Nuclear Energy: The Good, The Bad, The Beautiful
Climate change is accelerating, and we have just begun to feel its wrath. States like Texas that were once unaffected have experienced power grid failure by ignoring its momentous signs. Unusual weather patterns from last winter left millions of Texas citizens out of electricity and in the cold.
In November 2019, the UN warned that unless global greenhouse emissions fell by 7.6% each year between 2020 and 2030, the world would miss the opportunity to limit warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Even with the halt of human traffic (from the pandemic) — when energy demand decreased at 4% — carbon emissions ONLY fell 6%. Our efforts have been futile and we have reached the highest level of carbon emissions ever recorded with 419 parts per million — still adding ~40 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution to the atmosphere each year.
Things only get more complicated when the rest of the world’s population comes online, and energy consumption exponentiates. Forecasts have shown that energy demand will soar to 44% over the next two decades.
It almost seems as if reaching carbon neutrality is hopeless — unless we go nuclear.
To split or not to split the atom
When we talk about “clean energy,” nuclear energy (h/t: Marie Curie) is hardly present in the conversation. Most people think of solar panels, wind turbines, hydropower, etc., but rarely talk about the second-largest source of low-carbon electricity.
Yes, by second-largest, we mean the 440+ nuclear power reactors that produce ~10% of the world’s electricity.
For the first time since 1972, Democrats included advanced nuclear technologies as part of the decarbonization strategy. With the US’s ambitious goals to eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector by 2035, we must look at all viable alternatives.
There are two ways nuclear energy can be generated:
- Nuclear Fission: The process of splitting atoms to release energy. To split an atom, you need to hit it with a neutron. The splitting of the initial atom starts a chain reaction of atoms splitting nearby atoms. This reaction releases heat, and the heat turns into electricity, usually by creating steam to spin turbines.
- Nuclear Fusion: The process by which two or more atoms are combined to form heavier atoms. The new particle’s mass is less than the mass of the two original atoms, and the remaining mass converts to energy. Fusion is the natural reaction that occurs in the sun.
History
The short history of nuclear power is categorized by Generations I, II, III/III+, and IV, stemming from naval use in the late 1940s due to WWII. All reactors are overseen by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). They have full regulatory authority over the storage and disposal of all commercially-generated nuclear waste (which is often the fuel that’s not fully utilized) and high-level waste by the DoE in the US.
Generation I — The “proof-of-concept” stage — these prototypes were for the commercial generation of electricity at 50–500 MWe. Due to the arms race of the Cold War, there was a negative connotation surrounding the industry. The last plant of this generation was the Wylfa Nuclear Power, later decommissioned in 2015.
Generation II — A class of commercial thermal reactors designed to be economical and reliable for up to 40 years. They all share active safety features involving electrical or mechanical operations. This class of reactors encompassed the three unfortunate accidents of Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island.
Generation III — Reactors are basically Gen II reactors, but with many improvements on the design. They evolved with current light and heavy water reactor technology that improves performance, lifetime (~60 years), and risk mitigation features.
Generation III+ — Significantly increased the safety features of Gen III with the incorporation of passive safety features that do not require active controls or operator intervention but instead rely on gravity or natural convection to mitigate the impact of abnormal events. The inclusion of these passive safety features helped expedite the reactor certification review process and thus shorten construction schedules. Once online, they achieve higher fuel burnup than their evolutionary predecessors (thus reducing waste production).
Generation IV — The new class of reactors being developed for commercial use through the international cooperation of 14 countries. These unique designs emphasize safety and modularity. For the first time, this generation of reactors isn’t 100% government-funded and instead built by venture-backed startups.
The Good
Reliable
Nuclear power never goes to sleep. It’s a power generation source that stays on, unlike solar, wind, hydropower, etc. — sources that require an elemental force. It can take up to two years before ever having to refuel a power plant, and they operate at a total capacity more than 92.5% of the time.
Hypothetically, if a nuclear reactor produced one gigawatt (GW) of electricity, you would need a little more than two coal power plants to generate one GW of electricity each to replace that nuclear reactor.
