Tech companies collaborating to accelerate advanced nuclear

Google has partnered with Microsoft and Nucor to accelerate advanced clean electricity technologies through a new "demand aggregation model" to help bring "first-of-its-kind" commercial projects to market.

Technology companies compete with each other in a lot of ways but they all want to achieve the goal of being able to run operations and data centers using 24/7 carbon-free energy. They've done about as much as they can trying to buy, build and/or get credits from wind and solar plants and it hasn't been sufficient. With its announcement, Google acknowledges that they "need a broader portfolio of advanced clean electricity technologies" to be able to fully decarbonize their energy consumption.

The announcement lists the following as "advanced clean electricity technologies": next-generation geothermal, advanced nuclear, clean hydrogen and long-duration energy storage. This is an astounding announcement because it makes it clear that the tech companies are now moving their focus away from wind and solar, which are just too inconsistent and unreliable, to better, more reliable options.

The initiative aims to aggregate their demand for better types of clean energy to increase their buying power, their lobby power (we have to believe) and diversify the risks of investing in first-of-a-kind (FOAK) plants, whose costs are always higher than "Nth" of a kind plants. They recognize that there are a bevy of developers looking to build next-generation nuclear (and probably also geothermal) plants and they want to be able to help these ventures build those FOAK units, without each individually and solely having to take on risk. This is a tremendously important initiative and concept, it will definitely help accelerate the timelines for companies seeking to get plants built.

THe announcement comes just a few weeks after Amazon announced their purchase of Talen's nuclear-power Cumulous Data Center, which will enable Amazon Web Services to achieve their very ambitious decarbonization goal by 2025. But there aren't many nuclear power plants with spare generating capacity. In order to get access to sufficient quantities of 24/7 clean nuclear power, the U.S. will need to start building next-generation plants, many of which will be Gen IV designs.

Read more at Google's The Keyword: "A new initiative with Microsoft and Nucor to accelerate advanced clean electricity technologies," by Maud Texler, Global Director, Clean Energy and Decarbonization Development March 19, 2024.

Also see the IEA Report, Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector, cited by Google for its support of the need for advanced energy technologies, revised October 2021.

Published by Nucleation Capital in 100% Renewables, Advanced Nuclear, Advanced Nuclear Customers, Carbon emissions, Corporate decarbonization, Corporate purpose, Future of Energy, LINKS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear financing, Nuclear innovation, Private companies, Public companies, Solving climate, US competitiveness, US technological leadership, Zero emission energy

May 12, 2023

Dow Chemical CEO Gives Wall Street Lesson on New Nuclear

Dow Chemical CEO, Jim Fitterling appeared in a CEO interview segment with Sara Eisen on CNBC on May 12 and proceeded to discuss Dow's plan to build X-energy's advanced nuclear power plant at a Dow site in Texas. In what can only be described as a perfect 4-minute "New Nuclear 101” class geared for Wall Street, he produced possibly the best infomercial one could imagine for choosing advanced nuclear. Even if he didn't answer Sara's questions.

CNBC hosts CEO Interviews live on air and posts them almost immediately to their website. This one can be found here.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Advanced Nuclear, Advanced Nuclear Customers, Brilliant thinkers, Carbon emissions, Construction costs, Corporate decarbonization, Corporate purpose, Future of Energy, History Timeline, History-making, LINKS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear financing, Nuclear innovation, Public companies, Solving climate, US competitiveness, US technological leadership, Zero emission energy

May 9, 2023

Support for nuclear power soars

Grist writes: "US support for nuclear power soars to highest level in a decade: As the country looks to decarbonize, nuclear’s popularity continues to climb." This is what Akielly Hu, Grist's News and Politics Fellow, reports following the release by Gallup of a survey that found that 55 percent of US adults support the use of nuclear power. This total is up four percentage points in a year, and "reflects the highest level of public support for nuclear energy use in electricity since 2012."

