Small Modular Reactors, Power Ship Molten Salt Reactors,
and Micro-Reactors: New Nuclear Models Emerging for Mass Deployment in the 2030’s
– But Are They Really Affordable?
Many of us
believe it is simply fanciful wishful thinking that wind, solar, and storage
can reliably and affordably replace coal and natural gas for grid power.
However, there is one source of energy that matches the reliability of fossil
generation and that is of course, nuclear. Affordability is a problem with
nuclear, especially where safety and regulatory costs are much higher than they
need to be. Now, new models are gaining steam that can bypass some of the
safety issues and take advantage of manufacturing techniques like modularity.
Still, there will be a need for regulatory reforms to get these new designs
approved and deployed. As proven with reactors deployed around the world for
many decades, nuclear energy is safe. Nuclear has been in operation for decades
with only a few disasters that were due to completely fixable human errors and
poor reactor designs (Chernobyl) or errors in where they were deployed (Fukushima).
Making nuclear cheaper involves cutting unnecessary red tape, perhaps adding more
incentives for low emissions intensity baseload or firm power that is reliable
and not intermittent, and developing economies of scope and economies of scale,
supply chains, and support industries for these new modular models, including
domestic (non-Russian) sources of nuclear fuel.
Concerns and
challenges of nuclear beyond safety, cost, and time include dependence on
Russia for the more enriched fuel used in 40% of the world’s reactors and
almost a quarter of US reactors. This is why the US has not sanctioned Russia’s
Rosatom. That is concerning as we know Russia can be unreliable and weaponize
energy. New uranium enrichment efforts are underway in the US but will take
time. Development of domestic uranium enrichment capacity and complementary
nuclear fuel development industries, including mining and milling, is a matter
of national and energy security. Another method is to recycle existing nuclear
waste. Since nuclear deployment has stagnated in the US over the last 4 decades
there will be a need to train more people to do the work if there will be more
deployments. The US still makes 20% of its electricity with nuclear and several
plants slated to close (often for perceived safety and even ideological
reasons) have been given extensions to keep operating.
Small Modular Reactors
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
finally, after six years, issued its final rule to certify NuScale Energy’s
small modular reactor (SMR) design. This is the first SMR design to be
certified in the US and the 7th nuclear design overall to be
certified. NuScale’s design is an advanced light-water reactor delivered in
50MW modules. NuScale’s power plant design can accommodate up to 12 of the factory-built
reactors for up to 600MW of generating capacity. This plant is about one third
the size of large reactors. The reactors are passively cooled using convection
and gravity, so they require no water, power, or operator actions for cooling.
Currently, NuScale is seeking to uprate each module to produce 77MW (924MW for
12). NuScale has worked with the DOE since 2014 to develop these SMRs. A six-module
demo project has been up and running at DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory. The
first commercial module is expected to be operational by 2029 with full plant
operation in 2030. NuScale has 19 signed and active domestic and international
agreements to deploy SMR plants in 12 different countries, including Poland,
Romania, the Czech Republic, and Jordan, as well as the US. It should be noted that
the certification process alone was cumbersome and expensive. According to a
Huff Post article referenced below: “The application process alone took
NuScale six years, 12,000 pages and more than half a billion dollars. In a
lengthy 2021 report, the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, a trade group, called on
Congress to reform licensing fees and provide more federal financing for new
reactors.”
Another SMR
design has been selected for the first commercial contract in North America, a
collaboration between GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, Ontario Power Generation,
SNC-Lavalin and Aecon Group. GE Hitachi will design the reactor, a Darlington
SMR BWRX-300 reactor that will generate up to 300 MW of power. This SMR is
expected to be completed by the 4th quarter of 2028 and will likely
be the first commercial SMR operational in North America. GE Hitachi notes that
“the BWRX-300 is designed to reduce construction and operating costs below
other nuclear power generation technologies. It uses a combination of fuel
available in operating reactors and does not require high-assay low-enriched
uranium. Its design is based on reactor technology already licensed and proven
components.” Tennessee Valley Authority is working on preliminary licensing
for a possible BWRX-300 deployment in Tennessee. They are working with Ontario
Power Generation to get licensing from the U.S. NRC and the Canadian Nuclear
Safety Commission.
