• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About
  • Podcast
  • Archives
  • Links

Atomic Insights

Atomic energy technology, politics, and perceptions from a nuclear energy insider who served as a US nuclear submarine engineer officer

Nuclear Performance

Improved atomic energy offers a pathway that Princeton’s Net Zero America failed to acknowledge

December 23, 2020 By Rod Adams 12 Comments

Princeton’s Net Zero America: Potential Pathways, Infrastructure and Impacts charts five challenging, tortuous, investment-intensive paths to “net-zero” by 2050. A presentation that contains 345 slides of text, colorful graphs and wide area maps provides details about the selected scenarios. The Princeton research team promises peer-reviewed journal articles in the near future.

According to sponsor organization promotional materials, the slide deck was released before the journal articles “in recognition of the urgency to cut greenhouse gas emissions and the need for immediate federal, state, and local policy making efforts.” There’s little doubt that the project sponsors and the authors have a strong policy-influence agenda.

All five chosen scenarios involve technology and infrastructure deployments “at historically unprecedented rates across most sectors.” They represent “expansive impacts on landscapes” that have not yet been planned in communities whose permission has not yet been obtained.

Overlooked path

The NZA study ignores a straight, wide, blazed trail. As documented in Goldstein and Qvist’s 2019 book titled A BRIGHT FUTURE: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow, several major electricity grids have successfully eliminated coal and been nearly completely decarbonized. 

In those grids–France, Sweden, and Ontario–a combination of nuclear power and hydroelectricity did the job. In each case, it took about two decades of sustained effort.

None of history’s successful decarbonization efforts required a complete reordering of the economy. The nuclear energy portion of the country- or providence-wide efforts that now provide reliable, abundant electricity from non-combustion sources that do not dump carbon dioxide to the environment did not result in “expansive impacts on landscapes.”

Electricity can do most of the work

Though electricity is only a part of total energy use, the Princeton study makes the reasonable assumption that decarbonized electricity grids can be expanded to supply the energy services needed to decarbonize most of the rest of the energy supply. 

That same assumption continues to work if the electricity decarbonization path includes a successful effort to improve nuclear energy products and projects. Unlike wind and solar, atomic energy is a thermal energy source that can directly supply heat energy useful for industrial processes. Some of the electrification expansions that NZA assumes to be necessary to supply all energy demands might be accomplished more affordably with direct heat use.

Improved atomic energy systems can provide a major share of the energy that NZA scenario models supply using combustion accompanied by some form of carbon capture. If the carbon capture systems are retained while replacing combustion with abundant nuclear energy, we can draw down the current excess CO2 that has been accumulated in the atmosphere. Warming doesn’t stop if the blanket remains in place.

Choosing to discount nuclear improvements 

Unfortunately, all three of history’s successful efforts to replace combustion stopped growing several decades ago. They were halted before making major impacts on energy consumption outside of electricity. Other jurisdictions that started down the nuclear energy path quit even earlier in the process.

Such a long time has passed since those successes that many, including the Princeton research team, have either forgotten they ever happened or assume that the conditions enabling atomic success can never again be achieved.

A discussion with Jesse Jenkins, one of the lead authors of the Princeton NZA pathways study, helped me to understand why nuclear energy played only a minor role in the modeled results. Based on a handful of recent nuclear projects located in “western” nations, the group assumed that nuclear generation would cost $6,600/kw in 2020 and only decline to $5,500/kw by 2050.

Since the NZA study uses models designed to produce “cost optimized” selections, nuclear didn’t make the cut until after 2030. Only then did it get selected and only in the single scenario that included modest constraints on siting renewables and transmission lines. Waiting until 2030 to begin building new nuclear helps to guarantee a significant delay in improving nuclear.

It’s difficult to improve anything without practice. It’s also difficult to displace recently built infrastructure.

Assuming that nuclear doesn’t improve very much makes some unlikely actions look more attractive. It can even can make actions described in the following statement seem almost reasonable.

“The current power grid took 150 years to build. Now, to get to net-zero emissions by 2050, we have to build that amount of transmission again in the next 15 years and then build that much more again in the 15 years after that. It’s a huge amount of change,” said Jenkins.

Princeton University: “Big but affordable effort needed for America to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, Princeton study shows”

Aside: It might not be obvious to people who aren’t deeply entrenched in the electricity supply business but building major transmission lines is never easy or quick. The planning and execution process often takes decades; it’s not uncommon for projects to be abandoned after substantial investments are made.

