Small nuclear reactors could power the future — the challenge is building the first one in the U.S.
Nuclear plants could become smaller, simpler and easier to build in the future, potentially revolutionizing a power source that is increasingly viewed as critical to the transition away from fossil fuels.
New designs called small modular reactors, or SMR in shorthand, promise to speed deployment of new plants as demand for clean electricity is rising from artificial intelligence, manufacturing and electric vehicles.
At the same time, utilities across the country are retiring coal plants as part of the energy transition, raising worries about a looming electricity supply gap. Nuclear power is viewed as a potential solution because it is the most reliable power source available and does not emit carbon dioxide.
Building large plants is very costly and time-consuming. In Georgia, Southern Co. built the first new nuclear reactors in decades, but the project finished seven years behind schedule at a cost of more than $30 billion.
Small modular reactors, with a power capacity of 300 megawatts or less, are about a third the size of the average reactors in the current U.S. fleet. The goal is to build them in a process similar to an assembly line, with plants rolling out of factories in just a handful of pieces that are then put together at the site.
“They’re a smaller bite from a capital perspective,” Doug True, chief nuclear officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute, told CNBC. “They’re a perfect fit for things like replacing a retired coal plant, because the size of coal plants typically is more than that of the small modular reactor design space.”
The challenge is getting the first small modular reactor built in the U.S.
Only three SMRs are operational in the world, according to the Nuclear Energy Agency. Two are in China and Russia, the central geopolitical adversaries of the U.S. A test reactor is also operational in Japan.
Executives in the nuclear industry generally agree that small modular reactors won’t reach a commercial stage until the 2030s. An ambitious effort by NuScale to deploy SMRs at a site in Idaho was canceled last year, as the project’s price tag ballooned from $5 billion to $9 billion due to inflation and high interest rates.
Eric Carr, president of nuclear operations at Dominion Energy, said the biggest challenge to commercializing the technology right now is managing the costs of a first-of-a-kind project.
“Nobody exactly wants to be first, but somebody has to be,” Carr told CNBC. “Once it gets going, it’s going to be a great, reliable source of energy for the entire nation’s grid.”
Dominion Energy
Dominion is currently evaluating whether it makes sense to build a small modular reactor at its North Anna nuclear station in Louisa County, Virginia, northwest of Richmond. The utility’s service area includes the largest data center market in the world in Loudoun County, less than 100 miles north of the plant.
Electricity demand from these computer server warehouses is expected to surge because artificial intelligence consumes more energy. In the case of Dominion, the peak power demand from data centers is forecast to more than double to 6.4 gigawatts by 2030 and quadruple to 13.4 gigawatts in 2038.
Dominion asked SMR technology companies in July to submit proposals evaluating the feasibility of developing a small reactor at North Anna. Carr said interest in the proposal process has been high. The utility is currently working with vendors to make sure they understand Dominion’s needs and to figure out which technology might be suitable, Carr said.
“For our specific case at Dominion, we have a duty to our shareholders to do the right thing, and we also have a duty to our customers to make sure we can meet the demand of this growth, but we have to balance both of those interests,” Carr said. Though Dominion has not committed to building an SMR yet, one planning scenario envisages developing six such reactors starting in 2034.
The tech companies driving the data center boom have also shown a growing interest in nuclear due to its reliability and role in fighting climate change. Carr said Dominion is having discussions with some customers on possibly collaborating to move SMRs closer to reality.
“We’re having some discussions with the technology vendors as well as the large customers that are coming in and saying, ‘What could this look like if we all work together,'” Carr said.
Holtec International
Holtec International, a privately held nuclear technology company, is trying to find a path forward for the industry on two fronts. The company is in the process of restarting the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, which would be the first time a plant that ceased operations has come back online.
Holtec also plans to install two small reactors at Palisades in the early 2030s, which would nearly double the power capacity of the plant. Kelly Trice, president of Holtec, said, without disclosing names, that at least six utilities are interested in participating in restarting Palisades and constructing the small reactors.
“If they participate, they can get all of those painful lessons learned without having to pay for them,” Trice told CNBC. “And then, when the plant is built at their site, it is the second one or the third one or the fourth — which usually becomes a lot less expensive once you’ve learned all your lessons.”
