Part 1 of 2 Parts
     Tech companies are scrambling to find new power sources for AI’s huge energy needs. Some of them are turning to startups that are developing new nuclear technology. Google recently announced that it plans to start using power from Kairos Power’s small modular reactors (SMRs) by 2030. Amazon is investing in X-Energy, which is another nuclear startup. Microsoft hasn’t yet announced a similar investment. However, Microsoft recently agreed to purchase electricity from Helion Energy’s first fusion power plant, scheduled for deployment in 2028.
     Nuclear boosters claim that the newest nuclear tech is safer and more sustainable than traditional nuclear power plants. However, some critics argue that next generation “advanced” nuclear technology isn’t necessarily that advanced and that it’s unlikely to be ready on the timeline that Big Tech wants.
     Ed Lyman is the director of the nuclear power safety program at the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists. He said, “I think it’s highly unlikely that these reactors are going to perform the way that their developers are promising.”
     X-Energy is making a small reactor filled with fuel “pebbles”, each around the size of a billiard ball. They contain thousands of tiny particles of uranium that are each surrounded by layers of carbon. This type of fuel is “tristructural isotropic” fuel (TRISO). The Department of Energy (DoE) calls it “the most robust nuclear fuel on Earth,” a claim that Lyman says is “wildly overhyped.”
     TRISO fuel continuously rotates through the core of the reactor, along with helium that absorbs the heat. The heat turns water into steam which drives a turbine to make electricity. The X-Energy claims that its design is “meltdown-proof” and says the particles “retain their integrity under all foreseeable conditions.”
     Lyman wrote a detailed report about next-gen nuclear reactors in 2021 and closely follows the industry. He argues that it’s too early to say that it’s safe. He explains that “X-Energy’s specific fuel type has not yet been tested under any circumstances.” When TRISO fuel from another manufacturer was tested in a reactor at Idaho National Laboratory, the experiment had to stop early because it was producing high levels of radioactive cesium at certain temperatures. X-Energy also claims that its fuel is so inherently safe that a containment building isn’t necessary, but Lyman disagrees. He says that the reactors could be vulnerable to air or water leaks, and that the TRISO fuel has to be made to exacting specifications that have yet to be proven. He adds that “They’re still kind of basing all their safety analyses on optimistic assumptions.”
     X-Energy says their reactors run efficiently, using more than ninety percent of the available uranium in each pebble. However, Lyman says it’s less efficient than traditional nuclear power plants and that it generates more radioactive waste. The spent fuel will be stored on site for the 60-year life of the reactor. After that the DoE will have to store it in a geological repository. So far, these repositories don’t exist, and nuclear waste from decades of older nuclear power plants is still piling up. The U.S. started to build a repository in Arizona at Yucca Mountain, but the project was canceled in 2011.
     Kairos also uses TRISO fuel, with their own type of reactor. Lyman argues that there are other problems with the Kairos reactors. He says that the coolant that the company uses is corrosive and it could be difficult to find materials for the reactor that won’t be damaged by it. Kairos responded that it has done thousands of hours of testing with “very little corrosion” under normal operating conditions. Lyman still says that it’s too early in the process to know how the reactor will actually perform. Construction began in July on the company’s demonstration reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
    The full-scale TRISO reactor will also release more tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, than existing nuclear power plants. Lyman argues the tritium poses a threat to the environment. Kairos says the levels of tritium release “do not pose a significant risk to public health or the environment.” They note that some level of tritium naturally exists in groundwater. They say that they will “conduct regular monitoring and mitigation efforts to limit any tritium releases.”
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     A new report indicates Washington state could face an energy crisis within five years as its power capacity approaches its limit. The growing demands from AI and major tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are causing a strain on the state’s energy resources.
     Amazon just signed a deal with Energy Northwest and X-energy, investing in four new small modular reactors (SMRs) along the Columbia River in Richland near Hanford which is the most contaminated nuclear site in the U.S. Some groups are asking why we’re risking this again?
     Leona Morgan is an indigenous organizer. During a panel hosted by the organization Columbia Riverkeeper, she said, “Nuclear kills, and nuclear is killing my people. Nuclear is what we call ‘a slow genocide.” Morgan says that the health impacts her family and other indigenous people face arise from radioactive exposure and contamination on their land.
