High inflation and rising interest rates are driving up the cost of a new generation of miniature atomic reactors that the nuclear industry is relying on to lift sales and help meet climate targets.
Nuclear-company executives and regulators met this week at the International Atomic Energy Agency to negotiate potential manufacturing and technology standards, a key step the industry needs to take in order to make prices competitive with other emissions-free energy sources. There are currently more than 80 unique small modular reactor, or SMR, designs under development, resulting in sprawling supply chains and caps on scaling up production.
“With higher interest rates to deal with and inflation pushing up the cost of steel, copper wire and just about everything else that goes into building an SMR, we know that even the most promising projects are having to tell their investors and buyers that prices have risen substantially,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said at the meeting in Vienna. “Avoiding, or at least mitigating, cost rises and delays is now even more crucial.”
Some governments, big companies and billionaires including Bill Gates and Warren Buffett say SMRs are one of the planet’s best technological bets to combat global warming. SMRs are designed to generate less than 300 megawatts, compared with over 1,000 megawatts or more at large plants. Because of their smaller size and factory manufacture, they’re expected to be more widely distributed and quicker to build.
Nuclear energy costs in the US currently level out to an average of $373 a megawatt hour, according to the latest estimates by BloombergNEF. That’s significantly higher than solar or onshore wind at $60 and $50 a megawatt hour, respectively.
Enter companies like NuScale Power Corp., the first U.S. SMR developer with a licensed design, and which wants to begin generating at the end of the decade. NuScale originally foresaw average generation costs of $55 a megawatt hour in 2016, which was slightly lifted to $58 five years later.
But new estimates show costs surged to almost $120 a megawatt hour this year, according to company data analyzed by the Institute for Energy Economics. Skyrocketing prices of commodities including steel, carbon fiber and copper drove the increase, according to the report. NuScale’s stock has tumbled a third a third this year.
The Russian invaders have begun to gradually leave the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), and some ZNPP employees have also been instructed to leave the plant by 5 July, the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU) reports.
Quote: “The latest data indicates that the occupying forces are gradually leaving the territory of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Three employees of Rosatom [a Russian state corporation specialising in nuclear energy], who led the Russians’ actions, were among the first to leave the facility.
Ukrainian employees who have signed a contract with Rosatom have also been advised to evacuate. Under the instructions received, they should leave by 5 July.”
Intelligence reports that the head of the legal department, Mantsurova, chief inspector Shtatsky and deputy head of the station for support, Gubarev, have already left for the peninsula.
The DIU also emphasises that the number of military patrols at the ZNPP and in the satellite city of Enerhodar is gradually decreasing.
Meanwhile, intelligence reports that the Russian occupiers have instructed the personnel who remain at the station to “blame Ukraine in the event of any emergency”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Thursday with Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg and prominent European figures who are forming a working group to address ecological damage from the 16-month-old Russian invasion. –
The working group on the environment includes Thunberg, former Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Margot Wallström, European Parliament Vice President Heidi Hautala, and former Irish President Mary Robinson.
Zelenskyy said forming the group is “a very important signal of supporting Ukraine. It’s really important, we need your professional help.”
Thunberg said Russian forces “are deliberately targeting the environment and people’s livelihoods and homes. And therefore also destroying lives. Because this is after all a matter of people.”
The objectives of the working group are evaluating the environmental damage resulting from the war, formulating mechanisms to hold Russia accountable, and undertaking efforts to restore Ukraine’s ecology.
The heat wave has been unique for how long it has lasted and how high the temperatures were so early in the summer, said Isaac Longley, a meteorologist with AccuWeather.
A heat dome, created when the atmosphere traps hot air over an area, has inflicted triple-digit heat and humidity in the region since earlier in June. Del Rio, near the Mexico border, broke its daily record high for 10 straight days. The streak ended Wednesday, when the city only tied its daily high at 108 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Weather Service. Daily temperature records were also broken in cities including San Antonio, Abilene, Austin and San Angelo.
“It’s hard to believe that just a week ago, 112° would’ve been our all-time record high and now it’s just another day of 110° heat to add to the count,” the National Weather Service office in San Angelo said on Twitter Sunday.
Longley said central Texas has seen some of the worst of the heat. “We’re talking about temperatures up to 15, or even close to 20, degrees above the historical average,” he said.
As of Thursday afternoon, 80 million people were under heat warnings or advisories in Texas as well as in the West and a span of the Southeast stretching from southern Illinois to Arkansas and Louisiana and into Mississippi and Tennessee.
New York, Detroit, Washington DC remain in top 10 worst air quality list, globally. “Everyone’s talking” about the air, but how many know it’s a climate change impact?
Aaron Ostrander is a 20 year old third Generation Farmer in Azalia, Michigan, who is fighting to exercise his property rights and put some of his acreage into a solar development. He told me that “Everyone plays off that “the country kid is not really caring about that sort of thing,.. (climate)– that’s simply not true….We know it’s real.”
If you spend only half the year in Florida, Citizens, the taxpayer supported insurer of last resort in Florida, will raise your home insurance rates 50 percent.
At some point this comes to an abrupt tipping point, where Florida residents simply fold and leave.
Michael Webber is a great follow on Twitter, someone I interviewed a couple years ago, and have always looked to for informed takes on Texas as a microcosm for the larger grid.
Above, he had a great segment on PBS Newshour today, below, his piece in the Sunday NYTimes.
AUSTIN, Texas — A record-setting heat dome is smothering Texas and neighboring states with no sign of letting up any time soon. Heat like this burns bare feet on sidewalks and pool decks, and sears hands on steering wheels. Trees and power lines are sagging as branches weaken and metal wires expand.
Demand for electricity in the state reached an all-time high on Tuesday as people cranked their cooling systems into overdrive. Concerned about the possibility of power outages, ERCOT, the manager of the Texas grid, asked consumers to voluntarily cut back on their power consumption for four hours on June 20. This week, ERCOT has been able to manage electricity supply and demand by drawing from a mix of gas, wind, solar, coal and nuclear energy. But a new peak in demand could soon put the grid at risk. And with temperatures as high as 110 degrees Fahrenheit in some cities in the state this week, a power outage would most likely be deadly for some.
In situations like these, which will become more frequent as climate change makes heat waves longer and more intense, voluntary energy conservation isn’t likely to cut it.
What if instead of appealing to good will, utilities just paid people to reduce their power use during peak hours? It would be cheaper, faster and more effective than building new power plants.
