Who's powering nuclear energy's comeback?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Indicator from Planet Money Episode Title: Who's Powering Nuclear Energy's Comeback? Release Date: November 14, 2024 Host: Darien Woods and Weyland Wong Producer: Cooper Katz McKinnon

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Introduction: Nuclear Energy's Resurgence

In this episode of The Indicator from Planet Money, hosts Darien Woods and Weyland Wong delve into the renewed interest in nuclear energy, spotlighting its potential role in combating climate change and meeting the soaring electricity demands of modern technology.

Darien Woods opens the discussion by highlighting the prominence of nuclear energy at the COP 29 climate conference and the Biden administration’s ambitious goal to triple nuclear energy production in the US by 2050 (00:11).

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The Inflation Reduction Act and Corporate Investments

Weyland Wong connects the resurgence of nuclear power to recent legislative and corporate movements. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has provided substantial subsidies that have catalyzed major tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google to invest heavily in nuclear projects. Wong emphasizes that these companies are driven by the "voracious appetite for electricity" required to power AI data centers (00:30).

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Historical Challenges of Nuclear Energy

The hosts provide a historical context, explaining why the United States had previously moved away from building new nuclear power plants. Key obstacles included high construction costs and public fears surrounding meltdowns and environmental risks (00:52). Traditional nuclear power plants were not only expensive to build but also prone to significant cost overruns, often exceeding initial budgets by more than double (04:36).

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Introducing Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)

To address these challenges, Woods and Wong explore the emergence of small modular reactors (SMRs). These reactors are designed to be smaller in size—potentially as compact as a three-story building—and modular, meaning they can be mass-produced using standardized designs (03:20).

Mike Laufer, CEO of Kairos Power, the company collaborating with Google on SMRs, explains that SMRs aim to reduce costs and enhance safety through standardization and scalability (05:25).

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Insights from Kairos Power's CEO: Cost, Safety, and Waste Management

Mike Laufer provides a comprehensive overview of how SMRs could revolutionize the nuclear industry:

• Cost Efficiency: Laufer acknowledges the historical expense of traditional nuclear plants and argues that SMRs can mitigate these costs by streamlining the building process and leveraging repeatability (03:50). He states, "Nuclear plants today in the conventional way is really expensive, and it's not obviously going to be economically better than alternative sources." (03:50).

• Learning Curve: He emphasizes the importance of the learning curve in reducing costs, noting that each new build provides valuable experience that can lead to more efficient and cheaper production over time (06:08).

• Safety Enhancements: Addressing safety concerns, Laufer highlights that SMRs use safer fuels and coolants, and their standardized designs reduce the likelihood of meltdowns. He asserts, "We have to have a reliable plant in order to have an economically viable product. And for us, the requirements of protecting the operators and protecting the investment actually fully covers everything that's necessary to ensure health and safety of the public." (07:48)

• Waste Management: On the topic of nuclear waste, Laufer notes that waste from SMRs would be sent to the Department of Energy for storage. However, he acknowledges the ongoing challenges in finding long-term storage solutions due to local opposition (08:07).

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Overcoming Historical Pitfalls

Woods and Wong discuss how SMRs aim to overcome the historical pitfalls of traditional nuclear energy:

1. Standardization vs. Uniqueness: By producing reactors in standardized, modular formats, SMRs aim to eliminate the uniqueness of each plant site, thereby reducing the chances of cost overruns and construction delays (04:50).

2. Building Expertise: SMRs facilitate the building of multiple identical units, allowing for the accumulation of expertise and the establishment of a robust manufacturing process, which historically has been a barrier in the nuclear industry (05:42).

Mike Laufer reinforces this by stating, "Actually building things and getting that experience and knowing where to invest time and energy is absolutely crucial." (05:56).

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Safety and Environmental Impact

The episode contrasts the safety records of nuclear energy with fossil fuels. Despite high-profile accidents like Fukushima and Chernobyl, the number of annual deaths from nuclear power remains incredibly low and comparable to those from solar and wind energy. In stark contrast, fossil fuels cause millions of deaths annually, primarily due to air pollution (07:17).

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Timeline and Political Landscape

A critical part of the discussion revolves around the ambitious 2030 timeline set by Kairos Power and Google to commence energy production with SMRs. Mike Laufer acknowledges the aggressiveness of this timeline but underscores the urgency driven by the need to decarbonize rapidly. He states, "2030 is certainly an aggressive timeline and Kairos and Google both share, you know, a strong sense of urgency that we need." (09:14).

