June 18, 2024

Congress overwhelmingly passes the ADVANCE Act

By a vote of 88 to 2, the Congress overwhelmingly passed the reconciled ADVANCE Act (S. 870) in a powerful, bipartisan show of support for advanced nuclear power, accelerating deployments and bringing the NRC into the 21st century, so it can enable and support the growth of next-generation nuclear energy. 

Alexander C. Kaufman, writing in the Huffington Post, called the ADVANCE (Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy) Act "the biggest clean-energy bill since Biden's climate law." What it really is, is legislation designed to "reverse the American nuclear industry’s decades-long decline and launch a reactor-building spree to meet surging demand for green electricity at home and to catch up with booming rivals overseas." And, according to Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), a “much needed modernization of our nuclear regulatory framework.”

There are a number of very important provisions in the bill but, one of the most important is the provision which tasks the NRC with rewriting its mission statement so as to avoid unduly limiting nuclear and thereby preventing efforts to allow society to benefit from its clean power. The bill also reduces the fees charged to developers and helps speed up the process for licensing new reactors, hiring key staff and coordinating with foreign regulators to speed deployments.

The passage of the ADVANCE Act continues a long-term trend of strong bipartisan unity on nuclear-related bills, demonstrating agreement by Democrats and Republicans on the importance of expanding clean and reliable energy. The House of Representatives had previously passed its corresponding legislation by a vote of 365 to 36, strengthening and expanding upon the version passed back in July by the Senate.

“Republicans and Democrats recognize the development of new nuclear technologies is critical to America’s energy security and our environment,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), the bill’s lead sponsor, said on the Senate floor Tuesday evening. “Today, nuclear power provides about 20% of our nation’s electricity. Importantly, it’s emissions-free electricity that is 24/7, 365 days a year.”

“This bipartisan policy creates the framework for companies to start building that order book for a second project and a third project and ultimately get the NRC ready to license dozens per year,” said Nicholas McMurray, the managing director of international and nuclear policy at energy policy group ClearPath.

The ADVANCE Act is specifically tailored to boost the next generation of reactors being designed now, that are not currently in commercial production in the U.S. Some of these newer designs will be migrating away from water cooling and will use other types of coolants, such as liquid metal or high-temperature gas, which have a range of benefits, such as enhanced safety, allowing reactors to run on different types of fuel, producing less waste and being able to operate at higher temperatures and be sized to suit the needs of users in more settings than a traditional nuclear plant.

In recognition of these so-called fourth-generation reactor models’ unique uses and the urgency of bringing these designs to market, the bill authorizes the Department of Energy to give out financial awards to the first companies to meet specific goals, such as using fuel made from recycled nuclear waste or generating heat that could be used for industrial process heat, rather than electricity production.

Given that the Biden-Harris Administration has just announced steps to bolster the domestic nuclear industry and advance America's Clean Energy Future, it seems highly likely that Biden will sign the legistlation. Meanwhile, the DOE has also just announced that it has allocated an additional $900 million to accelerate the deployment of next-generation small modular reactors.

Together, these actions amount to laying the foundation necessary to help America finally compete with Russia and China. Speaking in support of the legislation Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the bill would “support job growth, clean energy and leadership while preserving the NRC’s fundamental safety mission.'

Sources

The Huffington Post, "Congress Just Passed The Biggest Clean-Energy Bill Since Biden's Climate Law:It's all on nuclear," by Alexander C. Kaufman June 20, 2024.

DOE Fact Sheet: Biden-Harris Administration Announces New Steps to Bolster Domestic Nuclear Industry and Advance America’s Clean Energy Future, May 29th, 2024.

Office of Nuclear Energy, Enhanced Safety of Advanced Reactors, 2024.

DOE Announces $900 Million to Accelerate the Deployment of Next-Generation Light-Water Small Modular Reactors, June 17, 2024

June 10, 2024

Gates’ TerraPower Advances the Natrium

Bill Gates' TerraPower has "broken ground" at the future site of the Natrium Power Plant, what will be an advanced nuclear power plant.   This follows the acceptance of TerraPower's Construction Permit Application for review by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in May, 2024.

