Nuclear energy’s role in decarbonizing the economy

Make Me Smart October 17, 2023 Transcript

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Kai Ryssdal 

All right. Jayk Cherry wasting no time.

Kimberly Adams 

Hey, everybody, I’m Kimberly Adams, welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.

Kai Ryssdal 

I’m Kai Ryssdal, it is Tuesday today, the 17th day of October. Here’s what we’re gonna do over the next couple of weeks, depending on you know, how scheduled go and news goes and all this jazz. But certainly, we’re going to be taking a run at climate solutions over the next period of time, what we can do, the challenges we face, and maybe how to get out of this mess, we’re going to start today with nuclear energy.

Kimberly Adams 

Right, because nuclear power is having a bit of a renaissance to claim Beyonce’s term there. As we look to decarbonize our economy. Since nuclear energy does not at least directly create carbon emissions, we want to know more about what the future of nuclear energy is going to look like what challenges the technology faces, because the technology is definitely different now than it used to be. And so here to make us smart about this is Jigar Shah, he is the director of the Loan Programs Office at the Department of Energy, welcome to the show.

Jigar Shah 

Thanks for having me.

Kimberly Adams 

So a lot of people when they think about nuclear energy, it’s always in a bad context of meltdowns and explosions and all sorts of terrible things. Can you talk about what modern nuclear energy actually looks like?

Jigar Shah 

Yeah, you know, I think that most people are surprised to learn that over half of all the clean energy in the United States comes from nuclear power, and most of them have been running, you know, without any incident for over 50 years. And so when you think about modern nuclear energy, it really comes from this legacy that we have have extraordinary nuclear safety record and, and productivity here in this country. So now, we are going to the next, you know, set of designs, which are even more safe and, you know, have other features that might make them more affordable.

Kai Ryssdal 

How reliant are we right now just as a way to sort of set the stage on nuclear power in this country.

Jigar Shah 

So there’s about, you know, 92 reactors that are operating safely every single day in this country, and it produces roughly 20% of all the electricity in the United States. More importantly, you can, you might recall that we use less power, let’s say in the spring in the fall than we do in the summer, in the winter, because you use less air conditioning or heating. And those nuclear power plants, though, are providing power throughout all of those periods of time. Whereas natural gas and coal plants may get used a lot less in the spring and the fall.

Kimberly Adams 

So then, earlier this year, I was doing some reporting on the Vogtle plant in Georgia, which is, as far as I could tell the first one to be built, at least from scratch, and to actually come online in decades. Why did it take so long? And why was it able to happen there first?

Jigar Shah 

So the vast majority of our nuclear fleet was approved for construction at a time when we had the Atomic Energy Commission. So the Vogtle nuclear plant was actually the first plant to be fully approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which we’ve had since the ‘70s. So it’s one of those things where, you know, when you haven’t done things in a long time, you sort of forget how to do them. So the Vogtle nuclear plant really was a full restart of our nuclear industry. We had to train over 13,000 new union workers, right, IBEW. And now, you know, we had to take designs that, you know, we hadn’t really built before, right. And you can imagine we had engineering procurement, construction contractors, that hadn’t built a nuclear plant in a very long time that we had to train. And so while the Vogtle nuclear plant, came in over budget, and took a lot longer, I think it is a testament to the perseverance and grit that we showed to really see it through. And today, Unit 3 is fully up and running. And Unit 4 should be up and running here in the next four or five months.

Kai Ryssdal 

So congratulations on the perseverance and grit. But look, these things cost billions and billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars. And one does wonder, first of all, whether that’s sustainable, just as an enterprise in these budgetary times, but also why do they cost so many billions?

Jigar Shah 

Well, it’s one of those things where the United States does small really well. But we have a hard time with humongous right? And one of those things is it’s really about mega projects, management, the Vogtle nuclear plants should have spent an additional billion dollars on the front end to, you know, be prepared for managing its costs on the back end. And that comes out of a lot of the best practices that we published in the nuclear liftoff report here at the Department of Energy. When you look at the next generation of designs, the GE Hitachi, the BWRX-300, for instance, was selected by Ontario Power group in Canada. They’re spending a lot of money up front to finish the design to get all of the pieces put in place before they start construction. And it’s not something that we did for Vogtle/

Kimberly Adams 

So does the fact that the Vogtle project sort of ran so far over and all these things had to get restarted and going again, does mean that future projects will be less expensive?

