Is Nuclear Power Making a Come-Back?
If you are working in the energy sector in the US, you probably already know that Palisades Nuclear Plant, a nuclear power plant that was decommissioned in 2022, is in line to come online as early as next year. And, it’s not the only shuttered plant that can come online this decade; the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear power plant is slated to come online as early as 2028. Even if you are not intimately familiar with the energy sector, you probably have heard rumors that Amazon is going nuclear to power its ginormous datacenters; and that even Microsoft has promised to look into nuclear power to power its next generation of AIs. With all these rumors and excitements in the nuclear power sector, I thought it was time to revisit nuclear power plants, why it might be making a come-back, and where it might be falling short.
Is there a renewed interest in nuclear power around the world?
US
In the US, there are at least two nuclear power plants that are supposed to start commercially producing power within the next five years.
Palisades already signed a power purchase agreement, and plans to start producing power for the grid in late 2025. Holtec International is responsible for bringing the plant online, and they are starting with the existing retired 800 MW unit, with plans to build their SMRs on site after 2030.
Photo credit: Holtec International (https://holtecinternational.com/products-and-services/holtec-palisades/)
Three Mile Island, the infamous site of the worst nuclear power disaster in the US, is also slated to be restarted. Constellation Energy, which bought the reactor that was unaffected by the partial meltdown, plans to start producing power by 2028. Microsoft already has a power purchase agreement with TMI to power its next generation of AIs with 800 MW of nuclear power.
Photo credit: Britannica (https://www.britannica.com/technology/nuclear-reactor/Three-Mile-Island-and-Chernobyl)
India
The Indian Department of Atomic Energy plans to add seven new reactors to its aging fleet by 2029 using public-private joint venture. At present, nuclear power provides a measly 2% of India’s total energy needs; with these seven new reactors, that is supposed to almost double, from 7.48 GWe to 13.08 GWe. DAE is also experimenting with indigenous SMRs, termed Bharat Small Modular Reactor, a 220MW reactor that uses light water instead of the traditional pressurized heavy water, and breeder reactors that can produce more nuclear fuel than it consumes to account for the relatively low nuclear fuel availability in the country. The first indigenous breeder reactor (550 MWe) at Kalpakkam Plant has already loaded the radioactive core, and is working towards achieving criticality. The biggest project is arguably the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, with two already functioning reactors, and four more reactors approved at the site. It is projected to generate a total of 6000 MW of power when completed.
Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, Photo credit: IndiaTV (https://www.indiatvnews.com/news/india/kudankulam-nuclear-power-plant-russia-ships-equipment-627451)
China
China has always been a huge proponent of nuclear power, and already has a massive fleet of over fifty reactors. With twenty more reactors under construction as of 2022, China has the fastest growing nuclear power generation in the world. China is also heavily investing in SMRs, and has quite a few of those operating as a part of an extended test program.
Photo credit: CGTN News (https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d514f3541544e31457a6333566d54/share.html)
Africa
The sole operating nuclear power plant in all of Africa is in South Africa, and so far, other African countries had been quiet on nuclear power. But, that has started to change.
Ghana is looking to build their own nuclear power plant. The Ministry of Energy (of Ghana) issued a Request for Information to gather technical and financial insights from vendors and countries regarding the deployment of SMRs in Ghana.
Nigeria and Kenya are finalizing their nuclear preparedness applications with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). While Kenya is in Phase 2, where they are looking for a suitable site to build their first nuclear power plant, Nigeria is still in the initial phase, where they are bringing their infrastructure up to code for a nuclear power plant in the country.
Uganda is on the verge of finalizing their partnership to start their nuclear initiative. 2024 will be a pivotal time in Uganda’s economy as they plan to secure financing required for a successful build of their first nuclear power plant.
Rwanda has already entered into a collaboration with Dual Fluid, a Canadian-German nuclear technology company, to build a new generation demonstration reactor along with overseeing the necessary technology transfer. The demonstration reactor is scheduled to be operational by the end of 2026, and comprehensive technical tests and technology transfer are supposed to be completed by 2028.
Egypt is by far in the most advanced stage of building their own nuclear power plant in Africa outside of South Africa. ROSATOM, the Russian state corporation, is overseeing the construction, and will provide the plant with Russian nuclear fuel after successful completion. The plant is being built in El-Dabaa (320 kilometers northwest of Cairo), and comprises of four reactors, each with a nameplate capacity of 1200 MW. GE has won the contract to provide the plant with their turbines once built. Egypt hopes to put the plant on the grid by 2028.
Photo credit: NPAA (South America
South America is no stranger to nuclear power. Even though hydroelectric power is readily available in the region, nuclear power has been gaining traction among the South American countries since the 2000s.
Argentina is leading nuclear power adoption in South America, with three already operating nuclear reactors, generating about 5% of the country’s electricity demand, and with a domestically designed SMR under construction. This new SMR, CAREM 25, will be a part of the new generation of reactors in Argentina, since the older three operating plants use traditional heavy water and enriched fuel systems.
Brazil has two nuclear reactors in operation already, with the third reactor having been suspended under construction. Work on the third reactor, Angra 3, was started in 1984, but was suspended in 1986. The project resumed in 2006, but was suspended again in 2015, after the construction was 65% complete. Recently, Eletronuclear, the company in charge of the reactor, got the Brazilian court to give it permission to resume work. The reactor is expected to commercially start producing power in 2031.
Oceania
In Australia, Nuclear power is heavily politicized. The country does not have any energy producing reactors, even though it is rich in Uranium. The sole nuclear reactor in Australia at Lucas Heights is used to produce radioactive materials used in nuclear medicine.
