The Mississippi Energy Institute sponsored this post authored by Executive Director Patrick Sullivan.
The demand increase for electricity is not a flash-in-the-pan but a trend expected to persist for decades in the U.S. and globally. This will create challenges with inadequate electricity supply in places but opportunities as well, especially for states like Mississippi that have shown the willingness and capability to develop critical infrastructure faster. As Mississippi considers opportunities for nuclear power expansion in the coming years, here are several points to acknowledge on the front end in managing public expectations: 1. Nuclear power is very, very expensive to build – Grand Gulf’s cost to build was almost $6 billion in the mid-1980s. Today, a similar sized facility may cost about 4 times that. Small modular reactors offer the prospect for smaller, more scalable units, but economics on SMRs are uncertain with no commercial projects yet underway. 2. Nuclear power requires many years to develop – The full process of permitting, licensing, financing and construction can take 15-20 years. Could the U.S. nuclear regulatory process be improved? Yes, and it should. Could the pre-construction and construction process be quicker with SMRs? Potentially, but time will tell as any projects develop commercially. 3. Nuclear power facilities are multi-generational assets – Just look at Grand Gulf. While there were construction delays and cost overruns 40+ years ago with that facility, the plant today may be the most dependable, lowest-cost source of baseload power, power that’s generated around the clock to meet base electricity demand. About 80% of all electricity generated in Mississippi comes from natural gas. As long as natural gas is at historically low prices, this is okay, but planning for the future must assume volatility in natural gas markets and higher prices in the future as global demand for natural gas continues to climb. Grand Gulf is the best case to look at to see actual, long-term benefits of a nuclear power facility. In today’s culture of instant gratification, getting the public to accept the enormous investment with such a long-term payoff can be challenging, but like Grand Gulf, presenting nuclear power projects as critical infrastructure planned today for the benefit of the next two generations is a case worth making. Whether the future of nuclear is new large reactor technologies or small modular reactors, Mississippi taking a proactive policy approach to ease early-stage planning and eventual construction could result in a big payoff 20 years from now. Looking to diversify the electricity portfolio is reason enough, but with more and more electricity-consuming industries looking for reliable, clean power, future nuclear power projects will likely bring more industrial development and high-paying jobs with it, like data centers and automotive manufacturing. More and more, companies will invest and operate where they know electric power will be reliably available.
20 comments:
Amazing....My Dad ran a warehouse for M,P&L. I heard a lot about the building of Grand Gulf Nuclear power plant along with the protests of that project. Now all the protester types are all about electric vehicles and quiet about where the electricity comes from. At 70 years of age, I'm just sitting back watching the show!
Yeah, it's a show for sure. It's as if all these liberals think that electricity is a natural phenomenon that just forms out of thin air. Liberalism is a mental disease.
Where is Entergy getting all the new power required for the Amazon data centers. They use lots of power.
I am in favor of Small Modular Reactors(SMR's). Long term I support Fusion SMR's: no long term waste and fail safe. I am wondering if we build Fission SMR's can the design of Fission SMR's consider future conversion to Fusion SMR's? Maybe not because a Fusion reactor is so differnt from a Fission reactor. long term Fusion is our only answer to clean energy.
Go read some about Southern Company’s new Vogtle unit. Realize it was an additional reactor to an existing plant that dealt with massive overruns and contractor bankruptcy that the promised cheap electricity….it is a pipe dream. Customers have to pay for all these costs via higher rates, just as MS customers will pay higher rates for Amazon’s needed power. Look at the data centers in Virginia and the increasing electrical costs to the consumer. Natural gas is the cheapest source after accounting for government subsidies on green energy. Also, natural gas is plentiful due to fracking. The volumes that are flared off because of pipeline restrictions preventing capture/transport is astounding.
Pearl Mississippi has a new professional baseball team, there's no good reason why they can't have a new nuculear reactor too!
Doesn't electricity like come from like organic kale?
Past time to get Grand Gulf NPP in order.
Unit one with an active reactor and then there's Unit two with a moth ball reactor just sitting there maybe spend some more updating
Hydrogen power is a possibility if the net energy problem can be somehow solved (takes more energy to split the hydrogen and oxygen apart than you can get out of it)
10:52, Entergy is buying the power from Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator and selling it to Amazon and pocketing the difference.
And still my bills never got lower as promised. Indeed, the old MP&L promised that we'd have nearly free electrical power because they could sell the excess! Do remember folks there are cities in other states with a larger population that we have in Mississippi. I don't want to be an investor that again gets zero profit from my investment.
Using our foreign policy logic, that means Mississippi will be able to develop nuclear weapons for the next civil war, right?
Enough profit has been made off selling excess power that they Entergy can damn well do maintenance on their plant and equipment! Maintenance and repair and knowing the "life" or parts and equipment should have always been a part of their operating budget!
Never forget that it was leftists who shut off our massive lead in nuclear power. There was a time when the majority of Light Water Reactors outside of the USSR were made by GE.
5:32 pm There is a huge difference in how other countries including Japan and all of Europe build and manage nuclear plants and how Grand Gulf was and is after renaming themselves as Entergy. Please look up MISS.P>&L v. Miss.ex rel.Moore::487 U.S.354 (1988) for a document that will only begin to enlighten you. Better yet, find some retired employees who can now tell you how things worked when it was MP&L and when it changed its name. Then you can contrast and compare how other state's power companies with nuclear plants have been built and managed. You don't have to leave the South to educate yourself on this. It ain't us vs the Yankees.
Entergy just signed a $1B dollar contract with NextEra Energy to provide solar to Mississippi, undoubtedly for the AWS project and their Fulfillment Center (no solar on the roofs there yet). NEE, through their subsidiary NextEra Energy Partners, is the largest provided of solar and wind in the nation. Funny how Entergy was so unprepared for the future they have to sub contract this!!!
Vogle got enourmous subsidies to finish that plant.
And the cheapest sources of new power (unsubsidized) are: 1) on-shore wind (25-50 $/MwH); solar (40-60 $/MwH); natural gas combined cycle (70-95 $/MwH). Natural gas is not the cheapest by any measure, but it’s easy to get built - small footprint, and a lot of Republican support, but not the cheapest.
Fusion as a source of power is decades away, still. It was right around the corner when I was in university 40 years ago and I had to take classes in electromagnetic theory and plasma physics to get ready.
Don’t hold your breath.
I have no idea where you get this lame data. The LWRs made by GE are Boiling Water Reactors (BWR). There are 61 operating BWRs in the world vs. 307 Pressurised Water Reactors (PWRs, the other kind of LWR).
We never had a massive lead, France did. France rapidly built out nuclear PWRs in the 60’s and 70’s with a massive government money infusion and commitment to free itself from machinations of the oil cartels. We took a different path. We still operate coal power plants, France’s coal electricity production is negligible. France has 56 operable nuclear reactors with a total capacity of 61 gigawatts (GW), generating close to 67% of the nation’s power. This is second only to the United States, which has a nuclear fleet of 95 GW.
Nuclear power failed here because it was uneconomically expensive without the massive subsidiaries provided by other governments. And, unfortunately (because I’m a fan of nuclear power), that ridiculously high price is still uneconomical.
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