     Morgan added, “Just because we can’t see it, it’s out of sight out of mind, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. And if you need proof of it, come visit us. See an abandoned uranium mine anywhere in the world? On Navajo, we have over 2,000.”
     The panel came just after Amazon’s SMR announcement. Riverkeeper maintains that nuclear energy is far from clean. Morgan added that “It’s the most expensive, complicated, dirtiest way to boil water.” She went on to explain that the carbon footprint of nuclear power is only counted at the power plant, not during the process to build it and the toxic waste left behind. 
     Billions of dollars in federal and local money go to fund nuclear site decommissioning and cleaning every year. Washington state just approved a record three billion dollars to spend on cleanup at the Hanford site this year.
     According to Riverkeeper, the money Amazon is investing in SMRs near Hanford could be better invested in renewables like solar, wind and hydro. Members of Riverkeeper say that nuclear power isn’t the clean energy savior that big tech makes it out to be.
     M.V. Ramana was a panelist at the Riverkeeper event. He said, “When it comes to companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon, the public has plenty of reasons to be angry at them. These companies steal your data, they do bad things, they want to pretend to be good citizens. The reason they can use investment in nuclear energy as a way to pretend they are good citizens is because the hard work of convincing the public has already been done by the nuclear lobby.”
     Ramana is the author of the book “Nuclear is not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change.” He says we should focus on energy conservation instead.
     Kelly Rae works in corporate communications with Energy Northwest. She told an interviewer that the permits for the SMRs haven’t been secured yet, although lawmakers from Jay Inslee on down are already lining up behind the project.
     Rae says that Amazon’s funding will pay for a feasibility study over the next two years, after which they are hopeful to fund the SMRs. If they’re successful, the electricity generated from the first four reactors would be available to Amazon only. Rae says that after that, other utility companies and municipalities could buy power to help Amazon fund additional reactors to provide energy for Washingtonians.
     Energy Northwest is an association of 28 utility districts, including Seattle City Light, Tacoma Public Utilities and Snohomish County PUD. Amazon didn’t say how much it intends to spend on the project, or how much, if any, will come from Energy Northwest.
     So far, there aren’t any other small modular reactors like the ones Amazon intends to invest in, operating in the U.S.

     General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) just announced that it has completed preliminary development of four individual performance models in support of its SiGA silicon carbide composite nuclear fuel cladding technology. One of the four individual models utilized to analyze the fiber architecture within SiGA cladding.
     GA-EMS is approaching completion of a thirty-month contract with the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) to deliver individual models for nuclear-grade SiGA materials to serve as the basis of a future digital twin. This modelling and simulation capability is intended to help accelerate the process of qualifying nuclear fuel and licensing for current and next generation reactor materials.
     SiGA is a silicon carbide (SiC) composite material that has great hardness and the ability to withstand extremely high temperatures. It has been used for industrial purposes for decades. It is now used as the basis for the development of nuclear reactor fuel rods that can survive temperatures far beyond that of current materials.
     GA-EMS said that the four individual physics-informed models it has developed are able to capture the complex mechanical response of SiGA fuel-rod cladding while exposed to irradiation. A multi-scale modelling approach was utilized where each individual model covers a different length scale – from a mechanism-based microscale model to a reactor system level model. In the future, these individual models will be combined into one integrated model which is called a digital twin.
     Scott Forney is the President of GA-EMS. He said, “A digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical object or system – in this case our SiGA cladding nuclear fuel system. When complete, this digital twin will allow researchers to predict SiGA performance inside a nuclear reactor core. This will reduce fuel development and testing costs and shorten the time it will take to get regulatory approval for this revolutionary technology, without sacrificing safety.”
     Christina Back is the vice president of GA-EMS Nuclear Technologies and Materials. She said that “We have been able to expedite development and verification of the individual models by leveraging the expertise at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory. Our work integrally involves dedicated laboratory testing as we develop each performance model. We look forward to continuing to the next phase to bring these individual models together and incorporate them into a greater digital twin framework. Utilization of the framework to apply the separate effects models appropriately will bring a new level of sophistication and accuracy to efficiently predict fuel performance.”
