How to Scale Nuclear Power
8th July 2024
Effectively harnessing nuclear energy does require sophisticated engineering in the form of power plants, but, once online, nothing can beat them in terms of efficiency — a nuclear power plant can generate over 57,000 MWh/acre compared to solar at 200 MWh/acre, or a natural gas plant at 1,000 MWh/acre. For further perspective, a single reactor can power over 1 million homes with over 90% uptime. In fact, our existing, and largely paid off, nuclear fleet also produces the cheapest baseload electrical power at around $30/MWh. And because nuclear energy doesn’t involve hydrocarbon combustion, it generates power without producing carbon dioxide emissions.
However, critics often argue that nuclear power is unsafe or unsustainable, citing fears about potential accidents and the accumulation of nuclear waste. These concerns are largely unfounded and reveal a misunderstanding about advancements in nuclear technology. Nonetheless, they have resulted in a state of affairs where new nuclear reactors are exceedingly rare in the United States and, thanks largely to onerous regulations, typically take many years and cost billions of dollars to complete.
Step 1: Get the government out of it.