The Energy Institute at the University of Texas Austin has a 25 page white paper titled Estimation of Transmission Costs for New Generation that helps explain some of the complexities in an intrastate system. Those can expand geometrically if multiple states get involved. End Aside.

Does improved nuclear change the conversation?

A growing and strengthening group of independently minded experts agree that expensive nuclear will never be an optimum choice, but they also have evidence to believe that it’s possible to dramatically improve nuclear costs. Choosing just one example out of many, General Electric – Hitachi (GEH) has published a cost target of $2,250/kw for their simplified, tenth generation BWR, the BWRX-300.

If the Princeton researchers gave as much credit to atomic innovators as they did experts from BP, Exxon and Occidental, they might have produced a scenario that included achievable nuclear cost improvements. Instead, they sought expert advice from major multinational oil companies to develop a “notional capacity-cost curve for CO2 transport and storage” while more than doubling estimated costs coming from nuclear energy experts. (Note: Alluding to page 4 of “Annex I (NZA). CO2 Transport and StorageTransition DRAFT 2020-12-13.pdf”, which is available from the folder titled Princeton NZA Annexes at https://bit.ly/NetZeroAmerica)

Princeton researchers deny that they are fundamentally opposed to nuclear. They advocate for an investment of almost $20 B during the coming decade for advanced nuclear energy R&D. This suggestion, however, should be understood in the following context.

“Its comprehensive modeling of the country’s future energy pathways for decarbonization indicates that $2.5 trillion in additional investments will be needed over the next decade, on top of an estimated $9.4 trillion the country would be expected to invest in energy over the next decade under a “business-as-usual” pathway.”

GTM: “Princeton Study Charts a $2.5T Pathway to a Net-Zero Carbon US”

For those who don’t routinely do math with big numbers in their heads, that means that the Princeton team recommends spending 0.8% of their recommended additional energy investments for the 2020s developing improved nuclear energy products.

When asked about including improved nuclear in future model runs, Jesse Jenkins provided a thought-provoking answer. “I’ve run plenty of models with very cheap nuclear. That’s why I can confidently say that if costs are <$3500 the model eats nuclear up, and if not, it doesn’t.”

What can we do to improve nuclear energy outcomes?

Nuclear energy improvements are not guaranteed, but they are at least as credible and achievable as the massively impactful efforts envisioned in the Net-Zero America study. 

In many places, the proven decarbonization path based on reasonable improvements in atomic energy needs to be cleared of accumulated debris. In other places, there are fewer barriers but a greater need for new infrastructure that has not yet been deployed. We–in the global, humanity-wide sense–have done this before and can do it again.

We can build better fission power sources now than we did in the past. Some countries, notably Russia, China and South Korea have nuclear energy industries that are already building cost-competitive nuclear projects on reasonably predictable schedules.

Even under democratic “disadvantages” we can manage nuclear projects better; we can enable a wider variety of systems that supply a wider variety of customer demands; we can mobilize abundant, affordable capital and we can ensure that “safety” is not used a code word for stopping innovation and continued expansion.

Not only do we have historical examples of success to follow, but we have developed many useful tools in the several decades since those successful efforts were abandoned before achieving full potential. Those new tools will enable us to achieve even greater success this time than during the First Atomic Age.

The better Atomic Age will require new thinking and aggressive actions. It is being influenced by disruptive ventures led by people who believe we can learn from history without repeating the same mistakes again and again.

Disclosure: Rod Adams, the author, is a Managing Partner at Nucleation Capital. He has a keen, vested interest in enabling advanced nuclear energy system success. 

Filed Under: Clean Energy, Climate change, decarbonization, Nuclear Performance

Nuclear’s Fork in the Road

August 19, 2017 By Guest Author

By Jim Little

Would you be willing to continue investing in an established business with flat revenues, increasing costs while competing against an agile field of competitors who enjoy a market advantage of lower costs, quicker deployment schedules and the support of government subsidies and favorable public opinion? Should you stay the course and focus on addressing those challenges or divest? This is the stark choice facing the nuclear power industry today.

The Curves in the Road Ahead

The current situation that the nuclear industry is experiencing is best captured in the familiar “S Curve” graphic below illustrating the life cycle that many industries undergo beginning with birth, through growth, expansion and maturity and a potential decline when later facing factors such as obsolescence, substitute products or a changing competitive or political environment. If conditions do not improve, they eventually come to a point where a decision must be made to either continue on in a declining business, make changes or go in a new direction.