Among other findings, the survey found that Republicans are more likely to favor nuclear energy than Democrats, which partisan divide is particularly visible at the state level, with more pro-nuclear policies adopted in Republican-controlled states than left-leaning ones. Nevertheless, support for nuclear energy by Democratic is also on the rise, in part due to advances in nuclear technologies and new federal climate laws that clarify the fact that nuclear power is carbon-free energy and can help in efforts to solve climate change.

The Biden administration has identified nuclear energy as a key climate solution to achieve grid stability in a net-zero future. The administration is pushing for the deployment of advanced nuclear reactor models that improve on the safety and efficiency of traditional reactor designs. These designs will all be far more consistent and reliable than wind and solar energy, which vary depending on the weather. The broader shift in public opinion and, in particular, Democratic opinion toward nuclear energy, is at least partially a function of strong pronuclear leadership coming from the Biden Administration and the DOE under Secretary Jennifer Granholm.

Read more at Grist, US support for nuclear power soars to highest level in a decade, by Akielly Hu, May 9, 2023.

February 15, 2023

Energy Insiders Plan for More Nuclear

RTO Insider has reported on the discussion at the NARUC meeting in mid-February, in which the Tennessee Valley Authority CEO, Jeff Lyash, made the case for his need for nuclear energy to achieve his goals of 80% carbon-free generation by 2035 and net-zero by 2050.

The TVA already has an early has an early site permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build its first SMR at Clinch River. But Lyash is not interested in building one reactor. “In order for us to be successful, TVA needs something on the order of 20 reactors over that period of time," Lyash remarked to those gathered at the National Associate of Regulatory Utility Commissioners Winter Policy summit in Washington, D.C.

TVA, a federally-owned utility, will still need a construction permit for the 300 MW GE Hitachi MWRX-300 SMR that it is planning to build but what Lyash really needs is for the construction to reach "nth-of-a-kind costs, supply chain, workforce, project execution" to make constructing a portfolio of 20 or more reactors and slam dunk.

The rising need for nuclear power as a critical technology to enable full decarbonization was a major theme of the NARUC conference. As such, the formation of a new initiative, the Advanced Nuclear State Collaborative, to bring together members of NARUC and the National Association of State Energy Officials was announced by David Wright, an NRC commissioner, and Tricia Pridemore, chair of the Georgia Public Service Commission. The initiative, sponsored by the Department of Energy, will provide technical assistance and expertise for states deploying or considering new nuclear projects, Commissioner Pridemore said.

The new collaborative is the response to growing interest in nuclear by energy insiders. In at least 20 states, “public service commissions and state energy offices are engaged in feasibility studies for advanced nuclear reactor site selection, strategies to reduce regulatory and policy barriers to new nuclear, and other activities to pave the way for advanced reactors,” Commissioner Pridemore said.

With the two new AP1000 reactors at Vogtle just starting to come online, one might think that the troubled Southern Co. experience of building them at more than double the original cost and six years delayed might put a damper on interest in building more nuclear. In fact, Lyash and LPO Director, Jigar Shah, agreed that Vogtle showed that "America is deciding to do big things."

As a result of completing these AP1000s, there are now 13,000 trained men and women with experience in building new power plants. They will next be deployed in building the next AP1000s in Poland, which selected the Westinghouse AP1000 in part because the Vogtle plant got done, produced valuable lessons, and there is current knowhow for building it.

Now, this experience is available to benefit all new buyers, de-risk new builds and improve the financial and public trust in the technology. If more customers step up, whether for the AP1000 or other new designs, the valuable lessons learned can actually benefit the U.S., other nations and our decarbonization efforts and help keep nuclear power competitive in general.

In fact, according to Lyash, nuclear power plants are "highly competitive." And he should know because nuclear generates 42% of TVA's power supply. So while nuclear plants require large up-front capital expenditure, "they have a tremendously long and beneficial life," per Lyash. "They also deliver all the attributes to a power system that you need—voltage, frequency and maneuverability." The key need going forward: Buidling them on time and on budget.

Read more at RTO Insider, Making the Case for Nuclear at NARUC, by K. Kaufman, Feb 15, 2023.