The role of the Inflation Reduction Act is pivotal in this endeavor, providing necessary subsidies. The uncertain political future, especially with a potential Trump administration and a new Congress, could influence the continuation of these subsidies. However, Trump has previously highlighted SMRs as a solution to longstanding economic concerns related to nuclear energy, indicating potential bipartisan support (09:46).

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Conclusion: The Future of Nuclear Energy

Summing up the discussion, Woods and Wong present a cautiously optimistic view of SMRs as a viable path for nuclear energy's comeback. While acknowledging the technological and regulatory hurdles, the potential benefits in terms of cost reduction, safety improvements, and environmental impact position SMRs as a promising solution in the fight against climate change.

Wong closes with a light-hearted nod to the episode's nuclear theme, while Woods adds a physics joke, encapsulating the episode's blend of serious analysis and engaging dialogue.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Darien Woods (00:11): "The Biden administration announced a goal to triple nuclear energy production in the US by 2050."
• Weyland Wong (00:30): "The Inflation Reduction Act is helping with that with a ton of subsidies."
• Mike Laufer (03:50): "Nuclear plants today in the conventional way is really expensive, and it's not obviously going to be economically better than alternative sources."
• Mike Laufer (05:56): "Actually building things and getting that experience and knowing where to invest time and energy is absolutely crucial."
• Mike Laufer (07:48): "We have to have a reliable plant in order to have an economically viable product."
• Mike Laufer (09:14): "2030 is certainly an aggressive timeline and Kairos and Google both share, you know, a strong sense of urgency that we need."

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Produced by: Cooper Katz McKinnon
Engineering by: Valentino Rodriguez Sanchez
Fact-Checked by: Sierra Juarez
Edited by: K. Cannon
Production Credits: The Indicator is a production of NPR.

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For those interested in supporting the show and accessing bonus content, consider subscribing to Planet Money+ at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

Transcript

[NPR]

NPR.

[Darien Woods]

Nuclear energy seems to be back in favour this week at the COP 29 climate change conference. Discussions are underway about how nuclear can help the world reduce carbon emissions. Also, the Biden administration announced a goal to triple nuclear energy production in the US by 2050.

[Weyland Wong]

The inflation reduction act is helping with that with a ton of subsidies. And those subsidies are part of the reason that this year Amazon, Microsoft and Google each signed massive deals to build nuclear projects. The companies have a voracious appetite for electricity as artificial intelligence data centers chew up more and more energy.

[Darien Woods]

The US lost its appetite for building new nuclear power plants several decades ago for a few reasons. First, it's incredibly expensive to build. Also, meltdowns and environmental risks loom large in the public imagination. But a new form of nuclear power generation called small modular reactors aims to change that. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darien woods.

[Weyland Wong]

And I'm Weyland Wong. Today on the show, could nuclear energy work differently? This time we probed the CEO of the company working with Google on its small modular reactor project, and we asked how it will deal with concerns about cost, safety and waste.

[NPR]

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[Cooper Katz McKinnon]

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[Darien Woods]

All its data centers without fossil fuels, but it's not just satisfied using solar, wind and batteries. With IRA subsidies and the prospect for always on energy, nuclear power is a tempting possibility.

[Weyland Wong]

In October, Google announced it would buy a ton of nuclear energy from a company called Kairos power starting in 2030. If this plan succeeds, it would be the equivalent of enough power for more than 400,000 homes.

[Darien Woods]

Google's deal is for energy from what's called small modular reactors. They're small, as in potentially as little as a three story building. Modular, as in there'd be a lot of them made the same way.

[Weyland Wong]

Now to be clear, there are no modern small modular reactors producing energy commercially in the US right now. But they are one proposed answer to a big issue with traditional nuclear power, which is that it's really expensive. Mike Laufer is the CEO of Kairos Power, the company that Google is working with.

[Mike Laufer]

Nuclear plants today in the conventional way is really expensive, and it's not obviously going to be economically better than alternative sources.

[Darien Woods]

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, nuclear engineers initially tried to drive down costs by harnessing economies of scale. So instead of building a few medium sized reactors, you could build one really enormous one. And that did work in bringing down electricity costs in many cases. Nowadays, running an existing nuclear facility is cost competitive with solar and wind and natural gas. But the costs of building, starting and eventually decommissioning a nuclear power plant are enormous. It's far more expensive than methods like solar with battery storage.

[Weyland Wong]

Nuclear power plants are also susceptible to cost overruns. Among megaprojects, nuclear is among the worst offenders of cost blowouts. The average nuclear plant ends up at more than double the planned expense.

