POLICY & REGULATION | ADVANCED REACTOR STRATEGY
by 30%. It was meant to be aspirational, but the campaign brought forth new ideas, and the fleet met the goal by 2020. The motivation was also cost-based: to match the price of electricity from natural gas power plants. According to the NIA, in the construction context, the goal should be set in terms of cost per megawatt-thermal – for advanced reactors, electricity will not be the only product – and should match the cost of other clean firm technologies like geothermal energy, or natural gas with carbon capture. A stretch goal would be to match the cost of steam generated with natural gas without carbon capture, which is the utility industry’s preferred alternative at the moment, because there is no requirement to cut climate-forcing emissions.
Becoming more business-like A key aspect of the report recommendations for the DOE concerns the need to become more effective in commercialising advanced nuclear energy technologies. Apart from developing an integrated Advanced Nuclear Energy Strategic Plan, there are improvements DOE can make in its operations to assist in commercialising the nuclear technologies that will be essential to achieving climate and energy security goals, the report says. Among those is the adopting a more business-like
Above:
The DOE is supporting Westinghouse’ eVinci advanced reactor design
For example, the solar and hydrogen Earthshots are
both framed in terms of cost (per watt and per kilogram, respectively). The authors say that DOE should consider extending this idea to an Advanced Nuclear Energy and should consider making cost the organising principle as opposed to, for example, focusing only on deploying a certain number of advanced reactors or generating a specific amount of MWh of advanced nuclear energy by a predetermined date. The report concludes that nuclear energy will not fulfil
its role in climate mitigation and energy security unless the actual costs of new nuclear reactor construction and operation come down. In particular, the report says, developers must be able to reliably deliver projects on budget and on schedule. This issue has traditionally been a challenge for the nuclear sector and it is one that must be addressed if nuclear is to reach its potential. The report argues that, in partnership with industry, the DOE can be instrumental in achieving that. Firstly, by promoting best practices in project management, contracting, and oversight and, secondly, encouraging design innovations such as modularity, smaller size, higher-volume manufacturing would simplify reactor projects. For example, the report argues that the standardization of certain components used in advanced reactor designs could facilitate their rapid deployment by creating a larger, predictable market for suppliers. Such innovation in standardised parts would allow multiple reactor vendors to leverage cost and supply chain benefits and would have a compounding effect on how quickly reactors can be built. Nuclear energy does not need to be the least expensive
source of energy because the power it produces are a premium product that is available around the clock and in all atmospheric conditions. But nuclear energy needs to be more reasonably and predictably priced and new projects reliably delivered. The report does point out that recent industry experience
offers promising results. The current fleet of nuclear energy plants set for itself a goal in 2016 of cutting operating costs
36 | July 2023 |
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approach, including carrying out tasks promptly, efficiently, and without excessive bureaucratic requirements. Successful businesses are good at staffing appropriately for the tasks at hand, smoothing out contracting procedures, and recognising that some of the ventures they will pursue will not succeed, and will turn out to be blind alleys, the report says, adding that while the DOE has often shown excellence as a technical organisation, it now also needs to excel as a business incubator. According to the authors that means adopting standard business procedures when negotiating non-disclosure, or intellectual property (IP) rights agreements; improving its business operations to reflect the urgency of climate challenges and the pace of the private sector; and adopting a business-like attitude that strategically and promptly decides whether a technical approach is viable and commercially promising. As the authors observe, successful private ventures try
out many ideas and drop the ones that don’t work. The government version, which the Energy Department should adopt, is to aim for the success of the portfolio, not every project in the portfolio. If there are, for example, eight key solutions to a particular problem, the important thing is that we find them, even if it takes twelve or sixteen attempts to do so. On the way to finding those solutions, DOE can also improve its operations. Government contracts typically specify that if the government pays for it, the government owns the IP. But the IP is precisely what private investors want to own, and the IP in question may not be worth much to the government. DOE needs a way to address the importance for innovators to retain their rights to their IP, and in turn enable smoother contract issuance and the ability for developers to meet the aggressive deployment schedules that the government has established. Private sector investors do not generally stumble over problems like this. The report says that the DOE needs a way to resolve these issues promptly, so that developers can keep to the aggressive deployment schedules that the government has laid out. Similarly, the report states that DOE non-disclosure agreements lack an effective approach because they are
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