Holtec
International makes a light water SMR of 160MW where the reactor is buried
underground. The life of the reactor is expected to be 80-100 years. Such a
long life could also be a selling point when comparing to solar, wind, and even
fossil generation, which will not last that long. Holtec’s choice of 160MW as a
size is due to its ability to replace a standard boiler in a coal plant, thus
repurposing the plant to run on nuclear instead of coal. The SMR-160 can
deliver steam at any desired pressure thus utilizing the exiting turbogenerator
of the coal plant. Holtec notes that “this approach preserves the jobs
associated with the operation and maintenance of the existing plant’s
turbogenerator and downstream systems, while creating new, high-paying jobs
associated with the SMR-160 nuclear power plant.” They have applied for a patent
for this configuration. This is quite an interesting development and can be
useful where premature decommissioning of coal plants is occurring or slated to
occur due to decarbonization desires or mandates. It can also help the plant
remain profitable and not become a stranded asset. India is interested in this
technology. The UK has a plan to deploy 32 of the Holtec SMR-160 units for a
total output of 5.1 GW. Construction is expected to begin in 2028.
Terra Power,
backed by Bill Gates, builds a sodium-cooled fast reactor, an SMR that requires
high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) for fuel. Their Natrium design features
a sodium-cooled fast reactor combined with molten salt energy storage. The
reactor output is 345MW and with charged storage added it can produce 500MW for
up to 5.5 hours. This gives the plant the ability to respond to a generation fluctuation
due to a high penetration of solar and wind on the local grid. Terra Power is
currently preparing to begin construction in Spring 2023 of the non-nuclear
parts of a demonstration Natrium plant in Wyoming at the site of a coal plant
making it the only coal-to-nuclear project being developed in the world, likely
the first of many. They do not expect to make power commercially till about
2030.
X-Energy is
developing a high temperature gas reactor that is gas-cooled. The high
temperature gas used is helium. They plan to utilize their own developed proprietary
fuel: tri-structural isotropic (TRISO) particle fuel. This is a HALEU fuel that
they plan to fabricate at their TRISO-X facility at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory that has served as a demonstration facility since 2016 of the
Company’s patented TRISO fabrication processes. TRISO-X has requested a 40-year
license and the NRC presented its proposed 30-month review timeline at the
meeting in Oak Ridge on January 25, 2023.
Nuclear Power Barges and Reactor Manufacturing at Shipyards
and Refineries
Samsung Heavy
Industries and compact molten salt reactor (CMSR) developer Seaborg announced a
joint venture to develop the CMSR Power Barge, a reactor or bank of reactors on
a floating barge with from two to eight 100 MW reactors, or up to 800 MW output.
The Seaborg reactors use spent light water reactor fuel with Thorium added as a
catalyst. They noted that the Power Barge could be used as a thermal
electricity source for industry, a dedicated power source for electrolyzers to
produce green hydrogen or ammonia, and/or for saltwater desalinization. The
Power Barges are expected to have a lifetime of 24 years. Robert Bryce points
out in a Substack article on the power Barge announcement that much of the
world’s population lives close to an ocean and can benefit from seaborn
nuclear. He also notes: “Shipyards have the production capacity – including
their own steel mills and armies of welders – to churn out reactor vessels at
the scale needed …” They could do it faster than other suppliers. In a
December 2022 article in the Breakthrough Journal – The Future of Nuclear at
Sea - the authors elaborate on the suitability of shipyards building
nuclear reactors:
“Shipyards build ships, of course. But they are more
than that; in reality, they are manufacturing centers for all manner of
extremely large, complex, and highly regulated items, such as oil drilling
platforms, cruise ships, and other marine vessels. In addition to large things,
shipyards specialize in constructions that are designed for extremely
challenging environments and operations, such as submarines or ice breakers.
Modern shipyards already have the professionals and the supply chains in place
to deliver safe, reliable, and ready-to-go products at impressively high levels
of quality control and assurance.”
“There’s no real reason that they couldn’t turn that
expertise toward building modular reactors and assemble them into barges and
other offshore platforms that could operate as offshore power plants—perhaps
even offshore power plants linked directly to hydrogen and synthetic fuel
production.”
They also note that building reactors at refineries,
which also fabricate large metal things, for hydrogen production (refineries
use much of the world’s hydrogen currently) is a good idea. The basic idea is
to build ‘Gigafactories’ at shipyards and refineries. Globally, there are 280
shipyards. Most are in South Korea, Japan, and China. The authors also point
out several reasons why Finland is an ideal place to get ‘shipyard nuclear’
started. It is an interesting and fascinating article – referenced below.
