0:00

First, the bad news. SAP

0:02

Business AI won't generate amusing holiday

0:04

cards, but it will personalize career paths

0:06

for your people and let you know which suppliers are best

0:08

so you can be ready for the next opportunity. Revolutionary

0:11

technology, real-world results. That's

0:13

SAP Business AI. Hey, Future of Everything

0:16

listeners. A quick note before we get into

0:18

this episode, which is all about the future

0:20

of nuclear power.

0:22

We want to hear from you. Do you think the

0:24

US should build more but smaller nuclear

0:26

power plants to provide electricity? Why

0:29

or why not? Let us know. Email

0:32

us at foepodcast at wsj.com.

0:35

Thanks for listening. Now, onto the show.

0:41

What do you think of when you hear the words nuclear

0:43

power plant? If you're like me,

0:46

you may have picked up a lot of what you think

0:48

you know about nuclear energy from... ♪ The

0:52

Simpsons ♪ That's

0:57

right. The Simpsons was probably my

0:59

first introduction to nuclear power. From

1:02

Homer's day job as a nuclear safety inspector.

1:04

Nuclear, it's pronounced

1:07

nuclear. To Smilin'

1:09

Joe Fission. Your atomic tour guide to the strange

1:12

and exciting world of nuclear power.

1:15

Though, shockingly, the show

1:17

isn't exactly scientifically accurate.

1:19

Don't! The US Office of Nuclear

1:21

Energy actually published a brochure with

1:23

a section titled, Four Things the Simpsons

1:26

Got Wrong About Nuclear.

1:28

Did you know nuclear waste isn't a glowing

1:30

green liquid? And, surprise,

1:32

surprise, Homer Simpson is not

1:34

a model safety inspector.

1:37

Ah! It's my problem! We're doomed!

1:40

Sector 7G is now being- One thing

1:42

the show did get right is the size

1:44

of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. It

1:47

looms over the town's skyline. The cooling

1:49

towers are really big, like

1:51

they are in real life. But what if a

1:53

nuclear reactor could be shrunk down to

1:55

fit into a small warehouse? Instead

1:59

of the large- concrete domes that you typically

2:01

think of for containment, we've gone to a very

2:03

small steel containment vessel.

2:06

Jose Reyes is the chief technical officer

2:08

and one of the co-founders of New Scale Power,

2:11

a company that's working on a new generation

2:14

of nuclear power generators. The

2:16

reactor vessel sits inside the containment vessel. We

2:18

pull a vacuum in the containment and we

2:20

immerse it in a pool of water. That's

2:22

the whole design. It's basically a reactor inside of a steel

2:25

thermos bottle underwater. The very

2:27

first nuclear reactor ever built during

2:29

the Manhattan Project in the 1940s fit

2:32

under the football field at the University of Chicago.

2:35

But now, most nuclear power plants are

2:37

like the Alvin W. Vodle electric

2:39

generating plant in Georgia, which

2:41

takes up four times as much land

2:44

as New York City's Central Park and sports

2:46

cooling towers that stretch 60 stories

2:48

into the sky. And it needs

2:50

a lot of staff. When the plant's

2:52

newest reactor comes online next year,

2:55

more than 1,600 people will be working

2:57

on site daily. This

3:00

is our highway where we operate. That's

3:04

Jordan Danielson, a test engineer

3:06

at New Scale Power.

3:07

He works at one of their test sites at Oregon State

3:09

University in Corvallis, a

3:12

small college town nestled along the west

3:14

bank of the Willamette River. Sort of

3:16

feels like a hangar almost. Like what

3:18

is this, like 60 feet or more?

3:20

No, probably around 50 something. 50 feet?

3:23

All right.

