Non-carbon energy in our future

Small, scalable, nuclear reactors.  
This may not be a good thing, even to anti-carbon environmentalists, but safer nuclear technology is viable, it's here, and it will be employed.

One player in the field of small nuclear reactors is Corvallis-based, NuScale Power, with technology developed at Oregon State University.  NuScale's reactors will be ready for deployment sometime in 2023-2024 with the first plant going to Idaho.  Other Western states (including Oregon) are in a loose alliance and will follow Idaho's lead.

New, innovative, large-scale nuclear energy 
At this point, Russia and China have taken the lead in nuclear power technology and are speeding ahead with production of new, full-size plants.  They will lead world mRkets because they can get things done - a complete reversal of fortunes in just one generation. Government regulation - an awesome power by itself.

Wall Street Journal, April 29, 2015  By Eric McFarland
Rethinking the U.S. Surrender on Nuclear Power
Russia and China are racing to profit from an energy source developed—and overregulated—in the West.

The ghosts of Lenin and Mao might well be smirk­ing. Com­mu­nist and au-thor­i­tar­ian na­tions are mov­ing to take global lead­er­ship in, and profit from, the com­mer­cial use of nu­clear power, a technology made pos­si­ble by the mar­ket-dri­ven economies of the West. New re­search and development could en­able abun­dant, af­fordable, low-car­bon en­ergy as well as fur­ther ben­e­fi­cial prod­ucts for in­dus-try and med­i­cine.

Yet out­dated and bur­den­some reg­ula­tions and re­stric­tions have sti­fled nu­clear in­no­va­tion in the U.S. and other West­ern na­tions, and are pushing these op­por­tu­ni­ties to China and Rus­sia.

Pres­i­dent Dwight Eisen­how­er’s Cold War “Atoms for Peace” cam­paign not­withstanding, there has never been any real at­tempt to al­low compet­i­tive, in­no­v­a­tive, pri­vate-sec­tor ex­ploita­tion of nu­clear re­ac­tions. Poten­tial ap­pli­ca­tions that might be co-de­vel­oped with new re­ac­tor sys­tem con­cepts go well be­yond pro­duc­ing sim­ply heat for base­load elec­tric­ity. They in­clude med­ical and in­dus­trial isotope co-pro­duc­tion, large-scale radi­a­tion-in­duced chem­i­cal syn­the­sis, wa­ter treat­ment, food preserva­tion and other ap­pli­ca­tions that cre­ative thinkers will cer­tainly in­vent.

Glob­al­iza­tion is real. Pre­vent­ing the in­no­va­tors in West­ern democ­ra-cies from cre­at­ing new cost-ef­fec­tive tech­nolo­gies us­ing nu­clear re­ac­tions won’t pre­vent it from be­ing done. It’s ironic, but given Amer­i­ca’s ever-bur-den­some nu­clear reg­u­la­tions, it will likely be en­gi­neers from non­de­mo­c­ra-tic, au­thor­i­tar­ian regimes like those in China and Rus­sia who will be free to de­sign the safe and cost-ef­fec­tive com­mer­cial nu­clear tech­nolo­gies of the fu­ture.

Department of Energy

will fund up to Two Small Modular Nuclear Reactors for 2022

Next Big Future