Dow’s Corpus Christi project shows nuclear challenges
WASHINGTON — If all goes to plan, a Dow Chemical plant north of Corpus Christi will be home to four small-scale, gascooled nuclear reactors that the Biden administration hopes will herald a new age of nuclear energy in the United States.
The project, in which Dow has partnered with the Maryland-based technology firm XEnergy, is scheduled to be operational by 2030. But before that can happen, the companies will need to not only navigate a federal regulatory process that has never licensed a reactor of the type they are building but do so without a guaranteed source of the uranium they need.
“We will make a decision, sometime between 2026 and 2028, to say that (uranium) supply chain exists,” Edward Stones, vice president of energy and climate at Dow Inc., said at a Senate hearing Thursday. “We’re willing to trust the government and everyone working on this will enable that, but without that we will not proceed.”
Four years after Congress passed legislation designed to spur the revival of nuclear power plant construction in a country that had built only a handful new reactors since the early 1990s, those plans are falling into increasing uncertainty.
The expectation was that a new generation of advanced nuclear power plants of the type Dow is planning for could be built smaller, safer and — most importantly — cheaper. Costs of the new, large Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia are estimated at more than $34 billion.
But development of the technology is being held up by rising borrowing and construction costs, supply chain disruptions and an uncertain licens
Anything more and scientists say survival will become a lot harder for all living things.
This conference of parties will hear that 2023 was the warmest year on record, greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise and the average temperature is on pace to rise 2.5 degrees Celsius. We are currently 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures.
Wood Mackenzie, one of the energy industry’s most trusted consultants, says the world must spend $2.7 trillion annually to limit warming to 1.5 degrees by 2050. The transition to a low-carbon economy is not only lifesaving, but the biggest business opportunity since the Industrial Revolution.
Al-Jaber and others who depend on oil and gas for their livelihood fear ending up like the coal industry. In 2015, I listened to the CEO of the nation’s largest coal company, Peabody Energy, make a desperate plea at CERAWeek.
“Why are we working so hard to push ourselves off the cliff ?” Greg Boyce asked, before declaring that efforts to save the climate would “hurt people and cripple economies
for negligible environmental benefit.”
Natural gas, wind and solar energy efficiently replaced the coal industry faster than anyone imagined. While some nations will always burn some coal, the U.S. is expected to cut consumption in half by 2026 from its peak in 2011, and even further by 2030, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis reported.
Now, al-Jaber and other oil executives are using the same desperate arguments to slow carbon and methane emissions reductions.
“Three billion people fall short of modern living standards, and far too many remain trapped in extreme poverty with no access to electricity or clean cooking fuels,” Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods told the APEC CEO Summit last month. “The global North-South divide will only be bridged when we commit to solving the world’s energy and
emissions challenges simultaneously. Oil and gas are at the center of both.”
Big Oil wants the government to pay them to remove the gases their products release.
Who wouldn’t want to make money making and cleaning up the mess? U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wants the world to replace using fossil fuels instead. “We know it is still possible to make the 1.5-degree limit a reality. And we know how to get there,” he said last week.
“It requires tearing out the poisoned root of the climate crisis: fossil fuels.”
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their Russian allies are panicking because they’re seeing oil demand growth slow. China’s economy slow and electric vehicles become more common. OPEC voted Thursday to further cut oil production to drive prices higher.
OPEC is also furious at the International Energy Agency, which was once a loyal lapdog. Ahead of COP28, the IEA predicted that oil demand would soon start declining in wealthy nations and reaching climate goals requires a massive cut back in fossil fuel use.
Even worse, the IEA determined that capturing carbon and methane emissions cannot substitute for slashing fossil fuel use in half.
The hottest topic at COP28 is how wealthy nations will help poorer ones skip the fossil fuel trap. While a few lessdeveloped nations with fossil fuels want to exploit their natural resources, most underdeveloped societies wish for clean energy, not dirty castoffs.
Al-Jaber will make COP28 about protecting Big Oil, and he may succeed in some ways. But ignore all the talk about helping the world’s poor; they are quite aware of what they’re going through and demand better.
Chris Tomlinson, named 2021 columnist of the year by the Texas Managing Editors, writes commentary about money, politics and life in Texas. Sign up for his “Tomlinson’s Take” newsletter at HoustonChronicle.com/TomlinsonNewsletter or Expressnews.com/TomlinsonNewsletter.