3:24

There are cables and wires going everywhere

3:26

like spaghetti, drills and wrenches

3:28

scattered on work tables. This prototype

3:31

is not nuclear powered, but it gets put through

3:33

its paces to make sure a real reactor

3:35

would be safe in the event of an accident. We

3:38

have around 500 or so data channels just

3:41

for temperature measurement. Some

3:43

of our temperature instruments get pulled and

3:45

removed and replaced with brand new fresh

3:47

calibrations every two or three tests

3:50

because we're here testing accident

3:52

scenarios. So it's pretty violent transitions,

3:55

pretty extreme conditions. 76 feet

4:01

tall. That's less than half the

4:03

size of some of the most advanced nuclear reactors

4:05

currently in operation. Because

4:07

Jose Reyes says New Scales' big plan

4:10

is to build small. We

4:12

wanted to develop something that was easy

4:15

to manufacture, could actually be manufactured

4:17

in a factory as opposed to on-site, could

4:20

be transported easily, and that we could reduce

4:22

the cost. And it was more

4:24

of a plug-and-play kind of a design. From

4:28

the Wall Street Journal, this is the future of

4:30

everything. I'm Danny Lewis. Today

4:33

we're looking at small modular nuclear

4:36

reactors because the future of energy

4:38

is electricity. And while

4:40

wind and solar have come a long way, we'll

4:43

need more options to feed our need for power.

4:46

How might small nuclear power plants fit in?

4:48

And can they help make the grid greener?

4:51

Stick around.

4:58

First, the bad news. SAP

5:01

Business AI won't help you generate cubist

5:03

versions of your family's holiday photos. But

5:05

it will help you understand which supplier is best

5:08

to help you roll out your plant-based packaging in Southeast

5:10

Asia, or identify the training your junior

5:12

project manager needs to rise up the ranks and

5:15

automate repetitive tasks while you focus

5:17

on big innovations. So you can

5:19

be ready for the next opportunity. Revolutionary

5:22

Technology. Real-world results. That's

5:25

SAP Business AI.

5:36

There was a lot of fear of nuclear

5:38

weapons following World War II, as heard

5:41

in a promotional cartoon released by General

5:43

Electric in 1953. But

5:46

there was also a lot of promise around nuclear power. Because

5:55

here in fact is the answer to a

5:57

dream as old as man himself.

6:00

A giant of limitless power at man's

6:02

command. Depicting atomic

6:04

power's potential as a literal giant

6:07

of energy, GE's cartoon

6:09

painted a picture of an atomic-powered future

6:11

with limitless technological potential.

6:13

The future supplying of electric power

6:16

to entire cities is far from

6:18

impossible, while nuclear

6:20

power in locomotives, submarines,

6:24

ships, and even

6:26

very large airplanes may all

6:28

but revolutionize future transportation

6:31

on land, sea, and air.

6:34

While nuclear power plants and submarines

6:37

do exist, the use of atomic

6:39

energy never became as widespread

6:41

as that promo predicted. In part,

6:43

because the nuclear energy industry figured

6:45

the best path forward was to build

6:48

a small number of very large power

6:50

plants.

6:52

Traditional nuclear power plants, the

6:54

type that we've been building and operating for

6:56

the past 40, 50 years, and the gigawatt

6:58

scale, the large beasts, right?

7:00

Yacopo Buongiorno is a professor of nuclear

7:02

science and engineering at the Massachusetts

7:05

Institute of Technology. He

7:07

says the thought was that big centralized

7:09

power plants would provide plenty of cheap electricity.

7:12

In practice, building them was complicated.

7:16

A lot of the cost overruns

7:18

and schedule delays that we've seen

7:21

in the construction of these large gigawatt

7:24

scale reactors

7:26

were associated with the inability

7:29

to manage large construction sites

7:31

and very complex supply chains. Now,

7:34

that may be changing.

7:35

In the past several years, you have a lot of investors

7:38

that are coming into this space. Jennifer

7:40

Hiller covers energy for the Wall Street Journal.

7:43

Like, Bill Gates and Sam Altman

7:45

and people like that have become interested

7:48

in this area, and they're

7:50

looking for carbon-free power

7:52

sources and seeing a

7:54

need as you try to reduce

7:56

greenhouse gas emissions.

7:59

of TerraPower, which is developing

8:02

slightly scaled down nuclear reactors.

