COVER STORY | ADVANCED REACTORS
Building a big market for smallest advanced reactors
To reach Net Zero by 2050 the US alone will need more than 550 GW of additional clean, firm power to complement renewables. Even the smallest advanced reactor technologies are getting set to be a big part of the answer
A NEWLY-RELEASED REPORT FROM US Department of Energy (DOE) concludes that the US will need between 550 GW and 770 GW of additional clean, firm power to complement the deployment of variable renewables in order reach net-zero by 2050. Noting that there are only a few options for clean power at this scale, the report estimates that advanced nuclear could provide some 200 GW of this requirement through the 2050 time frame. According to the Pathways to Commercial Liftoff:
Advanced Nuclear report, multiple system level decarbonisation modelling exercises over the last two years have concluded that significant new nuclear power would be required, especially taking into account estimates for renewables build-out that consider the limitations from transmission expansion, land use, regional siting requirements, and the supply chain that increasingly impact utility-scale deployment. Not only is nuclear power one of the few proven options that could deliver this kind of scale, it also creates high-paying jobs with concentrated economic benefits for those communities most impacted
by the energy transition, the report says. For example, the DOE says small modular reactors are estimated to provide nearly 240 permanent jobs per gigawatt, while traditional large-scale reactors currently employ around 500 per GW. Nuclear energy complements renewables, has low land-use requirements, and has lower transmission requirements than distributed or site-constrained generation sources, the DOE says, adding that it also offers significant regional economic benefits, can aid in an equitable transition to a net-zero grid, and has a wide variety of use cases that enable grid flexibility as well as decarbonisation beyond the existing grid. The analysis also highlights the need for urgency in deploying nuclear capacity, noting that rapidly scaling the nuclear industrial base would enable nearer-term decarbonisation and increase capital efficiency. If deployment starts by 2030, the DOE says, ramping annual deployment to 13 GW by 2040 would provide 200 GW by 2050. Conversely, waiting until the mid-2030s to deploy at scale could lead to missing decarbonisation targets
Above: Sanmen 2 is built around an AP1000 Gen III+ reactor from Westinghouse 40 | June 2023 |
www.neimagazine.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49