High Energy Density
“Seven pellets of uranium fuel produce as much energy as almost 1,800 lbs of coal and 3.5 barrels of oil, and if you took about 75 Kg ( ~165 lbs) of enriched uranium fuel, it would produce the same amount of energy as almost 2 million pounds of coal.” — Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant from Stuff You Should Know
Uranium can currently be used to produce 16,000 times as much energy per unit weight of coal. Even then, we only utilize about 0.7% of the fuel. A perfect nuclear reaction would yield ten million times more. The depleted fuel that the U.S. has produced over the last 60 years could fit on a football field at a depth of fewer than 10 yards.
Safety
“Nuclear power is over 97% safer than coal, oil, or gas.” — Ella Anderson
Unlike fossil-fueled power plants, nuclear reactors do not produce air pollution while operating. Studies from NASA’s Goddard Institute show that “global nuclear power has prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths.” The used fuel is securely stored in pools or dry casks across the country. And on-site storage at nuclear power plants (NPPs) isn’t expected to be permanent as current endeavors (e.g., SMRs) in the industry will considerably decrease the amount of waste produced.
The Bad
Waste Disposal
A primary environmental concern related to nuclear power is the creation of radioactive wastes such as uranium mill tailings, used reactor fuel, and other radioactive wastes. These materials can remain radioactive and dangerous to human health for thousands of years. Even after ten years, some waste can carry 10,000 rem/hour, far greater than the lethal dose of 500 rem/hour. There is also the possibility that these radioactive isotopes leak into the groundwater, rivers, and eventually into food chains.
However, while we call it nuclear waste, it is actually just not fully utilized fuel. Reactor physicist and nuclear engineer Nick Touran says that,
“Nuclear waste is recyclable. Once reactor fuel is used in a reactor, it can be treated and put into another reactor as fuel. In fact, typical reactors only extract a few percent of the energy in their fuel. You could power the entire US electricity grid off of the energy in nuclear waste for almost 100 years. If you recycle the waste, the final waste that is leftover decays to harmlessness within a few hundred years, rather than a million years as with standard (unrecycled) nuclear waste.”
Historical Baggage
Legacy nuclear reactors have created an anti-nuclear zeitgeist:
- Chernobyl (Ukraine 1986): Stemmed from the result of flawed reactor designs and inadequate operations of scientists. In an RBMK reactor, water is supposed to cool and slow down the reactions, and if the reactor generates too much power, uranium control rods inject themselves in the core of the reactor, which keeps everything safe. However, there was a delayed safety test run by an untrained crew that changed the fate of the reactor. The crew disregarded the safety protocols and went ahead with the test to meet the positive void coefficient. The positive void coefficient, which is unique to RBMK reactors only, is when more steam results in higher reactivity. During the test, the water boiled away, so there wasn’t anything to cool the core — thus becoming unstable. That night, the crew’s chief pressed an emergency button sinking all the controls rods back into the reactor to cool it down. Unfortunately, the uranium at the tips of the rods did the exact opposite — the pressure spiked from the steam, and the entire cap blew off. Finally, air leaked into the reactor, creating a second explosion that left a hole in the core. If the Soviet government wasn’t so averse to spending money, the rod tips would have had properly enriched fuel instead of graphite.
- Fukushima (Japan 2011): Triggered from the largest earthquake ever recorded in Japan, a tsunami flooded their nuclear reactors. Autonomic systems at the nuclear plant detected the earthquake and shut down the nuclear reactors. Emergency diesel generators turned on to keep coolant pumping around the cores, which remain incredibly hot even after reactions stop, leading to the nuclear meltdown of three reactors. The plant would have withstood the tsunami had its design previously been upgraded to meet international standards.
Including America’s Three Mile Island accident (in 1979), only a few accidents in nuclear reactor history have been newsworthy. Unfortunately, the loss of public confidence in nuclear energy post-Fukushima led to Germany planning to phase out nuclear energy entirely by 2022.
Many people seem to be under the premise that at any time, an uncontrolled atomic reaction could occur and result in widespread contamination of air and water, but that’s not the case. All events we’re avoidable. Even then, nuclear reactor accidents don’t compare to the harm created by the toxic pollutants from burning fossil fuels.