8:04

And Sam Altman, the co-founder of chat

8:07

GPT creator OpenAI, is

8:09

a major investor in another nuclear energy

8:11

startup called Oklo.

8:13

Small reactors have always been

8:15

around. There's always been like a contingent

8:18

of people in the nuclear power world

8:20

who see a use case. But

8:22

there's also been an interest just broadly

8:25

from the investment world

8:27

in building difficult things

8:30

like rockets or an

8:32

electric vehicle company. And I would put

8:34

nuclear reactors into the same category.

8:37

The difference now is that companies designing

8:40

small modular reactors say they're trying to

8:42

build equipment, not infrastructure.

8:45

Fundamentally, what we're trying to do is

8:47

build smaller plants

8:51

that we can build more of

8:53

in a factory quality controlled

8:56

setting to really get

8:58

the cost down to a

9:00

repeatable, predictable range.

9:04

Clay Cell is the CEO of Xenergy.

9:07

It's another company developing small modular

9:09

nuclear reactors.

9:10

Can we create something that is smaller,

9:13

that is appropriate

9:15

for incremental growth in the grid,

9:19

that we can simplify,

9:21

that we can build in a factory,

9:23

shrink rapid, skid mount

9:26

it, ship it out to the site

9:28

and assemble it in a period of months

9:31

rather than

9:32

construct it in a period of decades.

9:35

The U.S. government also

9:37

sees this approach to nuclear power as an

9:39

important tool in a future that relies much

9:41

more on electricity. The 100

9:44

gigawatts provides 20%

9:47

of our nation's electricity, approximately. There's

9:49

93-V operating nuclear reactors. Later this year,

9:52

there will be 94. Those gigawatt-scale

9:54

plants are really helpful for that base-flow

9:57

of power. for

10:00

nuclear energy in the U.S. energy department.

10:02

She runs the office overseeing and promoting

10:04

the nuclear power industry. If you can

10:07

scale down the size, the complexity

10:10

of these devices, you can start building nuclear

10:12

reactors more like airplanes than

10:14

airports,

10:14

and you get better economies of scale,

10:16

ideally, by saving

10:18

on time and going over

10:20

budget and things of this nature, because

10:23

it's more predictable than an on-site construction.

10:26

That's the electricity that's always there when

10:28

you go to turn on the lights or plug in your phone,

10:30

day or night, no matter the day of the week

10:33

or time of year. Huff says

10:35

nuclear energy is becoming an increasingly

10:37

important part of the U.S. government's plan to

10:39

power the country with low-carbon electricity.

10:43

You may be asking yourself, how is

10:46

nuclear energy low-carbon? Essentially,

10:49

nuclear power reactors generate electricity

10:52

from heat. All of the commercial

10:54

nuclear power plants in the U.S. use the

10:56

energy released by nuclear fuel to heat up

10:58

water and generate pressurized steam.

11:01

That steam turns turbines to generate

11:03

electricity. Or it could be used

11:06

for industrial purposes. We'll get back

11:08

to that in a bit, but unlike coal

11:10

or natural gas, nuclear reactors

11:13

don't release carbon into the atmosphere.

11:15

As

11:16

countries, regions, businesses

11:19

contemplate

11:20

their future plans for reducing

11:24

carbon emissions,

11:25

there is one technology

11:27

that they've got to consider. That's

11:30

Jakopov Buongiorno, the MIT researcher.

11:32

It's an incredibly dense

11:34

energy source. So you don't

11:37

need a big supply chain that continuously

11:39

feeds the power plant with fuel

11:41

the same way that you would with coal, for

11:43

example. Also, the machine

11:46

itself, the reactor, is very,

11:48

very compact.

11:49

But Wall Street Journal reporter Jennifer

11:51

Hiller says conventional nuclear power

11:54

plants also come with some disadvantages

11:56

in the energy market.

11:58

Natural gas became so... so inexpensive

12:01

in the U.S. that you had nuclear

12:04

reactors having to compete. And

12:06

that really helped kind of unwind

12:09

the economics of conventional

12:11

nuclear power. Nuclear power plants

12:13

generate plenty of cheap electricity once

12:15

they're up and running.

