A few weeks back a colleague was able to schedule a tour of the Seabrook Nuclear facility in Seabrook, NH. Early in my career I had the experience of working on nuclear plants as a student at Northeastern which led to my first full time position out of college.

The visit reiterated to me just how important this plant is to the region and how its importance is growing. These old-style reactors are still important today, and the future of these smaller modular design reactors has taken on even more importance. As we try to pivot away from fossil fuels, and the explosion of Data Centers, nuclear power might just be able to quench this developing energy thirst.

The Old-Style Reactors-Designed from the late 1950’s on

The Nuclear Power plants in existence today require a lot of land and contain many interconnected systems. Primarily they are either Boiled Hot Water Reactors (BWR) or Pressure Water Reactors (PWR).

These reactors are Fission, which splits atoms generating heat. Not be confused with Fusion that merges two atoms and has not been developed to a practical level yet. If it ever is, energy supply could be limitless, but that is an article for a much different day.

BWR reactors use fuel (plutonium) to heat water, creating steam that turns into a magnetic coil of kinetic energy where the output is electricity. This is all done with a single loop of water and steam. I have hands on experience at the now retired Vermont Yankee plant that was this style.

Conversely, PWR reactors (like Seabrook) use pressurized water heated by plutonium to heat a secondary loop of water into steam that then performs the turning of the coil. This means PWRs are more complex and need more space and design.

I personally prefer the BWR reactors as they are more efficient and require less space and cost-I am sure my new friends at Seabrook would get a chuckle out of that. BWRs though because of the one loop design do allow for potential contamination in the turbine. I was reminded of this when I noticed that employees at Seabrook do not wear dosimeters in all areas like I was required at Vermont Yankee.

Why the Nuclear Power Boom Ended

The main culprit here in the US was the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in 1979. This brought to light safety concerns and was unfortunately about the same time a fictional movie “The China Syndrome” with a plot about a nuclear accident was hitting theaters. Talk about bad timing for the industry. Good for the movie writers though.

Other issues were the nuclear waste which is stored on site in a spent fuel pool. A national repository site was hoped for in Nevada called “Yucca Mountain” that never came close to implementation. France does the repository well.

The Chernobyl disaster (1986) all but cemented the buildout of more nuclear reactors in the US. It didn’t seem to matter that it was a design with no containment and would never be built here. Plants that come to the end of life are possibly granted extensions or stop generating electricity all together.

The Rise of Data Centers-A boom for Old Idle Nuclear Plants

As AI emerged in the last few years, suddenly new demand started coming on the grid much faster than new supply. Utilities have been struggling to connect new data centers on their grid due to supply and transmission constraints. Data centers in some regions have to wait years in queue to get on the grid, forcing companies to rethink where these Data Centers will reside in the future, and how to power them.

Dormant nuclear power plants have found large companies like Microsoft, Google and Facebook reach out to revive these plants for their own needs bypassing the local power companies.

Of course, not all Data Centers are by behemoth type companies and can’t afford to re-open a dormant plant. So, what hope lies with these less affluent companies? They can either wait in line for years or investigate Micro Grids.

The Future of Nuclear

We are going to need more power in the future before we have a long term negative economic impact. The traditional BWR and PWR reactors are impractical to build today due to material and land costs, let alone the regulatory and permitting costs.

Enter the Small Modular Reactor (SMR). Like the traditional nuclear plants described above, they operate 24/7 and produce zero carbon emissions. They take up about 1/3 of the space, cost much less to build, and are one compact unit that can be portable. SMRs are safer than the traditional power plants and don’t require large cooling towers as they can use natural circulation for cooling. There are two SMR plants currently in operation-one in China, one in Russia. The US is still several years out to get them commercially due to costs, regulations and permitting. Industry Thought Leader Peter Kelly- Detwiler, Principal, NorthBridge Energy Partners, LLC describes these hurdles:

“The technology is attractive, but still likely ten years away from widespread commercialization. SMR designs must be approved by the NRC (only one – NuScale – has approval thus far). The associated companies need to obtain orders, build factories, and sell in sufficient volumes to bring costs down enough to make them competitive. That means most companies probably have to fail in order for survivors to consolidate production and achieve scale. Then there is siting, and NIMBY-ism will be a real concern, as well as fuel acquisition, waste storage, and security-related issues. A lot of needs to go right for this new technology to succeed.”

A Revival but when?

Nuclear Energy is poised for a big revival if these SMRs can be incorporated and work around the hurdles as described by Peter Kelly Detwiler. This is 24/7 power that is needed due to all the forecasted electricity usage. They are still several years from being largely deployed, and issues like a permanent repository for the spent fuel still need to be addressed. One thing for sure though, SMRs if implemented widely can be a crucial, carbon free component to our future energy requirements.