A bulldozer moves coal that will be burned to generate electricity at the American Electric Power coal-fired power plant in Winfield, West Virginia.
Luke Schallert | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A senior U.S. nuclear official said this week that plans to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant were a step forward for nuclear power, but that the United States needed to deploy new nuclear power plants to meet growing power demand.
Mike Goff, acting assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy, said the United States needs to at least triple its nuclear power fleet to meet demand, cut carbon dioxide emissions and ensure national energy security.
The United States currently has the largest nuclear weapons fleet in the world 94 operational reactors The total power is about 100 gigawatts. The fleet supplies more than 18% of the country’s cargo power consumption 2023.
Gove said in an interview with CNBC that the United States needs to add 200 gigawatts of nuclear power installation capacity. Based on the current average reactor size in the United States of about 1 gigawatt, this is roughly equivalent to building 200 new nuclear power plants.
“This is a huge undertaking,” Gove said. Last December, a U.S.-led global coalition formally committed to achieving this goal by 2050. recognition goals at a climate conference in New York City this week.
Constellation EnergyGoff said the plan to reopen Three Mile Island by 2028 is a step in the right direction. He said the plant operated safely and efficiently before closing in 2019 due to economic reasons.
The reactor Unit 1 that Constellation plans to reopen is not the reactor that partially melted down in 1979.
Microsoft will purchase electricity from the plant to power its data centers. Gove said the emergence of large data centers with power consumption of up to one gigawatt will only increase the need for new reactors.
“A lot of data centers are coming in and saying they really need stable, 24/7, baseload, clean power,” Gove said. “Nuclear is obviously a perfect match,” he said.
But he said restarting U.S. reactors would only provide a fraction of the nuclear power needed. Gove said only a small number of closed factories were likely to restart.
“It's not a huge number,” Gove said of a potential restart. “We also need to make real progress in deploying factories,” he said.
From coal to nuclear energy
Coal communities across the United States could provide a runway to build scores of new nuclear power plants. Utilities in many parts of the U.S. are phasing out coal as part of the clean energy transition, creating Because new generation power generation is not being built fast enough, there are supply gaps in some areas.
Recently closed coal plants, those expected to retire, and those currently operating but with no closure dates yet could provide up to 174 gigawatts of new nuclear power space in 36 states, according to a report. Department of Energy Research published earlier this month.
Gove said coal-fired power plants already have transmission lines built in, allowing reactors at those sites to avoid the lengthy process of siting for new grid connections. The plants also have personnel experienced in the energy industry who can transition to work at nuclear facilities, he said.
“We can actually reduce costs significantly by building coal-fired power plants,” Gove said. “Compared with direct investment in a new construction site, we can probably reduce costs by 30%.”
Cost overruns and long construction timelines are major obstacles to building new nuclear power plants. extension Vogtle, Georgia Plant For example, building two new reactors cost more than $30 billion and took about seven years longer than expected.
Expanding operating and decommissioning nuclear power plants in the United States could create a path to building up to 95 gigawatts of new reactors, according to research from the U.S. Department of Energy. Between coal and nuclear power plants, the United States may have room for up to 269 gigawatts of additional nuclear power.
Potential capacity will depend on whether these sites build advanced small reactors or large reactors of gigawatts or more.
According to research from the U.S. Department of Energy, smaller reactors could potentially generate more power if deployed on a large scale because there would be room for more reactors. However, some of these smaller advanced designs are still years away from commercialization.
But Gove said growing electricity demand from data centres, manufacturing and the electrification of the economy could also be a catalyst for bigger factories. For example, the Three Mile Island reboot will bring nearly a billion watts of power to meet Microsoft's needs.
“The increase in power demand will also lead to a further push for gigawatt-scale reactors,” he said.
Restart may be approved
Gove said that while restarting reactors was not a panacea, supporting and maintaining existing units was crucial. The United States has experienced a decade-long period of reactor closures because they were unable to compete with cheap, abundant natural gas.
However, Gove said the economy was changing, with tax support from the Inflation Cutting Bill and nuclear energy increasingly gaining traction for its carbon-free properties.
“One of the economic problems, especially in unregulated utilities, is that clean baseload power is not necessarily valuable,” he said. “There is growing recognition of the need for clean, robust, reliable nuclear power basecharges”
Constellation decides to reboot Three Mile Island, follows Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Michigan. Private owner Holtec International plans to restart the Palisades nuclear power plant in 2025.
“They are an independent agency but I hope if a safety case is made they will approve it,” Gove said of these possible restarts.
“Constellation has obviously operated the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant for many years and has a large number of reactors and is operating it safely and efficiently,” he said. “They will continue to have a wealth of expertise to help these plants continue to operate safely.”
But Doug True, chief nuclear officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute, said finding more plants to restart could be difficult.
“Things are getting harder and harder,” True previously told CNBC. “Many of these plants have begun the deconstruction process that accompanies decommissioning, and the facilities are not completely idle in the way of being reactivated in any way.”