What do Miss America 2023, nuclear science, nuclear engineering, nuclear power and sustainable transportation have in common?

By: McKinley Addy, P.E. | June 16, 2024

Earlier this year, I attended the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Conference on Advanced Reactor Development (2024 ASME CARD). Here are a few highlights and three takeaways from the Conference. Several related questions are posed.

First, the highlight of the conference was the keynote by Grace Stanke, Nuclear Engineer and Miss America 2023.?

The inspiring takeaway from Grace's keynote address was the role her dad played in motivating her study of nuclear engineering, her advocacy for better public understanding of nuclear science, the necessary and beneficial role of nuclear power to America’s reliable energy future and the importance of mentoring the next generation of nuclear engineers and workers to power a possible nuclear renaissance. Grace rightly points to the contribution nuclear science makes to nuclear medicine since Loma Linda University pioneered cancer proton treatment in the 1990’s, which is now emulated by other medical centers. Getting the public to better appreciate nuclear energy includes awareness that nuclear science plays an important role in nuclear medicine.

Grace's keynote address inspired a theme of "origin stories" which successive speakers emulated. Each speaker who shared an origin story highlighted the role their dads played in shaping the speaker's pursuit of engineering (invariably mechanical engineering or nuclear engineering).

Ms. Stanke joins a list of highly distinguished and remarkable women including Dr. Jill Siebert former NASA JPL Deep Space Navigation Engineer and Dr. Tamara Jernigan, former Deputy Chief of NASA's Astronaut Office. Both have made uniquely transformative contributions with global impact, both of whom I've met along my career. I was privileged to share speaking venues with Dr. Jernigan and Dr. Siebert.

Jill Siebert's journey is one every woman in America should hear. Undoubtedly, Grace's journey is likely to unfold similarly. Both Dr. Siebert and Grace talked about the role that mentorship played in their lives. Young women everywhere are encouraged to seek out such beneficial mentorships.

Second, the 2024 ASME CARD Conference explored prospects for “new nuclear” power plants in meeting America's increasing electricity demand. “New nuclear” refers to a range of Generation IV reactor technologies, including small modular reactors (SMR).

A motivation for me in attending CARD 2024 was to understand what had changed between my earlier review of several Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) studies on the prospects for a “Nuclear Renaissance” and, the optimism of other researchers at the time of my earlier review, and now.

At the California Energy Commission, I conducted a review of MIT’s 2008 report on what the report characterized as a possible “Nuclear Renaissance”. The unpublished staff paper explored the likelihood of 300 new nuclear power plants posited by the MIT report being in the US. Since the MIT report, only two new reactors have come online in the U.S. after delays and cost overruns.??

At a workshop on nuclear power around the time of the MIT studies, Stanford University researchers explored and suggested pathways to producing low-cost nuclear electricity.

Complementing the ideas from the Stanford University workshop, Dr. Galen Suppes of the University of Missouri, Columbia connected the safe recycling of spent nuclear fuels for electricity production to support low carbon transportation fuels.

ASME CARD 2024 speakers suggested the Paris Climate Accord, rising electricity consumption from new emerging demand centers such as AI, widespread transportation electrification efforts and the recognition that renewables such as solar and wind are unlikely to fully meet the reliable supply of electricity are conditions keeping new nuclear power options attractive. Would these new, apparently favorable conditions unlock the ‘Nuclear Renaissance” fueled by Generation IV and SMR technologies?

Rethinking Competitive Costs, Safety Concerns and Sustainable Transportation

A third takeaway from the ASME 2024 CARD is that, there may be credible pathways to make new nuclear facilities cost-competitive and affordable, by rethinking costs and safety concerns. These outcomes might not only produce cost-competitive electricity but also enable sustainable transportation.

Grace's advocacy for nuclear science and nuclear engineering adds to the scholarly work of Dr. Galen J. Suppes’ book "Sustainable Nuclear Power" and Dr. Geoffrey Rothwell of Stanford University. Professor Rothwell's research showed a pathway to competitively priced electricity from modular reactors.

Dr. Suppes makes the case that recycling sent nuclear fuels could open up new resources for nuclear power. In their March 29, 2024, Wall Street Journal article, the authors argue that the US Congress should act to enable recycling of spent fuels. They suggest that existing US stockpile of spent nuclear fuels can potentially be a source of 100 years of power supply to meet America's growing electricity demand.

Yet, for all its promise, cost and safety concerns remain persistent barriers to increase nuclear power use in the U.S. Many ongoing efforts aim to address nuclear power safety. Advocacy and education initiatives such as Grace Stanke's can supplement safety efforts.

Are there possible pathways to reducing new nuclear costs to competitive levels and even to cost-advantageous levels?

Rethinking Costs and Cost Comparisons

It is customary in the research literature to compare new nuclear electricity prospects by cost, to the prevailing cost of renewables (wind and solar). AdTra research suggests new approaches should be considered when evaluating renewables cost when such comparisons are made. Relevant factors such as availability, life cycle efficiency, Land Use Power Density (LUPD) and life cycle generation capacity should be taken into account.