[Darien Woods]

There are two major reasons for these cost overruns. First, each plant is unique. Different locations, different local safety considerations, different sizes. That makes it easier to mess something up when the new design doesn't account for all eventualities.

[Mike Laufer]

When you have really long capital intensive projects or mega projects, there's a lot of process that gets added in there. And there's the sense that you don't get a lot of opportunities to, to build the big thing. And so people tend to put more into it because you kind of want to get as much out of that opportunity as you can. And that's tremendously expensive.

[Weyland Wong]

The second reason is that because it takes so long to build a plant, experience is hard to find when those.

[Mike Laufer]

Cycles are 20 to 30 years as they are nuclear. You need to just make sure that you have processes that people remember what you did 20 years ago, which is not an easy thing.

[Darien Woods]

Small nuclear modular reactors aim to address both those problems by building small and modular. They'll hopefully be simplified and identical each time, and they'll allow more people to become experts at building them.

[Mike Laufer]

Actually building things and getting that experience and knowing where to invest time and energy is Absolutely crucial. And what's very elusive in nuclear technology is being able to follow that learning curve.

[Weyland Wong]

A learning curve meaning basically each time something is built, developers get experience that leads to a more efficient process and therefore that thing gets cheaper to produce. Solar and wind are good examples, with costs now a tiny fraction of what they were a couple decades ago. But this has not happened with nuclear energy historically.

[Mike Laufer]

So that's the concept. I think that the reality of translating that idea into reality shouldn't be trivialized. What's gone wrong is absolutely essential for us to avoid kind of those pitfalls.

[Darien Woods]

But even if Mike's company, Kairos, does succeed in eventually building cheaper modular nuclear reactors, nuclear power still has its critics. Like, is nuclear power safe? Evacuations after nuclear meltdowns like Fukushima and Chernobyl were hugely disruptive. On the other hand, the worst commercial nuclear power plant accident in American history, which is Three Mile island in Pennsylvania, exposed nearby residents to less radiation than a chest X ray.

[Weyland Wong]

All told, the number of deaths caused each year by nuclear power are incredibly small. They are comparable to that of solar and wind. On the other end of the spectrum, you've got millions of deaths caused by fossil fuels each year, mostly from air pollution.

[Darien Woods]

Mike says that Kairos is using one of the safer forms of fuels and coolants and that he expects the risk of meltdowns would actually be lower with small modular reactors because there's more standardization. Plus, you know, he doesn't want to melt down either.

[Mike Laufer]

We have to have a reliable plant in order to have an economically viable product. And for us, the requirements of protecting the operators and protecting the investment actually fully covers everything that's necessary to ensure health and safety of the public.

[Weyland Wong]

On the nuclear waste question, that stays highly radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, Kairos would send the waste to the Department of Energy. According to the Department of Energy, it's safely storing nuclear waste at more than 70 sites across the US using steel and concrete. But it's struggling to find places for long term storage in the face of local opposition.

[Darien Woods]

Another criticism is that given the need to decarbonise quickly, we just don't have the time to wait for small modular reactors to get developed, to get approved by the authorities and start producing energy on a commercial basis. This could be a decades long process.

[Weyland Wong]

We brought this to Mike Laufer, whose deal with Google is that they'll start producing energy in 2030.

[Darien Woods]

The 2030 deadline sounds soon to me, especially given small modular reactors aren't exactly a mainstream technology in the US right now. Not to mention that it needs to go through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Why are you confident that 2030 is a doable timeline?

[Mike Laufer]

So 2030 is certainly an aggressive timeline and Kairos and Google both share, you know, a strong sense of urgency that we need. We need demonstrations and we need them quickly. It's not other technologies which are, which are the enemy of the competition. It's carbon. Carbon is the enemy. So basically any strategy or technology which allows us to really decarbonize like those are, those are going to be highly valued. Those are going to be good things in my view, for the system overall.

[Darien Woods]

Now the small modular reactor experiment is bolstered by subsidies, the Inflation Reduction act in particular, and the fate of those subsidies remains to be seen under President Elect Trump and the new Congress. For his part, Trump pointed to small modular reactors as a potential answer to long running cost concerns surrounding the energy source. So we might see more companies trying this nuclear option.

[Weyland Wong]

This episode was produced by Cooper Katz McKinnon with engineering by Valentino Rodriguez Sanchez. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez. K. Cannon edits the show and the indicator is a production of npr. Ooh, I like that nuclear option.

[Darien Woods]

I know it's a little cheesy.

[Weyland Wong]

I liked it.

[Darien Woods]

It says neutral is a neutron.

[Weyland Wong]

Good physics joke.

[Cooper Katz McKinnon]

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