The Current Road Ahead Isn’t Straight – It Might be a Dead End.

There is great concern over the continued viability of nuclear power in the United States going forward. It is facing threats to its very existence, ironically at a time when its performance has reached its peak and when its value could most be appreciated with its carbon-free generation, reliability of supply, and economic benefit. The utility industry is facing some tough choices. Will nuclear generation continue or decline? Will the nuclear industry turn its attention away from new plant builds and extended-life operation activities and rather focus on decommissioning as evidenced by the plethora of recent conferences focused on decommissioning as the new market opportunity?

These threats are multi-faceted and are due to factors both external and internal. The external factors are well known by now – a disruption in the formerly stable power market created by imbalance between supply and demand. The supply side has been disrupted by an abundance of extremely low-priced natural gas produced through technological advances such as fracking and horizontal drilling and the rapid growth of increasingly cost-competitive renewables, sometimes supported by favorable government policies and subsidies. The demand side has been affected by the recent economic recession which suppressed growth in demand for power generation, already being tempered by improvements in energy efficiency.

The internal factors affecting nuclear are both existing and new. As no significant additions to the nuclear fleet have been made in many years, the fleet is aging and has required significant capital investment for upgrades and license extensions. Compounding this further are ever increasing regulatory requirements, the largest of which are those resulting from the events at Fukushima some six years ago.

One of the more disconcerting and difficult issues facing the industry is a loss of talent and experience right at a time when it is most needed to transfer knowledge to the next generation. The nuclear workforce demographic contains a large percentage of experienced talent reaching retirement age within the next five to ten years. With fewer people entering the industry, addressing the needs of the operating fleet will become more and more difficult and expensive. Further efforts to reduce costs by trimming workforces would only exacerbate the problem.

With revenues remaining flat, cost increases are significantly squeezing the profit margins of these operations. The financial outlook for nuclear utilities is bleak in an investment environment which rewards growth in revenues and profits. A number of utilities with nuclear units in merchant markets have recently announced decisions to decommission those units which are no longer able to sustain profitability. Utilities with units in regulated markets are likewise feeling similar financial pressures.

This situation was recently described to me by one nuclear utility executive: “From a shareholder perspective, how can I justify a recommendation to continue to invest in a facility when facing a forecast of declining returns while there may be other more profitable uses of capital?” So, should the default decision be to retire that unit and fund those efforts through its decommissioning fund; i.e. a “Nuclear 401(k)”?

There are no easy choices. While the logic may seem straightforward, abandoning even a single unit could have cascading effects and far reaching implications. This same executive explained his concerns further: “How does one retain and attract talent going forward when there is a signal that nuclear may not enjoy full support going forward?” The inability to offset talent loss due to retirements in the workforce can affect performance on the remaining operations, increase costs, and further accelerate the departure away from nuclear. With a downturn in the industry there are other outcomes such as the reluctance of students to enter the nuclear field, university decisions to pursue other programs of study, research budgets reduced and grant applications no longer being sought. There are a number of other issues; the loss of existing, stable baseload generation and economic impacts such as those being experienced in host communities such as Zion, Illinois, and Vernon, Vermont. From a national policy perspective, it directly impacts the largest source of carbon-free generation in the United States, currently 63% of the nation’s total carbon-free generation.

Lastly, for the industry, the departure from nuclear is likely irreversible once made in the U.S. as the current talent and knowledge base is the result of over 50 years of investment and development. The situation may best be described by Stephen Wright, a comedian who is a master of the art of irony: “I live in a house halfway down a dead end street. It’s one way.”

The Industry Drives On

Challenges aren’t new to the nuclear industry which, since its inception, has successfully addressed numerous challenges throughout the past five decades. With a culture based on a need for certainty and a search for excellence, it has focused intensely its attention “head on”. Over the past few years significant investments have been made in improvements with upgrades, upratings, and efforts to improve regulatory processes through risk-informed approaches among others. In response to the recent market conditions, it has undertaken initiatives on multiple fronts. Legislative efforts focused on political and community support have begun in states such as Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York highlighting the economic and environmental benefits of the nuclear facilities in those locations and the negative impact of early retirements opon communities and the need for the treatment of nuclear power on a level playing field with other competing sources of supply. Efforts are being made in the regulatory arena with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regarding the need to address the seemingly never ending increase in regulations without demonstrable need or benefit. A good example of progress in this area is the recent commission decision to uphold Exelon’s appeal for the NRC Staff to adhere to the cost-benefit analysis requirements of the Backfit Rule.

