The Dawn of Nuclear Energy Abundance

Nuclear energy is in the ascendant. Nations across the globe, lured by the prospect of clean, secure, and reliable power, are announcing that they are extending the lives of their nuclear plants or planning to build new ones. These nations include: the United States, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Poland, Switzerland, Hungary, Sweden, Ukraine, South Korea, Japan, China, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Nigeria, and Ghana.

This momentum isn’t a fad; it’s a new beginning. By the end of this century, the world’s electrical grids will be grounded in abundant nuclear energy, because it is the only source of reliable, emissions-free energy that minimizes environmental impacts, can be scaled to meet global demand, and is not geographically constrained. Areas without geologically specific reliable energy will be forced to adopt nuclear—or remain reliant on fossil fuels.

Weather dependent energies will falter

At this moment, a future dominated by solar and wind power seems inevitable. Government and public support for these popular energy sources abounds. In August, US President Joe Biden signed legislation to spend $370 billion on electric cars, wind, solar, and other green technologies. Across the pond, the president of the European Commission released a statement in September backing the EU’s “massive investments in renewables” because “they are cheap, they are home-grown, they make us independent.” Wind and solar are also being deployed at a rapid pace. The International Energy Agency estimates that 95 percent of the increase in global power capacity through 2026 will come from these sources.

Yet solar and wind will not become the foundation of most electrical grids for fundamental reasons.

Each new installation cannibalizes some of the benefits of previous plants to a degree not experienced by other sources. In 2021, American researchers found in a study of US solar and wind plants that their value declines 30 to 40 percent in regions in which their annual production reaches 20 percent of generation. Because wind and solar plants tend to turn on or off at the same time across large areas irrespective of consumer demand, installing more of them results in price deflation, sometimes all the way to negative values. This can lead to an intentional reduction in power output called “curtailment.” To fix deflation, wind and solar advocates argue for more transmission lines to be built to move the power away from the areas of low prices. When you add the expense of new transmission, costs for wind and solar start to climb.

Unfortunately, the extra costs of weather-dependent energy raise consumer prices. As Germany shuttered its nuclear plants and spent hundreds of billions of euros on solar and wind, its electricity prices rose 50 percent. In Australia, investment in renewables reversed a 40-year trend of price declines. Denmark, which has the highest integration of solar and wind in Europe, saw its electricity prices double.

Renewables advocates and journalists constantly recite the claim that solar and wind are the cheapest sources of power, but many of these assertions rest on bad math. They will often conclude that solar and wind are affordable simply by dividing capital costs by electricity generated, which results in a low value since solar panels and wind turbines are inexpensive to manufacture and have no fuel costs. But this calculation misses the extra costs solar and wind impose on the grid. In order to be used when and where we need energy, solar and wind require robust backup power and vast new transmission lines that reliable energies like nuclear generally do not.

Unlike nuclear, weather-dependent energies take a toll on nature. Solar plants can occupy anywhere from 175 to 600 times more land than nuclear due to the dilute nature of sunshine relative to the immense energy density of nuclear fuel. The largest solar plant in the world as of 2021, Gonghe, in China, covers 50 square kilometers and generates around 2.8 TWh per year. For comparison, the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in the US sits on less than one square kilometer of land yet generates six times as much power.

Wind energy is similarly afflicted with low energy density. Birds are killed when they fly into turbine blades. The US Geological Survey recently determined that if wind energy grows as projected, by 2040 golden eagle populations could fall as much as half in 10 years.

Center-left media are joining right-leaning media in beginning to document the downsides of renewables. In April 2022, Associated Press ran a story on how the wind energy company NextEra was fined $8 million for killing endangered eagles. In August 2022, AP chronicled the effects on Myanmar of rare earth mining for renewables, describing the “environmental destruction, the theft of land from villagers, and the funneling of money to brutal militias, including Myanmar’s secretive military government.” A 2022 Washington Post op-ed admitted that wind energy kills bald eagles, though the columnist framed their deaths as a necessary evil in the fight against climate change.

