LUCY STANBROUGH: Hello and welcome to The Risk Circuit. I'm your host, Lucy Stanbrough, head of emerging risks for the Willis Research Network. And today we'll be discussing myths and facts when it comes to nuclear energy. The quest for clean baseload power sources to meet growing global energy demands means that nuclear is raising new questions for producers and users of power.
The expansion of data centers, especially those powered by artificial intelligence, has dramatically increased energy usage over the last year. And we've seen a series of announcements from tech companies partnering with the industry regarding nuclear power. And yet, responses to our global clean energy survey had nuclear as the lowest priority for energy companies in the short term, at 3%.
But when looking out to the next 10 years, that rose to 14%. So we've got some knowledge gaps to fill and some myths to bust for the industry, which is why I'm delighted to be joined by Kate Fowler, who will forget more than I'll ever learn about nuclear.
Kate is our global head of nuclear for Willis Global Construction specialty business, a nuclear engineer by background and brings 16 years of specialist nuclear industry experience to Willis, including underwriting, client management, and nuclear engineering within the power and insurance industry, which makes her the perfect guest for the episode focused on exploring the myths about nuclear we most commonly get asked about.
OK, let's kick off with the biggest one. Nuclear energy is unsafe and plants can explode or create catastrophic radiation.
KATE FOWLER: All right. Thank you so much for having me, by the way. And this is kind of my favorite way to talk about nuclear energy is discussing the myths and educating people. So the comment and the question about safety inevitably are the first ones that come up.
And I would say nuclear is very, very safe. I know a lot of people, when they think nuclear power, their mind immediately goes to things like Chernobyl or Fukushima. But realistically, it's three events total. If we throw Three Mile Island in the United States, and that three events total for all the reactors operating in the world that have had some large event, either meltdown or release.
There's over 400 nuclear plants in the country. Some of them have been operating since the 1950s and '60s. So when you think about the operating hours and the number of events that we've had, very, very safe industries with respect to that. Actually, I went and looked at some statistics to see what is the deaths per terawatt hour for different technologies. And nuclear is actually 0.03%, so it's one death per 33 years of operating.
Whereas if you look at something like hydro, it's actually one per year. So nuclear, from a safety standpoint, is even safer than hydropower, which doesn't have a lot of people working on it.
But I love to share this story. I have three kids. And throughout my time inspecting nuclear power plants and working at nuclear power plants, I was pregnant, with all three of my children while going inside of them, because I had such a high confidence in the safety and the protection of employees, let alone the public, for nuclear.
They're continuously monitoring people to make sure that they're not getting exposures that they're not supposed to. I was getting below background limits, even being inside the reactor building. When we look at the technology side of things, the technologies we have in place today are very safe. The processes and procedures they have in place to make sure that if there is some of event, like a fire or an earthquake, being able to safely shut down the plant, which is part of my job when I worked at a plant, was safe shut down engineer.
So those are in place when we're looking at the next generation of technology. They're just improving on the safety profiles that exist in these legacy plants by having passive safety systems such that you don't actually need humans to shut down a plant if there's some of incident. The plant can shut itself down without human interaction or intervention.
So I would say they're very, very safe. The lives lost associated with nuclear power are low compared to other energy sources, and we're just continuing to make those technological advances to ensure that they're not only safe, but they're beyond safe for the next generation that's coming down the pipeline.
LUCY STANBROUGH: That's such an interesting stat. I'm going to add that I keep a little collection of things that are more or less dangerous than you think. So I'm definitely adding that one into the list. Our second myth, I think, almost follows on from that.
If we don't think about when we think nuclear, there's that question of safety, but then there's also that question around the volumes of waste that might need to be produced. I think if you ask anyone to draw a power plant, that that might be one of the things that you see at the side. But actually, I think that's a really interesting myth to bust. So are nuclear power plants continually producing large amounts of waste?
KATE FOWLER: So they are producing waste. And I wouldn't say they're producing large amounts of waste. And I think anybody who's an advocate for nuclear that says nuclear waste is not a problem is probably misleading you.
It is something that needs to be addressed. But as far as the volume of it, how much nuclear waste people think is actually being produced, probably a whole lot less than they think it is. The average plant for a 40-year lifespan is producing less than about 700 square feet worth of nuclear spent fuel waste, so relatively small.
I've seen a meme or a photo going around social media lately where it shows someone with a 12-ounce soda can and said that the entire lifespan of their energy usage could-- the fuel for nuclear power plant could fit into that soda can. So you can power one human their entire life with a 12-ounce soda can worth of nuclear fuel.
So it's not a lot. It is an issue that needs to be addressed, particularly if we're looking at building new plants. There needs to be some way to manage the spent fuel.
A lot of plants have spent fuel pads that are called ISFSI, independent spent fuel storage installations at the plants. And you have spent fuel canisters that go out on these concrete pads. And it's long-term storage or intermediate storage for the nuclear fuel.