Dr. Dan Kammen's UC Berkeley's Energy Resources Group’s seminal work on the role that innovation plays in cost reduction suggests a possible cost-competitive pathway for new nuclear. Although the Kammen research on 2-Factor Effects focused on battery technology, the concept and principle of combining technology innovation and scale economies as pathways to reducing cost can also be applied to new nuclear. Two- and three-factor effects consider different types of innovations and scale economies.

At AdTra, we collaboratively adapted Dr. Kammen's research to a new framework that adds business model innovation to technology innovation and scale. By implementing the Kammen-Addy 3-Factor Effects Innovation model to new nuclear, it is potentially possible to realize cost reductions to achieve $45/MWh to $72/MWh. These estimates approach the cost of PV plus storage facilities by applying 3-Factor Effects to Oak Ridge National Laboratory's reported $113/MWh levelized cost of new nuclear power plants. A leading US investment bank puts the all-in cost of solar at $120/MWh.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports a near-current cost of existing nuclear power plants at $6,317/kW. Other literature estimates suggest new nuclear costs could fall to $4,000/kW, with a stretch goal as low as $2,000/kW. These differ from recent cost estimates discussed in a May 2024 Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) study that includes worst cases for SMRs. Applying Kammen-Addy 3-Factor Effects to referenced installed costs suggest a possible trajectory summarized in the table below. (The business model innovations to realize these nuclear power cost declines are not explicated here for proprietary reasons and serve illustrative purposes. These innovations are being deployed and proven in other use cases.)

At $/kW installed costs shown in the table, the likely levelized cost of electricity from new nuclear is competitive with, if not less than wind and solar.

In the European context, a systematic meta-analysis of the cost of electricity that takes several factors into account, Hepstonstall and Gross report wind and solar costs of 43 to 50 Euros/MWh compared to a UK nuclear power contract of 92.5 Pound Sterling/MWh. The European wind and solar resources value was determined for a 15-year analysis period while the nuclear power contract was for a 35-year period. When the two groups of generation resources are compared on similar temporal basis, and converting to Euros, the solar wind resources show an all-in cost of 116.67 Euros/MWh. These prices do not reflect adjustments for availability, lifecycle efficiency, life cycle generation capacity nor LUPD. The UK nuclear comes in at 108.17 Euros/MWh.

An apparent implicit cost advantage of renewables is the comparative speed of deploying renewable generation. “Apparent” and “comparative” are used intentionally here. For example, in 2023, it is reported that 37 gigawatts of new renewable generation capacity were deployed in the US. It is argued that it would take several decades for a similar nuclear generation capacity to come online. And yet, upon closer consideration of the factors mentioned earlier, the equivalent new nuclear capacity to match the renewable generation might?be a tenth or less.

These reflections suggest that in addition to low carbon power generation and renewables, the case for nuclear power remains persuasive.

Considering availability, life cycle efficiency, LUPD and life cycle generation capacity, are renewables truly cost-advantageous compared to conventional and new nuclear generation resources?

Rethinking Nuclear Safety Concerns and Comparisons

New nuclear power plant success in the US would require the public to think differently about nuclear safety. The public’s justified safety concerns must be addressed as the MIT study authors suggest and stakeholders realize. Getting the public to think about nuclear safety in comparative terms is one way to approach this. Deaths due to medical errors in the US is an instructive lens.

According to Johns Hopkins University research, deaths due to medical errors in the US exceed 250,000 a year. Although nuclear power plant accidents can have wide-ranging and long-term environmental contamination effects, deaths due to the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima accidents have cost nowhere near the cumulative number of deaths due to US medical errors since any of those accidents occurred.

By contrast, as summarized in an internet search on the topic, although "The exact number of deaths from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945 is still unknown, estimates range from 110,000 to 226,000 people, with most of the victims being civilians. By the end of 1945, the bombings were estimated to have killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki. However, a 1998 study found that an additional 62,000 people in Hiroshima died as a result of the bomb, bringing the total number of victims to more than 200,000. Many victims died years later from cancer and other illnesses linked to radiation poisoning." These are the recorded deaths from deliberate misuse of nuclear energy.

Surely, safety measures in place to prevent nuclear power plant accidents have worked well to prevent catastrophic outcomes across the world's fleet of 440+ nuclear power plants.? This record suggests, with continued vigilance, nuclear power safety, while not guaranteed, is unlikely to impose the type of fatalities due to medical errors that occur in the US annually.

Robust statistical comparisons of nuclear power fatalities to other types of accidents are also instructive.? Dr. Stephen Chu’s recent Stanford University presentation on sustainability treats this topic and are pertinent.

Within this comparative context, there can be opportunities to address the constraints to harnessing the energy security and climate benefits of nuclear electricity in the United States.

Is it possible that stakeholders need to rethink public safety concerns about nuclear power?

