U.S. Department of Energy rushes to build advanced new nuclear reactors
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/us-department-energy-rushes-build-advanced-new-nuclear-reactors
Source: By Adrian Cho, Science Magazine.
Excerpt: In the latest effort to revive the United States’s flagging nuclear industry, the Department of Energy (DOE) aims to select and help build two new prototype nuclear reactors within 7 years, the agency announced last week [https://www.energy.gov/ne/nuclear-reactor-technologies/advanced-reactor-demonstration-program]. The reactors would be the centerpiece of DOE’s new Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which will receive $230 million this fiscal year. Each would be built as a 50-50 collaboration with an industrial partner and ultimately could receive up to $4 billion in funding from DOE. ...But even some proponents of nuclear power doubt the program will spur construction of new commercial reactors as long as natural gas and renewable energy remain relatively cheap. “New builds can’t compete with renewables,” says Robert Rosner, a physicist at the University of Chicago. “Certainly not now.” Commercial nuclear reactors supply 20% of the United States’s electrical power and 50% of its carbon-free energy. However, the U.S. nuclear industry has struggled for decades. Its fleet now comprises 96 reactors, down from 113 in the early 1990s. More reactors are slated to close and the nuclear industry’s share of the electricity supply is expected to start to fall. In spite of that dreary picture, engineers have continued to develop designs for advance reactors they say would be safer and more efficient....
Source: By Adrian Cho, Science Magazine.
Excerpt: In the latest effort to revive the United States’s flagging nuclear industry, the Department of Energy (DOE) aims to select and help build two new prototype nuclear reactors within 7 years, the agency announced last week [https://www.energy.gov/ne/nuclear-reactor-technologies/advanced-reactor-demonstration-program]. The reactors would be the centerpiece of DOE’s new Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which will receive $230 million this fiscal year. Each would be built as a 50-50 collaboration with an industrial partner and ultimately could receive up to $4 billion in funding from DOE. ...But even some proponents of nuclear power doubt the program will spur construction of new commercial reactors as long as natural gas and renewable energy remain relatively cheap. “New builds can’t compete with renewables,” says Robert Rosner, a physicist at the University of Chicago. “Certainly not now.” Commercial nuclear reactors supply 20% of the United States’s electrical power and 50% of its carbon-free energy. However, the U.S. nuclear industry has struggled for decades. Its fleet now comprises 96 reactors, down from 113 in the early 1990s. More reactors are slated to close and the nuclear industry’s share of the electricity supply is expected to start to fall. In spite of that dreary picture, engineers have continued to develop designs for advance reactors they say would be safer and more efficient....