     GA-EMS has successfully made silicon carbide nuclear fuel cladding tubes. The company’s technology incorporates silicon carbide fiber into its cladding tubes. The combination creates an incredibly tough and durable engineered silicon carbide composite material which can withstand temperatures up to three thousand degrees °F.  This is about five hundred degrees hotter than the melting point of zirconium alloy currently in use.
     Last July, General Atomics announced it had manufactured the first batch of full-length twelve-foot SiGA silicon carbide composite tubes designed for conventional pressurized water reactors. Previously it had created six-inch long SiGA rodlets and three-foot cladding samples that meet the stringent nuclear power reactor-grade requirements and will undergo irradiation testing at DoE’s Idaho National Laboratory.
     GA had originally developed its SiGA composite for its Energy Multiplier Module (EM2) small modular reactor (SMR) design. This is a modified version of its Gas-Turbine Modular Helium Reactor (GT-MHR) design.
     In February 2020, Framatome and GA agreed to evaluate the possibility of using SiGA in fuel channel applications through thermomechanical and corrosion testing. Their long-term goal is to demonstrate that the irradiation of a full-length fuel channel in support of licensing and commercialization.

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     It’s not clear how long the shelf life is for recommissioning a limited number of shuttered nuclear sites. That’s leaving the door open for still-unproven small modular reactors. Critics note that we still haven’t solved the radioactive waste problem that raised concerns during nuclear’s first golden era.
     Rich Powell is the CEO of the Clean Energy Buyers Association. The association represents some of the country’s biggest commercial power customers including Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft. Powell said, “But I think it’s fair to say that folks are taking a hard look at every one of them that would be technically possible to restart.”
     Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh defended the court’s decision to scrap the Chevron deference as a move to restore balance between the executive and legislative branches. Speaking recently at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law in Washington, Kavanaugh said that the longstanding deference to federal agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous laws had “put a thumb on the scale” in many legal battles over issues from the environment to health care to immigration.
     Kavanaugh continued, “What we did in Loper Bright, the chief justice’s opinion was, I think, a course correction consistent with the separation of powers to make sure that the executive branch is acting within the authorization granted to it by Congress.” Kavanaugh was appointed to the Supreme Court by former President Donald Trump in 2018. He warned against over-reading the Chevron ruling, which critics have said could shift power from agencies to judges.
     Kavanaugh added that “It’s really important, as a neutral umpire, to respect the line that Congress has drawn, and when it’s granted broad authorization, not to unduly hinder the executive branch from performing its congressionally authorized functions — but at the same time, not allowing the executive branch, as it could with Chevron in its toolkit, to go beyond the congressional authorization.”
     California Governor Gavin Newsom has entered the debate on an issue that had its moment in the culture war spotlight. He vetoed what would have been the nation’s first law mandating health risk labels on gas stoves. The legislation would have required warnings on gas stoves sold online to Californians starting next year and in stores starting in 2026.
     Newsom said in a veto message, “This static approach falls short in enabling timely updates to the labeling content that should align with the latest scientific knowledge so that consumers are accurately informed about their purchases.” The proposed warnings about the possible health impacts of “toxic” pollutants drew opposition from home appliance manufacturers, builders and business groups. Similar appliance warning bills were defeated in New York and Illinois. Newsom signed legislation delaying by six months the timeline for implementing California’s nation-leading corporate climate disclosure laws.
     The legal revision endorsed by the governor over the weekend gives state regulators until July 2025 to write the rules and make decisions on things like how much the filing fee should be for corporations disclosing their greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risks. The new law also allows subsidiaries to compile their disclosures at the level of their parent company. The implementation delay is shorter than the two years that Newsom had been seeking and it doesn’t go as far as the California Chamber of Commerce wanted to go in weakening the disclosure regime. With the so-called cleanup legislation in place, all eyes will turn to the next biggest threat to the laws which is a federal lawsuit led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that is set for a hearing Oct. 15.