You may ask: if solar and wind are so deficient, why are they expanding so rapidly? The answer is that their weaknesses don’t compound until their expansion reaches grid scale. Whereas a few installations won’t jack up prices, ravage a whole lot of land, or butcher many birds, a grid dependent on solar and wind installations will create major damage in those respects.

Green backup at scale for weather-dependent energy doesn’t exist

Energy analyst Isaac Orr at the Center for the American Experiment noted in an interview in 2022 that the 15-state regional electric grid in the center of the United States, the MidContinent Independent Systems Operator, experienced “an 80-hour period where wind capacity factors were below 10 percent and a 42-hour period where the capacity factors were below 1.5 percent—two days of essentially no wind.”

Thus, renewables need enough backup power to run the grid with little help from solar and wind for days or weeks. Currently, fossil fuels provide the backup power, not clean energy. Renewables advocates believe that emerging low-carbon technology will end the use of natural gas as backup, but the sheer persistence of intermittency, a lack of energy density, and missing innovation make a green savior for solar and wind unlikely.

Massive lithium-ion batteries are an option for storage but that solution faces several glaring problems. Their immense material requirements will drive up costs as demand booms. This is an energy-density issue: a lithium-ion electric vehicle battery weighing a half-ton has the same range as about 12 gallons of gas weighing 85 pounds. To compare batteries with nuclear, one pound of nuclear fuel has the same output as one million pounds of Tesla batteries.

Renewables advocates claim that batteries, which have fallen in cost, will follow computing’s exponential price drops, but they haven’t yet and never will. In the words of energy expert Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute:

Such a comparison isn’t just flawed; it’s impossible in the physics of energy. If lithium chemistry could emulate digital progress since 1990, an EV today would have a battery the size of a single flashlight C cell, not one weighing 1,000 pounds.

In addition, the low energy density of batteries means they don’t scale well. To quote Mills: “at today’s and likely future prices, building enough batteries to store 12 hours of electricity for the U.S. would cost about $1.5 trillion, and that scale of storage would still leave the nation regularly third-world dark.”

Renewables advocates also tout green hydrogen as a promising auxiliary for weather-dependent energies. Burned as fuel or harnessed in a fuel cell, green hydrogen is created by splitting off the element from another substance, such as water, using low-carbon power. The good news around green hydrogen is that we already use hydrogen from other sources for a variety of important tasks, such as making fertilizer and plastics. Plus, prices for electrolyzers, which create hydrogen fuel from water, are dropping rapidly.

Despite these positive attributes, hydrogen isn’t the silver bullet renewables need. To beat on the same drum: green hydrogen lacks energy density; it has a density just one-third that of natural gas, meaning a grid reliant on green hydrogen will require substantially more physical infrastructure than current, already-massive natural gas systems. And because hydrogen is more flammable and requires more cooling and compression to transport, existing natural gas infrastructure would require expensive upgrades to begin moving hydrogen.

Other reliable energy technologies are not coming to the rescue, either. Hydroelectric power, enhanced geothermal, and carbon capture and storage are limited by geology. For example, hydro power is maxed out in much of the developed world, yet most rich nations still depend on fossil fuels.

Natural gas: spoiler, enabler

Low-cost natural gas bolsters the economics for renewables because of renewables’ need for backup power. This backup power must be able to rapidly adjust to changing solar and wind output while remaining profitable, a role which natural gas is best suited due to its low fixed costs such as labor. Much of the cost of natural gas plants comes from their fuel costs, so when natural gas is cheap, the electricity produced by natural gas plants is cheap, which makes the blend of renewables plus low cost gas energy a bargain that undermines nuclear.

Policymakers foolishly believed that rock-bottom natural gas prices would continue because of the fracking revolution, which undermined the policy case for nuclear. Yet, natural gas prices are not going back to pre-pandemic levels for at least a couple of years and likely will remain high even after that time.

The war in Ukraine has cut the global supply of gas because Russia can’t move much of its gas previously destined for Europe to other customers. This impasse could last years, as the war and European sanctions show few signs of stopping.

