Of Data Centers and Aluminum Smelters
Have you noticed? Things are popping for nuclear energy (in a good way). A slew of news stories are charting a pathway to a nuclear energy future that holds a tremendous amount of promise.
The month of March kicked off with Amazon Web Services announcing a deal with Talen Energy to acquire a data center complex adjacent to the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station in Pennsylvania, a two-unit nuclear plant that generates nearly 2,500 Megawatts of carbon-free, reliable electricity. Susquehanna directly feeds to the data center complex, known as Cumulus. Amazon used to only talk about renewables when talking about carbon-free energy resources, so this move to nuclear is significant.
This week, we saw a super encouraging announcement from Google about an initiative “to accelerate the deployment of advanced clean electricity technologies, including advanced nuclear, next-gen geothermal, long-duration storage, clean hydrogen, and others,” according to a LinkedIn post from Maud Texier, Global Director of Clean Energy and Decarbonization Development at Google.
Google is teaming with Microsoft and steel-producer Nucor Corporation to aggregate the clean energy needs of these large power users. That need, 24/7/365, will serve to drive development of these clean energy technologies. For nuclear that likely means SMRs and microreactors.
The line of the announcement that stuck out to me: “and make them more widely available for all energy consumers.” That’s true leadership.
It’s the type of bold statement that has the power to create a groundswell for other power-hungry industries to re-think the art of the possible where nuclear energy is concerned. (Credit also to X-energy and Dow).
Sounding the Alarm on Aluminum
Which brings me to the Canary Media (aptly named) article by Maria Gallucci published Tuesday.
The article hit home because I used to live in Warrick County, Indiana, home to Alcoa’s Warrick smelter, which has been on a roller coaster of fits and starts in the past decade with announcements that its was being permanently retired only to have some of its potlines re-started, then at least one curtailed in 2022.
As Gallucci points out, our clean energy future needs aluminum. Badly. She writes:
Aluminum is a key component of solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, heat pumps and power cables. It’s mind-bogglingly ubiquitous beyond the energy transition, too, found in everything from soda cans, deodorant and smartphones to car doors, bridges and skyscrapers. The lightweight material is the second-most-used metal in the world after steel.
But the U.S. is losing its aluminum production infrastructure. Plants are closing or being curtailed as the worldwide price for this commodity fluctuates and concerns about the climate grow.
Aluminum production also requires a lot of electricity, and in many cases that electricity is generated by coal. Such is the case for the Warrick smelter, which is powered by the four-unit Warrick Power Plant. The plant had scrubbers installed which helped reduce its pollution output but not eliminate it.
Enter nuclear energy
In 2022, the Department of Energy identified more than 300 existing and retired coal plants that could house a nuclear plant instead. For those coal plants located adjacent to aluminum smelters it would be a radical clean energy transition – really good high-paying jobs and immense environmental benefits. Organizations such as DOE-NE's GAIN, EPRI, the Nuclear Innovation Alliance and others are providing the supporting research to show how it can work. It will be up to the nuclear energy industry to show we can do this.
The coal-to-nuclear effort is picking up steam. The Financial Times reported this week that work is starting soon by TerraPower on their Natrium reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming, at the site of a retiring coal plant. Currently, the sodium fast reactor is expected to be operating in 2030. That’s a timeframe that is advantageous for delivering carbon-free power to other coal plant sites that now support aluminum smelters, perhaps reinvigorating the U.S. aluminum industry and enabling deployment of more clean energy resources in the U.S.
To sum up
We are in one of nuclear energy's most critical decades. Nuclear has the potential to rise, or fall, based on the work that will unfold in the next six years to commercialize new technologies and secure orders for existing technologies.
The moment for nuclear energy's finest hour is upon us.