Tuesday Open Comments

America Must, Can, And Should Renew Its Nuclear Energy Dominance

The loudly announced policy of the new Trump Administration is for the US to regain global “energy dominance.” Most of us would first think, “drill Baby, drill,” so that we can increase our exports of liquified natural gas (LNG). However, there is another energy source that the new administration should encourage, and that is nuclear power. But if the public thinks that means that American citizens working for American companies can now build a complete nuclear power plant either in the US or abroad, they should think again—we can’t. Will future reactor sales go to Russia or China instead?

… President Eisenhower offered to share the technology with any country that would forgo using it for nuclear weapons through his “Atoms for Peace” initiative. Many reactor designs were tried out across the globe, but most commercial reactors ended up being built on American light water-cooled designs (LWRs).

As a lack of sales caused many companies to pull out of the market or even go out of business,…

The hard reality is that we lost the ability to be a sole-source nuclear power plant provider long ago….

The other portion of the American duopoly that resulted from the sorting out was General Electric. GE in turn partnered with two Japanese firms, Hitachi and Toshiba, for new reactor designs, before forming an “alliance” with Hitachi to form General Electric Hitachi (GEH) in the US and Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy in Japan.

The market we are concerned with here are the large reactors, in the gigawatt+ (GW) range. While much has been made of “small modular reactors” (SMRs), the designs that really matter for national energy policy remain the large utility-scale reactors, which have three to five times the output of an SMR. While SMRs should eventually find a market niche and can offer certain safety and technical advantages, the economies of scale are so strong for large and yet larger reactors that the cheapest nuclear electrical generation choice will remain large reactors that we can’t build alone.

President Eisenhower wisely insisted on international controls to keep nuclear commercial applications (like electrical generation) clearly separated from nuclear weapons development….

/snip

So, what would future American nuclear energy dominance look like, and how would the Trump Administration encourage it? We must first recognize that the world has changed and that Eisenhower’s promise to share peaceful nuclear technology has succeeded, perhaps to our national commercial detriment. Having acknowledged that fact, how will there be any profit or security for American workers and industry in a new generation of nuclear development?

It is a clear given that “climate change” policy driver that has been behind so much of recent nuclear support amongst the political class will get dumped into the “ashbin of history” by this administration. In reality, it always looked more like a smoke screen. Ask yourself this: Has “climate change“ generated any more nuclear generation on the grid? While the R&D support has been welcome, SMRs and micro-reactors are potential niche products and not panaceas for our global electricity needs.

But how does one sell nuclear reactors today? Plenty of countries are in the market right now as potential buyers. They could choose Russian or Chinese offerings, or they could buy from America and its allies. Selection usually boils down to two factors: financing or proliferation controls—or both.

For example, Saudi Arabia can swing the price but is put off by American insistence that they forgo nuclear enrichment, reprocessing, and weapons as part of a 123 Agreement. So far, no 123 Agreement and no sale. Will American hegemony hold, or do smaller countries see a future where they must go it alone? Most countries resist having America attach strings to their activities by the Americans and, naturally, would prefer greater autonomy.

But the other key to sales is financing. Nukes are very big-ticket infrastructure items, and the cost of money (and availability) for the financial risk involved is critical. Remember all the “zero interest rate” offers for new cars? …That basic behavior applies to countries interested in nuclear reactors, too. It’s just business.

You just can’t sell a nuclear reactor today without liberal financial terms. Even a “well qualified customer” like the UAE got US government financing for its $20 billion Barakah plant….

The US and its allies that wish to promote commercial export sales of nuclear power plants must accept that achieving our policy goals of both a peaceful world and gainful nuclear employment for their citizens will require both maintaining the current non-proliferation regime and offering attractive financing options to their buyers. Some of allies may have been tempted to offer one without the other. Americans and the Trump Administration need to understand that we won’t be able to go it alone but must still lead friendly consortia and support reliable but cash-poor buyers with easy terms. If not American nuclear energy dominance, then expect to see Russian and Chinese reactors sprout across the globe and new nuclear weapons states to arise. Neither is in America’s interests.