On top of this geopolitical strife, many politicians in the West are discouraging natural gas developments in their own countries. The EU has implemented a “windfall profits” tax of 33 percent or more which will cut into gas companies’ investment capital and raise prices for consumers. Europe’s record natural gas prices and a level of energy insecurity not faced since the 1970s oil crisis incentivizes those nations with fracking bans to end their prohibitions, yet they have mostly refused to, in an epic move of self-destruction.

In the US, shale companies lost $300 billion from 2010 to 2020 in a race to boost production, and now investors want profits more than growth. And, like their European counterparts, American leaders are largely doing the opposite of what should be done to increase production. President Biden has attacked fossil fuel companies with threats of windfall profit taxes, pledges to end fossil fuels, and cancellations of energy projects. While he quietly approved several gas export terminals in April, the political threat remains.

In a sign of record demand, shortages, and desperation, nations have snapped up all long-term natural gas contracts until 2026. European buyers cut off from Mother Russia have outbid developing nations, causing energy shortages and rolling blackouts in some countries.

In short, the state of the natural gas market has not been this favorable to nuclear in at least a decade, if not more.

The future is nuclear

Deployment of weather-dependent energies is handicapped by physics. The intermittency and low densities of solar and wind are what dictate the need for backup power, extensive new transmission lines, and large swathes of habitat, all of which will raise prices and harm wildlife. Lithium-ion batteries and hydrogen suffer from the same energy density problem, and natural gas is currently not a reliable partner for renewables.

Nuclear power is perfect for these circumstances.

Although proven, nuclear is not without its hang-ups. Anti-nuclear activists rightly note that nuclear construction in the West is plagued by absurd construction costs and time overruns. In one example, the only large US nuclear plant under construction, Vogtle, is seven years behind schedule and has doubled in price to $30 billion.

Contrary to anti-nuclear activists’ talking points, nuclear power is not doomed by these obstacles. Most currently operating nuclear plants use conventional water-cooled reactors, which can be built on time. France constructed 56 reactors from 1974 to 1989, the fastest decarbonization in history. South Korea built each of the six reactors at the Hanul nuclear plant in five to six years. Hanul, which is one of the largest nuclear plants in the world, generates as much power as 4,300 US land-based wind turbines.

Today, Russia, China, and South Korea usually build nuclear reactors in five to eight years. Pakistan has built four reactors, each in less than six years, since 2016. The UAE completed its first two reactors in 12 years, one of which is now featured on their thousand-dirham note.

Nuclear plants usually have the highest capital needs of any power source, but they can generate affordable power. In Germany, nuclear ranks as the lowest-cost major source of power. In the Ontario province of Canada (where most of the nation’s nuclear power is), nuclear energy is second only to hydroelectric. Globally, the International Energy Agency reported in 2020 that nuclear energy is expected to be the cheapest source of dispatchable low-carbon electricity in 2025.

Cost overruns are not as prohibitive as anti-nuclear advocates claim. Because nuclear reactors can run for 60 or even 80 years, their expansive output spreads the upfront capital costs over long time horizons. Canada is currently extending the lives of its nuclear reactors and it is estimated that even if the upgrade costs were to climb by 50 percent over original estimates, electricity rates from the reactors, which are already very affordable, would rise by only 8.9 percent.

Moreover, nuclear energy ensures formidable energy security against both threats from despots and the vagaries of the market. In 2021, the US state of Illinois made plans to spend $700 million to extend the operations of three nuclear plants—a prescient move. Because of the hike in fossil fuel prices in 2022 and a unique provision in the extension law, Illinois ratepayers will see their utility return to them over $1 billion.

Opponents of nuclear energy like to point out that nuclear has historically suffered from rising costs as nations have built more plants, even among countries with successful nuclear energy programs. France, for example, saw its costs rise 50 to 100 percent between 1971 and 1991, or two to four percent annualized. West Germany, Canada, the United States, India, and Japan all suffered from the same problem to different degrees.