That's a fine solution for now. But realistically, we need to find a way to aggregate that and store it in an individual area. Or we could actually look at reprocessing fuel, which France has been reprocessing fuel and getting more lifespan and reducing the amount of waste by doing that. A lot of countries don't do that.
So there are options out there to further reduce the amount of waste, however relatively small it is, but we're not doing it yet globally. So that is an option. There are ways to address the waste. We just need a little bit more time, and I think some more technological advancements. And obviously, we're going to need some policy changes and investment into the space to make some of those things a reality. But the actual volume of fuel is probably not what most people are thinking in their mind when they think of spent fuel.
LUCY STANBROUGH: Yeah. And it comes back to that thing that we need to think about across the power industry, that full life cycle planning. You mentioned lifespan in your response there, which brings me to our third myth that nuclear waste is often seen as an unsolvable and dangerous problem for future generations. What do people actually need to think about and to know?
KATE FOWLER: So like I said, it's not an unsolvable problem. It's just a problem that we necessarily haven't solved the best way we can yet. So here in the United States, where I'm located, we had a government facility that was under construction for many, many years that called Yucca Mountain, where they were going to aggregate all the fuel from the reactors in the country, and that never came to fruition.
And so we're still looking for ways to appropriately manage it collectively on behalf of the entire industry. We just haven't gotten there yet. I am a big advocate for reprocessing. I think it's a really smart solution. There are other solutions out there people are looking at of actually burying spent fuel.
And I know people have raised concerns about, is it going to get into water and things like that. But the spent fuel canisters that we have today are exceptionally safe. And even if you go out and do a Google search for it, there is a video out there-- and I think it's probably 20 or 30 years old, where it's showing a train running into a nuclear spent fuel canister just as a test, and it was fine.
So they're very robust. So what we have right now, it is safe to contain that waste, and it's safe to contain it for a very, very long time. But I do think we need to find some better long-term solutions to not just for protection, but as I said, to reduce that waste amount that we have. Particularly with all of the new technologies we're talking about bringing online, it would be nice to find a way to reduce what we're using and what we're having to store.
LUCY STANBROUGH: That's so interesting. And I'm definitely going to go to YouTube and try to find that video. It's the kind of scenario that people need to run, but also think about to make sure that they're able to put that risk perspective where it should be.
Kind of a different myth, similar kind of angle, but not on the wayside. On the emissions side, one of the ones that I get asked a lot is around is nuclear energy bad for the environment. I see some people saying that it significantly contributes due to carbon emissions. Is that myth? Is that reality? What's your thoughts on that, Kate?
KATE FOWLER: So I would say myth, but maybe somewhere in between myth and reality. The actual operation is non-carbon emitting. So it is a clean technology in that respect that it does not produce carbon emissions during operations.
As with any industry, though, that is building power, whether it's solar gas, whatever, there is other pieces of that lifecycle that are going to be carbon emitting. So nuclear plants use a lot of concrete. That production of concrete is carbon emitting. Actually going in and digging up uranium, there's going to be carbon emissions associated with acquiring that fuel and processing that fuel and getting it ready for the nuclear plant.
But it's really no different than any other energy production source, that beginning of life cycle through acquiring minerals and other items for it, building the turbine generators, whatever else it is. There is carbon emissions associated with that. But the actual operations of the plant, there are no carbon emissions from it.
And I know a lot of people, they may see a nuclear plant, and everyone loves the graphic of the cooling towers, which honestly drives me a little bit nuts because lots of technologies use cooling towers, but for some reason they get associated with nuclear. Everyone sees these white clouds coming out of them, and some people assume that it's smoke or it's some of carbon-emitting gas that's coming out of it.
It's just steam. It basically looks like a cloud, and that's all it is. It's water that's coming out of those. So it's nothing carbon emitting. It is just steam because you're cooling off the water that has come through the plant, and they're cooling it off to send it back into the plant. So it's from temperature differential creating that steam. That's all it is.
LUCY STANBROUGH: I think that leads us really nicely into our fifth myth, because you say, people think of nuclear, they think of those cooling towers. That's the idea that's stuck in their mind that that's what nuclear technology looks like and will always look like, that it's pretty stable and not really developing.
What are you seeing? Is nuclear energy obsolete or stalling in development, or actually, is there some really exciting innovation happening that maybe we're not familiar with?
KATE FOWLER: It is absolutely not stalling. I've said there are technology developers coming out of the woodwork now, and I can't keep up with them. I think globally, we have over 100 new technology developers for nuclear, and a lot of those are in the small modular reactor space.
So we've got this large volume of people looking at developing new technologies, and everybody is doing something just a little bit unique, a little bit different. And part of it is looking at that safety profile that we talked about, improving safety profile through different methodologies, improving cost and deployment speed. Because historically, nuclear is very expensive. Nuclear can take a long time to build.