Bill Gates wrote about this ground-breaking in Kemmerer, Wyoming on his GatesNotes blog and he provided further background on his interest in advanced nuclear, which started as far back as 2008. It just so happened that when he fell in love with the density, inherent safety and superior performance of advanced nuclear power, he was able to afford to hire a team and launch TerraPower on his own.  It also didn't hurt that he happened to be buddies with Warren Buffet, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, the company that owns PacifiCorp, which owns a lot of struggling coal plants, so he was able to score a site on the property of a retiring coal plant, on which to plan to build his demonstration reactor.

In fact, advanced nuclear holds tremendous prospects for resurrecting the value of these ill-fated plants and the economic vitality of those regions suffering from the closures of coal, most of which are closing as a result of competition form cheap natural gas that is also better suited for being "dispatched," at a minute's notice, if, let's say, the wind stops blowing. As many as 80% of these plants could, according to a study done by the DOE, be converted to advanced nuclear plants cost-effectively, because they are reuse turbines, generators and even transmission lines that are already there. Taking what are currently brownfield sites with very little value because of the toxicity, health and carbon-impacts of coal and converting them to clean power plants that use advanced fission to generate both power and heat, is starting to look like a very lucrative endeavor.

No wonder Bill Gates has already invested over a billion dollars and has committed to putting billions more of his own funds into this venture. Being the sixth wealthiest person in the world gives him this option. And, if you think that, because you read a lot and you've had exeptional success with a software company, that you have what it takes to create the best advanced nuclear technology and believe that it will be rapidly adopted and deployed around the world and possibly put the remainder of the world's coal plants out of business, investing your billions into that makes total sense.

For the rest of us, however, investing into a venture fund like Nucleation Capital, which is dedicated to building a diversified pool of advanced nuclear ventures with various alternative designs, more than a few of which could find real traction within differing niches of the energy markets which also need power but may prefer a different configuration or set of features, may make more sense and pose considerably less risk. Especially when the fund provides low-cost participation, so that those of us not in the top ten wealthiest humans list, can access that fund without breaking the bank but nevertheless have a meaningful chance of participating in the growth of nuclear around the world.

Read Bill's GatesNotes announcement here:   "We just broke ground on America’s first next-gen nuclear facility: Kemmerer, Wyoming will soon be home to the most advanced nuclear facility in the world"  Bill Gates, June 10, 2024.

Bloomberg, Bill Gates Says He’s Ready to Put Billions Into Nuclear Power, by Caleb Mutua, June 16, 2024.

June 4, 2024

Fossil fuels lose market share when electricity is done right

By Rod Adams, Managing Partner

Screen shot 2021 05 26 at 5.22.09 pm

Mined hydrocarbons, also known as fossil fuels, have been the foundation of modern industrial society for several centuries. But most parts of society don't depend on the specific action of burning hydrocarbon fuels. People need and want the heat that the combustion reaction produces and the services provided using machinery designed to convert heat into motion.

The growing importance of electricity

Most energy use cases can be supplied by alternative sources of heat and mechanical motion, but non-emitting alternatives such as wind and solar have been constrained by temporal and geographic availability. By themselves, they are not as flexible or as deliverable as hydrocarbons. The electrical grid, however, enables a wide variety of non-fossil fuel alternatives (think wind, solar and nuclear) to deliver controllable heat and motion almost anywhere at almost any time.

When electricity is a) clean, b) abundant, c) reliable and d) cost competitive, it can often win in the markets for services provided by burning hydrocarbons. All four criteria are important. But electricity isn't a fossil fuel replacement, and thus cleaner, if is produced using fossil fuel power.

Currently, 60% of U.S. electricity is still produced by burning fossil fuels because they have generally been reasonably available and affordably priced. We are now producing most all of our own fossil fuels with enhanced U.S. production but we shouldn't forget those worrying times when the lack of availability and high prices of fossil fuels have threatened the rest of the economy.

Using electricity to replace fossil fuels requires continued reductions in the use of fossil fuels in the electricity sector, and substantial increases in the total amount of electricity produced. Some calculate that electricity production needs to more than triple to enable an energy transition away from fossil fuel dependence.

Several power sources have proven their ability to take significant shares of electricity production from fossil fuels. These include hydropower, nuclear power (from fission) and wind and solar power. Hydro power (essentially falling water) is a well proven way to generate electricity, but due to geographic and environmental constraints it has not grown in the US since 1970. Its production fluctuates with varying precipitation but remains close to 6% of electricity supply. We shall consider the remaining options.

