The Future of Nuclear Energy with Everett Redmond - WBD615

Everett Redmond is a nuclear engineer working as the Senior
Director of Fuel Affairs at Oklo. We discuss the enormous
challenges and opportunities in renewing the US’s nuclear fleet
over the next decade, Oklo’s development of fast nuclear
reactors, and how such small modular nuclear reactors will soon
become commonplace.


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Biden’s White House has embarked on an ambitious climate change
policy: it plans to eliminate fossil fuels for energy production
in the U.S. by 2035. But, as anyone who has knowledge of the
energy grid knows, this can not be replaced by traditional
renewable energy sources: wind and solar both have intermittency
and geographic constraints, hydro is even more geographically
limited, and biomass has a range of issues such as the scale of
land required and emissions.


Whatever technology is used to produce sustainable energy in the
future, it needs to provide a minimum level of base power that
can enable human life to flourish in any and every location.
Nuclear, despite the widespread fears, presents that opportunity:
it is an extremely dense, reliable and effective power source.
And yet, political pressure has resulted in the industry
flatlining over the past few decades.


Nuclear provides 20% of the US’s energy needs. It has been like
this for the past 20 years, over which time only 1 new reactor
has been built. This lack of investment means the US nuclear
fleet has an average age of over 41 years, the third oldest in
the world. Experts realise nuclear needs to be central to Biden’s
climate change ambitions. And yet, the renewal of the existing
fleet represents a challenge in itself, before thinking about
increasing capacity.


But there is a path forward: a new generation of fast nuclear
reactors provides an opportunity to have modular designs,
streamlining the build and planning process, and reducing costs
and development timescales. Such reactors are designed to be
inherently safe and can support a range of energy needs beyond
just electricity production. Further, such reactors can use spent
fuel and significantly limit the amount of waste produced. We are
on the cusp of a nuclear future.