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     Dozens of SMR designs have been proposed. For this study, Krall analyzed the nuclear waste streams generated by three types of SMRs being developed by Toshiba, NuScale, and Terrestrial Energy. Each company chose a different design. Results from these case studies were corroborated by theoretical calculations and a broader design survey. This three-pronged approach allowed the authors to draw powerful conclusions.
     Rodney Ewing is the Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security at Stanford and co-director of Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). CISAC is part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford. Ewing is also a professor in the Department of Geological Sciences in the Stanford School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences and a co-author of the Stanford study. He said, “The analysis was difficult because none of these reactors are in operation yet. Also, the designs of some of the reactors are proprietary, adding additional hurdles to the research.”
     Energy is produced in a nuclear reactor when a neutron splits a uranium atom in the reactor core. This generates additional neutrons that go on to split other uranium atoms, creating a chain reaction. However, some neutrons escape from the core which is called neutron leakage. The escaping neutrons strike surrounding structural materials, such as steel and concrete. These materials become radioactive when impacted by neutrons lost from the core.
     The new study found that SMRs will experience more neutron leakage than conventional reactors because of their smaller size. This increased leakage has an impact on the amount and composition of their waste streams.
     Ewing said, “The more neutrons that are leaked, the greater the amount of radioactivity created by the activation process of neutrons. We found that small modular reactors will generate at least nine times more neutron-activated steel than conventional power plants. These radioactive materials have to be carefully managed prior to disposal, which will be expensive.”
     The Stanford study also found that the spent nuclear fuel from SMRs will be discharged in greater volumes per unit energy extracted. The SMR waste can be far more complex than the spent nuclear fuel discharged from existing power plants.
     Allison Macfarlane is a professor and director of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia and a co-author of the study. She said, “Some small modular reactor designs call for chemically exotic fuels and coolants that can produce difficult-to-manage wastes for disposal. Those exotic fuels and coolants may require costly chemical treatment prior to disposal. The takeaway message for the nuclear industry and investors is that the back end of the fuel cycle may include hidden costs that must be addressed. It’s in the best interest of the reactor designer and the regulator to understand the waste implications of these reactors.”
     The Stanford study concludes that SMR designs are inferior to conventional nuclear power reactors with respect to radioactive waste generation, management requirements, and disposal options.
    One major problem is long-term radiation from spent nuclear fuel. The research team estimated that after ten thousand years, the radiotoxicity of plutonium in spent nuclear fuels discharged from the three study modules would be at least fifty percent higher than the plutonium in conventional spent nuclear fuel per unit energy extracted. Because of this high level of radiotoxicity, geologic repositories for SMR wastes need to be carefully chosen through a thorough siting process, the authors said.
     Ewing said, “We shouldn’t be the ones doing this kind of study. The vendors, those who are proposing and receiving federal support to develop advanced reactors, should be concerned about the waste and conducting research that can be reviewed in the open literature.”

Part 1 of 2 Parts
     Small modular reactors (SMR) have long been touted as the future of nuclear energy. However, they will actually generate more radioactive waste than conventional nuclear power plants. This was found during research at Stanford and the University of British Columbia.
     Nuclear reactors generate electricity with limited greenhouse gas emissions. A nuclear power plant that generates one gigawatt of electricity also produces radioactive waste that must be isolated from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years. In addition, the cost of constructing a large nuclear power plant can be tens of billions of dollars.
     To address these challenges, the nuclear industry is developing SMRs that generate less than three hundred megawatts of electric power. SMRs are about one tenth to one quarter the size of a traditional nuclear energy plant due to compact, simplified designs.  They can be assembled in factories. Industry analysts say that these advanced modular designs will be cheaper and produce less radioactive waste than conventional large-scale reactors. However, a study published on May 31 of this year in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has reached the opposite conclusion.

    Lindsay Krall is a scientist at the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company and lead author of the study. She said, “Our results show that most small modular reactor designs will actually increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal, by factors of 2 to 30 for the reactors in our case study. These findings stand in sharp contrast to the cost and waste reduction benefits that advocates have claimed for advanced nuclear technologies.”
     About four hundred and forty commercial nuclear reactors currently operate globally. They provide approximately ten percent of the world’s electricity. In the U.S., ninety-three nuclear reactors generate about a fifth of the country’s electricity supply.
