The nuclear power industry is betting on a new generation of reactors that are small enough to fit on a truck—an emerging technology that mostly uses alternatives to water for cooling, runs at lower pressure than traditional units, and costs far less than the behemoth power plants and cooling towers that currently define the nuclear landscape.
However, proponents of the notion claim that those in charge of policing their industry in Washington have no understanding how to evaluate it. According to Amy Roma, a partner at the law firm Hogan Lovells who has worked on dozens of licence applications, today's requirements are “truly a square peg in a round hole for these sophisticated reactor designs.” She claims that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is “far removed from truly understanding—in depth—the nuclear power plant.”
The NRC has been tasked by Congress with writing rules to replace a regulatory framework that stretches back to the 1950s. Because the new criteria aren't expected until at least 2025, the agency is continuing to operate as it has for decades, evaluating plants that bore little similarity to ones the regulations were designed to evaluate. The commission, for example, requires data from similar facilities to show the safety of designs, but none of the smaller sites have been built in the United States, so there is no performance history. The rules are also tailored for light-water reactors, which split uranium atoms to create steam that drives turbines.
To keep the core from overheating, contemporary technology often includes molten salt and lead, as well as gases like helium. Only one design, a water-cooled type from NuScale Power LLC, has been approved, and no business using these technologies has received a building licence. The NRC refused to make any commissioners or staff members accessible for an interview. Micro-plant proponents argue that because nukes emit no carbon, they can help the Biden administration achieve its target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from power generation by 2035.
The US Department of Energy has gotten ahead of the NRC in this regard. Fund advanced reactor research, the government is requesting Congress for up to $4 billion over seven years. TerraPower, a Bill Gates-founded company working on a project in Wyoming; X-energy, which is planning a high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor in Washington state; and Kairos Power, which plans to build a 35-megawatt salt-cooled test reactor in Tennessee and applied for a construction licence in September, are among the beneficiaries. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told her advisers on Jan. 25 that advanced reactors “have immense promise” and that the department will continue to fund them.
However, with the disasters at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima Daiichi still vivid in many people's minds, these plants will be met with fierce opposition. Small reactors, according to environmental groups, still create enough radioactive material to pose a pollution concern. Some have a capacity of about 1.5MW, or approximately 0.1 percent of the size of a regular plant. And adding additional plants, even small ones, to the pile of poisonous waste that no one knows what to do with will only add to the problem. “We will actively push back to the degree that there will be efforts to reduce the regulatory envelope,” says Geoff Fettus, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
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According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, more than 70 compact modular reactors with a total capacity of around 12 gigawatts have been planned or are under development in at least five nations throughout the world. The only one built so far is a floating reactor in the Russian town of Pevek, which is used to power mining operations in the Arctic Sea. The lack of activity on such plants around the world, according to Gregory Jaczko, who served as NRC chair from 2009 to 2012, implies that we would be incorrect to rely on them as a path out of the climate dilemma. He says, “They're just not ready.” “And they're not going to be useful by the time they're ready.”
The November infrastructure bill includes $2.5 billion for advanced reactor development as well as $6 billion in federal subsidies for existing units. A $35 billion nuclear production tax credit is included in the Democrats' Build Back Better programme, which is now stalled in the Senate. Senators Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the top members of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, presented legislation in December to build advanced reactors near decommissioned fossil-fuel power facilities, claiming that the scheme would help struggling communities.
According to the NRC, at least two dozen designers are working on new concepts. NuScale's 50MW model was approved after gaining 17 exemptions from current licencing requirements from the Energy Department, though developers would still need to secure a construction and operating licence to construct one. After nearly two years of investigation, the commission denied Oklo Power LLC's application for a 1.5MW reactor that would run on radioactive waste in January, citing a “severe” lack of safety information. Oklo claims that its technology is ready, and that the commissioners' decision just underlined their adherence to the outdated regulations. “It's not surprising because we're doing something different,” says CEO Jacob DeWitte, who hopes to submit a revised application.
In the United States now, about 100 nuclear reactors produce around 20% of the country's electricity. Due to competition from low-cost natural gas and renewables, the ageing nuclear fleet has suffered financially in recent years. The industry has lobbied authorities to keep the current fleet in place while expanding next-generation reactors.
By 2027, the NRC must design a licencing framework for advanced reactors, according to a statute passed by Congress in 2019. Since then, politicians from both parties have pressed the NRC to speed up the implementation of new laws, citing the fact that at least 50 reactor designs are in the works, prompting the commission to move its goal date to 2025. According to Stephen Burns, who chaired the panel from 2015 to 2017, the cautious pace makes sense. It has researched the new reactors for years but has consistently declined to update its licence criteria, partly because the technology had not yet scaled up and there was no certainty it would ever do so, he claims. “It wasn't apparent who would actually walk through the door,” Burns recalls. “Are we going to spend the money on something that might or might not happen?” —In collaboration with Will Wade
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