Source:
https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/15/the-nuclear-energy-advancements-of-the-past-four-years-will-blow-your-mind/
" (nuclear energy) creates high-paying jobs better than any other energy source.
Its fuel sources are abundant.
... despite its sensationalist image, it is far safer than fossil fuels, and about the same in safety as solar and wind.
“Nuclear provides 55% of our country’s clean energy, and about 20% of our power, and it’s one of the most reliable generators that we have on the grid today,” says Dr. Rita Baranwal, who this month completed her tenure as assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy in the Trump administration.
“Our reactors in the U.S. avoid putting out 470 million metric tons of carbon emissions each year.
That number is equivalent to removing 100 million cars off the road.”
... With high degrees of government regulation and small amounts of government investment, reactors have been shut down across the country, destroying jobs and energy.
... (President Trump) issued an executive order, promoting energy independence and economic growth, and that included the recognition that nuclear energy is a clean baseload power source that’s very important to overcoming our environmental challenges.”
... groundbreaking accomplishments in American nuclear energy ... have hardly received the coverage they deserve.
... Miniaturized fission plants are smaller, safer, cheaper, and now far closer to being a reality.
This September the design for a Small Modular Reactor (SMR), designed by NuScale Power, gained approval from the federal government.
It’s the first such reactor to be approved, ever.
Small reactors like NuScale’s offer the possibility of fundamentally changing the economics of nuclear power.
While fission plants pay off in the long run, they have immense upfront costs that other energy sources just don’t experience on the same scale.
Today, starting a commercial fission plant is something of an Odyssean task requiring decades of paperwork, miles of land, and billions in investment.
These smaller reactors ... "can be factory-built and assembled on site much faster than these larger gigawatt-scale reactors. And so part of what we have seen with the cost overrun and the schedule delays… will not be experienced with SMR or microreactor deployment,” ...
The mass-produced nature of these small reactors (means) ... The plants can be built far more cheaply while retaining the same safety guardrails of a larger plant.
Once installed, each 100-megawatt plant would cost around $500 million to construct but generate $1.3 billion in sales and require 7,000 jobs, according to a study on the design.
... the first-ever such plants will receive final approval for construction this year.
... After three decades passing without the construction of a single new large commercial reactor in the entire country, two brand new ones — part of Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia — are now nearly complete.
“The completion of Vogtle Units Three and Four in Georgia, which had been supported by the DOE, are using AP1000 technology, which is the most advanced light water reactor system that has been licensed by the NRC,”
... “Those units are the first new large-scale reactors to be built in the United States in more than three decades and they’re scheduled to come online in the next two years — a very, very exciting time.”
Additionally, the (Trump) administration has approved and funded designs in even newer tech via the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program.
... the Versatile Test Reactor (VTR), the scientific project called by Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette “key to revitalizing the nuclear industry.”
... The facility will allow American companies to test their most advanced tech without surrendering their designs to Russia or China, both of whom currently possess advanced similar test reactors.
... new research and development offers a hopeful sign for an energy source, which more and more Americans are seeing as an important part of the country’s future."