Under the leadership of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the industry has focused on internal issues with its cost efficiency initiative, Delivering the Nuclear Promise, which has an aspirational goal of saving one third of operating costs. Utility members are identifying cost improvements and sharing them with the membership in a series of efficiency bulletins for consideration and implementation. In the past year, the program has identified over thirty bulletins with a potential savings exceeding $650 million across the U.S. nuclear fleet. Not relying on this program alone, some utilities are taking direct actions to reduce costs by mandating fixed budgets and corresponding organizational streamlining and workforce reductions. The key question is whether these actions will identify enough remaining potential for improvements. Furthermore, will there be a sustainable benefit over the longer term to address future challenges not yet encountered? With a legacy focus on continuous improvement and efficiency, what’s really left to improve upon?

Did We Miss a Turn?

Faced with an uncertain path forward, these obstacles may seem insurmountable with success being elusive. Yet, there may be an option other than continuing to pursue a traditional method which uses robust, tried and true problem solving approaches. The answer might not lie ahead but along the side of the road already traveled. Did we miss a possible turn as we forged ahead during the past years in the search for excellence?

This possible option might be best described in Oren Harari’s book, “Jumping the Curve: Innovation and Strategic Choice in an Age of Transition”. He points out an alternative to the traditional approach which searches for answers to problems. After all, he was famously quoted saying, “The electric light did not come from the continuous improvement of candles.” This new approach is not based on finding answers but in asking questions. Curiosity is used as the tool to explore and find new opportunities. Rather than focusing on answers to lowering costs it focuses on asking “Why should we do this?” and “What are we doing and why are we doing it? Have we gone too far down that road in that search and find ourselves on an unsustainable road to “Excessilence”?

This New Path Isn’t Necessarily Straight Either

The nuclear industry operates with a psychology and tradition of ensuring certainty and having solutions to problems. There is a very strong drive to adhere to established practice. Take, for illustrative purposes, a simple example: the practice used for years to sign documents. It was always required that documents be signed using black ink. Quality Assurance would reject anything signed with blue ink. The simple reason behind this requirement was that in the past, copy machines were not able to capture the color blue; therefore the requirement to forbid the use of blue ink. In some cases, organizations were even not allowed to stock blue ink pens. Yet for some years later, even after copier technology evolved to capture the color blue, the prohibition remained in place.

New solutions may be found by questioning current practices and departing from tradition. Rather than look at the efficiency of those practices, are they effective? We need to probe deeper to look for improvement. Are our operations effective in delivering the value that we need to reliably and safely deliver cost effective nuclear produced electrical generation? So, we need to ask ourselves, are we still using “black ink”?

Let’s look deeper and question the scope and extent of programs and practices which have been developed and implemented over the past decades. Are they still appropriate or have they expanded further beyond their purpose and become part of tradition? There are lots of areas to evaluate but consider some sample questions in just three:

1. Have quality assurance programs gone too far? Are some records now produced primarily as a defense for potential audits? Are corrective action programs focused on correction or just protection?

2. In the area of security, are assessments and activities focused on credible threats that are possible and probable or have they been stretched to a hypothetical and theoretical limit?

3. In procurement, does a predominant focus on lowest cost with multiple bidders deliver the best result? Does an arms-length relationships ensure customer satisfaction (i.e. access to alternative solutions and the best result) and supplier success (i.e. stable workloads that keep companies with good talent available)?

The questions may seem simple, but actually the answers are complex when considering that those practices and processes that were validated and adopted years ago in the pursuit of excellence. Questions pose a whole new set of questions or concerns: How can we “back up” from our current methods? What will the reactions of stakeholders be to a perceived reversal of those practices solely for the purposes of saving money? How can we undertake such an effort and ensure that any revisions do not have unintended consequences?

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
Yogi Berra

Moving Forward on a New Path

Facing the need for change is not anything new. As a species, we have been exceptionally good at dealing with change. We are naturally skilled at assessing our environments and adapting to the changes we perceive. These adaptive skills have allowed us to find novel and useful solutions to complex challenges. Were we to stay in our comfort zones and hope things get better (or hope we don’t get eaten) we would not have become the dominant species on the planet.