Jigar Shah 

I think it means that future projects will take into consideration all the best practices that we learned out of Vogtle. The other piece of it, though, is that we have 13,000 trained workers that we didn’t have before. And that’s a big deal when you’re building a nuclear power plant. Remember, the welds on a nuclear power plant lasts for 80 years? Right? So it can’t be repaired that easily, they have to be done right the first time. And when you think about what it takes to become an approved welder for a nuclear power plant, it’s over seven years. Wow.

Kai Ryssdal 

How do you just to get back up to the to the top and Kimberly’s question about about you know, popular perception of nuclear power? How do you get over the look legit fears that people have they read about Fukushima here now even a decade later, we’re talking about you know them releasing water into the Pacific and all the rest of that I was in high school and Three Mile Island, and there’s a whole generation of people who remember that. How do you get over that?

Jigar Shah 

I think you just have to keep showing people that you know, we’re operating things safely. I mean, remember, you know, when you get pregnant, right? Your doctor asks you not to eat fish. You don’t eat fish, because you know, not because people are breaking thermometers and dumping mercury into waterways. It’s because we burn coal. And one of the things that comes out of coal is that mercury goes into the air. And when it rains, it goes into our waterways, right? I mean, we somehow have gotten totally fine with burning coal, and not eating fish when you’re pregnant, and eating mercury laden fish all year round. But with nuclear power, these things get sensationalized. And even though they operate so well, I think people are worried about the prospect of something happening when we have over 50 years of safe operation that prove otherwise.

Kimberly Adams 

Is the, you know, view changing? Are people getting more supportive of nuclear power, especially when we see in stark reality, the consequences of continuing to burn coal and other sorts of carbon intensive energy production?

Jigar Shah 

Well, clearly, climate change is a big driver. But the other big driver is that people want more electricity. I mean, when you think about ChatGPT and artificial intelligence, you know what they work on? Electricity. ChatGPT alone needs 10,000 megawatts of new hyper data centers. Right? We don’t have that capacity today. And while I love solar and wind power, as you may know, my background is in the solar industry. The solar industry is awesome, but we need a diverse set of resources. And nuclear power is going to be one of those staples that we need, if we’re going to take advantage of electric vehicles, heat pumps, you know, artificial intelligence, and, you know, saving all those photos of your child, you know, for $1.99 a month on Apple.

Kai Ryssdal 

What is the the federal government’s role in this, by the way?

Jigar Shah 

So the federal government plays a much larger role in nuclear than we play in most other energy technologies. You know, we do a lot of research and development, of course, but in the nuclear space, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a very large role in making sure that things are done safely. There’s also a lot of subsidies required. When you think about nuclear power. It’s not the same as building solar and wind where the private sector can sort of do it on its own. It really requires a real full public and private partnership, not dissimilar to the federal highway system, right, which clearly is constructed with private sector contractors, private sector suppliers of cement. But you know, the federal government has a heavy role to play there.

Kimberly Adams 

What do you say to people like just in casual conversation, when you’re talking to them about the stakes, you know, when it comes to whether an if they’re in the not in my backyard camp?

Jigar Shah 

Well remember, we have, you know, many nuclear sites already throughout the country, right. And many of them were planned to build additional nuclear reactors at those same sites. So the people who live in those communities love nuclear power, because it produces 25% of the property taxes locally. I don’t know if you’ve ever gone to a high school, and played high school sports at a high school that has a nuclear plant nearby. It’s always like.

Kai Ryssdal 

Sorry, sorry, are there a lot of a lot of those?

Jigar Shah 

A lot of those. And in fact, there are three women here,

Kimberly Adams

They are very well funded.

Jigar Shah

Who came from one high school in New Hampshire, I grew up near the Byron nuclear power plant. And every time we played tennis against them, I was like, wow, are these brand new courts? It was it was great, right. So the folks there all want more nuclear reactors, because they know their current nuclear reactors are 50 years old. And they want to extend that, you know, that nuclear workforce, which is often union, that live there, right. We also have over 200, coal plants that are already announced, for shutting down or have already shut down. And those coal plants play the same role for those communities there. 25% 50% of the property taxes in that community, some of the highest paying jobs in that community. And folks want that to continue. And so there’s a lot of communities around the country, asking us to repurpose that existing infrastructure, right, because there’s a big transmission line there. There’s a lot of cooling water locally. And so you can actually just put a new nuclear plant on top of an old coal plant.

Kai Ryssdal 

So just to sort of bring it to a close, right now nuclear is about 20% of our power supply in this country. How high do you want, think, should, does it need to be do you suppose if we’re going to succeed and making nuclear a real part of of clean energy and the transition to it?

