Dr. Matthew Memmott: Nuclear power plants
SciLine conducts interviews with experts and makes the footage available to journalists for use in their stories.
What is Experts on Camera?
Expert on Camera
More than 50 nuclear plants are operating in 28 U.S. states, and greenhouse gas emission reduction goals are spurring interest in expanding U.S. nuclear power. At the same time, many states and communities are grappling with how to safely manage nuclear waste from these facilities.
On November 20, 2024, SciLine interviewed: Dr. Matthew Memmott, an associate professor of chemical engineering at Brigham Young University. See the footage and transcript from the interview below, or select ‘Contents’ on the left to skip to specific questions.
Declared interests:
Dr. Memmott is the co-founder and a technical advisor/consultant for AlphaTech Research Corp., a nuclear reactor design company commercializing micro-molten salt reactor technology.
Journalists: video free for use in your stories
High definition (mp4, 1280x720)
Introduction
[0:00:20]
MATTHEW MEMMOTT: My name is Matthew Memmott. I am an associate professor in the chemical engineering department at Brigham Young University, and my focus is nuclear engineering, particularly nuclear power plants, safety, innovation and improvements.
Interview with SciLine
How safe is nuclear energy generation in the United States?
[0:00:43]
MATTHEW MEMMOTT: A few people a while back were interested in that same question, and they underwent a study where they aggregated all of the data regarding power production and fatalities, and they created a chart of deaths per terawatt hour per year for all the different types of power production. And at the very, very bottom, around .03, .02 deaths per terawatt hour per year was nuclear. Very closely followed and interchangeable almost with solar power. So, considering all the accidents and all of the circumstances we’re concerned with, nuclear is still the most safe power production that we know.
How does nuclear compare to other kinds of U.S. energy generation in terms of greenhouse gas emissions?
[0:01:31]
MATTHEW MEMMOTT: So, it turns out the greenhouse gas emissions are produced for everything, and the challenge is that we need electricity—there are some greenhouse gas emission sources that are minimized. So, for example, when you look at solar and wind, no greenhouse gases are produced as it’s operating. Which is great. But you do make greenhouse gases in making the solar panels and in making the wind turbines, et cetera, et cetera. And nuclear is right there with solar and wind, and that no greenhouse gas emissions are released at all through the operation of nuclear power. Like with solar and wind, there’s some before and after, but that’s an unavoidable fact. The idea is that of the emissions-free power production in the U.S.; 50% of our electricity that’s emissions-free comes from nuclear.
What newer nuclear energy technologies are emerging, and how are they different from existing nuclear plants?
[0:02:30]
MATTHEW MEMMOTT: The nuclear plants that we run right now are light water reactors, and those were developed and conceived by Admiral Rickover. They worked on the ships and the subs, and basically you use water to cool off solid rods of uranium oxide that are fissioning and generating heat, and they work really well, particularly in the water, but some of the challenges are that if you don’t have water or cooling capabilities, then that fuel can get too hot. We’re also worried about the waste, and the cost of those light water reactors has gone really, really high because of the fact that we build them very, very large. And so, some of these advanced reactors that have been proposed over the last several decades really are designed to fix some of those challenges or make them even better. So, for example, some of the newer reactors can take nuclear waste and put it in as fuel and run on that nuclear waste, thus eliminating our waste stockpile. Some of them are really, really good at being so incredibly safe that a meltdown is virtually impossible. And some of them are really good at economic advantages. And so, these advanced reactors, there’s multiple designs and types that many people and many companies are trying to develop right now, and the idea is they’re taking something that’s already the safest power production and making it cheaper, safer, and better from a lot of technical standpoints.
What challenges exist for U.S. nuclear facilities?
