Fact Checking Flashcards About New Nuclear Projects
In the past two months a number of projects issued press statements making claims attempting to hitch their wagon to the rush of investment dollars heading into the nuclear industry.
Due diligence and fact checking remain important, else some people not familiar with the complexity of building nuclear facilities will mistake a stack of public relations flashcards for real substance.
Examples include claims by startups that they will have an operating reactor on the grid, fission or fusion, within timeframes that not only stretch the boundaries of plausibility but also physics, regulatory process, etc.
These behaviors are not limited by size of the firm as in recent months several very large, ambitious projects, as well as small ones, have been announced sans lists of investors and other information supporting due diligence about the substance of their intentions. Although, two of these firms have impressive starts. Fermi America announced $100M in Series C plus a $250M loan facility. The Nuclear Company announced $51.3M in Series A funding. Both firms will likley burn through their respective first rounds of funding in short order.
Separately, a recent announcement by a combination of TVA, NuScale, and data center firm ENTRA1 was long on promises and short on financial commitments. Despite the serious intent of the respective parties, the deal doesn’t seem to have much substance, at least for now, beyond the equivalent of a stack of flashcards
While NuScale said in an SEC filing that it was paying ENTRA1 for some preliminary site investigation and other startup costs, eventually, the burden of the majority of the costs, and raising the funding, will be shifted to ENRTRA1.
TVA’s role is limited to offer candidate sites for the proposed 6 GW of power generation planned by the project. Further, unless NuScale has a larger SMR than its current 77 MW offering waiting in the wings, 6 GW of power reveals a need for six dozen of the current NuScale design offering.
Key credibility factors matter. Among the list of microreactor projects recently announced by DOE, how many have binding power purchase agreements with customers? For several of the very large nuclear projects involving both full size reactors and SMRS, how will these firms raise upwards of $40 billion each (!) to cover their costs. Is the demand for nuclear power for AI data centers really going to pan out? Can these firms, with their outsize ambitions to build multiple AP1000 1,150 MW PWRs, deliver the first units on anything close to on time and within budget in order to attract investors for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th units?
What happens to the supply chain for RPVs, steam systems, turbines, transformers, etc. when the demand for all of these projects hits the market. Will the workforce be there to build them? Will foreign suppliers, especially heavy industries in South Korea and Japan, be able to meet the demand for these products?
Finally, I will remind readers of the “no bozos rule” which I have written about on my blog that the nuclear energy industry is no place for amateurs. Industry experience matters in the “C” suite.
Most recently the conditions that brought this rule into play took place in the tiny agricultural community of Jerome, ID.
In time all nuclear projects hit the same challenges: money, supply chain, skilled workforce, and regulatory approval. What are the items on your checklists for success?
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