I2M’s Chief Geologist Presents the 2021 Annual Report to EMD Zoom Conference

NuScale personnel produced a report in early 2021 to extoll the virtues of their new technology. They indicated that over the past century, the power generator fleet in the U.S. has gone through many changes. New technologies, state and federal environmental regulations, and changing operating costs have all contributed to an increasingly diverse energy generation landscape. The early industrial successes of the world are credited to the affordability and abundance of electricity, particularly from coal-fired power plants. Historically, large-scale coal power plants in the U.S. offered a cost-effective power solution that satisfied growing energy demand, due to the wide availability of coal as fuel and the relative ease to which it could be delivered to a plant site.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), over the last decade, the United States has led the world with over 260 billion short-tons of recoverable coal reserves—translating to 28 percent of total global reserves—which is 50 percent more than Russia (the world’s second largest reserves). Even as alternative generation sources emerged, America’s continued use of coal as the primary fuel for electricity production was a direct result of the nation’s wealth in it as a resource. (see * below).

Coal’s long reign over the energy sector, however, has rapidly declined throughout the 21st century as new clean energy technologies have emerged and climate change concerns across the globe have increased. Many U.S. electricity providers have announced the retirement of coal-generating assets due to both market and regulatory factors; coal infrastructure across the nation is also aging. The nation’s coal consumption peaked in 2007 and in 2008, coal-fired electricity represented nearly half of U.S. generation.

Since 2007, this capacity has declined by 39 percent. The EIA’s latest inventory of electric generators report5 released in February 2021 states that a total of 48 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired electric generating capacity has retired over the past five years. In 2021, 2.7 GW of coal-fired capacity is scheduled to retire, primarily from older coal units that are more than 50 years old.

Coal continues to face increasing competition from other generation sources, including natural gas, solar, wind, and hydroelectric power and nuclear power. This purpose of this report is to discuss the benefits of adding advanced small modular reactor (SMR) nuclear technology into this mix of competition. With the first ever SMR to receive U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) design approval, Oregon-based company NuScale Power is poised to usher in a new era of clean energy with advanced nuclear technology that builds on America’s legacy of safe and reliable nuclear power.

NuScale has developed a new modular light water reactor nuclear power plant to supply energy for electrical generation, district heating, desalination, and other process heat applications. The groundbreaking small modular reactor (SMR**) design at the heart of the NuScale power plant is the fully factory fabricated NuScale Power Module™ (NPM) that generates a gross output of 77 megawatts of electricity (MWe) using a safer, smaller, and scalable version of pressurized water reactor technology.

NuScale’s scalable design—power plants that can house up to four, six, or 12 individual power modules— offers the benefits of carbon-free energy and reduces the financial commitments associated with gigawatt-sized nuclear facilities. NuScale builds on proven nuclear technology with a focus on integration and simplification. The result is an affordable clean energy solution that provides unparalleled safety, flexibility, reliability and resiliency.

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*[Coal will soon be an industrial-scale source of rare earths and graphene. Also, see Campbell, et al. (2014).]

**[For a history of SMR development over the past 10 years, see the I2M Web Portal Search Results)].