[0:03:55]
MATTHEW MEMMOTT: One of the biggest challenges that we’re facing right now in the nuclear industry, and why several nuclear plants have shut down is market economics. Although a lot of these plants have been paid off, we’re talking about nuclear being a base-load production. And there are a couple of stresses to that. One, that base load means you turn it on all the time, no matter what, and you keep it on full power as much as you can. And one of the challenges is, as we begin to introduce more renewables onto the electricity grid, we get a lot of electricity coming from the sun and wind during the day, and then it dramatically drops off when the sun goes down, but people come home from work and want their TVs and their microwaves and everything on. And so, we have this stability issue where we have big swings in the demand for electricity, and we can’t just store electricity on the grid. We have to use it as soon as it’s created. And so nuclear plants have struggled because they can’t quickly turn down the power, and they can’t quickly turn up the power. And so, the price for electricity during those times when there’s a lot of renewables goes really low, and it causes economic hardship because they’re not getting the money that they need to maintain, uh, profitability. And so, there’s some unique market circumstances that have made it challenging for current nuclear plants to stay operational. And when it comes to new plants, a lot of them have technology that will fix this. They can match the load of renewables really easily. They call it load following, and these nuclear plants have the capacity to do so. But the challenge for almost all nuclear plants that are new is licensing. The licensing process takes 20 years and a billion dollars, historically with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and that’s just as a massive barrier to entry that very few can take that hit to their company line.
What different kinds of nuclear facilities are there?
[0:05:51]
MATTHEW MEMMOTT: We have several nuclear facilities in the United States, and this ranges from front-end. We call it of the fuel cycle, in other words, production of the fuel. So we have mills and fabrication plants that work on taking the uranium ore and processing all the way to the fuel. We have nuclear power plants that use that fuel as a source and then generate electricity. We have national labs that do a lot of nuclear based research. We have nuclear medical facilities where we are looking at using medical isotopes, isotopes that come from nuclear reactions or nuclear processes that are used for medicine or for diagnostics, and we have fuel storage capabilities where we’re looking at storing spent fuel, although those have not technically opened. The facility has been built and established to some degree, and some are used for government purposes. And so, there’s a wide range supporting the entire supply chain of nuclear energy, and also a lot supplying the needs of industries and medical industries for the isotopes that are needed for some of those very standard processes that are used there.
How much nuclear waste is produced in nuclear energy generation?
[0:07:05]
MATTHEW MEMMOTT: This is one of the real strengths of nuclear. Nuclear energy produces the least amount of waste compared to just about any other type of energy production. In fact, if you were to consider that nuclear power would provide all of your electricity needs as an individual, from birth to death, all of the waste that your entire life of electricity use would produce would be about the shape of a can of soda. And if we took all of the nuclear power that has produced since 1950, and keep in mind that’s 20% of the entire U.S. consumption of electricity, if we took all of that electricity generated by nuclear since 1950, all of that would fit on a football field and be only about 10 yards deep on a single football field. So, it’s a very, very small amount. And even more significant, 95% of that quote, unquote, nuclear waste is actually still usable fuel, but because of some physical limitations, we can’t use it without doing some processing of that waste first.
How is U.S. nuclear waste stored?
[0:08:12]
MATTHEW MEMMOTT: Typically, what happens in the storage of nuclear waste is when it first comes out of the reactor, it’s very, very radioactive, and so they’ll take it and transfer it directly to a pool of water, and that pool of water does two things. One, it keeps it cool, because it’s still generating a little bit of heat even after the process is done. And two, it blocks all of the radiation and keeps everybody in an environment safe and from that radioactive potential. And so that typically is stored somewhere between two and 10 years, depending on the type of reactor and the type of fuel. After that’s done, there are two options. One option is what we had originally proposed that we would do in the United States, and that is, we take that fuel, we put it in special casks that can be transported safely, and we send it to an underground repository where we stick it, and until we know what to do with it, we just keep it underground for however many years. The other option, which is ended up being what we actually do, because that underground repository was never fully readied and utilized. Instead, we stick it in giant concrete casks that are really robust. They can handle falling off 50-story buildings, being hit by trains, crashing from an airplane, etc. without damage. And we stick these large concrete—they call them spent fuel casks—on site at the new plant, and they just basically sit there on the nuclear plant property until we know what to do with them. And that’s what we’re currently doing.
What role do you think nuclear energy will have in the future of the United States?
[0:09:42]
MATTHEW MEMMOTT: I recently read a study, or series of studies, that indicate that between electrified vehicles and data center needs, the anticipated consumption of electricity in the U.S. is expected to go up two to 10 times by the year 2050. And if we think about that, that means we’re talking about building all the power plants we’ve ever built that are operating right now between two and 10 more times in just 25 years, even though it took us decades to get to where we are now. And so, we’re talking about a massive need for electricity. And I think advanced nuclear being cheaper, and safer, and more effective in a lot of ways must be a big part of our solution, as well as the renewable piece.
