Nuclear Industry Sees Its Survival In The Need For Carbon Capture

Source: Jeff McMahon · FORBES · | December 17, 2020

The control room of the BN-800 at the Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Station in Russia, considered the ... [+] TASS VIA GETTY IMAGES

Nuclear advocates see a vast market for reactors in carbon capture and carbon-based products, not only for the next generation of reactors in development, but also for the aging dinosaurs they evolved from.

“Carbon products represent the potential for an entirely new market for nuclear energy,” said Canon Bryan, the CFO of Terrestrial Energy, which is developing a reactor that uses liquid uranium fluoride fuel.

“Nuclear energy has traditionally been constrained to the province of electric-power generation, and that’s been fine, and maybe a little bit of desalination, but these types of industrial products and industrial generation represent new markets for the next generation of nuclear technologies.”

Among those carbon products is sustainable aviation fuel, currently made mostly from biomass. The nuclear industry would derive the carbon for that fuel instead from smokestacks, likely at cement plants, and eventually, if costs drop sufficiently, from direct-air capture.

Some advocates also see a new market for the existing reactors that are limping toward obsolescence. The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in San Luis Obispo, California, for example, is slated to shut down in 2024 and 2025.