     Unlike power plants that run on coal or natural gas, nuclear plants emit little carbon dioxide which is a major cause of global warming. Nuclear advocates say that as global demand for clean energy increases, more nuclear power will be needed to minimize the effects of climate change.
     However, nuclear energy is not risk free. In the U.S., commercial nuclear power plants have produced more than eighty-eight metric tons of spent nuclear fuel, as well as substantial volumes of intermediate and low-level radioactive waste. The most highly radioactive waste is mainly spent fuel. It will have to be isolated in deep-mined geologic repositories for hundreds of thousands of years. Currently, the U.S. has no program to develop a geologic repository, after spending decades and billions of dollars on the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada. Spent nuclear fuel is currently stored in pools or in dry casks at reactor sites. It is accumulating at a rate of about 2,000 metric tons per year.
     Some nuclear analysts claim that SMRs will significantly reduce the mass of spent nuclear fuel generated compared to much larger, conventional nuclear reactors. Other analysts say that conclusion is overly optimistic, including Krall and her colleagues.
     Krall said, “Simple metrics, such as estimates of the mass of spent fuel, offer little insight into the resources that will be required to store, package, and dispose of the spent fuel and other radioactive. In fact, remarkably few studies have analyzed the management and disposal of nuclear waste streams from SMR.”
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Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     Gorman said that “We do have to admire what China is doing in terms of the parallel construction of these projects at the same time. Every nation has to come to terms with the fact that we are going to have to be doing these projects concurrently. And if I just look at one province alone, Ontario, our official systems plan is calling for eighteen gigawatts of new nuclear by 2050. The work being done right now is figuring out how we are going to support that in concurrent ways because of all the consideration you have there. But nations have done this before – Canada has done it before, the USA has done it before, as have Sweden and France.”
     Daniel Westlén is the State Secretary to Sweden’s Minister for Climate and the Environment. He said that a change of government two years ago made it possible to make changes to Sweden’s nuclear policy.
     Westlén continued, “We have found for a long time that we have increasing support for nuclear power.  It’s politics that has been the problem, where nuclear has been used to form governments. The matter of where we stand on nuclear has not been based on physics or the needs of the power system. It has been based in political realities, and the ability to form a government. Now that is gone, we have a government that accepts nuclear, where everybody is working to make nuclear possible and work properly.”
     Westlén said that Sweden is “much better prepared this time” for its new nuclear program, compared with when it built its current reactors in the 1970s and 1980s. “We have operating experience, we have recent projects of power uprates and modernizations. So we have a lot of people that have been doing complex projects in nuclear. We didn’t have any of that last time. I think there is reason for optimism.” However, he added, “I’m sure the first project is going to be a little more complex and run into hurdles than the coming ones and that’s why it’s so important to have a program to get this bandwagon effect going.”
     Vijay Kumar Saraswat is a member of Niti Aayog, the Indian government’s public policy think tank. He said that the country aims to reach net-zero by 2070. “Our main mission is to reduce carbon emissions as much as possible and we have a strategy for reaching that in terms of how do you meet the energy demands with the reduced use of fossil fuels. In the last ten years, we increased our nuclear energy contribution – something like two percent of total power production and about three percent in terms of electricity. That would amount to an almost thirty five percent increase in the last ten years.”
     He added that India plans to triple its nuclear energy capacity by around 2030 through the construction of large reactors and SMRs.
     Bilbao y León said the size of the challenge of meeting climate targets “is enormous”. He added that “it requires nuclear and wind and solar and hydro and natural gas and many other things, so all low-carbon energy industries really need to work together”.

     Nuclear-powered container ships could be moving cargo in and out of Europe by the end of the decade. Danish company Maersk moves twelve million containers a year. It has partnered with Lloyd’s Register and nuclear technology start-up Core Power to study the regulatory feasibility of using fourth-generation nuclear reactors to supply power to container ships. Negative public perception and waste management continue to be a challenge for the nuclear industry. The study will investigate how to improve regulation and safety rules for its use.