From the World Nuclear Association,
“If nuclear power was used to supply a person’s electricity needs for an entire year, only about five grams of highly-radioactive waste would be produced.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that the byproducts from burning fossil fuels result in 7 million deaths annually or about 1 in 8 total deaths. Radioactive material from a coal power plant carries 100 times more radiation into the environment than an NPP that produces the same energy. Relative to fossil fuels, nuclear is statistically a lot less radioactive. Even after Fukushima, Japan aims to restart its NPP program.
Time & Cost to Build
Traditional NPPs take five to seven years and $3.5–6 billion to build. However, this aging fleet of NPPS will soon be replaced with modular designs that can significantly reduce capital expenditures as they scale. Some of the new reactors can be deployed within two days.
Nuclear power is cost-competitive with other forms of electricity generation, except locations with direct access to low-cost fossil fuels. For reference, the average cost of electricity in the US in 2020 was $0.11 per kilowatt-hour (KWh).
Note: Since fusion has yet to become commercially viable, there isn’t much to go off of for cost comparisons, but research has suggested it could be four times cheaper than standard fission.
The Beautiful
“The statistics will tell you in the next 25 years we’re going to double the amount of electrical demand and consumption… The potential market is enormous, requiring an investment of $10 trillion or more in generating equipment by 2050.” — CEO of TAE Technologies, Michl Binderbauer
In 2020, nuclear energy provided the U.S. with 52% of carbon-free electricity from 94 operational commercial nuclear reactors. 94 of those reactors remain stable at 56 NPPs in 28 states at an average age of 39 years old — America is currently the largest producer of nuclear power and the largest domestic source of clean energy.
Recently, the US administration has acknowledged the importance of nuclear within their plan to go completely carbon neutral in the incoming decade. The government has been looking to award contracts for advanced nuclear designs and extend nuclear production tax credits for any new reactors placed in service after December 31st, 2020.
Nuclear Fission
A renaissance of nuclear reactors is dawning — traditional NPPs are looking to be phased out with more resilient energy systems that provide safe, reliable, and robust grid performance over the long term. New fission reactor designs entail small modular reactors (SMRs) and microreactors. Idaho National Laboratory (INL) distinguishes between microreactors as 100 to 1,000 times smaller than conventional nuclear reactors, while SMRs range from 20 to 300 megawatts. Their agile sizes allow them to scale rapidly. Multiple reactor modules can be added to any location as they’re needed. And as the number of modules at a site increases, the price heavily decreases. This class of modular reactors can excel in remote areas currently powered by non-sustainable options.
They benefit from fuel diversification — smaller reactors won’t rely on natural gas or coal, thus avoiding potential volatility in those commodity markets. Some advanced fission designs utilize TRI-structural ISOtropic particle (TRISO) fuel, which has created a buzz as the most robust nuclear fuel on Earth. According to the Office of Nuclear Energy, “TRISO particles cannot melt in a reactor and can withstand extreme temperatures that are well beyond the threshold of current nuclear fuels.” Fuel can be stored on-site, reducing exposure to challenges within the supply chain.
Notable players:
- Oklo: Very young startup from Silicon Valley building a microreactor named Aurora that’s expected to have 1.5MWe. Backed by Y Combinator and MassChallenge.
- NuScale Power: Founded in 2017, they are the first-ever SMR to receive U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission design approval. They are currently working with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) to install an SMR power plant by 2030. Backed by CMEA Capital and the Fluor Corporation.
- Terrestrial Energy: Founded in 2013, developing a nuclear reactor based on Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) technology. Backed by DCVC.
- Seaborg Technologies: Founded in Denmark in 2014 — producing floating nuclear reactors with a Compact Molten Salt Reactor (CMSR) the size of a shipping container. Backed by PreSeed Ventures and the European Union.
- XEnergy: Founded in 2009, building an SMR with their very own proprietary version of TRISO-X. Backed by IBX and ARPA.
- Radiant Nuclear: Founded in Los Angeles in 2019, developing the first portable, zero-emission power source that works anywhere. Their microreactor, Kaleidos, uses TRISO particles encapsulated in a meltdown-proof core. Backed by Acequia Capital, Tom McInerney, Hank Vigil, Charlie Songhurst, and Josh Manchester.
