II am so excited to talk to you today about why nuclear power kicks ass! Of all power sources, why does nuclear power kick the most ass? It is – quite simply – the quickest, cleanest, and surest route to a carbon-neutral future. And it will yield many dividends beyond carbon-free power, including solving water shortages by refilling our depleted aquifers and watersheds, closing the fuel cycle to reprocess spent fuel, developing proliferation-resistant technology, creating new usable land opportunities for millions of homes and businesses, and enabling multi-planetary life through long distance space travel at higher speeds. But let’s focus now on the best thing about nuclear power – we can scale it quickly starting right now using proven technology to address carbon neutrality much faster than through any currently viable alternative.
What if the U.S. committed right now to doing the one single thing that would most quickly push the world into a carbon-neutral future? What if that one thing drastically reduced the cost of U.S. electricity for the next generation? What if that one thing drastically increased our coal, oil, and gas exports, helping us lift the last 700 million people on the globe out of extreme poverty? What if our children had the most reliable power grid in human history? What if you, me, and some like-minded compañeros made congress do it for us right now?
I will define that one thing, so that we don’t have to discuss it in the abstract. But that thing could be a range of different similar things – I’ll define a reasonable midpoint of the idea based on tried and true generations of American and Korean technology. That thing is the all-new Kia Soul!
Source: https://www.caranddriver.com/kia/soul-2024
Not really – it’s the KEPCO APR-1400 pressurized water reactor, but the marketing images made by its manufacturer are not quite as sexy…
Source: https://www.epj.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=3146
This baby cranks out 1400 mW of electrical power and includes many passive safety and reliability features that make it one of the safest possible options for nuclear power. For example, the inclusion of two separate cooling loops provides a redundancy against the primary mode of failure – loss of cooling. I could spend pages lauding the safety features of this reactor, but I will simply say that it is a good example of tried and tested technology that can be built at a reasonable price. It represents the right balance between new technology and well-understood designs. Seven of these reactors are operating around the world currently, and another five will be operating soon.
So, I said nuclear power was the quickest, cleanest, smallest and surest route to a carbon-neutral future. How quick? Well, we’ve increased the amount of electricity from renewable sources from about 12 percent of the U.S. total in 1980 to about 22 percent in 2022, with about 61 percent still coming from natural gas and coal. At that rate of increase in renewables (10 percent every 42 years), it would take another 250 years to displace the fossil fuels. But in less than 20 years we could build enough safe, reliable nuclear power plants to generate all of our electricity from carbon-free sources.
Nuclear power plants can be built in about 5 years when everything runs smoothly. We don’t have a smooth process right now because we have scared the public away from nuclear, and we have a byzantine regulatory structure that is actively trying to kill nuclear. But consensus is beginning to build behind nuclear power. If we got really serious about building a new fleet of reactors and picked one or two models like the APR-1400 to stick to for the next generation, we could fix this problem before the babies that are born today finish school. It would probably take 10 years to build the first couple power plants well, taking our time to do it right and to train the trainers that will develop our workforce to build a new fleet. Once we got the process down, the build-time would begin to drop quickly. So we start building two in the first year, and then a year later we start building another four with some of the same engineering and construction labor to train their new colleagues, and then a year later we start building another eight, and so on, until we reach a plateau in the build rate that is limited only by available skilled labor and materials. At that point, we’re ready to proceed at steady state until we have 217 new APR-1400 reactors. That’s roughly how many reactors it would take to create all the electricity we’re currently making with coal and natural gas. We could probably have 217 new power plants in less than 20 years if we came together as a nation and made it a central priority. There would be LOTS of obstacles, it would be EXTREMELY difficult, but it would be this generation’s hero’s journey. I will borrow from the last president who died in the line of duty to make this point: We choose to go to carbon-free electricity. We choose to go there in this generation and to do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.
Those of us who know enough about the world to understand the nuances of the energy problems we face now are mostly all old enough that we’re getting ready for the actuarial tables. This project is not about us, it’s about those who we are creating, and the world we are creating for them. When we’re gone, those people and the things we create will all that will be of us left in this world. My wish is that it should be good. The fleet of power plants I am talking about will provide generations with cheap, clean and carbon-free power for our country. They can be constantly rebuilt and refurbished, and if we develop new and better technologies, they can be replaced in a careful and deliberate manner, without the feeling that we have now of the sword of Damocles hanging over us.
No one can tell me there is any other power source currently available that we can scale so quickly to meet the challenges that face us. Is there a crisis right now, and do we need to act urgently? If so, the real question to you is, will we be willing to undertake all the risks to do the right thing now? Here is my plan.