The Nuclear Option

A couple years ago I got to sit in a meeting between people from over a dozen of these companies, and a former head of the NRC. The reactor people said their biggest problem was that the NRC requires the design to be nearly complete before they'll even look at it. It takes several hundred million dollars to get to that point, then the NRC gives a simple yes or no. If no then you're done, if yes then you've still got nothing but paper. It's a very difficult environment for investors.

They said if the NRC at least went with a more phased approach it would help a lot. The NRC person was unsympathetic, said it wasn't the NRC's job to help promote or develop nuclear power, and was uninterested in climate change.

Fortunately Canada's regulators are more rational. Terrestrial Energy has spoken highly of them, has gotten through the hardest part of their process, and expects to get a molten salt reactor to market within a decade. Moltex has moved to Canada as well, and possibly others.

But it's unfortunate that the U.S. is so difficult, since with facilities like Oak Ridge it could help a lot.

Prompt critical is prompt.

“Subsidies to wind and solar are backfiring, both economically and environmentally,” says Michael Shellenberger, head of the pro-nuclear advocacy group Environmental Progress. “That money should be shifted to nuclear.”

The most generous renewable subsidy offered across the USA [1] is the wind Production Tax Credit, which offers wind projects $23 in tax credits per megawatt-hour that they generate over the first 10 years of operation [2]. There is only 1 American reactor new enough that it would qualify if the same terms were offered to nuclear projects: Watts Bar II, which was completed in 2016 after a 30 year construction hiatus.

There are 4 partially completed AP1000 reactors that would also now qualify for wind-like tax incentives if they had met their planned construction schedules. Unfortunately, all 4 are horrendously behind schedule and over budget. Two have been canceled. These project failures drove the bankruptcy of Westinghouse in 2017.

New nuclear power has had its own federal production tax credit since 2005, though on terms less generous than those offered to wind:

https://www.nei.org/advocacy/build-new-reactors/nuclear-prod...

I would guess that it's less generous because in 2005 nuclear power was considered to be relatively mature, affordable technology already; wind was riskier and needed more incentives to develop to maturity. 14 years later, wind projects look like the predictable option for investors and nuclear projects are the crazy gamble. So I wouldn't be opposed to offering reactor builders the same incentives offered to builders of wind and solar farms, but I don't think that will move the needle much. The problem isn't that new reactors need more revenue per MWh. It's that they have trouble delivering any MWh. You can offer $50 per MWh and it doesn't help if the project can't deliver a single megawatt and is years delayed, billions over budget.

Why are all the AP1000s late and over budget? Why did schedules slip so badly? They were originally supposed to be built within 5 years in the US. In fact, they are taking 8 years or more. Even the AP1000s built in China ended up taking nearly 9 years. It wasn't obstructionist tactics from anti-nuclear activists or lawyers. It wasn't shifting regulatory requirements. It was the nuclear industry itself.

Here are the Post and Courier stories tagged “Westinghouse.” These are all about the failed VC Summer AP1000 project in South Carolina.

https://www.postandcourier.com/search/?k=%22westinghouse%22#...

Some damning headlines:

S.C. utilities knew of big problems 6 months into nuclear project but didn’t tell customers

Insight that would’ve alerted problems with nuclear project scrubbed from audit two years ago

Whistleblower says he was demoted after finding problems in S.C. nuclear project, report says

Confidential Westinghouse report details early faults with nuclear projects

Letter shows S.C. utilities knew Westinghouse’s reactor designs would lead to increased costs and schedule delays

The American nuclear industry is going to take a decade to recover from these self-inflicted wounds, if it ever does. Maybe (I hope) small modular reactors can avoid the runaway schedule and cost problems that plagued the AP1000 and the EPR.

I've been reading calls to prioritize building reactors over renewable projects for at least 15 years now. They even made a lot of sense back then. The pitch: if we can just get the irrationally fearful public out of the way, nuclear projects can displace fossils faster and cheaper than renewables. These American AP1000s were supposed to convince fence-sitting environmentalists and ratepayers alike that it was time for an American nuclear renaissance. Reactors would be as all-seasons reliable as coal and generate a MWh cheaper than any solar farm. Instead they've been complete fiscal disasters that to date have generated less electricity than a single rooftop solar system.

People who are still pitching the "cheaper and more predictable than renewables" line about nuclear projects should be dismissed as chat-bots stuck in a loop. They're not integrating new information and reconsidering past stances.

[1] I don't know details of all 50 states' renewable incentive policies, and some of them are structured in ways that make it difficult to assign a straightforward dollars-per-MWh value.

[2] https://www.energy.gov/savings/renewable-electricity-product...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Atomic_Energy_Co...