12:16

But building the plant itself is really

12:19

expensive. Most of them are custom

12:21

built for a specific location, which

12:23

takes a lot of capital investment.

12:26

Compare that to natural gas, which is

12:28

cheap and plentiful in the U.S.

12:30

Natural gas power plants also cost

12:33

less upfront to build. And

12:35

there's also the safety question, especially

12:38

after disasters like the meltdown at the Fukushima

12:40

Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan

12:42

in 2011. It's unclear

12:45

whether anyone was directly killed or

12:47

sickened by radiation exposure from the accident,

12:50

but more than 160,000 people were displaced and at

12:54

least 30,000 people still haven't

12:56

returned.

12:57

Broadly speaking, nuclear power

12:59

tends to be pretty safe. But when they

13:01

do have an accident, it can be big and

13:04

catastrophic. And there's the added concern

13:06

about nuclear waste, which can take thousands

13:09

of years to decay. But some

13:11

advocates for nuclear energy say smaller

13:13

reactors would help here because they use

13:15

less fuel to begin with. While

13:18

advanced safety systems need less human intervention.

13:21

This is what Jose Reyes is trying to do at

13:23

NewScale. The real aha

13:25

moment for me was when I worked for

13:27

the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

13:30

He served as a technical expert on passive

13:32

safety systems. And I kept hearing

13:35

the same thing. We can't afford the large

13:37

thousand megawatt reactors. They're just too

13:39

expensive. We don't have the grid to support

13:41

a thousand megawatt. They wanted something smaller.

13:44

So he started working on the design for

13:46

a smaller power plant that could still supply

13:48

the consistent levels of carbon free electricity

13:51

that makes nuclear energy so attractive.

13:54

One that doesn't need hundreds of acres of

13:56

land or cooling towers that stretch

13:59

hundreds of feet in the air. new

14:01

scale isn't the only company designing small

14:03

modular reactors for the global energy market,

14:06

but it is the first company to have one of its

14:08

designs certified by the US Nuclear

14:10

Regulatory Commission. One

14:13

of our modules will produce about 77 megawatts electric. Just

14:16

by about 60,000 homes can

14:19

be powered by one module. We can power

14:21

all of Corvallis here. It's a lot less electricity

14:23

than a conventional nuclear power plant would generate.

14:26

But Reyes and his team designed their system

14:28

to be able to string together multiple reactor

14:31

modules to generate a similar amount of electricity.

14:34

Our 12th module plant is 924 megawatts. A

14:37

conventional large plant, pressurized water

14:39

reactor, is about 1,000 megawatts. So we're

14:42

comparable, but we're in a much smaller footprint.

14:45

And each of those modules can operate

14:47

independently, meaning a new scale

14:49

plant could start producing electricity and

14:52

start making money once the first

14:54

module is installed. Reyes

14:56

says this also makes the plant safer. That's

14:59

because its cooling systems rely on passive

15:01

systems to prevent meltdowns, like

15:04

recirculating steam to keep the nuclear fuel

15:06

submerged in water. Unlike

15:08

conventional nuclear power plants, which

15:10

require offsite power to run their cooling

15:13

systems during emergencies. If

15:15

you have a hurricane come through, it knocks

15:17

out the grid. Commercial nuclear power plants today,

15:20

they would have to shut down.

15:21

A nuclear meltdown happens when the chain

15:23

reaction that produces heat goes out of control,

15:26

generating more heat and pressure than the system

15:29

can handle and melting down

15:31

the reactor's components. That

15:33

can cause an explosion and release radioactive

15:35

materials into the environment. The

15:38

Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires

15:40

all existing nuclear plants in the U.S.

15:42

to be able to draw electricity from the power grid

15:45

in order to prevent this during an emergency shutdown. But

15:48

Reyes says that's not the case for new scale,

15:51

simpler reactors.