South Korea has proved to be an exception. Since 1971, construction costs there have declined 50 percent. Today, South Korea operates 25 reactors that generate 27 percent of its electricity. They kept costs down by building a standardized design using the same construction crews and making only incremental changes. Indeed, costs of certain plants dropped in the US and France when those plants followed the Korean model. Russia and China may have also avoided the rising cost problem, but they do not publish those figures.

Costs rose in the aforementioned nations in part due to baseless radiation hysteria, which is often aided and abetted by people who oppose nuclear energy. In the US, costs for nuclear plants skyrocketed by 280 percent after the Three Mile Island accident even though no one received harmful doses of radiation from the mishap.

Even worse, radiation panic kills. The Japanese government shut down the nation’s nuclear plants due to radiation fears after the reactor meltdowns at Fukushima, which was triggered by a record-breaking 9.0 magnitude earthquake and resulting 10-meter tsunami. A 2019 analysis found that this action raised energy prices, likely causing around 1,200 deaths in four years from loss of heat during freezing conditions. In comparison, the accident itself caused only one death due to radiation.

The Chernobyl nuclear accident, the deadliest in the history of nuclear energy, is calculated to have resulted in 245 deaths, a fatality count well surpassed by fossil fuel accidents. In the US alone, 276 people have been killed and 1,145 injured by natural gas pipeline accidents in the past 20 years. Additionally, the cleanup for Chernobyl was more successful than widely understood. After the accident, radiation levels dropped to a point where the undamaged reactors could return to operation. The last reactor didn’t close until 2000 over the protests of the Chernobyl workforce.

And, of course, radiation deaths are minimal compared to those caused by fossil fuel emissions. The air pollution from fossil fuels shortens the lives of millions each year. Estimates vary, but a Harvard study concluded that in 2018 one in five deaths globally were caused by fossil fuels. Indeed, nuclear energy has saved over 1.8 million lives by displacing fossil fuels.

In fact, because nuclear power as a whole has generated so much more power over its lifetime compared to the projected lifetimes of solar and wind developments, nuclear energy is just as safe as solar and wind once adjusted for energy generated over time.

Nuclear is safer than the much-lauded lithium-ion storage. In developed countries, lithium-ion batteries have killed more people than nuclear radiation. Battery fires have killed eight people and injured 130 since 2021 in New York City alone.

With respect to nuclear waste, anti-nuclear activists obsess over used fuel, promoting the idea that it is hazardous. Yet nuclear waste has never killed anyone. While harmful if handled improperly, it is easy to store the waste in water pools and concrete casks. In fact, water is such a potent shield of radiation that humans can swim in the cooling pools containing nuclear waste without receiving harmful doses of radiation.

Unlike nuclear waste, solar energy has contaminated the environment with carcinogens, something which anti-nuclear activists either ignore or are unaware of. Many solar panels contain heavy metals including lead and cadmium, which can leach into the ground if the panels are destroyed by extreme weather.

Nuclear waste is actually very useful. Because most nuclear plants use only 10 percent or less of the available energy in uranium rods, breeder or fast reactors can generate energy from the waste while reprocessing it for use in conventional reactors. Russia already does this, and innovators in the West are working on this opportunity now. Because of this and other innovations, there is actually enough spent or unmined nuclear fuel to last billions of years.

Nuclear newcomers

While existing nuclear reactors are highly effective power sources, they are not without complications, especially construction difficulties in the West. In response, innovators are working on small modular reactors (SMRs), which are usually 300 megawatts (MW) or less as opposed to conventional reactors of about 1,000 MW.

Globally, there are 70 SMR designs under development with many dedicated investors. These designs endeavor to pare down capital costs through smaller sizes, increasing the amount of construction that can occur in factories, and cutting regulatory burdens by building identical reactors. Existing large nuclear plants exploit economies of scale, but SMR companies are betting they can keep costs down by substituting size for repeatability. Plus, smaller sizes open new markets for nuclear energy, such as minor islands, remote manufacturing facilities, and nations with small populations.

There is evidence that supports the philosophy behind SMRs. The US Navy, which powers its aircraft carriers, submarines, and other vessels with small nuclear reactors, cut costs substantially when it moved more construction into factories.

