Dr Ford a question for you how many Advanced and modular reactor designs do you believe the market may be able to support and sustain in the future considering there are so many different designs currently being investigated what do you perceive being the distinguishing traits of the successful designs well certainly I mentioned earlier in the in the discussion here that what we'd be looking for are technologies that can meet some of the same performance standards that are existing light water plants have and so they would need to demonstrate that they have at least a a pathway to get to the kind of capacity factors of 90 to 90 percent five percent availability that our existing Whitewater plants have uh that would be a first point as if they need to demonstrate that as far as I would not like to probably Hazard a guess of how many of the Technologies might be viable uh there are at least 10 different designs for example that are being funded through the department of energy Advanced reactor demonstration program uh and I think that's a viable strategy in the sense that they want to make sure that they've allowed them to get far enough down the path to understand which ones of those may be the most viable for both use in the electricity use case and then perhaps for the process heat solution so we might need for industrial heat so I'd say that uh it's a an unknown how many may be supportable the challenge of course will be if they're if they're multiples let's say the 10 make their way to a point of being ready to demonstrate and be available for the market uh which will be actually viable we depend on where the supply chain is able to support them perhaps uh most readily on that already noted that if it's a light water Advanced light water design that supply chain already exists in many cases but for some of the other Technologies it does not there's still material challenges and so at some point the question may be answered by the market in other words which ones do they want to continue to support and demand based on the performance characteristics that they demonstrate and I do think they're all going to have to demonstrate themselves with at least a demonstration plant that shows a viable Pathway to high reliability that would be my guess is that companies will not want to make an order until they have demonstrated that these Technologies can provide that support that the existing light water Fleet is provided over the last many decades thank you and um Amanda would love to get your thoughts but will you also touch then on licensing and and what is the Readiness for the nuclear Regulatory Commission to license these kinds of new technologies foreign chapter I'd like to venture by saying I am not the licensing expert but I learned quite a bit and in speaking with the licensing experts in our committee we actually developed a fairly substantial list of gaps in licensing so I do encourage people to to go to that report and read those gaps there are gaps in for example qualifying uh licensing fuels licensing modes of operation that some of these companies are betting on um there are also uh problems on the regulatory side itself in other words within the institution the NRC has a a Workforce problem in the sense that we again haven't been training enough nuclear Engineers especially on some of these more novel Technologies who can go into the NRC and start developing the regulatory Frameworks and there's a rate of churn within NRC staff as well because there's a smaller pool of human capital in this field and and so um people can poach you if you're in a certain organization and you know your stuff um the other big problem with NRC at the moment is that their funding comes from the existing light Water Reactor operators right and so they have traditionally not or historically not been able to develop a profound depth of competence in regulating non-lightwater Technologies because there aren't licenses operating those reactors who could justify that mission uh that has changed recently so Congress has provided kind of limited funding for NRC to start developing regulatory Frameworks for advanced reactors Mike gets these emails I'm sure everyone on the committee does you probably do as well Carol these NRC is developing engaging in stakeholder consultation sessions trying to develop new regulatory standards for these Advanced reactors uh NRC actually started talking about Fusion recently which is also exciting so they're starting to think of these Advanced Technologies as engineered systems and products that might be available in a couple of decades and therefore they're trying to channel more money into developing uh the necessary regulatory procedures for them thanks um we've talked a bit about what the federal government has been doing let's move down to the States we have a question about whether there are State nuclear policies um if you could speak a little bit to those that exist or how they might differ or I know a number of states have just removed moratoriums or formed advisory boards for Governors can you speak a little bit to what's going on in the states Dr Ford uh I can answer just uh quickly that and uh Matt may practice I don't track that uh terribly closely but I would say that I do see that uh some of the uh some of the states that have historically had moratoria on uh building new nuclear for example Illinois uh has had one and I think they're looking at now overturning that and and allowing new development so there are states that have been reconsidering uh and then also including nuclear as a alternative in low-carbon generation so it's not just about whether or not they've allowed uh development of new nuclear technologies it's whether they've treated nuclear in a similar fashion as a low carbon generating source and so some of that is also changed in the last number of years that have made existing plants more viable for economically and may make future plants uh more palatable from an economic standpoint in