Once the first SMR has been constructed at Palisades, Holtec plans to build an order book to “continually manufacture the components to do this for whatever plant is needed,” Trice said.
Holtec’s SMR design is a pressurized water-reactor, the same technology as most plants currently operating in the U.S. fleet. “But with some elegant safety features that don’t require human action, and as a result of that simpler to operate, fewer people required, easier to maintain,” Trice said.
“And also reproducible. Our goal is for every SMR to essentially be the same,” he said.
Constellation Energy
The largest operator of nuclear plants in the U.S., Constellation Energy, is also exploring the possibility of building a small reactor at one of its facilities.
The trend in the industry is to upgrade existing plants with small reactors in part because the communities are already open to nuclear. The necessary land, water, grid connection and security footprint are also already available, said Kathleen Barrón, chief strategy officer at Constellation.
Barrón said the idea is to work with a customer that is interested in contracting at one of Constellation’s existing plants for power today, and then working with them to use the facility to “host an SMR to provide greater clean power to that customer in the future.”
“This will only happen if there’s a supportive state policy akin to what states have done with offshore wind and there are customers that are interested in buying the offtake from those reactors,” Barrón said.
For now, the energy transition will require an all-above approach with natural gas acting as a bridge toward cleaner energy as coal phases out — until the next technology comes online, Dominion’s Carr said.
“SMR may very well be that next technology,” he said.
It’s an exciting week for grid resiliency-lovers in California, as Governor Gavin Newsom followed up his earlier smart grid law and signed another law this week which may require bidirectional charging on EVs in the future – though the law has no hard timeline attached, so it may be a while before we see this happen.
Bidirectional charging refers to the capability of electric vehicles to not just take electricity from the grid to charge, but to output electricity in various forms, whether this be vehicle-to-load (plugging in devices, like the 1.8kW capability on the Kia Niro EV), vehicle-to-home (like Ford’s “Intelligent Backup Power” system), or vehicle-to-grid (like the Nissan Leaf is capable of).
While these applications may seem like a party trick, widespread use of bidirectional charging could lead to huge benefits for efficiency, grid resiliency, and enable much greater penetration of renewable electricity generation.
Most electric grids don’t really have trouble meeting the regular everyday needs of electricity consumers, it’s when big spikes happen that things get difficult. Either on a hot day when everyone is using air conditioning, or a day when electricity generation is curtailed for some reason or another, that’s when things get difficult.
And as climate change makes temperatures hotter, California’s grid is often overtaxed on the hottest summer days, which are becoming more numerous. Even worse, methane-burning fossil gas peaker plants are the highest-polluting form of electricity California consumes, and these are currently used at peak times in order to deal with high demand.
One solution to this problem is adding energy storage to the grid which can be dispatched when needed, and which can fill up when the grid is oversupplying electricity. This helps to balance out supply and demand of electricity and make everything a little more predictable.
This is why there has been a push for grid-based storage like Tesla megapacks, which represent a large source of rapidly-dispatchable energy storage.
But there’s another source of grid-connected batteries out there which was right under our nose the whole time: electric cars.
EVs, which are mostly connected to the internet anyway, could be used as a distributed energy storage device, and even called upon to help provide electricity when the grid needs it. We already see this happening with Virtual Power Plants based on stationary storage, but if cars had V2G, theoretically cars could contribute in a similar way – both saving the grid, and perhaps making their owners some money along the way via arbitrage (buying electricity when its cheap and selling it when its expensive).
The problem is, not many automakers have included V2G capabilities in their cars, and in the cars that do have it, not many manufacturers have made V2G-capable equipment, and the ones who have built it haven’t seen that many customers who are interested in spending the extra money to upgrade their electrical systems with V2G-capable equipment.
So there needs to be something to jumpstart all of that, and California thinks it might just have the thing.
New CA law might require bidirectional charging… eventually.
The idea started in 2023 when state Senator Nancy Skinner introduced a bill which would require EVs to have bidirectional charging by 2027.
As this bill made its way through the legislative process, it got watered down from that ambitious timeline. So the current form of the bill, which is now called SB 59, took away that timeline and instead gave the California Energy Commission (CEC) the go-ahead to issue a requirement whenever they see it fit.
The bill directs the CEC, the California Air Resources Board, and the California Public Utilities Commission to examine the use cases of bidirectional charging and give them the power to require specific weight classes of EVs to be bidirectional-capable if a compelling use case exists.