- Kairos Power: Headquartered in Alameda, CA. Their reactor, HR (KP-FHR), leverages TRISO fuel combined with a low-pressure fluoride salt coolant. Backed by DoE and Office of Nuclear Energy.
- Last Energy: Spun out of Energy Impact Center as a nuclear research organization to develop SMRs. Backed by First Round Capital.
Nuclear Fusion
Nuclear fusion is the holy grail of energy generation. These reactions can release four times more energy than fission reactions without producing any harmful byproducts. If we can learn to harness this reaction, we could theoretically have unlimited power.
As marvelous as “harnessing the power of the sun” sounds, some scientists regard nuclear fusion as the most challenging scientific problem in the world. When trying to achieve nuclear fusion, three main conditions must be met:
- Heating the soup of subatomic particles called plasma to reach the optimum reaction temperature. The optimal reaction temperature is approximately 160 million °C, so about six times hotter than the sun. Plasma must be hot enough to provide the hydrogen atoms with enough energy to overcome the repulsion between the protons.
- The ions must be confined with a high ion density to achieve a suitable fusion reaction rate.
- The ions must be held together with extreme pressure, in close proximity, long enough to avoid cooling and sustain a net energy positive reaction.
There are two primary means of achieving fusion/isolating plasma: using magnets or lasers (also known as inertial confinement). The most effective configuration for magnetic confinement is in toroidal reactors, which are shaped like doughnuts. Toroidal confinement systems consist of tokamaks, stellarators, and reversed field pinch (RFP) devices.
It’s often said that “nuclear fusion is years away,” but much progress has been made despite the skepticism. Fusion went from no power output in the 1950s to a power output equal to 67% in 1997 with the Joint European Torus (JET) reactor. EU’s public multinational physics project, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) joint fusion experiment in France, is expected to start its first experiment on its tomak fusion reactor in 2025 (now moved back to 2027). However, this project has been costly. What began at $5 billion has risen to $20 billion, eclipsing funding for all nuclear fusion & fission startups combined.
Notable Players:
- Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS): Founded in 2017 as a spin-off of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC). Their reactor SPARC is a tokamak reactor using rare-earth materials such as yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO). Backed by Beni VC, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Devonshire Investors, Eni Next, Temasek, Khosla Ventures, and Moore Strategic Ventures.
- General Fusion: Founded in Canada in 2002. They are looking to commercialize this technology by 2025 with their magnetized target fusion (MTF) reactor. Backed by Thistledown Capital, IBX, and GIC.
- TAE Technologies: The oldest of the bunch founded in 1998, TAE creates a laser confinement approach with field-reversed configuration (FRC). In April 2021, they announced that their reactor Norman produced stable plasma at over 50 million degrees Celsius. Backed by Venrock, NEA, Google, Vulcan Capital, and UpVentures Capital.
- HB11: Australia’s first commercial fusion energy company was founded in 2019. They use laser technology to fuse Hydrogen and Boron-11.
- Helion Energy: Founded in 2013 in Redmond, WA, their attempt at breaking the fusion barrier is by achieving commercial MTF, which would combine the stability of steady magnetic fusion and the heating of pulsed inertial fusion. Backed by Sam Altman, Dustin Moskovitz, Capricorn Investment Group, Mithril Capital, and Y Combinator.
- Avalanche Energy: Founded in 2018, Avalanche is developing compact fusion reactors 9 inches in diameter and 15 inches long for carbon-free. Backed by MIT Venture Mentoring Service (VMS).
- Marvel Fusion: Founded in 2019, Marvel is building another laser-based reactor — based on the short pulse, high energy, and electrically efficient laser. Backed by BlueYard Capital and Inventures.
- Focused Energy: Starting operations in Austin — developing and selling inertial fusion energy, using laser beams to start a fusion reaction. Backed by Prime Movers Lab and Alex Rodriguez.
Restoring Faith
We are experiencing an atomic renaissance — a change in the zeitgeist curtailing a sometimes fraught and often misunderstood history. A growing consensus is emerging that nuclear power is not only the primary candidate for a carbon-free energy grid but may be the only way we can meet the world’s future energy demands. We have no time to wait — and rest assured, Cantos won’t.