those States and so by having a Level Playing Field if you will or how they're treated in terms of their generating as a low carbon resource and that's that's a a definite benefit that I think works in favor of nuclear but certainly removing the moratoria so at least it gives the markets the the option they may not choose to take it but it provides that option I think is a value proposition that many of them should consider thanks Ahmed would you like to add to that moratorium clean energy standards or clean electricity standards certainly are very uh interesting developments um probably very powerful developments in terms of signaling to investors the other two things I'd like to mention the first is some states are realizing recognizing that uh maybe they've always recognized that decarbonizing industry will be difficult and so States like Illinois States you know especially in Oklahoma states that are traditionally not uh that want to safeguard that industry that heavy industry sector might be more willing to explore options like smrs for example or even micro reactors so that's one development kind of the core benefits of protecting industry is looking at nuclear the other thing is that a lot of action is happening at the utility level so even sub States and many of these utilities that are actually interested in very they're very ambitious in their decarbonization goals uh many of them might be municipalities for example right or co-ops or government's own utilities and so they would exercise leverage on their seats in providing incentives to potential development even if it's a study a feed study to see if this should go forward or not let alone you know a Giant's upfront investment incentive or a production credit or something like that uh we're seeing more of these signals and they're coming from all across the board every jurisdiction and they're tied into the decarbonization discussion fundamentally that's the thing that matters to many of many more people now it's great you know one of the things we've talked about a lot is also diversifying Economic Opportunity um as you're looking at the energy mix and I know that uh there's a lot of talk right now about whole to nuclear Transitions and re-industrialization and reuse I was just wondering if if you all can speak a little bit to that opportunity as we see it potentially playing out across the country yeah I'd say that there that there is a definitely a value a case we made that the value proposition there is that you already have the in many cases the existing electrical infrastructure to support a generating plant and so if you're able to place a small modular reactor let's say in place of where there have been an existing coal plant that's a definitely a benefit in that it helps reduce some of the infrastructure costs for development and site development so you may be able to re-leverage that that capacity in the grid so it's a grid capacity a challenge in some cases if you have to cite completely uh Greenfield where you're developing the entire infrastructure around it that's much more expensive proposition so that helps and it also brings in a cleaner production capacity than the existing plants that were there so certainly it's a benefit of bringing in and maintaining some of the jobs in those areas where those plants have been historically and so you're able to keep a strong Workforce uh and tax base for those communities where they've had these generating facilities and it'll be replaced but but kept in place in the sense that you'll be continuing some employment in that area that's definitely beneficial to the communities I think uh and the the last thing I'd say is that the capacity of the uh or the the safety case for the newer plants in many cases makes it more possible to cite in areas that perhaps have had a lot of growth around them which has happened to a lot of coal plants for the communities have grown around them uh it makes it more viable for some of these plants that have a lower inventory that maybe can have other safety cases and emergency planning zones that are at the site boundaries that makes it more possible to put these plants where the existing coal facilities exist that's great we've been fortunate enough to hear from the mayor of camera Wyoming on the Terra power facility that is being talked about not being talked about been agreed upon uh in at the Naughton plant so we we're excited about following that project um Ahmed I'm going to give you this next question which goes back to our earlier conversation about risk and perceived risk uh the question is given that nuclear power plants are vulnerable to attack during war and or by terrorism how can nuclear power be safe um that would be a difficult one to answer but uh allow me for one second to speak to the previous question as well um we need there's there there's a need for slight caution with the talk of repurposing called you know retired call or sustainable facilities and that notes of caution is that the grid is changing so in places where you know let's say Vermont Yankee they repurpose some of that transmission infrastructure already right so just because these facilities exist and have been connected to the Grid at one point does not mean that in a changing grid those those locations will be available for long um and so there's a timeline issue again we need to coordinate here right as a grid changes and nuclear is being proposed there might be some tension there and the other thing the other notebook of caution is other horses are Galloping in this race so batteries right they they are looking at these facilities and they might like them as well or gas plus CCS so or hydrogen for that matter so there's there's an or Fusion to speak of Mike's current role so there are other horses galloping in this race and we just need to be cognizant of that as we talk about when these things will be deployed about uh safety um

2023-06-01 04:23

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