As more and more people demand electric vehicles there will be greater and greater demand for power to be supplied to the electric grid. One solution is breakthroughs in energy storage, and as I wrote yesterday, rechargeable Sodium batteries may be one of those breakthroughs.
But what about producing more power? In addition to wind and solar, I am hopeful that modular nuclear power plants can be a breakthrough in providing non-fossil-fuel-based power.
There have always been two big problems with nuclear power - disposing of the nuclear waste and the danger of runaway nuclear power plants in case of power plant failure - like the Fukushima power plant in Japan, which had the cooling water pumps incapacitated by a tsunami which allowed the plant to spew radiation uncontrolled.
The runaway plant problem may have been solved by new design small modular nuclear power plants, recently approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
"Unlike current plants, though, the water used to cool the reactor doesn't rely on a pump, which can fail....Instead, the SMR uses natural convection to keep cold and hot water flowing inside the containment vessel."
These are about 50 MW plants (compared to about 1000 MW old style plants). They can be built and installed much more quickly and linked together for more power demand. They could be installed locally near smaller cities and rural areas.
Disposal of the spent nuclear waste remains a problem but that seems to be more political than technical to me. If nobody is willing to store it in remote desert areas, maybe the Energy Department puts it on rockets and shoots it up into the sun?