We also know that change is difficult. Our brains are wired to pursue the familiar path. Our neural networks don’t have to work as hard when we are engaged in routine behavior. We fear that doing things differently will result in the loss of all that has been built and invested in. This is precisely why the process of change needs to involve the right people, working toward a clear set of goals that lead to a shared vision. The process also requires the courage to face uncertainty and to engage the imagination to figure out the best ways to get there.

One of Charles Darwin’s most often quoted phrases is: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

The time to act is now. We must address the issues facing the industry on all fronts to preserve nuclear as a valuable asset for the nation. Doing less is simply irresponsible and unacceptable.

We are beginning the start of this dialogue with a panel discussion to be held at in the executive session for the upcoming American Nuclear Society Utility Working Conference on August 6-9, 2017 at Amelia Island, Florida. I will moderate a panel of executives with utility, regulatory and supplier experience to discuss their opinions and perspectives of this path forward. In addition, this September, the Carolinas Nuclear Cluster which is part of E4Carolinas, a 501(c) energy industrial trade organization serving the Carolinas will undertake an effort entitled “Nuclear, What’s Next?” to further pursue this initiative.

As always, reactions, input, comments and questions (of course!) are welcome.

p.s. It’s ok to use blue ink.

Jim Little is an Executive Consultant, Nuclear Energy Programs
He’s a member of the State of South Carolina, Governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council. He earned an MS in Nuclear Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University

Editor’s Aside: Better ways to document acceptance and approval should be encouraged. Ink is so last century.


Note: The above article was originally published on Linkedin at Nuclear’s Fork in the Road. It is republished here with permission from the author. The author presented his thoughts at a well-attended session at the Utility Working Group. He gave Atomic Insights permission to share his slide deck.

Filed Under: Business of atomic energy, Guest Columns, Jim Little, Nuclear Performance

Atomic Show #253 – Delivering the Nuclear Promise

April 25, 2016 By Rod Adams 29 Comments

The US nuclear industry has decided that it’s time to take aggressive action to improve its operational efficiency. Leaders have looked hard at the competitive landscape. They’ve clearly recognized that while they produce a valuable, desirable commodity, their production costs are not competitive. Many of them aren’t willing to give up their markets and valuable […]

Filed Under: Business of atomic energy, Nuclear Performance, Podcast

Atomic Show #237 – Dave Lochbaum, UCS

April 3, 2015 By Rod Adams

On March 26, 2015, Cleveland.com published a story titled Perry refuels its nuclear reactor, critics concerned about storage (photos). The story described how a group of activists had tried to generate concerns and actions in response to First Energy’s decision to improve the Perry plant by adopting fuel designed to provide more energy per fuel […]

Filed Under: Antinuclear activist, Nuclear Performance, Nuclear regulations, Podcast

Associated Press’s slanted interpretation of recent GAO report on US nuclear regulator

October 19, 2013 By Rod Adams

While the recent government shutdown was still in progress, Jeff Donn of the Associated Press published a slanted story about a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That report had not yet been released to the public, but it was made available to Mr. Donn. Though Mr. Donn is not […]

Filed Under: Nuclear Performance, Nuclear regulations

US Nuclear Power Plant Performance August 2013

September 21, 2013 By Rod Adams

I realize that I may be accused of cherry-picking a particularly good month for US nuclear power plants, but I wanted to share something that helps to explain why I am so darned enthusiastic about nuclear energy’s potential to improve the human condition. This quote comes from the Nuclear Performance Report of August, 2013. For […]

Filed Under: Nuclear Performance

Primary Sidebar

Search Atomic Insights

The Atomic Show

Atomic Insights

Follow Atomic Insights

Recent Posts

How did an oil shale investor hamstring his atomic energy competition? (Ancient but impactful smoking gun)

Improved atomic energy offers a pathway that Princeton’s Net Zero America failed to acknowledge

Adams Engines™: Design Concepts

Will heavy nitrogen become a widely used fission reactor coolant?

Is there a conspiracy against nuclear energy?

  • Home
  • About Atomic Insights
  • Atomic Show
  • Contact
  • Links

Search Atomic Insights

Archives

Copyright © 2021 · Atomic Insights

Terms and Conditions - Privacy Policy