     Ole Graa Jakobsen is Maersk’s head of fleet technology. He said, “Nuclear power holds a number of challenges related to for example safety, waste management, and regulatory acceptance across regions. If these challenges can be addressed by development of the new so-called fourth-generation reactor designs, nuclear power could potentially mature into another possible decarbonization pathway for the logistics industry 10 to 15 years in the future.”
     Large maritime vessels run on bunker fuel which is a tar-like substance that belongs to a large family of petroleum-based fuel oils. The maritime transport industry is responsible for three percent of global total carbon emissions. Production has increased by twenty percent over the last decade. A U.N. Trade and Development report said that it would cost up to twenty-eight billion dollars annually to decarbonize the world’s fleet by 2050.
     Maersk has set the ambitious goal of reaching net zero by 2040. It is investing heavily in green methanol to decarbonize. Its joint study with Core Power and Lloyd’s Register into nuclear power may open up the possibility of a multi-fuel pathway.
     Lloyd’s Register released a report last month on the use of nuclear power as an alternative low carbon maritime fuel. It highlighted how nuclear power could provide a cost-effective solution for the maritime industry because nuclear vessels would not need to be refueled as often as bunker-using container vessels. They consume around sixty-three thousand gallons of fuel per day and need to refuel every few months.
     Nuclear power has been used for many military vessels, with naval reactors, widely used in the US military, typically needing to be refueled every ten years. Newer reactor models have been designed to last up to fifty years in aircraft carriers and submarines. This allows them to travel distances of more than ninety-three million miles.
     Though nuclear power has been successful in the military, progress in the maritime industry has been slow because of cost restraints and safety concerns around ships entering ports.
     Lloyd’s also says that the designs for nuclear reactors currently under consideration for the maritime industry include molten salt reactors (MSR) and micro-reactors which have passive safety features in place to prevent nuclear accidents. Newer reactors contain cooling systems do not depend on emergency generators or pumps. This makes them “walk away safe” in the event of a malfunction.
     Tighter regulation is required on how to dispose of large volumes of radioactive waste more efficiently. The report maintains that fourth-generation reactors will have the capacity to reduce the amount of low-level waste produced, which accounts for ninety percent of nuclear waste.
     The International Chamber of Shipping 2022-2023 survey of more than 130 maritime executives reported that nine percent anticipate nuclear power will find commercial use in the next decade.
     The joint study involving Maersk will mainly look to provide evidence for regulatory changes in safety and operation around nuclear power. These changes will improve the understanding of how nuclear power works for members of the maritime supply chain who will be affected by its use. The end goal of the study is to create a framework for the construction of a nuclear-powered container ship to be used in a European port.
     Mikal Bøe is the CEO of Core Power. He said that he expects first orders for reactor-equipped vessels to come in by around 2028-29, and hopes to build a ten-billion-dollar order book by 2030.

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     These comments come as the U.K. government has started to encourage pension fund investment into nuclear energy. This follows its push to expand the country’s nuclear energy sector through earmarking more than one billion two hundred and eighty million dollars for the nuclear power station Sizewell C.
     The Labour political party is currently leading in the polls by twenty percent to win the U.K.’s general election this week. It has also promised to build new nuclear power stations and small modular reactors to help the country achieve energy security and clean power.
     Government sentiment towards nuclear started to change following the war in Ukraine. France, China and India decided to build and restart their nuclear fleet to increase energy capacity and secure energy dependency.
     Attitudes towards nuclear energy have also changed since the European Union included nuclear energy in its sustainable taxonomy in 2022, recognizing its role as a transition energy.
     In recent years, Canada, France, Finland, Russia and the U.S. have all issued their first green bonds for nuclear power projects.
     Bioy said that these issuances “can be seen as a positive signal that nuclear energy is a worthy investment on the path to net zero”. She added that “New issuance of nuclear green bonds and other sustainable bonds eligible for financing nuclear energy should also be supported by the inclusion of nuclear power in the EU taxonomy for sustainable activities.”
     The U.S. has implemented the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which offered more federal handouts to struggling nuclear reactors.
     However, despite this government push and appetite, when talking to some pension funds from the U.S. they reported that they are only exposed to nuclear investment through their holdings in publicly held companies and not through direct investment.
