Climate change and the 75% problem

Maria,

Much controversy about capacity markets these days, mostly because they no longer do what they were designed to do. Originally, the purpose of capacity markets was to make payments to generation facilities for guarantees of future capacity: "From January through March of 2023 I will provide you with 1000 megawatthours of electricity, each day, for this price," for example. It gave generators some money in advance to build their plants, so they would be ready to go live when needed.

Then, wind and solar entrepreneurs stepped in and wanted a piece of the action, but there was a problem: due to the unpredictable nature of weather, neither could guarantee they would be able to provide the energy when it had been promised. They tried to justify payments using statistics: "statistically, there's a 35% chance it won't rain, and I'll be able to give you 1000 megawatthours on June 7, 2023. So I'll just charge 35% as much for my capacity, 'kay?".

For a moment everybody was happy, but then reality sank in: say you're booking an Uber to the airport, and the driver calls and tells you "There's only a 20% chance I'll be able to make it, so I'll charge you $5 instead of $25." Is that a deal you'd accept? Of course not - you might save $20, but you also might not make your flight. You'd waste the $900 you had spent on round-trip tickets!

Capacity payments don't make sense for renewables, period, and because they're inherently unreliable, they can't compete with dispatchable sources of electricity. Though suddenly this has become a big debate, it's something that never should have started in the first place.

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The idea for molten salt reactors (MSRs) began with an experiment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1960s, where physicists assembled an 8-megawatt prototype. The reactor ran for a total of six years, generating 8 million watts of electricity non-stop, before it was shut down for political reasons (it was considered a resounding success, despite some technical problems).

Interest in the technology experienced a renaissance in 2005, after physicists Ralph Moir and Edward Teller ("The Father of the Hydrogen Bomb") published a paper describing how a hypothetical molten salt breeder reactor might work.

From 2011-2015 I attended several conferences sponsored by a group called the Thorium Energy Alliance, and spoke with Moir about progress on the technology. Much of the enthusiasm at the time was centered around the fact it couldn't "melt down". I discovered, however, that reactor meltdowns are virtually impossible at a modern U.S. plant (Fukushima and Chernobyl would never have been licensed to operate in the U.S. - not in the 1960s, not today). In 2012 two grad students at MIT started Transatomic Power, a company devoted to making an MSR that "would consume existing stockpiles of nuclear waste". In theory it was a great idea; in practice, it was a monumental task of engineering that would have required more money (a lot more) and expertise than the students could pull together. Transatomic Power folded in 2017.

Progress continues in China and Canada, but is not expected to yield fruit for another decade. For climate change, that's too long.

NuScale is the shining star in 4th-generation nuclear technology. Much about NuScale's Small Modular Reactor (SMR) is similar to existing plants, with several important differences: it's smaller, and runs at a lower temperature and operating pressure (think Crock Pot, vs. pressure cooker). The main attraction, however is cost - about 1/3 as much for the same power output as a "mainframe" 3rd-generation plant. The first NuScale plant is scheduled to go online in 2025 - not a moment too soon.