The state already estimates that integrating EVs into the grid could save $1 billion in costs annually, so there’s definitely a use case there, but the question is the cost and immediacy of building those vehicles into the grid.
The reason this can’t be done immediately is that cars take time to design, and while adding bidirectional charging to an EV isn’t the most difficult process, it also only really becomes useful with a whole ecosystem of services around the vehicle.
Even Tesla, which for years has touted itself a tech/energy company and sold powerwalls, inverters, solar panels and so on, is still only gradually trickling its bidirectional Powershare feature out onto its vehicles.
And that ecosystem has been a bit of a hard sell so far. It’s all well and good to tell someone they can make $500/year by selling energy to the grid, but then you have to convince them to buy a more expensive charging unit and keep their car plugged in all the time, with someone else managing its energy storage. Some consumers might push back against that, so part of CEC’s job is to wait to pull the trigger until it becomes apparent that people are actually interested in the end-user use case for V2G – otherwise, no sense in requiring a feature that nobody is going to use.
Electrek’s Take
Given all of these influences, we wouldn’t expect CA to require bidirectional charging any time soon. But it still gives the state a powerful trigger to pull if other efforts, like the recently-signed smart grid law, turn out not to be enough as California works to, grow, clean up, and make its grid more affordable all at the same time.
But having the force of law behind it could turn V2G into less of a parlor trick and more into something that actually makes a difference the way us EV nerds have been dreaming of for decades now (true story: Electrek once turned down Margot Robbie for an interview and instead talked to some engineers about V2G for an hour).
So, telling manufacturers that California may start mandating bidirectional charging soon means that those manufacturers will perhaps start taking V2G more seriously, particularly given the size and influence of CA’s car market. Even if the CEC doesn’t make it a requirement, the threat of it eventually becoming one means that EV-makers will probably start getting ready for it regardless.
There’s no real point to a single person discharging their car into the grid, but when millions of cars are involved, you could work to flatten out the famous “duck curve,” which describes the imbalance between electricity supply and demand. We hear a lot about “intermittency” as the problem with wind and solar, and grid storage as the solution to that, so being able to immediately switch on gigawatt-hours worth of installed storage capacity would certainly help to solve that problem. And we hope this law helps us get just a little closer to that potential future.
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Japanese equipment giant Komatsu dropped its new, 320-ton Power Agnostic 930E mining truck at MinsExpo trade show in Las Vegas, calling it a future-ready solution that can run on diesel, hydrogen, or pure electric power.
Komatsu continues to develop alternative engine technology with the release of its first commercial rigid-frame dump truck with a “power agnostic” platform for running on diesel, hydrogen, or even battery electric power.
That’s because the platform is designed around the concept of a modular powertrain. The design not only gives the Komatsu assembly line an easy way to build diesel, BEV, and hydrogen fuel cell rigid haulers on the same line, but also enables customers to upgrade from diesel to battery electric or hydrogen down the road, if and when whatever logistical obstacles that are preventing them from running an electric or hydrogen solution today are overcome.
“This platform enables mining companies to start with conventional diesel engines and gradually transition to cleaner energy sources as needed, including utilization of trolley assist for diesel or as one of the future dynamic charging solutions for battery trucks to reduce fuel consumption and emissions,” reads Komatsu’s press material. “Whether adopting battery technology, hydrogen fuel cell technology or a combination of energy systems, the Power Agnostic 930E provides the infrastructure and adaptability necessary to meet evolving sustainability goals.”
Potential customers got a sneak peek at the concept truck, which they were apparently allowed to test at Komatsu’s Arizona proving grounds ahead of MineExpo (I wasn’t invited). The first pre-production Power Agnostic 930E prototype will make its way to Sweden in the coming months, where it will be put to work alongside other electric Komatsu machines in Boliden’s Aitik copper mine, one of the largest such operations on the European continent.
Electrek’s Take
Converting gas and diesel-fueled cars to electric at scale is a concept that’s fraught with problems. Far too many to list here, in fact. But heavy equipment?