November 23, 2022

Giving Thanks & Getting

anksgiving isn't typically a time for making investment decisions . . . but it should be.

Americans give thanks in many ways, notably through the national holiday we call "Thanksgiving." We celebrate the abundance of the land we inherited centuries ago by feasting on turkey and other delicious indigenous foods, which sustained our existence as pilgrims. The holiday of Thanksgiving has survived generations of tumult, crisis and even war relatively unchanged. But we've arrived at a point at which we must recognize that humanity's current path—dumping fossil fuel waste into the atmosphere that is rapidly heating our climate—is disrupting those same ecosystems which have long supported us. Thus, it might be time to consider celebrating Thanksgiving both by honoring the bounties of nature that we have enjoyed and by working to save the ecosystems that have always supported human life and reverse the damage that we are doing by investing in climate solutions.

Given how large the climate problem is, the personal actions we might take, such as turning down the heat or even buying an electric car, will not make sufficient difference. Sadly, scientists tell us that the whole world must reduce emissions by a matter of gigatons in rapid fashion and we are running out of time to act, so our modest personal actions won't make enough difference. We must seek to find things that we can do which provide greater leverage. It turns out, investing in innovation is one of the ways that small individual actions can accumulate to make a big difference.

Why innovation? We know that climate change is caused by humanity's use of fossil fuels. While we want to stop burning of coal, oil, petroleum and natural gas, at the same time, no one wants to have to go without reliable sources of electricity, heat or transportation. Thus, the dilemma we face is that clean renewables like wind and solar don't provide a direct, reliable replacement for the widely available sources of fossil fuel energy.

What we need are better clean energy alternatives. We are forced to burn these dirty, carbon-emitting fuels to have comfortable, warm, well-furnished homes and functioning societies because we don't have better options available. We don't want intermittent lights, intermittent refridgeration, intermittent heart monitors or even intermittent Youtube videos. This is what makes addressing climate change so challenging for Americans: we're not willing to go cold turkey on the quality of life that we have enjoyed as a result of the abundance of fossil fuels. This is why we desperately need better options!

Investing in innovative ventures can accelerate their success in commercializing better energy alternatives. We have very few clean energy options and they all have significant downsides—such as intermittency—and there simply is nothing that is a runaway winner in terms of competing with natural gas or petroleum fuels. Which is why it is time for investors to step up and invest in those ventures innovating to create these improved technologies. These may be risky investments but if they can produce a broader set of clean energy options that enable us to maintain our lifestyles while reducing emissions, they will be very successful investments.

This is what Nucleation Capital is doing. Providing an investment vehicle that allows more investors to invest in some of the most exciting, most competitive clean energy alternatives coming out of the advanced nuclear sector. For many, investing in solar or wind power is appealing because they think "renewable" energy is what's needed. In fact, wind and solar power will always be intermittent—and that will never compete directly with fossil fuels. What's needed to replace fossil fuels is clean, reliable, dense energy and many energy experts see next-gen nuclear as our best option.

Nuclear energy may not yet be as popular as renewables but what's popular doesn't necessarily translate into great investment returns. Even winning consensus investments don't beat winning contrarian investments. Which is why, for those looking for impactful investments that are off the beaten path and which, by their nature, can produce extraordinary returns, nothing can beat nuclear energy innovation, which we believe will be the black swan of clean energy.

The advanced nuclear sector is the most under-appreciated clean energy sector that is innovating as fast as conceivably possible. This sector, more than any other, holds out tremendous promise for a technological solution to our climate dilemma, yet these innovators need access to more capital. Next-generation nuclear innovators are solving safety, scalability, cost, construction time and all the other issues we have long associated with traditional nuclear and making it into the energy source of our future. They are, for example, developing reactor designs that won't require water cooling or siting next to bodies of water. Innovators are also working to solve other problems that have held back the growth of nuclear, namely closing the fuel cyle and providing safe, permanent waste storage, among other things.