Fission

All nuclear power used today comes from the fission of atoms. When it was initially developed and booming, nuclear energy quickly captured about 20% of the electricity market. Initially discovered in late 1942, fission entered the commercial market in 1957 and grew to 2300 terrawatt hours per year (TWh/yr) of primary energy production by 2000.

Eventually, due to aggressive political opposition, poor project cost and schedule performance, growing regulatory uncertainties – from both state public utility commissions and federal safety regulators – and flat electricity market growth combined to reduce and then halt new nuclear power plant orders by 1978. This was bad enough but, during the 1970s and 1980s, there were a significant number of project cancellations after major expenses had already been incurred. The new nuclear plant construction industry atrophied, nevertheless, ongoing plant operations and services continued to improve, and nuclear capacity factors grew and resulted in upratings on plant generation capability.

Memories of financial losses and periodic abundance of low priced hydrocarbons have helped to delay or derail attempts to revive the nuclear plant construction industry until now.

Wind and solar

Stimulated by Renewable Portfolio Standards, federal production and/or investment tax credits, similar pieces of legislation at state and local levels and tens of billions of dollars in investments appropriated as part of the Recovery Act of 2009, wind and solar have grown rapidly since 2000 to capture about 15% of the US electricity market. Sustained investments and growing markets enabled the supplier (mostly Chinese) and installation industries to achieve economical scale and substantial manufacturing cost reductions. Advocates for wind and solar have lauded these price reductions and have argued that, because these costs are so low, wind and solar are going to be able to grow to replace all of fossil fuel demand.

Unfortunately, the evidence surrounding the growth of renewables show that they are growing rapidly but not even keeping up with the rate of growth of energy demand. Additionally, they are not replacing fossil fuels, which plants are also growing as a function of being needed to supplant the intermittency and low capacity factors of both wind and solar.

The energy transition that we need to achieve has a far greater chance of success in a future where nuclear and renewable energy sources both grow to their potential instead of the historical either-or growth pattern shown to the right.

That binary alternative energy history of growing either nuclear or wind and solar has given us a history of doing very little to reduce fossil fuel consumption or its inherently associated pollution and greenhouse gas production. The graph below shows U.S. historical energy usage and the shifting patterns of growth of coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind and solar.

US historical energy production displaying coal, gas, nuclear, wind and solarThis graph leaves out oil because it provides only 1 percent of electricity generation (though it is largely used in sectors like transportation and heating that are not yet seeing much impact from competition with alternative sources delivered to end users via electricity). It also leaves out geothermal because its production is barely visible in the graph. What's clear from this image is that wind and solar have helped enable the growth of natural gas, at the expense of coal usage but they have not caused a net decline in the total amount of fossil fuel use, just a marked shift in type.

Multiple tools needed

Transitioning our energy system from fossil fuel dominance to a system producing far less pollution while retaining the availability and abundance that provides prosperity is a difficult task requiring a full set of tools, including nuclear, wind and solar.

Using available tools to their fullest extent requires application of enabling policies, relying on experience of what has worked and what has failed to work. The undeniable success of the wind and solar build out offers lessons that can be applied to new nuclear as an energy source that is as clean and as safe as wind and solar.

Government policies

It is immensely encouraging to see that there is growing political support and action in this direction. Congresses over the last decade have managed to pass several major pieces of legislation supportive of nuclear energy with overwhelming bipartisan majorities. The parties have even engaged in positive competition boosting support to new nuclear energy. Most recently, the Biden Administrative launched the Nuclear Power Project Management and Delivery working group, an expert group empowered to accelerate the approval, construction and deployment of both traditional and advanced nuclear power. This is just the most recent initiative, yet it goes further than any prior administration, and reflects growing public support for the deployment of nuclear power to reduce carbon emissions and continued reliance on fossil fuels.

Internationally, the progress has been equally as impressive. At COP 28 in the UAE this past winter, the US joined with nearly every other nuclear-powered nation in a pledge to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050, even as the entire conference itself agreed to "transition away from fossil fuels."