15:59

full power, close to full power, and then

16:02

whenever the dispatcher calls and says, okay,

16:04

we need power to help restore this section of the

16:07

grid, we can provide that power.

16:09

But that's a couple steps into the future, because

16:12

no one has yet built a working small modular

16:15

reactor in the US. And there

16:17

are other questions to answer about what it will

16:19

take to build the new atomic age. More

16:22

on that after the break.

16:31

The Wheel. A Big Idea.

17:09

We've talked about how building smaller nuclear

17:11

reactors could make them cheaper and easier

17:13

to build. So how about replacing

17:16

the sheer amount of electricity a single

17:18

large power plant can generate? We're trying

17:21

to just think completely different about nuclear.

17:23

Instead of economies of scale,

17:26

let's go for economies of volume.

17:29

Ex-Energy CEO Clay Sell says

17:31

small modular reactors can help because

17:33

they can be installed wherever electricity

17:35

is needed.

17:37

That makes geographic locations

17:39

more available to us, whether it's

17:42

replacing a coal plant that has suffered

17:45

from suburban encroachment or

17:48

whether it's siding a plant next

17:51

to a data center or next to an industrial

17:53

facility.

17:54

A recent US Energy Department report

17:56

estimated that a first-of-a-kind small

17:58

modular reactor like those X-Energy

18:01

and NuScale are designing, could cost

18:03

as much as $3 billion to build. That's

18:06

a lot of money,

18:08

but it's a lot less than the $30 billion spent

18:11

building the two new reactors at Georgia's

18:13

Vodal Nuclear Power Plant.

18:15

CEL says to make the economics work and

18:17

to avoid being priced out by cheaper fuels

18:19

like natural gas, nuclear energy

18:22

will have to expand beyond municipal

18:24

power grids to industry.

18:27

I mean, what is the petrochemical industry

18:29

other than applying heat

18:32

and pressure to crack molecules and then recombine

18:34

them, right? And a lot of that pressure is

18:37

produced through steam.

18:38

And so there's a huge

18:41

market for steam

18:44

on the U.S. Gulf Coast and in other

18:46

industrial applications, and today that

18:48

market is met with by

18:51

burning natural gas.

18:52

Earlier this year, X-Energy partnered

18:55

with Dow Chemical and the U.S. Energy Department

18:57

to jointly develop a four-unit modular

19:00

nuclear facility at an industrial plant. Those

19:02

units will provide steam to a specific

19:05

plant, their seed drift plant

19:07

in Calhoun County, Texas. It

19:09

will also provide electricity to the

19:11

plant, and the excess

19:14

electricity will be sold and injected

19:16

into the Texas grid. CEL says

19:18

tapping this market can expand the demand

19:20

for nuclear energy in the future.

19:23

We can't decarbonize the economy

19:25

just by, you know, getting electric

19:27

vehicles and planting solar

19:30

farms and wind parks.

19:32

He hopes small modular reactors will

19:34

one day power everything from chemical plants

19:36

to hydrogen generators to server

19:39

farms used to train artificial intelligence.

19:41

But Wall Street Journal reporter Jennifer

19:44

Hiller says building a lot of small

19:46

nuclear reactors instead of a few

19:48

big ones may not solve the scale

19:50

problem on its own. That was the argument,

19:53

essentially, for building larger plants,

19:55

and that did not work in terms of driving

19:58

costs down on the large reactor.

19:59

front. And so they're sayi of

20:02

building large, we

20:03

wil and that

20:05

will drive the c

20:10

is just a question. We do to

20:13

that yet.

20:14

Plus, Hiller nuclear

20:17

reactors will sti stringent

20:20

regulatory her safe.

20:23

You do have to anci

20:25

of can you

20:27

really put sma the

20:30

country is every comm welcoming

20:33

of smaller reac

20:35

are still risks associat

20:39

have been at least 34 ser accidents

20:43

worldwide since

20:46

study by researchers from the

20:49

University of British small

20:53

modular reactors w even

20:55

more radioactive wast plants.

20:59

Some countries are use

21:01

of nuclear energy, inc which

21:04

shuttered its last n April.