Micro-Reactors
One company already
fabricating prototype reactors at a manufacturing facility that makes equipment
for refineries is startup Last Energy. These reactors are 20MW air-cooled
single loop pressurized water reactors (PWRs), an existing reactor type already
on the market, just re-packaged into a different and smaller form. The 75-ton reactor
pressure vessels will be buried underground. They plan to deploy 10 of the
reactors (200 MW total) in Poland beginning in 2025. Each 20MW reactor is
expected to cost $100 million for construction. Last Energy will operate and
maintain them. They are taking on the risk of cost overruns. Long-term power
purchase contracts are the basis for borrowing the $1 billion needed for Polish
project, in line with wind and solar financing models. The Last Energy model involves
each reactor module being replaced every six years with a new module pre-loaded
with fuel. The old module stays in the ground where its waste is secured within
the multiple redundant cooling mechanisms. It cools for years until it is time
to decommission. It is a trade-off meant to make the process a little easier on
balance.
The Nuclear
Energy Institute defined micro-reactors in a 2019 report as those between 1 and
10 MW in size. Thus, Last Energy’s rector is too big to fit their definition
and might be better defined as an SMR. A company called Oklo applied for licensing
a 1.5MW non-light water reactor, fast reactor design that uses HALEU fuel from spent
fuel nuclear fuel (SNF) which is currently stored as nuclear waste. They’re
application in 2020 was denied by the NRC due to security and safety concerns.
They re-launched their licensing process in September 2022 and hope to re-apply
to the NRC soon.
Recycling Nuclear Waste to Reduce Dependence on Russia
As mentioned above,
one way to add uranium enrichment capacity in the U.S. is to recycle existing
nuclear waste. This has the added advantages of reducing overall nuclear waste
and avoiding more mining and processing of uranium ore. It would have been
better to build a U.S. nuclear fuel recycling plant years ago, but political
headwinds were against it after nuclear fell out of favor.
Fast reactors like
those of Oklo, X-Energy, and Terra Power, are able to deal with impurities that
may be present in spent nuclear fuel. The fuel, known as high-assay low-enriched
uranium (HALEU) provides better energy density than other nuclear fuels and can
cost less. It also enables longer core life and more of the fuel burns up so
there is less waste. However, HALEU can only be acquired in the U.S. by
down-blending (diluting?) U.S. DOE high-enriched uranium. It was estimated in
2020 that it would take a minimum of seven years to develop fuel cycle
infrastructure for HALEU. Oklo’s was the first pilot project to use that
down-blended high-enriched uranium. However, as demand builds for HALEU, SNF
recycling will have to be ramped up.
Both Canadian mining company Cameco and
Oklo want to begin enriching SNF to make HALEU. Cameco entered into a strategic
partnership in late 2022 to acquire Westinghouse, a long-established American
nuclear company that has manufactured for about half of global nuclear plants
and also is a major nuclear fuels supplier. Oklo has a goal to recycle and enrich
the waste from their own reactors ultimately making recycling a less costly option
than mining, processing, and enriching new uranium ore supplies. They also hope
to establish an alternative to Russia’s closed-loop fuel services that appeal
to countries that want nuclear power but do not want to deal with the waste. Russia’s
close-loop system can offer the ability to design, build, and even operate a
nuclear plant as well as take away the waste. The U.S. currently buys 3 times
more Uranium from Russia than it produces so ramping up domestic uranium mining
and buying more from countries like Canada is also being pursued. According to
the EIA in a 2021 report the U.S. only domestically produces 5% of the uranium
it uses. The rest is imported: 35% from Kazakhstan, 15% from Canada, 14% from
Australia, 14% from Russia, 7% from Namibia, and 10% from other countries
combined. Oklo is aiming for a model where fuel recycling and sales (potentially
to competitors like Terra Power) makes up 40% of their business and reactors
make up 60%.
Affordability
Detractors to
nuclear energy, including advanced and SMR designs, point to construction costs
and regulatory time. They say it can’t be done fast enough or cheap enough to
make a dent in emissions reduction, compared to wind, solar, and storage, including
long duration storage like pumped hydro. They do have a point if the past is
considered. The Unit 3 reactor at the Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia began
construction in 2009. It is expected to finally be online in April of 2023.
That is 14 years later. A plant in Finland took 17 years for the same process
and though online in 2022 is still having problems. The Vogtle project was nearly
2.5 times over budget. It was expected to cost $14 billion and ended up costing
$34 billion. The South Carolina nuclear project collaboration between Westinghouse
and Toshiba was scrapped in 2017, with both companies facing huge losses and
Westinghouse filing for bankruptcy. Detractors also cite the high construction
costs of advanced nuclear, but these are costs for prototypes, pilots, and the first
commercial projects of immature technologies without well-established manufacturing
and supply chains. Construction and deployment costs will come way down as these
technologies mature. Of course, that will take time, and climate alarmists
always argue that we don’t have time.
