Nuclear Resurgence

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Bibliographic details

• Authors: TED NORDHAUS, JUZEL LLOYD
• Published: December 1, 2022

Recent turnabout in nuclear policy and deployment

• Recent months have marked a dramatic turnabout for the fate of nuclear energy across the developed world as the Russian invasion of Ukraine turned post-pandemic energy shortages into a full-blown energy crisis.
• Policy and deployment changes noted:
  • Nuclear power plants slated for closure across Europe have been given an 11th hour reprieve.
  • Japan plans to restart many of its reactors, which have sat idle since the nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi.
  • France reversed earlier plans to reduce nuclear dependence and now plans to build six new reactors and a dozen more small modular reactors.
  • The UK has launched an ambitious plan to build eight new reactors and 16 small modular reactors.
  • Germany extended the life of the nation’s last three operating nuclear power plants.
• The turn back to nuclear energy is framed as a ray of hope amid a geopolitical landscape in which Europe has been forced to import liquefied natural gas, fast-track pipeline projects from North Africa, and fire up mothballed coal plants to replace Russian oil and gas.

Limits of renewable energy

• Two interlinked conclusions from the energy crisis:
  • The world remains far too dependent on fossil fuels despite progress in renewable energy.
  • Wind and solar alone will not be sufficient to break that dependence.
• Key statistics and observations:
  • The power sector accounts for only about 20 percent of energy use and emissions globally.
  • No economy has succeeded in getting much more than about a third of its electricity from wind and solar combined.
  • Denmark generates about 50 percent of its electricity from wind, but it is integrated into the larger Scandinavian grid dominated by hydroelectric power and nuclear energy; Denmark’s wind accounts for only about 4 percent of total electricity generation annually across the Scandinavian grid.
  • France gets 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy.
  • Sweden and several other advanced economies get about 50 percent of their electricity from nuclear energy.
• Technical limits of large light-water reactors:
  • Complex technologies requiring highly trained personnel.
  • Large amount of fissile material in their core, depend on multiplicity of active safety systems.
  • Require sophisticated regulatory capabilities.
  • Need to be refueled regularly, every 18 months or so, complicating decoupling from the nuclear fuel cycle and raising proliferation concerns.
  • Operating at lower temperatures, they cannot meet heat requirements for many industrial uses and have limited ability to ramp up and down, making them less optimal for grids with significant wind and solar.

Refining nuclear: advanced and smaller reactor technologies

• Nuclear technology will need to evolve to play a major role beyond power sectors of advanced economies:
  • Several new advanced reactor technologies are under development better suited to industrial uses and targeted to replace existing coal-fired production.
  • China connected its first high-temperature gas reactor to the grid, envisioning it as a drop-in replacement for existing coal-fired power plants and for industrial purposes such as hydrogen and chemical production.
  • The United States has committed to building two advanced demonstration reactors this decade:
  • One by X-energy will be designed to provide industrial heat and power.
  • One by TerraPower is planned as a coal plant replacement and will feature an integrated molten salt energy storage system to optimize backing up variable wind and solar electricity generation.
• Smaller and less complicated advanced reactors:
  • Technologies such as Oklo’s Aurora reactor are applying for licenses in the United States and Canada.
  • Very small reactors are sealed, don’t require regular refueling, can operate for years without refueling, can be replaced and sent back to a factory for refueling and refurbishment.
  • These designs are positioned as suitable for countries without the technical know-how and institutional capabilities to maintain large conventional reactors and for remote off-grid locations.

Institutional, regulatory, and financing considerations

• Realizing potential of new nuclear technologies requires changes beyond engineering:
  • New business models.
  • New and more flexible regulatory, licensing, and export rules.
  • A revised global nonproliferation framework.
• Climate development financing constraints:
  • Long-running exclusions of nuclear and hydropower by most development banks (largely because of environmental objections from donor nations) effectively limit poorest countries to renewable energy options.
  • The authors argue this constrains development aspirations of the poorest nations, which have a fraction of the wealth, infrastructure, and technological capabilities of rich countries.

Powering Africa and development implications

• Sub-Saharan Africa’s energy gap and development needs:
  • Uses about the same amount of electricity as Spain despite having 18 times its population.
  • More than 600 million lack access to electricity, clean cooking fuels, and modern transportation.
  • The entire continent has only two factories capable of producing ammonia, the critical precursor of synthetic fertilizers.
  • Lack of access to affordable fertilizers results in yields that are five times lower than US or European farmers’.
  • Africa’s population is expected to double by 2050.
• Role of nuclear in Africa:
  • Nuclear is not a panacea and new nuclear technologies designed and scaled to Africa’s needs are at least a decade away.
  • Numerous African nations (Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia) have expressed interest in developing new nuclear plants.
  • Any long-term pathway toward prosperous and modern African development is likely to need nuclear alongside other options.
• Broad argument: accelerating transition away from fossil fuels globally requires putting new low-carbon options (including nuclear) on the table, not excluding them.

Key recommendations and implications

• Expand the set of feasible low-carbon options globally by:
  • Supporting development and deployment of advanced and smaller nuclear reactors suited to diverse contexts.
  • Reforming regulatory, licensing, export, and nonproliferation frameworks to accommodate new technologies safely.
  • Reconsidering climate development financing rules that exclude nuclear and hydropower so that developing countries can pursue an all-of-the-above energy agenda.
• Pursue innovation in business models and institutional capacity to enable safe operation, maintenance, and regulation of nuclear technologies in a wider set of countries.

F&D Magazine, December 2022 — "Nuclear Resurgence" by TED NORDHAUS and JUZEL LLOYD.

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