21:06

At the same time, r solar

21:10

wind and geothermal as

21:13

nuclear costs remain u

21:15

of the key criticisms

21:17

you else

21:20

gets a whole bunch c decade.

21:23

And meanwhile you nuclear

21:26

reactor again, de

21:28

promises, no

21:30

fully funct nuclear

21:32

reactors have bee yet.

21:35

And while their benef on paper, they

21:37

still have in the real world.

21:40

I am c But

21:43

let me say up front t a

21:45

lot of high. And so

21:47

eve taken with a grain of sol Giorno

21:51

again,

21:51

the recert early

21:54

projects are absolu

22:00

for this industry. Credibility

22:02

with investors, confidence in themselves

22:05

that they can deliver. So if these early

22:07

projects are going to be again massively

22:10

late and massively more expensive than

22:12

the industry has advertised, then

22:15

it's going to be a real tough proposition

22:17

to go back to the investment community

22:19

and say, what, please give me another $15-20 billion, because

22:22

now I'm going to scale up.

22:24

Cost and demand are still issues that these

22:26

companies have to address. NuScale

22:28

was planning to build its first small modular

22:31

reactor in the U.S. at the Idaho National

22:33

Laboratory. The hope was to start

22:35

generating electricity by 2029, but

22:38

the project was canceled earlier this

22:40

month when it became clear there weren't enough customers

22:42

signed up. NuScale says it

22:44

does have other similar projects in the works,

22:47

including one with standard power to build two

22:49

reactors in Pennsylvania and Ohio

22:51

by 2029. Even

22:54

so, Buongiorno says nuclear power still

22:56

shows a lot of promise in replacing fossil fuels.

22:59

Some coal and natural gas plants could

23:01

even be retrofitted with small nuclear

23:03

reactors to pump out clean energy.

23:06

They're almost ideally suited to

23:08

be replaced by these small modular reactors.

23:11

You get to reuse a lot of the infrastructure

23:13

that already exists at that site. So mission

23:16

lines don't care where the electricity is coming from.

23:18

Not to mention all the other infrastructure

23:20

that's already built at these sites, like

23:23

roads, plumbing, and power lines. Buongiorno

23:26

says replacing old fossil fuel plants with

23:28

nuclear power could also keep well-paying

23:30

jobs in these communities too.

23:32

Coal-fired plants here in the United States

23:35

are typically located in areas which are going to

23:38

suffer mightily if those

23:40

assets go out of business and they're not replaced with something

23:43

else that employs local and

23:45

provides well-paid jobs, and nuclear small modular

23:48

reactors can do that.

23:49

Plus, he says that having a range of

23:51

energy sources, solar, wind,

23:54

and nuclear, for example, will make

23:56

the power grid more stable and resilient

23:58

in the long run.

23:59

especially as the need

24:00

for electricity in the U.S. continues

24:03

to grow. Bongiorno

24:05

says the nuclear power industry has its best

24:07

chance to really take hold now and

24:10

help lead the way into a future of plentiful,

24:12

carbon-free electricity.

24:15

They're very much

24:16

under the microscope at the moment. And

24:18

this is their time. This is their moment. It's

24:21

their chance. It's exciting. And

24:24

the ball is in their core, so to speak.

24:27

The Future of Everything is a production of

24:29

The Wall Street Journal. Stephanie Ilgenfritz

24:32

is the editorial director of The Future of Everything.

24:35

This episode was produced by me, Danny

24:37

Lewis. Our fact-checker

24:39

is Aparna Nathan. Michael Laval

24:41

and Jessica Fenton are our sound designers and

24:44

wrote our theme music. Katherine

24:46

Milsop is our supervising producer. Aisha

24:49

Al-Muslim is our development producer. Scott

24:51

Salaway and Chris Simphly are the deputy

24:53

editors. And Filana Patterson is

24:56

the head of news audio for The Wall Street Journal. Like

24:59

the show? Tell your friends. And

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leave us a five-star review on your favorite platform.

25:04

Thanks for listening.