Examining The Future Of Nuclear Energy With Nuclear Innovation Alliance Project Manager, Patrick White

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Alec Crawford is joined by Patrick White, project manager at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, to discuss nuclear energy, sustainability, and technology. Patrick talks about his career journey and how he ended up at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, starting with his studies at Carnegie Mellon University and working in the commercial nuclear industry. He then pursued a Masters and PhD in nuclear science and engineering at MIT while co-authoring the 2018 report on the future of nuclear energy. The conversation focuses on the role of nuclear energy in deep decarbonization and how technology and artificial intelligence can be used to build a better sustainable future.

Patrick is a graduate of 2021 and works for the Nuclear Innovation Alliance. His role involves looking at the regulations currently in place for nuclear power plants and making them more effective and efficient. He is also looking at policies at the state and federal level that would enable nuclear energy deployment. Patrick advises aspiring nuclear engineers to figure out what aspects of the energy problem they are most excited to solve and to take advantage of opportunities, such as internships and degrees in related fields, to plug into that.

This conversation discussed the role of nuclear energy in the U.S. The speaker explained that the future of nuclear energy depends on how seriously we take climate change and our clean energy goals. Nuclear energy can play a role as a complementary energy source, not just to reduce carbon emission, but also to meet the goal of 100% clean energy. Nuclear energy also has a unique advantage in producing high temperature steam for electrolysis, which is an efficient way to create hydrogen gas. To explore this potential, the U.S. Department of Energy is funding a nuclear hydrogen hub, which will focus on researching and demonstrating hydrogen production with nuclear power. Finally, the speaker noted that the U.S. produces 20% of its electricity from nuclear power, while France produces 70%, highlighting the importance of nuclear power for energy security and grid stability.

When discussing grid stability and reliability, many questions arise regarding the balance between supply and demand. Nuclear energy is often described as firm energy, meaning it is reliable and dispatch-able, and can be turned on regardless of the weather conditions. This makes it an ideal complement to other clean energy sources such as solar panels and wind farms, which may not always be available. Nuclear power plants can supply electricity when the grid needs it, helping to balance out other renewable energy sources in order to meet overall energy goals.

Timestamps

0:00:02

Conversation with Patrick White, Project Manager at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance

0:02:12

Lead on Regulatory Modernization at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance

0:04:34

Exploring the Role of Nuclear Energy in Achieving Clean Energy Goals and Producing Hydrogen

0:09:06

Exploring the Benefits of Nuclear Energy for Grid Stability and Reliability

0:10:42

Exploring Energy Security and Nuclear Regulatory Challenges in the US

0:13:40

Exploring Flexible Power Operations for Nuclear Plants

0:17:16

Exploring Flexibility in Nuclear Power Plants to Meet Grid Demands

0:18:30

Heading: Exploring Nuclear Energy Solutions to Complement Renewable Sources

0:20:19

Exploring Generation Four Reactors: A Discussion on High Temperature Gas Reactors and Molten Salt Reactors

0:21:34

Heading: Advantages of High Temperature Gas Reactors (HTGRs) and Sodium Fast Reactors for Nuclear Energy

0:25:01

Exploring the Benefits of Sodium Fast Reactor Technology for Nuclear Power Generation

0:26:24

Exploring the Potential of Sodium Fast Reactors and Small Modular Reactors for Reducing Carbon Emissions

0:28:16

Exploring the Benefits of Small Modular Reactors for Utilities and Construction Companies

0:31:45

Exploring Environmental Impacts and Emergency Planning for Nuclear Power Plants

0:34:34

Exploring the Safety Profile and Supply of Nuclear Fuel for Nuclear Reactors

0:36:18

Exploring the Impact of Russia on the Uranium Fuel Market

0:39:14

Exploring the Safety Concerns of Increased Nuclear Power Use and How They Are Being Addressed

0:40:45

Nuclear Power Plant Safety Regulations and Procedures

Highlights

Yeah, so when it comes to the safety and nuclear power plants, a lot of it comes down to what are the potential hazards of the facility and then what are the systems, structures, components, programs and operations that are really doing to ensure safety? So in the United States, with the existing fleet, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has done a lot of work to basically ensure that the US power plants are secure against what they call a whole suite of design basis accidents.

And so, as the United States is starting to look at kind of ensuring the fuel supply for its existing nuclear reactors, the question is, okay, what percentage of our enriched fuel comes from Russia? And how can we potentially shift to other suppliers or other countries to make sure that we're not relying on Russia to power all of our US. Reactors? Right now, it's not a near term issue. Despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the challenges that we're having with international markets, the uranium markets are still functioning. It's something where they've kind of talked about uranium diplomacy kind of being beyond the scope of normal diplomacy, just because everyone recognizes that it's kind of a special material.

And for the reactors that we currently use, we need to go from the natural level of enrichment, which is about 0.7%, to an enrichment level of about four to 5%. And so we do that in what are called enrichment facilities, most commonly gas center fugitive facilities. And that's kind of a technology that's very well protected just in terms of the opportunities for nuclear proliferation and concerns around states getting access to enrichment technology.. And so enrichment facilities are really limited in a much smaller number of countries, including Russia, France and the United States. Then the final step is you take that enriched uranium turn into fuel. The reason I kind of tell that full back story is that when we start talking about uranium fuel and what the impact of Russia is on the market, russia, and specifically the Russian state owned company Tenx, controls a large percentage of not the mining, but actually the conversion and the enrichment services. So kind of that back end.

And so those conversion facilities are really kind of focused. There's some in the United States. Netherlands, UK, Russia. And the final step is something called enrichment. So, with enrichment, what we're really interested in doing is changing the ratio of two isotopes in the uranium fuel, specifically uranium 235 and uranium 238. So uranium 235 is an isotope, uranium that we really want for nuclear reactors. It's a type of uranium that's very easy to fission or to split and release energy.

And so with some of these small modular reactors, they thought about the safety case of their technology, and they've essentially used more kind of passive or inherent safety mechanisms that reduce the need for having large pumps, large valves. Large emergency safety systems and that even in the worst case accident, you won't have these large releases of radioactive material that cause or essentially necessitate having emergency evacuations.. The best example of that that we've seen so far is the new scale reactor that I mentioned earlier. They've worked very hard with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to show that under every single possible accident condition, that there will be no evacuations needed outside their plant boundary. So even in the worst case of a worst case accident in a new scale plant, there'll be no need to have evacuations. And that essentially the entire accident will be contained on site.

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