Introducing Energy Central Podcast and Our Inaugural Episode Featuring Dan Yurman - [an Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast]

Looking forward to it Matt, and a great debut!

A warning, however: Though Dan's nuclear chili is not radioactive, consumption may result in emissions with a half-life of several days.

A huge thanks to Dan Yurman for his extensive nuclear industry insight and, of course, his chili recipe. Thanks to all the Energy Central readers for pushing his article to the top in reader popularity. I am thrilled to host the Energy Central "Insights" podcast and a big kudos to the Energy Central team for launching this program. 

Thanks Dan for sharing your deep knowledge about the nuclear industry, very interesting podcast! It is especially interesting to think about the hybrid projects you mention where various renewable energy sources can be deployed near one another so as to offer complementary advantages and work together cumulatively to reduce emissions across the board.

The Chili recipie is found here with 2,780 page views so far.  It also makes important distinctions between beer for cooking and beer for drinking.  Enjoy.

https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/dan%E2%80%99s-idaho-nuclear-chili-rec...

I’m 81 years old and in a tearing hurry to get nuclear power on the way to dominating energy supply to mitigate the C in CAGW, for the sake of my children and grandchildren. And I have ‘seen the light’ – yet I am a lone voice in the wilderness, because:

Dan Yurman, Michael Schellenberer and all the rest of the nuclear industry’s top communicators, in and on the main media and social media, seem completely oblivious to the 2 most significant developments in the nuclear industry that have the potential to bring about a resurgence of nuclear power by 2030, that will be irresistible.

The first game-changer will have those drooling, pseudo-green, quick-buck pension fund managers breaking the doors down to get their money out of renewables and into GE-Hitachi's BWRX-300 Small Modular Reactors [SMRs]. By 2030, they'll be at the factory manufacturing stage, with a 2 year on-site build programme and a capital cost competitive to gas.

Site work on the first one will commence in 2025, for the breakers to be thrown in 2027, at a capital cost 60% below that of 'big nuclear'. By 2030, the capital cost will be down to US$2,000/kW and available for manufacture under licence in the UK, to provide us with 300 MW nuclear power plants [npps] at a capital cost of £468 million. At Sizewell in the UK, 11 such SMRs, built in series, with earnings from 2 years onward, would fit exactly within that site boundary and would cost £5.2 billion – that’s less than1/3rd of what we expect to pay for EDF's planned EPRs.

This uniquely simple npp, using significantly less materials per MW than any npp that has ever been designed and is ever likely to be designed, will change the nuclear power landscape forever. It will become the workhorse of low-carbon electricity generation, as ubiquitous as coal fired power stations were in their heyday.

The second ground-shaker is the conclusions reached by the USA's NRC, that the Emergency Planning Zones for SMRs need extend no further than the boundary fence of the tiny sites. Succinctly expressed by Dr James Conca in an August article in Forbes:

"...the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission just agreed that any emergencies that could possibly occur at a small modular nuclear power plant probably won’t even get past the fence..........No need to come up with huge evacuation plans for nearby cities or anyone living near the plant, like we did for older plants. You can just stand there at the fence and watch what’s going on...".

In the hand-in-glove world of Capitalism and Politics, this is how it will work: The pension fund managers will pile into BWRX-300 expansion; the politicians will follow the money; the utterly uninterested/disinterested UK public will be told: "nuclear power is now safe and cheap, we're going to get rid of all of this renewables rubbish, and your electricity will all come from nuclear in future".

There will be a palpable shrugging of millions of shoulders, an audible rumbling of millions of TV remotes in operation, all will be peaceful on the nuclear front, we’ll be paying 1/3rd as much to boil our kettles and the money we save will be for our own lifestyle choices.

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