Everything from excavators to loaders to heavy trucks are already built to be powertrain agnostic, and manufacturers will often offer the same basic vehicle with Cummins, Detroit Diesel, or Volvo Pentapower, so there’s a degree of openness baked into those systems already. Komatsu is just taking that to the next level by adding a modularity of energy storage (fuel tanks, hydrogen cells, or battery packs) to the mix. And, if the project is successful, it could be the first of many.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Komatsu; Equipment World.
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isinwheel’s terrific personal EVs “bring all the things you want closer to you.” Whether it’s an electric scooter, an e-bike, or an e-skateboard, the three things you’re guaranteed to get no matter which you choose are fun, safety, and affordability.
We’re taking a closer look below at six of isinwheel’s personal EVs – could one of these be your next electric ride?
Table of contents
isinwheel S9Pro commuting electric scooter
Meet the isinwheel S9Pro, the best value-for-money electric scooter that zips you through your day at speeds up to 19 mph with a range of 19 miles – perfect for your daily commute.
The S9Pro‘s powerful 350W motor delivers a smooth, efficient ride without breaking the bank. With a lightweight, foldable aluminum frame, it’s easy to carry, store, and even pop into your car trunk or onto public transport. Plus, the quick one-step folding mechanism makes it the ultimate on-the-go companion.
You can find the S9Pro on Amazon here.
isinwheel S10Max long-range electric scooter
The isinwheel S10Max is your ultimate high-performance ride, powered by a beastly 1000W motor that conquers any terrain with ease. With an impressive range of up to 37 miles, you can enjoy long-distance adventures without worrying about recharging.
The S10Max‘s all-terrain 10-inch off-road tires, paired with dual shock absorption, provide unbeatable grip and stability whether you’re cruising through city streets, on country paths, or on muddy trails.
You can find the S10Max on Amazon here.
isinwheel GT2 off-road electric scooter
Unleash your adventurous side with the isinwheel GT2. With a powerful 1000W motor, it rockets up to 28 mph, effortlessly conquering steep hills and challenging landscapes for a thrilling ride every time.
Its 11-inch off-road tires are built for all terrains, whether you’re cruising through the city or tackling rugged countryside paths. Plus, with four advanced shock absorbers, every ride is smooth and stable, no matter where your journey takes you. Get ready to ride the GT2 and experience performance like never before!
You can find the GT2 on Amazon here.
isinwheel M10 electric commuter bike
The isinwheel M10 electric commuter bike blends style with power. Crafted from lightweight, rust-resistant aluminum alloy, this sleek ride weighs just 47 pounds, making it easy to carry and tough enough to last.
With a professional 35-speed transmission, the M10 adapts to your every need, whether you’re accelerating, cruising downhill, or conquering steep inclines. With a 500W motor capacity, a top speed of 20 mph, 374 Wh battery capacity, and four hours of charging time, it’s the perfect blend of performance and convenience for your daily commute!
You can find the M10 on Amazon here.
isinwheel U1 folding electric bike
Say hello to the versatile isinwheel U1! With folding handlebars, pedals, and a height-adjustable seat, it’s perfect for easy storage and transport. The U1’s 500W motor comes with a smart chip that instantly adapts to give you that extra boost when you hit an incline, face a headwind, or carry more weight.
The U1 has a top speed of 18 mph, 280 Wh of battery capacity, and three hours of charging time. Whether you’re zipping through city streets or tackling hills, the U1 has you covered with power and portability.
You can find the U1 on Amazon here.
Check out isinwheel’s V8, V6 and V10 electric skateboards
The isinwheel V8 electric skateboard is your ticket to thrilling rides, featuring a top speed of 28 mph and a range of up to 12 miles. Its removable, detachable batteries allow for quick swaps, so you can extend your adventure with ease. Choose from four riding modes and let the gorgeous ambient lights make you stand out, whether you’re cruising in daylight or lighting up the night. With its powerful dual 540W motors and regenerative braking system, the V8 delivers a ride that’s as exhilarating as it is stylish.
The V8 is isinwheel’s first-gen electric skateboard, and we’ve also taken it to the next level. The V6 is perfect for teens and beginners, and the high-performance V10 is for those who crave more power. But we’re not stopping there – this September, we’re launching the V6 PRO, the ultimate cool ride for young skaters and newbies. Stay tuned; it’s going to be epic!
You can find the V8/V6/V10 on Amazon here.
Follow isinwheel on Instagram here, on X here, on YouTube here, and on Facebook here.
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