Earth Day, 2022: Going Nuclear

Even Democrats are having second thoughts about
closing Diablo Canyon in 2025. (Chron photo)

On Earth Day, 2022 there are signs that the decades-long freeze against nuclear energy is over.

Biden launches $6 billion effort to save nuclear power plants

The Biden administration is launching a $6 billion effort to rescue nuclear power plants at risk of closing, citing the need to continue nuclear energy as a carbon-free source of power that helps to combat climate change...The program was funded through President Joe Biden's $1 trillion infrastructure deal, which he signed into law in November.

Question Asked: Can Coal Plants Turn Into Nuclear Reactors? [bold added]

the main issues are that you have these coal plants that are closing down that have an experienced workforce. So you could tap into the workforce, you could save some jobs, and help out local economies. And that you would reuse the site in a sense that you have these valuable grid connections that are there and that you could do something with that. And then that you would be replacing coal essentially with a cleaner energy, that nuclear is a no carbon way to make electricity. So the idea behind modular nuclear reactors is that they are smaller and faster to build.

Bill Gates’ TerraPower aims to build its first advanced nuclear reactor in a coal town in Wyoming

The Kemmerer plant will be the first to use an advanced nuclear design called Natrium, developed by TerraPower with GE-Hitachi.

Natrium plants use liquid sodium as a cooling agent instead of water. Sodium has a higher boiling point and can absorb more heat than water, which means high pressure does not build up inside the reactor, reducing the risk of an explosion...

Natrium plants can also store heat in tanks of molten salt, conserving the energy for later use like a battery and enabling the plant to bump its capacity up from 345 to 500 megawatts for five hours.

The plants are also smaller than conventional nuclear power plants, which should make them faster and cheaper to build than conventional power plants. TerraPower aims to get the cost of its plants down to $1 billion, a quarter of the budget for the first one in Kemmerer.

Nuclear power plants designed a half-century ago are being matched against today's solar and wind power technology. Comparing all non-fossil-fuel sources of energy for their current safety, cost, and reliability is a much more honest analysis.