Trying to find ways to streamline the deployments of these new technologies, such that we can get them on the grid faster. And they're also looking at things like innovative fuels. So there's new fuels in development that are also going to improve safety profile, but can also help decrease some of the waste that we talked about. So there's a lot going on in this space. So anybody who thinks nuclear is a dead technology or that there's no innovation going on, the industry is absolutely nothing but innovation right now, trying to improve the technology and make it more accessible.
LUCY STANBROUGH: I think our last myth that I want to bust with you is around the cost profile. It's one of the ones that I always see come up. And when you and I met, we were talking about this graphic that circulates around the industry that we both love to hate, because it makes it look like the cost is prohibitively expensive. Tell us your thoughts about that.
KATE FOWLER: Yeah. So, I mean, nuclear is expensive. I'm not going to deny that. It is expensive. But when you're looking at that levelized cost, everyone likes to put up these graphics that show the levelized cost of energy for wind and solar and nuclear and coal and all of these other things. And nuclear is just, it's like they have to change the scale on the graph to get it so High. And I hate that because when they're doing those comparisons, they're looking at the, quote unquote, "lifespan" of that technology. So for solar, it's probably about 20 to 25 years. For nuclear, they're probably also looking at 20 years. They might be looking at 40 because plants are licensed for 40 years.
But realistically, nuclear plants are not 20 or 40 year assets. They're probably not even 60-year assets. Realistically, they're probably 80 to 100-year assets and maybe longer because we haven't had commercial technology online that long.
But when we're looking at that levelized cost, nuclear is going to be more expensive than other technologies, but it also has a longer lifespan such that if you were going to replace it with solar, you're going to have to build at least three times to get the lifespan that you would with nuclear.
And the other thing to keep in mind, things like solar, it's intermittent technology, whereas nuclear is baseload. So the value that you're getting from having that baseload power, it's a clean technology. There just aren't other things that can really compete with it.
So even though it does have a higher cost, I think there's a higher value there as opposed to using another technology that either is carbon emitting or something that is intermittent, because it's one of the biggest issues we've got with the grid right now is those low margins for power and the intermittency that can be created from not having enough baseload power ready to go on the grid.
LUCY STANBROUGH: That intermittency is one of those key reasons why we've seen technology companies exploring nuclear power that need for continuous, reliable power has also come up, whether across the year, whether that's airports, whether that's need to run power for trains, whether that's around national security issues. So it's going to be so interesting to see how the industry continues to develop. And like you said, with what new technologies continue to come out of the woodwork as people get inspired.
I want to finish on a last question, which is what is your most favorite nuclear fact that sounds like a myth that's actually really interesting? I mine is related to jellyfish, but I think yours is around manatees.
KATE FOWLER: It is his around manatees. So another question or myth that I think comes up is nuclear is bad for the environment. And when someone is going to deploy a nuclear power plant, obviously, like with any other technology, they have to do environmental reviews to assess how is this plant going to impact the environment around it.
So that is something they have to go through to ensure they aren't negatively impacting the environment. And I do have an instance around manatees where a nuclear plant actually positively impacted the environment. There is a plant here in the United States that during operations, of course, they're putting warm water back out into the ocean.
And so they were using that as their ultimate heat sink versus using a cooling tower. So this warm water coming off the plant is going out into this bay. And it actually became a habitat for manatees because the water was warm, there was abundant food sources for them there, and they just really liked to hang out there.
That plant ultimately shut down, and there was a lot of concerns about now the water isn't going to be what the manatees have become accustomed to. And that plant actually had to install heaters into the water to mimic the water temperatures during operations to ensure that it remained a good habitat for manatees to live there.
So this is an instance where a nuclear plant actually was a good thing for the environment. And after shutdown, they had to continue to pretend like the plant was operating because the animals had gotten so accustomed to the warm waters generated by the plant.
LUCY STANBROUGH: It's all of these different things that you never think you have to think about until they happen. I think if you've been reading the news over the last month. You'll have seen news of the nuclear power plant shutdown in France, where a swarm of jellyfish clogged some water intake valves. That's something that can seem crazy.
But actually, it's happened multiple times since the 1990s. So there's all of these different things that actually you need to think about and be aware of. And that's why it's so great to be able to call on your specialized industry expertise, Kate.
I know that I've really enjoyed the discussion and I know that our listeners will as well. So I'm sure that they'll be following up with questions in your inbox around other things that maybe they didn't realize that they needed to ask about. So thank you, Kate. And thank you, everyone for joining us. And we'll catch you again on the next episode of The Risk Circuit.
ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening. We hope you found this episode insightful. For more information, visit the Insights section of wtwco.com. This podcast is for general discussion and/or information only, is not entirely to be relied upon. An action based on or in connection with anything contained here should not be taken without first obtaining specific advice from a suitably qualified professional. Thank you.