Jigar Shah 

I think people have a hard time wrapping their brain around what’s happening today, we have not had any electricity growth in 20 years.

Kai Ryssdal 

So I’m sorry, is that like no new generation?

Jigar Shah 

We have only just retired old stuff and replaced it with some new stuff. But in terms of how much electricity we use today, it’s the same as 2003. Right, that number is going to double, probably over the next 20 years. When that happens, just to maintain 20%, we’ll have to build roughly 200 gigawatts of additional nuclear power. So I don’t think that number has to go up from 20%. I think we have to keep it there.

Kai Ryssdal 

Right? And it’s just got it’s gotta go up in absolute terms right?

Jigar Shah

Yeah, yeah, that’s right.

Kai Ryssdal

Jigar Shah is the director of the loan programs office, he’s at the Department of Energy. Jigar thanks for your time. I really appreciate it.

Jigar Shah 

Yeah, thanks so much for your interest.

Kai Ryssdal 

I didn’t know was 20%. First of all, I should have known that.

Kimberly Adams 

I didn’t know either. I think that, you know, it’s one of those things that, you know, if you look into it, I think I knew it when I was working on the story about the Vogtle plant. But even then I was, I forgot it. But even then, when I was talking to them, and they were saying, and I heard people talking about repurposing coal plants into nuclear power plants. I think these are like such smaller scale nuclear plants, because I have to imagine a lot of people have the Simpsons Nuclear Power Plant in mind half the time about this, this giant sort of hourglass shaped thing off in the distance spewing, you know, smoke or whatever. And that’s just not really like how these look anymore. They’re much smaller and just different in in scale. But I guess this is the future.

Kai Ryssdal 

No joke, no joke. Also, I all respect to Mr. Shah, I think he undersells the oh, my god Chernobyl factor. You know?

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, I don’t have, you know, a memory of these things happening as much as the fear and the aftermath and, and I’m probably the last generation that sort of took shelter under school desk in those drills, you know, sort of preparing for the the weapons side of things. But yeah, I think that the fear factor is kind of the big barrier here.

Kai Ryssdal

Totally, totally.

Kimberly Adams

All right. Well, let us know what you think about a resurgence in nuclear energy and what role if any, you think it should play in our clean energy economy. Our number is 508-827-6278, also known as 508-U-B-SMART. You can also email us at makemesmart@marketplace.org. We will be right back

Kai Ryssdal 

Alright, news, Kimberly Adams, what do you got?

Kimberly Adams 

I keep clicking between our script and C-SPAN trying to get the vote that is going on right now as we’re recording this, the first round of voting of voting for speaker and we’ve already got news that it’s going to have to go to a second ballot because nobody has enough to make it in this first round just given the voting in progress so far. And the piece that I was reading this morning that really struck me was one in Politico. So obviously, Jim Jordan, of Ohio is the Republican’s, some of the most of the Republicans choice at this part choice to be Speaker of the House. He doesn’t seem to have enough votes to make it through at least on the first ballot. Who knows by the time most folks are listening to this, he might. But Politico and several other news organizations were walking through in their newsletters this morning, sort of what a Jim Jordan speakership should, would mean and there was a section that jumped out at me in Politico’s Playbook this morning. It said it’s hard to underplay the stakes. electing a speaker, Speaker Jordan would mean installing a firm and Donald Trump loyalist atop the house. One even more willing to embrace the former president’s desires and tactics than McCarthy was a significant player in the plan to undo Joe Biden’s presidential victory. It’s easy to imagine the house moving appropriations bills that would defund DOJ’s Trump probes or zero out various Biden cabinet officials salaries or voting to impeach Biden or shutting down the government over policy fights with Democrats. And then over in The Washington Post, no CNBC has a story saying that Google, Amazon, and Apple could see antitrust bills put on hold if Jim Jordan is house speaker, because he seems to not have the appetite to do big tech regulation. And so while it’s relatively easy to kind of dismiss the partisan bickering and you know, we haven’t really been dismissing it, it’s obviously put the House on hold. We’ve talked about the threat of a government shutdown. We’ve talked about how military aid can’t move through and all these other things, but just even if they do pick someone, it really does matter who it is in terms of how this country’s economic policy is going to go.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, it’s a huge, huge, huge vote. It’s an enormous decision. It has incredible ramifications. And oh, by the way, sorry, this is my little pet peeve. Speaker of the house is the second line to the presidency. Jim Jordan is an election denier. He was talking to Donald Trump on the sixth of January. I’m, I don’t, I got nothing.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, yeah. I I’ll be curious how many votes it goes today whether it gets sorted today, are we going to do more but the news is in progress as we are talking right now.

