Nuclear power plants may become smaller, simpler and easier to build in the future, potentially revolutionizing an energy source increasingly seen as crucial to the transition away from fossil fuels.
As demand for clean electricity from artificial intelligence, manufacturing and electric vehicles grows, new designs called small modular reactors, or SMRs, are expected to speed up the deployment of new factories.
Meanwhile, utilities across the country are retiring coal-fired power plants as part of the energy transition, raising concerns about looming power supply gaps. Nuclear power is seen as a potential solution because it is the most reliable power source available and emits no carbon dioxide.
Building large factories is expensive and time-consuming. In Georgia, Southern Company The first new nuclear reactor has been built in decades, but the project is seven years behind schedule and costing more than $30 billion.
Small modular reactors have a power capacity of 300 megawatts or less, about one-third the size of the average existing reactor in the United States. The goal is to build them through an assembly line-like process, where just a few pieces are shipped out of a factory and assembled on site.
“They’re a smaller share from a capital perspective,” Doug True, chief nuclear officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute, told CNBC. “They’re ideally suited for things like replacing decommissioning coal plants because coal plants The scale is usually larger than the design space of small modular reactors.”
The challenge is to build the first small modular reactor in the United States
According to the agency, there are only three small and medium-sized reactors operating in the world nuclear energy agency. Two of them are located in China and Russia, America’s main geopolitical rivals, and a test reactor is also operational in Japan.
Nuclear energy industry executives generally believe that small modular reactors will not enter the commercial stage until the 2030s. an ambitious effort Newcastle Last year, plans to deploy an SMR at a site in Idaho were scrapped as the project’s price tag soared from $5 billion to $9 billion due to inflation and high interest rates.
Eric Carr, president of nuclear operations Dominion EnergySaid that the biggest challenge in commercializing this technology is managing the cost of the first project.
“No one really wants to be first, but someone has to be first,” Carr told CNBC. “Once it’s launched, it will be a significant, reliable source of energy for the entire national grid.”
Dominion Energy
Dominion is currently evaluating whether it makes sense to build small modular reactors at its facilities. North Anna Nuclear Power Plant Located in Louisa County, Virginia, northwest of Richmond. The utility’s service area includes the world’s largest data center market, located less than 100 miles north of the facility in Loudoun County.
Power demand from these computer server warehouses is expected to surge as artificial intelligence consumes more energy. Taking Dominion as an example, peak power demand for data centers is expected to more than double to 6.4 GW by 2030 and quadruple to 13.4 GW by 2038.
Dominion asked SMR Technologies in July to submit a proposal to evaluate the feasibility of developing a small reactor in North Anna. Carr said interest in the proposal process was high. Carr said the utility is currently working with vendors to ensure they understand Dominion’s needs and identify technologies that might be a good fit.
“In the specific case of Dominion, we have a responsibility to our shareholders to do the right thing, and we have a responsibility to our customers to make sure we can meet the demand for this growth, but we have to balance those two interests,” Carr said. Although Dominion has not yet committed to building small reactors, plans envisage the development of six such reactors starting in 2034.
Technology companies driving the data center boom have also shown growing interest in nuclear power because of its reliability and role in fighting climate change. Carr said Dominion is discussing possible collaborations with some customers to bring small and medium-sized reactors closer to reality.
“We’re having some discussions with technology vendors and large customers that are coming in and saying, ‘What would this look like if we worked together,'” Carr said.
Haotai International
Holtec International, a privately held nuclear technology company, is trying to find a way forward for the industry on two fronts. The company is processing The restart of the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Michigan will be the first time that an out-of-service nuclear power plant has resumed operation.
Holtec also plans to install two small reactors at Palisades in the early 2030s, which will nearly double the plant’s power generation capacity. Kelly Trice, president of Holtec, said at least six utilities are interested in participating in restarting Palisades and building small reactors, but did not name them.
“If they participate in it, they can get all these painful lessons without having to pay,” Trice told CNBC. “Then when the factory is built at their site, it’s the second, third or Number four – once you learn all the lessons, it usually gets a lot cheaper.”
Trice said that once the first SMR is built in Palisades, Holtec plans to build an order book to “continuously manufacture components to meet any factory needs.”
Holtec’s SMR design is a pressurized water reactor, the same technology used in most plants currently operating in the United States. “But because some elegant safety features don’t require human intervention, they are simpler to operate, require fewer people, and are easier to maintain,” Treese said.
“And it’s repeatable. Our goal is to make every SMR essentially the same,” he said.
Constellation Energy
The largest nuclear power plant operator in the United States, Constellation Energyis also exploring the possibility of building a small reactor at one of its facilities.
The trend in the industry is to upgrade existing plants with smaller reactors, in part because communities have opened up to nuclear power. The necessary land, water, grid connections and security footprint are also already in place, said Kathleen Barrón, chief strategist at Constellation.
Barrón said the idea is to work with customers who are interested in signing power contracts at one of Constellation’s existing facilities and then work with them to use the facility “to host SMRs to provide more clean power to that customer in the future.”
“That will only happen if there is supportive national policy similar to what states have done for offshore wind, and there are customers interested in buying the power generated by these reactors,” Barron said.
Dominion’s Carr said the energy transition now requires a comprehensive approach, and as coal is phased out, natural gas will serve as a bridge to clean energy until the next technology comes online.
“SMR is probably the next technology,” he said.
About The Author