GE Hitachi, a U.S. and Japanese partnership, is exporting an SMR called the BWRX-300, a 300-MW boiling water reactor, to Canada and Poland and has signed agreements to explore BWRX-300 potential in the US, Estonia, and the Czech Republic. The advantage of the BWRX-300 reactor is that boiling water reactors are already used around the globe, just at larger sizes. The BWRX-300 is one of the most compelling SMR designs under development due to its simplicity, investor interest, and track record. GE Hitachi aims to finish construction of a BWRX-300 in Canada by 2028.

Another promising company is US-based Oklo, which is developing micro sodium-cooled fast reactors generating anywhere from 1.5 to 15 MW. Their design has at least two qualities traditional nuclear power plants do not have: it can use nuclear waste to generate power and can run without refueling for at least a decade.

Although they have higher construction risks compared with conventional water-cooled reactors, sodium-cooled reactors have a strong operating record. Since their invention, these reactors have had 450 reactor-years of operation. The first sodium-cooled fast reactor, the Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II) was designed in the US in the 1960s and is the basis for Oklo’s reactor design.

The EBR-II is a smart starting point because it is unimaginably safe. American engineers attempted to melt down the EBR-II in one test; they pushed it to full power and cut off major safety systems, yet the reactors cooled without human intervention. This key feature, which is not shared by most operating reactors today, is called “walk-away safety.”

Oklo has a clever business model. Instead of selling the reactors to utilities, they contract directly with customers such as remote communities, colleges, hospitals, and factories, which is how some wind and solar projects are sold today and will fit into corporate sustainability goals quite nicely. The company aims to deploy a reactor by 2026.

Canada-based Dual Fluid Energy is developing a 300-MW lead-cooled fast reactor, which is also walk-away safe, and aims to deploy their first by 2029. The reactor cannot overheat thanks to splendid physics. Should the core heat up past optimal levels, the fluids naturally expand, reducing the density of the fissile material, which shuts down the reaction. This design also allows the reactor to generate heat up to 1,000 °C, which is much higher than most reactors. This would enable Dual Fluid to efficiently provide the industrial heat for the production of materials such as steel or hydrogen.

Nuclear’s history may point to the future direction of SMRs. In the ’50s and ’60s, fission reactors started around the size of today’s SMRs and increased in size over time to achieve economies of scale. The SMRs in the West may see a comparable trajectory. In particular, as GE Hitachi gains experience building the BWRX in factories, it may find that it can increase the size of its reactors and factories without sacrificing repeatability.

That trail has been walked before. In the heyday of nuclear power in the US, two of America’s leading companies spent over $125 million to build a nuclear plant factory on an artificial island that would churn out identical 1,150-MW nuclear plants that could then be barged to customers. Despite the bold vision, the factory never produced a reactor, dying from a thousand cuts. The ’70s oil crisis halted power demand growth; President Jimmy Carter placed a moratorium on nuclear plant construction; and then the Three Mile Island accident terrified the US.

But dreams of unprecedentedly large nuclear construction live on. Executives at Dual Fluid Energy believe they may one day be able to enlarge their reactors to seemingly unfathomable sizes, such as 30,000 MW, to match the energy output of oil refineries.

Despite their potential, SMRs face significant challenges. Most reactors today are large, water-cooled designs because these models have proved to be the most workable and economic of the dozens of designs proposed in generations past. But that doesn’t mean every design got its due, and there is room for innovation. The necessity of nuclear is spurring businesses and governments to explore its entire potential, even though some, even most, SMR companies will fail. Fortunately, all it will take to revolutionize energy is for a few designs to become affordable.

The free world vs. despots

The question now is just as much who will power the future as what. The free world is locked in competition with Russia and China for nuclear energy dominance.

The free world is behind but is making strides. In Europe, the EU recently approved nuclear as “sustainable” under its Green Finance Taxonomy, which will make financing nuclear projects easier on the continent, a remarkable move considering the EU’s traditional hostility to nuclear. At least 10 European nations plan to build nuclear plants. Even anti-nuclear Germany has reluctantly delayed its planned phaseout of its last three nuclear plants.