Investors and innovators

Along with the government enablers, private sector investors and innovators are applying lessons from the early rise (and then stagnation) of nuclear energy and from the accelerating rise of wind and solar. Nuclear energy sources, now both advanced fission and multiple approaches to fusion, are being developed in a wide variety of sizes, shapes and operating temperatures designed to fit the needs of a much larger universe of potential customers.

The term small modular reactor (SMR) has entered the lexicon and been the subject of much discussion within the small community of people that focus on energy. We like to think of the term as meaning smaller, manufactured reactors and believe it should be viewed as covering a market sector as broad and impactful as the terms PC or AI. We also assert that the world has successfully been using SMRs since the 1950s, but strategic and political considerations restricted their use to military applications, such as for powering submarines.

Some SMRs are designed to be small enough to be fully produced inside factories and delivered as complete units. These are often called micro or very small reactors. Many of these will be able to operate for a decade or more without needing new fuel, giving them capabilities that are unobtainable by fossil fuel generators.

Other SMRs are designed to allow various components and systems to be manufactured, fabricated and assembled in factories and then shipped to sites where the parts can be connected into a complete power plant. These are often being designed to reduce or avoid the mega-project risk that has plagued very large nuclear plants.

Some vendors are focusing on producing reactors as heat sources; letting others design and build systems that will either use the heat directly or as the driver for an energy conversion system that produces electricity. There are designs that focus on producing very high temperature heat and others that focus on improving the fuel cycle to make better use of the energy content of natural actinides like uranium and thorium.

Outside of reactor vendors there are emerging suppliers for waste handling, supportive IT and AI systems, improved displays and simulators, better ways to engage with communities and regulators and an emerging group of companies focused on developing nuclear projects. New business models are being developed to better fit a market that is no longer dominated by vertically integrated monopoly utilities.

The opportunities associated with renewed growth in nuclear are enormous and the variety of solutions is almost overwhelming. As someone who believes in the enormous prospects for nuclear power and as a managing partner in Nucleation Capital,, I spend my days focusing on understanding the teams, the improvements, the markets, the obstacles, the mitigations, the political situation and all of the other complexities associated with successfully deploy a new generation of advanced energy technologies to help change the direction of one of the largest segments of the world's economy.  We are now in our third year of operations and continuing to assemble a portfolio of investments in companies in this sector with outsized growth potential.

Broadening Participation by Investors into Venture Capital

At Nucleation Capital, we believe a successful energy transition can only be accomplished when attacked with a complete range of the best available tools. This includes advanced nuclear. Plenty of other investors are focusing on wind and solar; we see new nuclear as an under-appreciated sector whose immense value is just beginning to be recognized, so we are focused on investing into this sector and providing access for more investors to participate.

Though some large, public companies will benefit from nuclear energy growth, most of them are widely diversified conglomerates whose nuclear divisions are a relatively small portion of the company. A number of them are working on SMRs of their own. These ventures can usually be accessed through the public markets. We focus our efforts on the younger, smaller and emerging ventures that are targeting nuclear energy innovations and which are raising venture capital to finance their development and growth. By targeting the energy buyers in various niches with products that can compete head-to-head with fossil fuels, they have enormous growth opportunities given the urgency with which the world needs to transition to carbon-free energy sources.

Nucleation Capital is an open-ended fund that has almost unlimited capacity to include new investors (at almost any capital level) that recognize the potential and want to gain investment exposure to this sector. We bring expertise to this sector to synthesize the complexities and make the investment choices for our investors. If this interests you, please make contact to find out how you might prosper with us.

May 29, 2024

Biden’s Brilliance Advances Nuclear

The Biden-Harris Administration held a summit on Domestic Nuclear Deployment and announced major new steps to bolster the U.S. domestic nuclear industry and advance America’s (and likely the whole world's) clean energy future. This is political leadership, informed by science, industry, policy, practice and realism, at its best. The effects of Biden's brilliance in this area—with his focus on accelerating the deployment of the only energy technology that can compete head to head with fossil fuels—can make a real difference in how quickly and cost-effectively next generation nuclear will get to market and is exactly what we need to finally enable us to move the needle on climate.

