Southern Ohio to play major role in America's new nuclear future
CINCINNATI (WKRC) — In the high desert of Idaho, Experimental Breeder Reactor-I made history 75 years ago, when it became the world’s first nuclear power plant to generate usable electricity. Since then, the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has achieved a long list of firsts in nuclear power.
(WKRC)
U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright didn’t make the trip to INL to pay homage to the past but to lead the charge in powering up the country’s new nuclear future.
We visited the site where nuclear power got its start, to see how it’s holding hope for the future (Photo: Holden Robinson)
He calls it America’s “nuclear renaissance.”
“It’s super important. The quality, the affordability, and the security of your energy system for a society, it sets the constraints on what’s possible,” Wright said.
Secretary of Energy Chris Wright told us energy is the key to a society’s future, and he’s insisting that nuclear is a major component (Photo: Holden Robinson)
What was just a possible source of energy a short time ago, is now moving the earth at INL: Small Modular Reactors (SMR) and microreactors are, according to the Secretary, the future of nuclear power.
Wright showed us cranes and diggers preparing the ground to build reactors, which will be far different from the massive, water-cooled cores at the country’s aging nuclear power plants.
SMRs, which can either stand alone or be connected, are expected to provide enough extra electricity to meet the country’s growing demand. Microreactors that can fit on a trailer and be shipped anywhere-including the most remote sites-are expected to deliver power to the military first.
These new, compact powerhouses will be built in factories and will be sealed with highly enriched uranium and molten salt for cooling.
Construction equipment is on site in Idaho, prepared to build nuclear reactors (Photo: Holden Robinson)
“The new ones that are being built now, that reactor is placed in there, fully fueled, and it’s never touched for 40 years,” Wright explained.
He emphasized that the new reactors have a crucial safety feature.
“If everything goes wrong, they automatically turn themselves off,” Secretary Wright explained, with confidence.
In addition to safety questions, Wright went on to explain why new nuclear powerhouses are tied to national security.
“We don’t want the nuclear future owned by the Russians and the Chinese,” he said. “We want the nuclear future exactly where the nuclear start came.”
Harnessing nuclear power is essential to national security, Wright told us (Photo: Holden Robinson)
Behind the nuclear push is the race to dominate artificial intelligence, or AI.
Wright calls the race for AI America’s next Manhattan Project.
To succeed in AI, the country will need to generate a huge amount of electricity to feed power-hungry AI data centers that are already being built.
According to the Electric Power Research Institute, the amount of electricity used by data centers is expected to triple in less than four years, with newer, power-hungry AI centers projected to consume as much as 790 terawatt-hours by 2030. That is enough to power more than 75 million homes.
We asked if it would be possible to provide that kind of power without nuclear power. Wright simply answered, “Not in the long run.”
The newest forms of nuclear reactors are safe, and will help keep the US at the forefront of innovation, according to the Secretary of Energy (Photo: Holden Robinson)
While a limited number of new reactors are expected to be delivered in two to four years, most won’t be operational until 2035.
To bridge that five-year power gap, Wright and the Administration are issuing licenses for 13-year-old nuclear power plants and bringing three decommissioned ones back online, including the old Three Mile Island plant, where a partial core meltdown in 1979 caused the most serious nuclear accident in U.S. history.
That plan has received pushback, mostly from environmental and anti-nuclear groups, but Wright insists all American nuclear power is safe.
“It’s incredible how safe nuclear reactors are,” he said. “I’d put my tent inside of the reactor and live there for a month. No problem at all.”
Safety questions aside, the bulk of the power gap in the short term will be filled by natural gas.
In March, Wright was part of the Trump Cabinet team announcing a partnership with Japanese Softbank to build a massive $33 billion gas-fired power plant on-and-adjacent to the old Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Southern Ohio. The new natural gas fed power station is expected to produce enough electricity to power 5 million homes.
“This facility that’s going to be built here, is bigger than any facility ever built in world history,” the Secretary confidently told a crowd gathered at the announcement in March.
There’s no question that Secretary Wright is pushing America forward in a race to power the future, and the secretary makes it clear: It’s a race the U.S. cannot afford to lose, he’s promising that his nuclear renaissance will deliver.