The United States is the single-largest producer of nuclear power in the world, accounting for approximately a third of global output. But the domestic nuclear sector is in severe decline, and the nuclear fleet is rapidly aging, with many of the nation’s reactors scheduled to be retired in the coming years. Reviving the sector could be a huge boon to national energy security and global climate goals, but building new plants is prohibitively expensive.
In the past few decades, the United States has only built one new nuclear power plant, Waynesboro, Georgia’s Plant Vogtle. Vogtle has the distinction of being the most expensive infrastructure project of any kind in U.S. history, clocking in at a whopping $35 billion after years of delays. First approved in 2009, the last reactor finally came online in April of last year.
The project is considered by most to be a bloated disaster, with the potential to derail momentum toward a nuclear renaissance in the United States. “But there are two ways to interpret the cautionary tale presented by Vogtle,” Oilprice reported as the project was wrapping up last year. “ Either you think that the lesson is not to build new reactors, or that the lesson is to build nuclear reactors better.”
A number of labs and startups across the United States have opted for the latter. Scientists and engineers are hard at work trying to figure out how to build nuclear reactors better and more cheaply than ever before.
One of the biggest focuses of nuclear innovation is the development of small modular reactors (SMRs) which will make nuclear power more scalable and streamlined, lowering up-front development costs. These smaller reactors can be mass-produced offsite in a factory setting and then assembled onsite, avoiding the extremely costly design and permitting process of traditional nuclear plants. Already, two SMR models have been approved for rollout in the United States, and many more are in the pipeline.
Meanwhile, Oak Ridge National Laboratory is working on integrating cutting-edge technologies into nuclear plant design for more efficient and effective designs and processes, including 3-D printing and artificial intelligence. The Tennessee-based National Laboratory says it has “successfully developed and validated large-scale, 3D-printed polymer composite forms for casting complex, high-precision concrete structures that would be technically challenging and costly to produce using conventional methods.”
The use of these 3-D printed composite forms can considerably cut down on production times. Typically, the casting of “complex structural components with unique geometries” can take weeks, but with these molds, nuclear projects can cast the parts on-site in a matter of days and with greater precision. The design of the 3-D molds has been tested and validated as part of the construction process for the Hermes Low-Power Demonstration Reactor at Kairos Power’s Oak Ridge campus.
“At ORNL, we’re showing that the future of nuclear construction doesn’t have to look like the past,” says Ryan Dehoff, director of the lab’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility. “We’re combining national lab capabilities with MDF’s legacy of taking big, ambitious swings — moonshots that turn bold ideas into practical solutions — to accelerate new commercial nuclear energy.”
The timing is right – nuclear is a rare bipartisan priority in the United States and the current policy climate is bullish on a homegrown nuclear revival. At COP28, during the Biden administration, the United States was one of more than 20 countries that cooperated to launch the Declaration to Triple Nuclear Energy. And so far, anomalously, the Trump administration has shown no signs of walking back that pledge. Just this week, Donald Trump signed a flurry of nuclear deals with the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, amounting to multiple billions of dollars to expand nuclear energy power production capacity across both nations.
By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com
More Top Reads From Oilprice.com