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Nuclear’s last hurrah |
By Will Wade
The US nuclear industry threw a huge party in Georgia to celebrate the country’s first new reactors in more than 30 years.
Fanfare last week over the long-delayed expansion included a choir, color guard and a big yellow cake shaped like the Alvin W. Vogtle facility. Governor Brian Kemp even quipped to a crowd of hundreds about building another reactor there.
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The Alvin W. Vogtle power plant in Waynesboro, Georgia. Photographer: Ryan Cavataro/Bloomberg
But the festivities mask a difficult truth: while Vogtle marks the US country’s biggest nuclear advance this generation, it will be the last reactor built for a long time. The project’s delays and ballooning costs have cooled enthusiasm for new reactors, despite a resurgent interest in nuclear power. Instead, the country is set to do something more prosaic — retrofit existing plants.
Big reactors like Vogtle can take a decade or more to build, and none are on the drawing board in the US. The nuclear industry is still hopeful about the next generation of fission technology — small modular reactors that can be produced in a factory and assembled on site — but a series of setbacks mean few are likely to be in service before the end of the decade. At this point, wringing a modest amount of power from aging plants is the only way to capitalize on renewed interest in nuclear power.
“It’s impossible to build a new reactor,” said Chris Gadomski, lead nuclear analyst at BloombergNEF. “You might as well upgrade the ones you have.”
It’s a stark contrast from China, which is on track to surpass the US and become the biggest nuclear-powered nation by the end of the decade. The Asian country may add as many as four reactors in 2024, and could soon be approving as many as 10 a year.
Read the full story to understand the shifting nuclear tides and how to upgrade a reactor.