Nuclear has
additional safety considerations that renewables and storage don’t have to
worry about. If it is deemed cheaper and faster than nuclear to overbuild wind
and solar, add battery and other energy storage, including pumped hydro, then
why not just do it instead? I think the answer will end up being a combo. If we
can hold off on climate alarmism a bit and plan our energy future smartly, we
will likely find we need an increase in all those technologies along with
decarbonized and efficient natural gas designs that incorporate carbon capture,
partial electrification of peak load natural gas plants, blue and green hydrogen,
and molten salt, lithium batteries, vanadium flow batteries, and other energy
storage technologies. Charging batteries and other energy storage and making
green hydrogen will require even more dedicated wind and solar. But for each
technology, costs will have to be forecasted and watched closely to avoid overruns
and it will need to be determined whether the cost to commercialize them at
scale is reasonable compared to alternatives. It will be an all-of-the-above strategy
that will still include coal where it is cheap, available, and needed for
energy access in developing countries. It will not be strictly natural gas-to-nuclear
as Robert Bryce favors, but wind, solar, storage, and upgraded and expanded
power grids will also be a big part of the picture. Other technologies like
geothermal will play a part as well. Perhaps deeper into the future, the deeper
and hotter parts of the planet can be accessed in supercritical geothermal, but
that day won’t be soon.
As mentioned,
one thing that can make advanced nuclear attractive in the long term is plant
life. If typical plants could last 60-100 years with just routine maintenance, they
could outcompete wind and solar in the long term, which last a third or half as
long before they need replaced. Wind and solar advocates would likely counter
that argument with the immediacy of climate change mitigation that they say
wind and solar can offer. That too is debatable.
Some think
that building nuclear plants smaller is one key to the affordability problem,
at least on the front end. Large construction projects, not only nuclear ones,
have been beset with cost overruns in recent years, often due to poor construction
management. Projects involving less construction do not have those problems and
modularization, which involves making bulk components in controlled factory
settings, can help keep costs down. The large nuclear projects in the U.S. that
were mothballed or slow and over cost have also been hampered by the fact that
no large nuclear plants have been built for decades so there were new learning
curves. Over-regulation has not helped either. Theoretically, small designs are
easier to manage and regulate. Modular factory processes are also easier to
standardize so that building the next ones of a bank of reactors can benefit
from the building of the ones before. This is how it has been done successfully
for nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers.
Another issue
nuclear has faced, especially with just a few large projects, is supply chains.
For the most part, there are none. With smaller modularized projects those
supply chains can be developed much easier and much faster, especially as new
orders arrive to keep them running and growing. Upfront spending and de-risking
before engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contracts are awarded, are
being done more now, after lessons learned from Vogtle. Jigar Shah, head of the
DOE’s Loan Program Office noted that they give loans with preferences given to
those who have acquired long-term off-take agreements and EPC contractors that
believe they can build the plant at cost. They will not lend to a supply chain
vendor unless that vendor has many orders ready to go.
Solving the
world’s energy conundrums is neither easy nor easily agreed upon. Commodity
prices and forecasts are always changing and subject to geopolitical risks and
glitches. New technologies often experience unexpected problems and costs.
Materials, minerals, metals, and labor costs fluctuate. While new tech often
makes resource costs drop, resources may become less concentrated, or of a
lower grade after high-grade deposits are depleted, which makes costs rise.
Thus, the cost picture for each energy resource is always changing. Regulatory red
tape seems to affect just about every resource, but is very high with nuclear,
mainly due to safety concerns around radioactivity and potential weapons
proliferation. Virtually every power generation resource has environmental
impacts that must be considered. Weighing all this stuff in comparisons can be
daunting. Wind and solar have high upfront costs compared to natural gas which
is pay-as-you-go with fuel purchases and use spread over the life of the
plants. This offers a net present value advantage. Nuclear has even higher
upfront costs than wind and solar but is both a comparable low carbon generation
source and a much more reliable one that can supply baseload needs which wind
and solar cannot do. It has fuel costs but they are much lower than fossil fuel
plants. Thus, with all the buzz about the energy trilemma of security,
sustainability, and affordability, it is affordability that is most difficult
with nuclear. However, that could and should become much less of a problem as these
models mature.
Some Basic Data of Selected Advanced Nuclear Designs, Cost Projections, Timing, and Comparisons
References:
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