Ted Nordhaus and Adam Stein at the Breakthrough Institute:
If last month’s announcement by Microsoft and Constellation Energy that they planned to restart Three Mile Island was a potent symbol of nuclear energy’s changing fortunes and importance to efforts to decarbonize the US electricity system, this month’s announcements by Google and Amazon likely tell us a lot more about where the US nuclear sector is heading. It is one thing to reopen a recently shuttered nuclear plant like Three Mile Island, quite another to build new reactors. Revitalizing the nuclear sector, such that it might play a major role in meeting US climate ambitions, will require building several hundred new reactors, 200GW worth by 2050 according to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and other Biden administration officials.
Over the last decade, there has been a sometimes quiet, sometimes open debate within the nuclear sector about whether the future of the technology would look much like its past. Would we see predominantly large conventional light water reactors built and operated by regulated monopoly utilities, or does successfully rebooting the sector require different technologies and business models better suited to the range of use cases where nuclear might play a significant role and the changing realities of the US utility sector.
More here.
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