     Why has there been limited direct investment into nuclear energy by asset owners?
     Bioy explains that a reason for this is that financing nuclear power projects remains a “challenge” for many reasons. These include the high costs, deployment timelines, technological hurdles, as well as safety and waste management issues. “Nuclear is a more difficult investment story to sell than renewables such as solar and wind.”

     Bioy also notes that there are “few funds” specifically focused on the nuclear theme. They’re mostly exchange-traded funds (ETFs), making it difficult for investors to access the market.
     “The limited number of options reflects the fact that nuclear energy is a very narrow theme for which it is hard to find pure players. These funds tend to invest in utilities companies for which nuclear energy represents only a small part of their overall activities. “They also invest in companies in the value chain, for example reactor manufacturers, but there aren’t many of those, and companies that mine uranium, a chemical element used as fuel in nuclear power plants,” Bioy claims.
     Nuclear power is still a “controversial” energy source, due to past disasters as mentioned before, challenges in radioactive waste management and very high upfront costs. Uranium is widely used to produce nuclear energy. It is an element which is dangerous to mine and technically not renewable.
     All this proves that government backing and “long-term drivers are supportive of the theme of nuclear energy”. However, “challenges remain” making it difficult for investors to commit, explains Bioy.

     Scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) have devised and tested a new, gamma-noise method for monitoring nuclear reactors non-invasively and from a distance. The new method was tested on EPFL’s CROCUS nuclear reactor. It can improve nuclear safety and treaty compliance.
     Monitoring nuclear reactors around the world to ensure that they are in compliance with regulations in international treaties is essential for safety. However, while current monitoring methods are effective, they often involve invasive procedures that can disrupt reactor operations or pose security risks.
     Nuclear technology is constantly evolving, creating new challenges for nuclear monitoring. Small modular reactors (SMRs) are compact and often installed in remote locations. Conventional monitoring methods are primarily designed for larger facilities and may not be sufficiently adaptable or sensitive to the workings of SMRs.
     A team of researchers at EPFL and the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) have pioneered a non-invasive and more efficient technique using gamma noise to monitor reactors.
     They just published a paper in Scientific Reports. In this report, they show that gamma radiation, as opposed to the neutron signals used by traditional monitoring methods, can provide accurate and timely data on reactor criticality and composition without actual, physical intrusion into the reactor vessel.
     The study was led by Oskari Pakari. He is a scientist with EPFL’s Laboratory for Reactor Physics and Systems Behavior and Professor Andreas Pautz with the PSI’s Nuclear Energy and Safety Research Division.
     In their new monitoring method, the researchers used two bismuth germanate scintillators. These were strategically positioned outside EPFL’s CROCUS research nuclear reactor. This allowed them to non-invasively monitor gamma radiation emitted from its operation.
     Gamma radiation is one of the types of electromagnetic radiation produced during nuclear reactions. Gamma rays carry information about the reactor’s state, such as changes in criticality and composition of its fuel (e.g., uranium) without directly interfering with the reactor’s operations.
     The new method also utilizes statistical analysis of the variability of gamma ray detection over time. Unlike conventional methods, which rely heavily on neutrons, gamma noise analysis focuses on the fluctuations in gamma ray counts. These correlate to the fission chain reactions occurring inside the reactor. The degree of correlation provides insights into the reactor’s operational state.
     The new method can provide essential data within minutes. This is a significant improvement over traditional methods, which typically require longer measurement times and closer proximity to the reactor core. The gamma-radiation method uses computational tools to analyze the temporal and spatial variance of detected gamma rays, which allows for rapid and accurate assessments of the reactor’s condition.
     The researchers tested their method by extended experiments, successfully demonstrating its efficacy at distances up to several yards from the reactor core. The gamma-radiation monitoring detected prompt decay constants with minimal error. This reduced the need for direct contact with the reactor core and it also enhanced the speed and accuracy of data acquisition.
     The new method provides reliable, non-invasive monitoring of a variety of nuclear reactor types, including SMRs. It could change nuclear safety protocols, facilitate better compliance with international treaties, and possibly be applied to other fields requiring radiation monitoring without direct sensor contact.