So, if you'd like to do more than just give thanks with your turkey, consider allocating some of your discretionary investment capital to a fund investing in the innovations that would allow us to end our dependence on fossil fuels. We expect that, over the next decade, the nations of the world will begin deploying any number of advanced designs to power cities, factories, campuses, ships, industry and homes without emissions, thereby maintaining energy security and grid reliability without needing fossil fuels. We'll even use nuclear to generate synthetic hydrocarbons (for where liquid fuels are still needed) and power carbon drawdown so can begin to reverse global warming.

Yes, investing in advanced nuclear is high risk. Yet it only poses the risk of losing your money (so allocate accordingly). Not solving climate change, however, risks losing everything we hold dear. Our propery, our children, our traditions. Which is why more investors are considering allocating a portion of their investible capital to investments that can meaningfully reduce demand for fossil fuels. Whether they can invest a lot or little doesn't matter so much: they will still get the satisfaction of knowing that they are using their money to make a difference in the final years that we have to rescue our future.

* The "Th" image above is the period table symbol for the element Thorium, and comes curtesy of the Thorium Energy Alliance, which advocates for the use of thorium along with uranium as a fuel for nuclear energy.

September 26, 2022

Issuance of first-ever voluntary nuclear energy carbon credits

This corporate PR news made zero headlines in the press but we could not be more excited about it. Yet, this unassuming group of executives pursuing their own corporate objectives, could well have an enormous impact on the future of the whole planet. The agreement they reached and announced in a joint press release, involving the planned procurement by Microsoft of Clean Energy Credits (CECs) from OPG, may be the first-ever voluntary corporate purchase of a carbon-credit from nuclear energy.

This auspicious moment deserves more attention than it received, as it marks the inclusion of nuclear energy for the first time as a source of carbon credits. Up until now, for no reason other than possibly concerns about public perception, carbon credit purchases (which are an entirely voluntary type of corporate greenwashing) have come solely from purchasing rights to claim credit for new renewable energy generation and activities like reforestation or rainforest preservation. As far as we know, no company has elected to purchase clean energy credits from nuclear energy.

This ground-breaking agreement could well serve as a model for many other companies seeking truly meaningful ways to reduce their actual and ongoing carbon impacts and the team involved in the deal is clearly aware that they are setting a new precedent. The press release included the following three quotes from Ken Hartwick, President and CEO of OPG, Chris Barry, President of Microsoft Canada, and Todd Smith, Canada's Minister or Energy:

“This innovative partnership will not only spur economic development in Ontario, but also serve as a model for other companies and jurisdictions to encourage use of clean hydro and nuclear power,” said Ken Hartwick, OPG President and CEO. “As part of OPG’s Climate Change Plan, we committed to achieving net zero as a company by 2040, and to act as a catalyst for efficient economy-wide decarbonization. Ensuring industry has access to clean energy to offset emissions assists in meeting that goal.”

“We can only address climate change by tackling the challenge collectively. Agreements like this one with OPG will help Microsoft move closer to achieving our sustainability commitments, including our goal of having 100 percent of our electricity consumption, 100 percent of the time, matched by zero carbon energy purchases by 2030.” said Chris Barry, President, Microsoft Canada. “Working closely with like-minded organizations like OPG, will help us move toward a more sustainable future, while continuing to power innovation in Ontario.”

“As environmental goals increasingly influence corporate decisions on where to invest and grow, this partnership between OPG and Microsoft illustrates the potential for Ontario’s Clean Energy Credit registry to draw businesses from across the world to our province,” said Todd Smith, Minister of Energy. “This voluntary registry will incentivize investments in new clean energy generation and technological innovation while reducing costs for ratepayers.”