Rethinking the New Nuclear Business and Industry Model

Stakeholders and advocates for new nuclear point to the need for a robust supply chain if affordable nuclear electricity is to be realized over the next several decades. Success would require establishing and beefing up the supply chain beyond the existing group of market actors currently mostly comprised of SMR start-ups. Many new nuclear start-up companies have worked on their nuclear SMR technologies going back over a decade with some progress but not sufficient to support a fully functioning, viable “new nuclear” industry. What’s needed instead, is a robust group of well-capitalized companies with a highly specialized workforce and an established supply chain.

The highly regulated, capital-intensive, safety-focused with a robust established supply chain, commercial aircraft and airline industry may be instructive. Despite its recent challenges and missteps, the Boeing Company, and Airbus, are the cornerstone of the global commercial aircraft manufacturing industry. With their highly specialized workforces and established component suppliers, Airbus and Boeing, and to a lesser extent, the Brazilian company, Embraer, supply reliable aircraft to the commercial airline industry. General Electric, Rolls Royce, Safran and United Technologies manufacture the jet engines that power Airbus and Boeing airplanes. In this industry model, airlines order airplanes. Aircraft manufacturers build airplanes. Airlines deliver passengers to their destinations. ?Reviving the US nuclear industry that is highly regulated, capital-intensive, safety-focused and requiring highly technical staff teams might benefit from emulating the best features and practices of the airline/airplane industry. Under this framework, well-capitalized companies with highly specialized workforces and robust supply chains could build new certified modular reactors, developers could buy and deploy those SMRs and deliver electricity, thermal energy and hydrogen to customers.

Are there best practices to be learned from the experience of the commercial aircraft and airline industries to build a “new nuclear” industry in the US?

A Pathway to Sustainable Transportation

Affordable, safe electricity to meet widespread?electricity demand for transportation, buildings and industry electrification would require baseload nuclear power. Power demand for AI centers compound this demand. New modular nuclear capacity can be used to produce competitively priced, zero-carbon hydrogen for transportation. But business model innovation is critical to achieve the affordability outcome.

The most exciting promise of new nuclear is the opportunity for low-cost transportation hydrogen production as a solution for zero emission heavy-duty vehicles. While the US Department of Energy's Super Truck Program has historically focused on improving the ton-mile cost of conventional heavy-duty Class 8 trucks, low-cost transportation hydrogen for fuel cell trucks can supplement the Super Truck Program goals.

AdTra current research shows a possible path to replace California's fleet of 200,000 heavy-duty Class 8 trucks with zero-emissions fuel cell trucks and a reasonable fraction of America’s 4 million+ population of Class 8 trucks.

Electricity price points achievable as indicated above could be a pathway to new nuclear electric power that could be used to make low-cost hydrogen for transportation (see table below), especially for use in America's trucking sector. With a ten-year lead time to achieve such outcomes, affordable hydrogen for transportation could be one option to address the intractable criteria air pollutants problem in markets like California and also meet the state's 2045 zero-carbon electricity goals. This timeline aligns as well, with California’s policy targets for the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard. But, first, California would need to revisit its policy on nuclear power generation. The value to candidate truck fleets benefiting from low-cost electricity and hydrogen for transportation from new nuclear is shown in the table below. The table is adapted from earlier collaborative analysis for a global powertrain manufacturer.

New nuclear is also critical to achieve America's 2035 100 percent clean electricity targets by 2035 as outlined in the nation's 2021 Long-Term Strategy on its path to a low-carbon economy. Price points as indicated above might just make this reliable power resource find new relevance to the nation’ electricity future than previously contemplated.

• Can “new nuclear” serve a targeted purpose to solve an intractable problem, such as sustainable clean transportation, that the market and public readily relate to?
• Can “new nuclear” help decarbonize America's transportation sector and strengthen the nation's energy security?

Returning to my motivation for attending the 2024 ASMECARD. What has changed since my review of the MIT studies? New SMR technologies have made much progress. Artificial intelligence and machine learning have made possible the tool of Digital Twins to make the design and manufacturing of SMRs more efficient. SMR cost reductions pathways have emerged. New markets now exist that didn't. And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is implementing regulatory reforms to strengthen safety and streamline the application for certifying and licensing new nuclear power plants. Importantly, Grace Stanke is advocating initiatives to educate the public and decision-makers about the promise, benefits and safety of?nuclear energy.

Together, with Grace Stanke’s - Miss America 2023 - advocacy and education initiatives for new nuclear, technological advances in modular reactors, and improved fuel cell power trains along with fast-track regulatory reforms at the NRC, a hoped-for sustainable transportation future, might just be realized. Fortunately, 20-year policy target dates to achieve these sustainable transportation outcomes make such aspirations possible.

About the Author: McKinley Addy is a Professional Engineer specializing in Mechanical Engineering, energy systems, engineering economic analysis and business model innovations. He’s a principal author of California’s State Alternative Fuels Plan, contributing author to the “Joint Agency Report on Reducing California’s Petroleum Dependence”, and contributing author to several previous California Integrated Energy Policy Reports.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to my colleagues Gerry Bemis and Jared Babula for their review and comments. The perspectives expressed in this article are the Author’s alone.

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