New Zealand goes even farther in banning nuclear reactors by enforcing New Zealand Nuclear-Free Zone. Under the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act of 1987, territorial sea, land and airspace of New Zealand became nuclear-free zones. This has since remained a part of New Zealand’s foreign policy.
European Union
EU is highly divided on nuclear power. And although about 25% of the bloc’s total energy comes from nuclear power, not all countries in EU are in agreement about the future of nuclear power in the region.
Germany is one of the strongest oppositions of nuclear power in the EU. Once a strong proponent of nuclear power, so much so that in 1990, a quarter of the country’s total energy needs came from nuclear plants, Germany has already phased out nuclear power in April 2023.
Portugal, Denmark, and Austria are also heavily against nuclear power. In 2022, these three countries actually filed a legal challenge against the EU, claiming its categorization of nuclear energy as green investment was ‘greenwashing’.
Opinions on nuclear power in Italy are mixed. Italy had previously shuttered all of its nuclear power plants, but in recent years there have been a number of proposals to revive nuclear power.
Earlier this year, the EU held its first ever Nuclear Energy Summit in Brussels. 32 EU member countries attended the summit (Germany was notably absent). The summit highlighted the importance of nuclear power for meeting the region’s decarbonization goals, and had discussions about creating financing pipelines for future projects in the EU.
Opinion
I am very supportive of nuclear power. I think it is a fantastic way to decarbonize our grid, and provides a very safe form of reliable energy. Don’t get me wrong, renewables are great; but at the end of the day, it is dependent on the weather. And while batteries mitigate a lot of the intermittency issues associated with renewables, at its current state, it’s still not the silver bullet that humankind had been waiting for. And although accurate weather forecasts, and high performance grid scale batteries do help, we’d need to massively scale up our installed renewable capacity, and would need to ramp up battery research even more, if we want to completely decarbonize our grid without nuclear power.
Full decarbonization is possible without nuclear power, but it’s just not practical (I may have to eat my words in the future). Lithium mining is highly problematic, with severe geopolitical implications, and other battery technologies (like sodium batteries) are not as energy dense as lithium batteries. And at its present state, batteries themselves are limited with their cycle/lifetime numbers. It is possible to offset the restrictions due to finite cycle/lifetime numbers using more installed capacity, but then we are making the grid purposefully inefficient. Grid scale batteries also store a finite amount of charge (usually 4 hours at full power), and any weather events lasting more than four hours will need to be met with even more installed capacity of renewables+batteries.
Nuclear power, on the other hand, is a mature technology that produces minimal waste products with the highest capacity factor. Nuclear power is stable, and can provide the baseload power even on calm nights. Even at its present state, we have the technology to make nuclear power as safe as humanly possible that can withstand literal Tsunamis (hint: Fukushima Disaster), with safer smaller versions of big nuclear plants right around the corner (hint: SMRs).
SMRs are poised to revolutionize the electric grid with smaller reactors taking up much less space, and with somewhat flexible power output that can ramp up or down according to demand. While they are not as flexible as gas units or batteries, they are also not limited by their available charge nor do they produce any greenhouse gases.
In developing countries like India that are still heavily dependent on coal power, and where residential solar is still very much limited to a minuscule fraction of the already privileged part of the population, nuclear power can have a drastic effect on per capita carbon footprint. Renewables are obviously necessary, but if we use those as those are designed (intermittent resources), we make a much better use of our installed capacity.
Even from a technical standpoint, nuclear power provides the grid with much needed system inertia (MVAR support) that renewables cannot. If we have too much renewable power in our generation mix, we’d need a new type of grid connected technology called synchronous condensers to supply the grid with system inertia. Nuclear power does not come with such requirement.
Nuclear power does come with other restrictions though, such as radioactive waste disposal, and the need for a foolproof disaster management system. Any oversight in either of these invites disaster that can potentially kill tens of thousands of people. As it stands right now, we have effectively solved the disaster management system of nuclear plants; there are Thorium based reactors being tested that can be operated by high schoolers, and has such strong passive protection systems that it’s almost impossible for it to go into a meltdown. And if we look at older nuclear disaster management technologies, it might be controversial, but in my opinion, the Fukushima Disaster actually proved how safe nuclear power was even two decades ago; since even when everything went wrong in the decades old reactor, even when the plant got hit by a literal tsunami, the plant operators could direct the contaminated materials into safe storage tanks, and there had been no recorded deaths directly resulting from the disaster. However, disposal of radioactive waste is still a hot button issue that does not have an easy solution. Even though the amount of radioactive waste a nuclear plant produces is relatively small, the half-lives of the most common radioactive elements produced as waste products are in thousands of years which forces us to think in geological timescale. We need proper storage of radioactive materials in a place that’s geologically stable, and we need effective deterrents that can stand the test of time, hundreds of generations worth of time. So far, the most common method of storing radioactive waste is inside the plant area itself, in large concrete chambers, which isn’t ideal, and desperately needs to be changed. At the end of the day, we need a good mix of both nuclear power, and renewable power in our grid. It’s not a zero sum game, nuclear power and renewable power both have their own niche that they can target. Right now most of the world’s “peaking plants” are diesel units or gas turbine units. Both very expensive, and diesel units have the added problem of being environmentally disastrous. If we have enough nuclear power that can provide us with the baseload requirement, we can better direct renewables to provide us with power intermittently, without relying too much on batteries. I long to see the day when the whole world is powered by safe and affordable energy without any GHG emissions.