Read more at Microsoft News Centre Canada: OPT and Microsoft announce strategic partnership to power a Net-Zero future for Ontario, published September 26, 2022.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Capital reallocation, Carbon emissions, Carbon markets, Climate change, Corporate decarbonization, Corporate purpose, Energy abundance, Future of Energy, History Timeline, History-making, LINKS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear financing, Nuclear-inclusive energy policy, Public companies, Solving climate, Zero emission energy

July 15, 2022

Rod Adams on Nuclear Economics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2QsN8hPHY4

Rod Adams explains why the lack of recent construction experience in the U.S. and the massive size of the Gen III nuclear power plant design, contributed to the excess costs and delays in building these types nuclear power plants. In contrast, Gen IV designs will be smaller with pre-fabricated components and allow for more rapid builds and learning through repetition.

Published by Valerie Gardner in Construction costs, Corporate purpose, Future of Energy, Investor activity, NEWS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear financing, Nuclear innovation, Nuclear maritime propulsion, US competitiveness, US technological leadership

December 10, 2021

New Nuclear Capital reflects nuclear’s paradigm shift

Nucleation Capital founder and managing partner, Valerie Gardner, joined an impressive roster of virtual speakers at the 2021 New Nuclear Capital conference, December 8-9, 2021, focused on the financing necessary for setting the foundation for the deployment of the next generation of advanced reactors.

Speaking on a panel entitled, "Perspectives on Private Financing: Emerging Financing Arrangements and the Role of Financial Institutions," Ms. Gardner represented the voice of the first venture capital fund and its LP investors focused on investing in the advanced nuclear sector, which represents a major paradigm shift for the nuclear industry.

Ms. Gardner spoke of the "reframing" that becomes possible when, rather than trying to finance large, grid-scale projects, a bevy of small, private ventures are raising capital in order to design small, manufacturable, modular reactors. The fact that these ventures are developing technologies that will be meeting a huge need in the market from which they will generate profits, opens up financing mechanisms that were otherwise not possible, specifically venture capital, which invests in the equity of private, high-growth enterprises, which have set their sights set on meeting the demand of a huge and growing market for clean energy.

The fact that Climate Change is barreling down on the planet and forcing the widescale transition away from dirty sources of energy plays an important, critical part of the reason investors, especially climate investors, believe the future market for Advanced Nuclear is huge.

While it is not entirely clear that the nuclear community understands just how much of a paradigm shift this is for the future of the nuclear industry, investors are searching high and low for clean tech options. Experts have made it clear: we need nuclear to solve the energy problems, and nuclear may be the "greenest" investment there is. These factors together fundamentally shift nuclear's relationship to venture capital, as investors will accept risks in order to achieve both climate solutions and returns. This forces the industry to look past "Alpha Particles to Alpha Generation."

Generating "Alpha" is the term investors use for generating investment returns that beat the market. Venture capital seeks this type of outperformance. Given nuclear's dense, always on clean energy, venture capitalists are taking note of the ability of top ventures to achieve alpha, particularly in light of the extraordinary risks.

Yes, every venture capitalist is wrong more than they are right and some 80% of returns are generally produced by a mere 5% of invested assets, which is why VCs must be very picky as to whcih ventures they invest in, and only select those they believe could be homeruns.

Once the exclusive purview of institutional investors and the wealthiest investors, disruption within the venture industry itself has made venture capital accessible to a much broader class of accredited investors.

Online investment platforms, such as that used by Nucleation Capital, now enables accredited investors to access and elect to support a much broader range of fund managers and fund types, invest at lower levels and see decreased costs and risks. This enables those who really understand the value proposition of nuclear to be able to invest in this next generation of private ventures. The demographic of potential investors has been effectively increased by these platforms, translating into nearly 15 million more investors and nearly a trillion dollars of private capital that can flow into worthy ventures.

Ms. Gardner noted that these combined trends—private ventures seeking to deploy smaller, manufactured systems, climate change and the democratization of venture—have important implications for Advanced Nuclear ventures and bodes well for the sector's future ability to follow the more standard venture capital pathways for financing growth with equity fundraising rounds, and scaling their future deployments with access to the regular public markets and standard capital stack financing channels.

