Nuclear industry hopes to expand output with reactors
The U.S. nuclear industry is generating less electricity as reactors retire, but now plant operators are hoping to nearly double their output over the next three decades, according to the industry’s trade association.
The massive scaling-up envisioned by the utilities hangs on the functionality of a new type of nuclear reactor that’s far smaller than traditional reactors. About two dozen U.S. companies are developing advanced reactors, with some that could come online by the end of the decade if the technology succeeds and federal regulators approve.
Utilities that are members of the Nuclear Energy Institute project they could add 90 gigawatts of nuclear power, combined, to the U.S. grid, with the bulk of that coming online by 2050, according to the association. That translates to about 300 new small modular reactors, estimated Maria Korsnick, president and chief executive officer of the institute.
“We have the innovation, we have the capability, we have the American ingenuity,” she said. “There’s no reason that we shouldn’t be able to to bring these products to market.”
U.S. nuclear electricity generation capacity peaked at 102 gigawatts in 2012, when there were 104 operating nuclear reactors, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The nation’s current 92 operating reactors have nearly 95 gigawatts of capacity.
Their output totaled 778 million megawatt hours in 2021, which was 1.5% less than the previous year and 19% of the nation’s electricity, the information administration said. That’s enough to power more than 70 million homes.
It’s costly and time consuming to build huge conventional nuclear plants. A project in Georgia — the only nuclear plant under construction in the United States — is now projected to cost its owners more than $30 billion. When approved in 2012, the first new nuclear reactors to be built in decades were estimated to cost $14 billion.