According to numerous analyses, the Biden Administration is taking decisive steps to support the construction of large-scale nuclear reactors, crucial for meeting our clean energy goals, as well as supporting the licensing and development of next-generation nuclear power plants. The White House has formed an expert group whose focus and mission will be to work on solving the problems that are cause delays to new projects and thus eliminate, reduce or mitigate industry risks to ensure timely completion of projects and bolster progress towards a carbon-free power sector by 2035 and a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.  The text of the White House Fact Sheet is so perfect, it is better to reprint it than attempt to summarize it.  See the first few paragraphs below, but click the links to go directly to the sources.

For decades, nuclear power has been the largest source of clean energy in the United States, accounting for 19% of total energy produced last year. The industry directly employs nearly 60,000 workers in good paying jobs, maintains these jobs for decades, and supports hundreds of thousands of other workers.  In the midst of transformational changes taking place throughout the U.S. energy system, the Biden-Harris Administration is continuing to build on President Biden’s unprecedented goal of a carbon free electricity sector by 2035 while also ensuring that consumers across the country have access to affordable, reliable electric power, and creating good-paying clean energy jobs. Alongside renewable power sources like wind and solar, a new generation of nuclear reactors is now capturing the attention of a wide range of stakeholders for nuclear energy’s ability to produce clean, reliable energy and meet the needs of a fast-growing economy, driven by President Biden’s Investing in America agenda and manufacturing boom. The Administration recognizes that decarbonizing our power system, which accounts for a quarter of all the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, represents a pivotal challenge requiring all the expertise and ingenuity our nation can deliver.

The Biden-Harris Administration is today hosting a White House Summit on Domestic Nuclear Deployment, highlighting the collective progress being made from across the public and private sectors. Under President Biden’s leadership, the Administration has taken a number of actions to strengthen our nation’s energy and economic security by reducing – and putting us on the path to eliminating – our reliance on Russian uranium for civil nuclear power and building a new supply chain for nuclear fuel, including: signing on to last year’s multi-country declaration at COP28 to triple nuclear energy capacity globally by 2050; developing new reactor designs; extending the service lives of existing nuclear reactors; and growing the momentum behind new deployments. Recognizing the importance of both the existing U.S. nuclear fleet and continued build out of large nuclear power plants, the U.S. is also taking steps to mitigate project risks associated with large nuclear builds and position U.S. industry to support an aggressive deployment target.

To help drive reactor deployment while ensuring ratepayers and project stakeholders are better protected, theAdministration is announcing today the creation of a Nuclear Power Project Management and Delivery working group that will draw on leading experts from across the nuclear and megaproject construction industry to help identify opportunities to proactively mitigate sources of cost and schedule overrun risk. Working group members will be made up of federal government entities, including the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy, the White House Office of Clean Energy Innovation & Implementation, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the Department of Energy.  The working group will engage a range of stakeholders, including project developers, engineering, procurement and construction firms, utilities, investors, labor organizations, academics, and NGOs, which will each offer individual views on how to help further the Administration’s goal of delivering an efficient and cost-effective deployment of clean, reliable nuclear energy and ensuring that learnings translate to cost savings for future construction and deployment.

The United States Army is also announcing that it will soon release a Request for Information to inform a deployment program for advanced reactors to power multiple Army sites in the United States. Small modular nuclear reactors and microreactors can provide defense installations resilient energy for several years amid the threat of physical or cyberattacks, extreme weather, pandemic biothreats, and other emerging challenges that can all disrupt commercial energy networks.  Alongside the current defense programs through the Department of the Air Force microreactor pathfinder at Eielson AFB and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) Project Pele prototype transportable microreactor protype, the Army is taking a key role in exploring the deployment of advanced  reactors that help meet their energy needs. These efforts will help inform the regulatory and supply chain pathways that will pave the path for additional deployments of advanced nuclear technology to provide clean, reliable energy for federal installations and other critical infrastructure.

Additionally, the Department of Energy released today a new primer highlighting the expected enhanced safety of advanced nuclear reactors including passive core cooling capabilities and advanced fuel designs. Idaho National Laboratory is also releasing a new advanced nuclear reactor capital cost reduction pathway tool that will help developers and stakeholders to assess cost drivers for new projects.

Continue reading the White House announcement here:   "Fact Sheet: Biden-⁠Harris Administration Announces New Steps to Bolster Domestic Nuclear Industry and Advance America’s Clean Energy Future,"  May 29, 2024.

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