In France, President Macron has swapped his scheme to roll back nuclear’s share of electricity from 75 to 50 percent with plans to build 14 new nuclear plants. Yet the road is long for France. In the words of Mark Nelson, managing director of the consultancy Radiant Energy Group, “Punitive taxes, parasitic expropriation of generated power, and an unnecessarily forced plant closure has helped bring France’s nuclear fleet to its knees exactly when Europe needs it most.” Coming out of the COVID lockdowns, over half of France’s reactors were inoperable.

Across the Atlantic, the US is providing nuclear with a level of support not seen since the “Atoms for Peace” era of the ’50s and ’60s that initially heralded its nuclear buildout. Recently signed laws have allocated $6 billion to keep existing nuclear plants open and $3.2 billion for SMR development. Crucially, the provisions include a production tax credit for existing nuclear plants, which will help insulate them from natural gas competition.

While federal support for SMRs and existing nuclear is strong, there is little appetite in Congress for a buildout of conventional reactors, a hapless misstep considering the US government is promoting the export of conventional US reactors around the globe.

In some good news for the free world, South Korea is back in the nuclear race. Its previous government had pledged to end its nuclear program, a decision which has been reversed by South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol, who has promised to make South Korea a “nuclear reactor superpower.”

Trends are heading in the right direction for the free world, but their recent trouble building nuclear plants and decades-long antipathy towards the technology has put them behind.

The world leader at the moment is China. Its nuclear competencies and ambitions lead the world, with 52 reactors planned or under construction, and another 150 reactors proposed. For context, the US is currently the world’s largest generator of nuclear energy with 92 reactors.

China has the ingredients for a successful nuclear program; they have direct government subsidies, strong R&D programs with universities, and standardized reactor designs. On the SMR front, China has already deployed one with an advanced design, a 200-MW high-temperature gas-cooled pebble-bed reactor in Shandong province. The US’s own leading design of that type will not reach the market until the late 2020s at the earliest.

China faces two major headwinds. They have yet to export reactors, a situation that may not change in the next 10 years. Second, China’s rising geopolitical belligerence could deter nations from partnering with them.

Russia is second to China but ahead of the countries of the free world. It is a top global exporter and domestic builder of nuclear energy. Russian and Chinese designs constitute 87 percent of reactors that began construction between 2017 and the first half of 2022. Rosatom, Russia’s state-run nuclear energy company, attracts their brightest engineers and innovators. They have deployed the world’s largest fast reactor, the sodium-cooled Beloyarsk BN-800. On the SMR front, Russia has deployed two 35-MW water-cooled reactors.

But Putin has shown that Russia is willing to extort their energy customers. It is losing customers in the world’s richest countries—the free world. Already, Finland and the Czech Republic have thrown Russia out of their nuclear programs, and Western nations are seeking new suppliers for uranium fuel.

Currently, the free world is behind China and Russia by at least five to seven years in the SMR race and, other than South Korea, a decade behind in the race for conventional reactors. The free world is finally running forward, but, for now, the despots are ahead.

It’s morning for nuclear power

The energy landscape has never been better for nuclear. Natural gas prices are sky-high, the unavoidable defects of renewables are becoming all too apparent, addressing climate change is an urgent priority, and Russia is manipulating energy supplies in a land war unlike any since World War II. People around the globe are beginning to recognize the potential of nuclear power to provide energy security and prosperity to their nations.

It is now an open subject as to how long it will take for nuclear to realize its potential. Energy transitions can be excruciatingly slow. The transition from biomass to coal, the fuel source that enabled industrial modernity, took two hundred years, and its widespread availability in the 20th century didn’t stop the use of biomass power from doubling.

The pace of the US fracking revolution offers some hope. Fracked gas is the primary reason coal generation in the US fell 55 percent since 2007, a seismic shift in such a brief period of time. If nuclear undergoes a similar innovative commercialization, it could deploy at the same velocity.

Nuclear is just getting started in much of the world and will take decades to become the bedrock of the global energy system. But the day is coming when nuclear energy will transform our planet. Truly, it has already dawned.