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Accessibility statementSkip to main content Democracy Dies in Darkness SubscribeSign in Democracy Dies in Darkness OpinionsEditorialsColumnsGuest opinionsCartoonsLetters to the editorSubmit a guest opinionSubmit a letter OpinionsEditorialsColumnsGuest opinionsCartoonsLetters to the editorSubmit a guest opinionSubmit a letter OPINION NUCLEAR POWER COULD RISE AGAIN Building out nuclear power will be critical for the project of combating climate change. 4 min 542 View of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, which sits along the Susquehanna River. (Michael S. Williamson/WASHINGTON POST) By the Editorial Board October 23, 2024 at 4:59 p.m. EDT Nuclear energy is getting another chance. In short succession over the past few weeks, three of the nation’s tech goliaths announced eye-catching investments in nuclear projects to secure low-carbon electricity for artificial intelligence data centers. Sign up for Shifts, an illustrated newsletter series about the future of work First, Microsoft committed to buy 20 years’ worth of power from the shuttered Three Mile Island facility in Pennsylvania, site of an infamous disaster in 1979 that arrested nuclear development in the United States. Then Google cut a deal with California-based Kairos Power to develop a series of high-tech small modular reactors. And Amazon announced it is funding another cutting-edge nuclear firm, X-energy, to develop and license its own line of SMRs. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.) The flurry of activity, just a few months after the long-delayed opening of the Vogtle 4 light-water reactor, which started providing electricity to Georgia’s power grid in April, suggests that nuclear power, long shunned as either too dangerous or too expensive, might be reemerging as an essential tool in the battle against climate change. Advertisement Story continues below advertisement Still, it will take more than a handful of deals with Big Tech to transform nuclear into a viable, economical source of clean energy at scale. According to an Energy Department analysis, meeting the promise to produce zero net carbon emissions by mid-century will require at least 200 additional gigawatts of nuclear power, tripling existing capacity. Nuclear power requires much less land than solar and wind farms. It can be located closer to where power is needed, reducing needed investment in long-distance transmission lines. Critically, it produces electricity all the time, not just when the sun shines and the wind blows. Follow Editorial Board Follow According to the DOE analysis, based on modeling of California’s power system, including nuclear energy in the mix, along with other firm, non-variable sources of electricity such as geothermal and hydropower, would reduce the overall cost of decarbonizing the grid by 37 percent compared with relying on renewables and energy storage alone. The DOE recommends starting immediately. But hurdles remain. Developing a nuclear future will require selecting a technology to build out in order to develop the economies of scale, know-how and other efficiencies that will help contain costs. The enormous expense of the 20th-century nuclear deployment in the United States was largely because builders used more than 50 unique reactor designs. Other countries with more standardized models built out nuclear energy much more cheaply. Advertisement Story continues below advertisement The several projects making headlines — all reliant on different technologies — do not settle this choice. Kairos is developing SMRs that use molten salt as a coolant. X-energy’s SMRs use a gas coolant. Neither has gotten the green light from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, nor has either been deployed commercially. SMRs are designed to be built in factories, to be assembled inexpensively on-site, and to be far more flexible in location and application than traditional nuclear plants. They are worth exploring, particularly if the experimentation leads the industry to coalesce quickly around one design. Meantime, utilities and the government already have a design they should be able to agree on, for the bigger, traditional nuclear facilities that the nation needs. The design of the two AP1000 light-water reactors deployed in the Vogtle plant in Georgia over the past two years, each boasting an output of 1.1 gigawatts, is a 21st-century version of the familiar nuclear plants people have been building for decades. The technology is better-designed and even safer, offering a promise of large amounts of power. Advertisement Story continues below advertisement Opponents point to Vogtle as proof that nuclear energy will always be too expensive. The two reactors, originally budgeted at $14 billion, ended up costing $32 billion after massive delays. But the cost overruns stemmed either from idiosyncratic mistakes — such as an incomplete design when the project began — or from problems that always come with first-of-a-kind construction, such as an immature supply chain and an untrained workforce. Future AP1000s will not be unique. As the Energy Department noted, the fourth Vogtle reactor was cheaper than the third. Despite higher interest rates, the DOE estimates that future AP1000 reactors could provide power at half the cost as the two most recent additions: as little as $60 per megawatt-hour. Getting more built will probably require pooling demand, and that will likely require involving the federal government to either build reactors on its own or to offer insurance to cover cost overruns by the private sector. The technology itself matters less than the commitment to deploy it. That is essential for nuclear energy to rise again, which is, in turn, important for sustaining high standards of living as the world transitions off fossil fuels. THE POST’S VIEW | ABOUT THE EDITORIAL BOARD Editorials represent the views of The Post as an institution, as determined through discussion among members of the Editorial Board, based in the Opinions section and separate from the newsroom. Members of the Editorial Board: Opinion Editor David Shipley, Deputy Opinion Editor Charles Lane and Deputy Opinion Editor Stephen Stromberg, as well as writers Mary Duenwald, David E. Hoffman, James Hohmann, Mili Mitra, Eduardo Porter, Keith B. Richburg and Molly Roberts. Share 542 Comments Popular opinions articles HAND CURATED * Opinion|If demography is destiny, bring on immigration. We’re going to need it. October 23, 2024 Opinion|If demography is destiny, bring on immigration. We’re going to need it. October 23, 2024 * Opinion|The risk of exaggerating Trump’s ability to overturn the election October 22, 2024 Opinion|The risk of exaggerating Trump’s ability to overturn the election October 22, 2024 * Opinion|Voters prefer Harris’s agenda to Trump’s — they just don’t realize it. Take our quiz. October 22, 2024 Opinion|Voters prefer Harris’s agenda to Trump’s — they just don’t realize it. Take our quiz. October 22, 2024 View 3 more stories Follow the Editorial Board Sign up to get email alerts every time the Editorial Board publishes. Sign up Subscribe to comment and get the full experience. 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