Kai Ryssdal 

It is alright. Here’s my not in progress, it’s actually yesterday, but I missed it. Otherwise, I’d have oh, no, it’s today. Sorry, it’s today, but it’s late over there, their time, Israel time. It’s an article in Bloomberg. I will read it to you and then I will opine for about 10 seconds. Israel said on Tuesday, I’m quoting Bloomberg now, Israel said on Tuesday, it’s in talks with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to set up a Starlink satellite network to bolster wartime communications and have unexpected ground incursion into the Gaza Strip. Now, number one, have the Israelis learn nothing from the Ukrainians? Right, who had a whole rigmarole with Elon Musk and using Starlink to target in Crimea. We talked about that when it happens. So that’s issue number one. Issue number two is, again, has Israel or nothing by watching Elon Musk on the company, the social media company that he owns, and his boosting of anti-semitic tropes, his support of anti-semitic actors on that platform, and I don’t get it. That’s it. That’s what I got. I’m not getting a lot of things these days. Not many things making sense for me.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, and there’s a lot of things that just don’t make sense in general. Unless you you know, apply the basis of human instincts to motivations, which I try really hard not to do on a daily basis.

Kai Ryssdal 

Alright, we’re over the news, let’s do the mailbag.

Mailbag

Hi Kai and Kimberly. This is Godfrey from San Francisco. Jessie from Charleston, South Carolina. And I have a follow up question. It has me thinking and feeling a lot of things.

Kimberly Adams 

So last week, we talked about why schools run by the Department of Defense are outperforming a lot of other schools in the United States with more funding for teacher pay, a lot more stabilities stability sometimes in the families, and also well stocked school supply cabinets, which are a big part of it. And we actually heard back from a teacher.

Emily

Hi, this is Emily from California. As a teacher, I absolutely spend my own money on supplies, I buy pencils, art supplies, even printer paper one year, I wanted to point out that this is actually baked into the system so much that there’s a $300 tax deduction for teachers who spend their own money on their own supplies. It’s in the tax code. Thanks for making me smart.

Kimberly Adams 

That is just messed up on so many levels, like, we have this problem. Let’s bake it into the tax code and just accept that it’s a problem that we’re not going to fix. And then $300? So, like the fact that the write off exists is problematic, and at the beginning, and the fact that it’s not enough is even worse. But then on the other hand, do you want teachers spending even more of their salaries? No, but we know that teachers are going to spend more of it because they care. And then they can’t even get a full tax write off for it.

Kai Ryssdal 

Messed up on so many levels. Yes. All right. Before we go, as we always do this week’s answer to the Make Me Smart question, which is what is something you thought you knew, but later found out you were wrong about? This week’s answer comes from Kai Bird. He’s the co-author of “American Prometheus,” which if you saw the movie this summer, you know, is his biography along with his co-author whose name I cannot remember for the life of me and I apologize for that, of Robert Oppenheimer, which is funny because we were talking about nuclear power today. Anyway, so here he is Kai Bird on what he thought he knew, but later found out he was wrong about.

Kai Bird

As a young expatriate American growing up in the Middle East, I witnessed all the region’s terrible wars, the 1956 Suez War, the 1967 June war, there Jordanian Civil War of 1970, the September 1970, hijackings, the October 1973 war, but I truly thought that by the time I was in my 70s Well, surely there would be peace. And surely there would be a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum. I guess I was mistaken.

Kai Ryssdal 

That’s a historian right there. Martin Sherwin, by the way, is the co-author of American Prometheus with Kai Bird. History matters people. History matters.

Kimberly Adams 

Surely does. If you’ve got an answer to the Make Me Smart question or you want to recommend someone who you think should come on the show and answer said question which is what is something you thought you knew you later find out you’re wrong about our number 508-827-6278 also known as 508-U-B-SMART.

Kai Ryssdal 

Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Today’s program is engineered by Jayk Cherry. Juan Carlos Torodo is going to mix it down later. Our intern is Niloufar Shahbandi.

Kimberly Adams 

Ben Tolliday and Daniel Ramirez composed our theme music. Our senior producer is Marissa Cabrera. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts. Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital and Marketplace’s Vice President and General Manager is Neal Scarbrough.

Kai Ryssdal 

I should see that movie again. It was a long haul, but it was good.

Kimberly Adams 

It was. I got to see the Barbie movie first still. Oh, yeah, I only got to Oppenheimer side of the Barbenheimer.