ROSTER OF SPEAKERS

NNC SPONSORS

Published by Valerie Gardner in Advanced Nuclear, Brilliant thinkers, Capital reallocation, Climate change, Construction costs, Corporate decarbonization, Corporate purpose, Energy abundance, Land Use by Energy, NEWS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear financing, Nuclear innovation, Private companies, Public companies, Solving climate, US competitiveness, US technological leadership, Zero emission energy

October 19, 2021

Amazon, Ikea and others commit to zero-emission shipping by 2040

An initiative organized by the Aspen Institute helped Amazon, Ikea, Unilever, Michelin and Patagoniz to pledge that they won't use shipping companies which allow emissions by 2040. Shipping the world's products around produce about 3 percent of human emissions each year, an amount similar to what Germany's annual emissions are, as the sixth largest emitter in the world.

In signing the pledge, the companies hoped to signal their determination to decarbonize this part of their supply chains and inspire "a surge in investment by ocean freight carriers and producers of zero-carbon shipping fuels," their announcement read. They also urged government officials to "to set ambitious marine fuel goals, implement regulations and market-based measures to encourage the rapid development of new fuels and technology, and to allow zero-carbon shipping fuels to “become competitive with fossil fuels as soon as possible.”

Read more in The Washington Post, Amazon, Ikea and other big companies commit to zero-emission shipping by 2040, by Hamza Shaban, published October 19, 2021

Published by Nucleation Capital in Advanced Nuclear, Carbon emissions, Climate change, Corporate purpose, Future of Energy, LINKS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear maritime propulsion, Private companies, Solving climate

September 15, 2021

Woke Nuclear

Author Maureen T. Koetz explores nuclear's history and how air emission credits were the economic birthright of the nuclear industry since the passage of the 1990 Clean Air Act (CAA) amendments, when emission control capability first became a tradable commodity. Yet it took until 2016 for ratepayers and shareholders to receive even a small fraction of this valuable return on investment.

Nuclear’s emission control value actually more accurately dates to 1957, when the first civilian production plant came on line, and this past exclusion of nuclear from credit markets has mislead decision makers for decades. Factoring nuclear out of emission credit markets over the last three decades has proved costly for the entire fission industry. As a policy director at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), I first developed emission avoidance calculations in 1997; the new data sets confirmed nuclear’s role in eliminating both criteria pollutants under the CAA and greenhouse gases then the subject of planned international controls under the Kyoto Protocol. The calculations also identified what were then hundreds of millions of dollars in emission credit value that had never been booked or realized by plant owners and operators on behalf of shareholders. Twenty years on, the forgone return on investment value has only multiplied.

According to NEI, a 16.4 percent increase in nuclear generation from 1990 to 1995 in 21 states avoided 480,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, or 37 percent of the 1990 CAA amendments reduction requirement. Noting that “no credit was allocated to nuclear plants,” NEI estimated the “contribution” to emission control would have been worth about $50 million, but that’s really only a fraction of the cumulative value. Actual emission credit value accruing to shareholders and ratepayers since the 1960s spans multiple emission categories and regions. Besides historic sulfur prevention, the avoided emission value of nitrogen oxide and particulate matter in heavily controlled areas like California and the Ozone Transport Region are more likely billions even before greenhouse gases are included.

While recent state-by-state ZEC programs are positive steps, they have yet to equalize the value of a proverbial ounce of greenhouse gas prevention with pounds of sequester cure provided to fossil fuel technology. New York’s early adoption of ZECs uses complex formulas based the social costs of carbon that price credits at $17 per megawatt hour at four upstate nuclear units. The overall estimate of $480 million per year in ZEC payments to the James A. Fitzpatrick, R.E. Ginna, and Nine Mile Point Units 1 and 2 plants that annually avoid 15 million tons of greenhouse gases yields $31 per ton controlled under a straight credit pricing basis.

Read more about this fascinating history at NuclearNewswire Woke nuclear?, by Maureen T. Koetz, published September 15, 2021.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Carbon emissions, Corporate purpose, Fossil fuels, Investor activity, LINKS, Nuclear financing, Nuclear-inclusive energy policy, Public companies, Regulatory reform, Zero emission energy