Last Updated on January 24, 2023 by Chicago Policy Review Staff
Joe Rogers is an MBA candidate at the University of Chicago.
There is bi-partisan support surrounding the United States’ transition to a 100% clean electricity grid by 2035. Carbon-free electricity is an important component of the United States’ broader carbon abatement strategy, and our rapid deployment of renewable energy is helping us make progress towards those goals.
It is paramount that we act swiftly to achieve our carbon abatement targets. However, relying exclusively on renewable energy technologies will subject our energy grid to variables such as sunshine and wind. In their current states, the intermittency of solar and wind will not be able to provide the reliable and continuous baseload power that society demands.
The feasibility of wind and solar power relies on anticipated improvements to battery storage technology. While it’s easy to imagine a hypothetical “grid of the future,” where a potent combination of utility-scale solar/wind and long-term battery storage reliably power the United States, the imminence of our clean energy transition challenges our ability to wait for a breakthrough.
Wind and solar combined accounted for only 11% of electricity generated in 2020, while natural gas and coal contributed 40% and 19%, respectively. We need to continue deploying clean energy assets, even if it means using technologies that (at least by some measures) are less cost-efficient than the hypothetical combination of renewables and next-gen battery storage.
Thankfully, nuclear power offers a scientifically proven, clean pathway towards ensuring continuous and reliable power without dependence on storage. We ought to stop ignoring the promise of Advanced Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).
You can stop picturing Homer Simpson’s nuclear facility. SMRs are built using factory-made parts that allow the manufacturer to benefit from economies of scale. Once an SMR is designed, it can be replicated easily in multiple locations. This replicability is perhaps the most exciting development with SMRs. The traditional nuclear plants of old required significant design expenses for each individual plant and consistently experienced rampant cost overruns. The footprint of an SMR is significantly smaller than that of a traditional nuclear power plant and requires less than 6% of the space what would be required by a utility scale solar project to generate the same amount of power. This technology is undoubtedly promising, but as with all new technologies, barriers stand in the way of wide-spread adoption.
Many critics argue that SMR technology is “too late, too expensive, too risky and too uncertain” when compared to existing renewable energy technologies. These critics cite analysis showing that the anticipated cost of deploying a SMR would be prohibitively more expensive than a comparable utility-scale solar project. But this type of comparison is missing the point. While it is certainly true that we should continue the rapid deployment of renewable energy, we must also acknowledge that the energy transition will not be achieved without a reliable and continuous carbon-free energy source that is free from intermittency. In this way, the purpose of SMRs is not to replace future solar/wind projects with SMRs, but instead to supplement those renewable energy sources with non-intermittent, carbon-free energy that allows us to safely increase our reliance on renewables.
SMRs are an immediately viable option to replace carbon-emitting assets on our grid. Over 85% of asset retirements taking place in 2022 will be in the form of coal plants, with this trend expected to continue in the foreseeable future. SMRs possess a unique set of characteristics that allow them to take over the same properties that are currently occupied by retiring coal plants. By contrast, a utility-scale solar project would require over 16x the amount of land as an SMR, and that’s assuming that the coal plant just so happens to exist in an area that is conducive to wind or solar generation (very unlikely!).
A number of states have already taken policy actions that allow grid operators to closely evaluate potential SMR adoption. Montana recently passed legislation that will evaluate a proposal to replace one of the nation’s largest coal plants with an SMR. States like West Virginia, Indiana, and Wyoming are making similar evaluations for their retiring coal plants. This unique ability for SMRs to slot into our existing energy infrastructure makes them an even more important component of the multi-pronged energy grid of the future.
Despite instances of tacit state-level support for SMRs, political hurdles related to regulation, cost, employment, and safety continue to be prominent obstacles preventing SMR adoption. Acquiring regulatory approval in the nuclear sector is a famously slow process. While there has been a recent push by scientists and regulators to streamline this process by removing bureaucratic red tape, the process is still unnecessarily burdensome. NIMBYism attitudes towards nuclear energy persist. Politicians are incentivized to make energy decisions that not only ensure reliable and affordable power to their region, but also provide economic benefits to their constituents. These are some of the main reasons that political support for legacy coal plants still exists. However, SMRs have a strength in this regard, as studies predict that they will provide higher employment levels and larger economic benefits than other alternatives such as coal, natural gas, or renewables.
This year will mark the 80th anniversary of the world’s first nuclear reactor being created here on our own University of Chicago campus. Let us not ignore what that scientific breakthrough meant to humankind, and instead ensure that nuclear energy is evaluated as a legitimately competitive tool in our fight against climate change.